Video: The Problem with Political Poetry

A Reading From While the Undertaker Sleeps

Below poems are from While the Undertaker Sleeps

The Aim

The aim is always heartless, like desire.

This morning the President is tweeting, looking for trouble.

You want to say, “Not again.” “This has to stop.” “Fuck off, I’m so very tired of you.”

But it’s 3 a.m., and there’s the possibility your son’s heart may stop at any moment. There’s also the dog, who’s snoring under your feet and will be dead by Thanksgiving. Whereupon Sorrow, like the heavy granite slab you’ll place over her grave.

Nothing to do but pet her, promise to meet on the Rainbow Bridge, to bring your token and photos from your whole wondrous life.

Anything to distract you from that shadow prowling by the woodshed.

An itinerant angel?

An artist starving for attention, pacing the dark recesses of his cruel cage?

No, just a gaunt coyote squatting near a graveyard—stiffening at the sounds the dead make.

Rally

A face from a fun house mirror pressing against my driver’s side window. Giant shark teeth and a mouth twisted in rage—a gargoyle image of a banished second-rate mythological harpy some third-rate Greek poet had failed to write about after being distracted by a toothache. Which reminded me, once again, about the serendipitous arc of history that weak-minded people cling so hopelessly to, with predictable results. I’m with the guy who got arrested for standing naked among the lily pads in the town’s pond, except I wouldn’t have been touching myself. That’s how people get into trouble. They make a barely acceptable symbolic gesture, then go overboard, alienating even the most hardcore troublemakers—like when this woman writes “Fuck you” on my window with purple lipstick, as my beat-up SUV inches slowly through the crowd. I’m on my way to get a scone, a seemingly apolitical gesture, but now she has my attention. “Smile! Be happy!” I say, lowering my mask. “Jesus loves you! I’ve got a Jesus as big as my hat!” I point to my black felt fedora on the passenger-side seat. Which is my attempt to distract her and exit this current dark tunnel of mania. There’s much yelling, a little spitting, until she’s dragged away by a shaggy guy holding a sign that promotes the castration of a certain gay journalist. Knowing that bleach cures and child molester conspiracies will soon follow, I motor on, eventually making my way home. I sit on the back porch, sconeless and forlorn. I tell my wife about the woman. She has her back to me and seems to have put on twenty pounds since this morning. “Smile! Be happy! Jesus loves you,” she says, in a snarky, unfamiliar voice—an ominous sign that I’ve been followed home.    

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You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com

His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems

His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories

Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments, even though he has a publisher for it, by downloading the PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss+