Planet of the Blind

It’s a game Uncle History plays—
Supposing some people
Were never born
Stalin, of course
And Pol Pot
But also Humphrey Bogart
And Bridgette Bardo
He goes from horror
To the trivial
Hitler, Captain Kangaroo
It’s all Morse code
Dit dit
No Freud
Dot dot
No Lotte Lenya
He keeps Brecht
But doesn’t know why
Sometimes it’s more important to be human, than to have good taste…
Neither pertains to Uncle

Uncle History knows
About wishes
How the Puritans
Made iron
So their souls
Wouldn’t sag
But he doesn’t know
About the neural connections
Of consciousness
Or how to put an electric probe
On the skin of the past
He does recall John Winthrop
Inviting men
From their hiding places
To make spears
Sometimes the worthiest ideas
Are best when
Not enacted
The Pequots who
They didn’t slaughter
Were sold into slavery

“Who has time for anything?”
The big question
In the age of machines
Uncle History is a Luddite—
He hates artificial intelligence
Calls it the “kitsch of destruction”
He’s not wrong, right now
A clot of computers
Builds a suspension bridge
Melville’s books are torn by bots
Who has a moment to himself?
A meadow would be nice
He once saw a donkey
Beside a ruined house
It brought tears to his eyes
O mordant habituations
How happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone…
He loves Emily Dickinson
Thinks:
Once I aspired to tallness like the oak…
Now it’s seeds I’m after…

He wishes he had kids
But Uncle History has no leisure for “sexy time”
Besides, he’s a saboteur—looking backwards…
He prefers puzzles to hope
The Minotaur, he loves the Minotaur
Give him the tragedy of architecture
Give him long winded myth
On the streets of Paris
He spots hopeful children
He thinks: the lamb in the brain
May still lie down with the lion
But then he gets dizzy
And must hold fast to a wall

Uncle History sees
Disappearing the innocent
Is easy—all you need
Is faith—inquisitors
MAGAs, Bolsheviks
Even Buddhists
With the right conditions
Make them “go poof”
He doesn’t need a Swiss watch
To keep track
All the worst have their leaders
“Dented can people”
Uncle calls them
Stalin, after dinner
Suffered guests
To listen to a gramophone record
Of howling wolves

Uncle History still grieves over Herodutus
Who recited his work at the first Olympics
How the crowd roared hearing him
So what he didn’t tell the truth?
Fascinations and mysteries
Always motivate men
They’ll go to war
When the lies are colorful
You know, the Persian War
Began with the abduction
Of goddesses
Pushing soldiers to fight
Always requires hallucinations
“The good old days” uncle thinks
All those Athenians
Seeing things
That weren’t there
“The good old days…”

He likes anti-aging cream, does
Uncle History—favoring
An ancient Egyptian formula
One that employs
Supernatural forces
He also likes incantations
Amulets, offerings, aromas,
Tattoos, and statuary
You should see his house
Meanwhile picture him
With a falcon’s hood
Over his head
And waving to ghosts
Everyone needs
Minor amusements
When wars
Are described as heroic

If Uncle History has a memory its shaky
Remember when Amelia Earhart
Took Eleanor night flying?
They swept over Washington and the moon
Appeared to follow
This was the height of the Depression
And the marble, for once, seemed hopeful
Now this story has been forgotten
History lives inside a vast electric relay
But two brave women went flying on a spree
When the nation opposed tyrants

Uncle History dives (occasionally)
To the wreck of Titanic
He doesn’t care about the machinery
He’s interested in toilets
And the captain’s bathtub
Its confirmation he’s after
Ghost feces of the dead
And the hint of a tragic last bath
He too would like to be
On the edge of panic
Though he’ll never get there
What with one thing
And another
What with the homely artifacts
Of loss—what with
His inability to look up

In his diary Uncle History really dishes–
Napoleon stinks of feces
Though he tries to cover it up
With antimacassar
Which only makes him smell
Like a rich man’s piss pot
His breath is like death after death
As for the Empress
She smells like burning bibles
His nose is Uncle’s best sense
Because no one ever sees him
He’s the future perfect
But he still shivers