That “ginger” episode of South Park was hilarious.
Oh hello there. Welcome to my poem on the white race.
I knew a blonde guy with freckles, a boyish handsome face,
Who wanted to be Italian. He thought they
Looked better than him. In leather, like Andrew Dice Clay.
He used to sarcastically call a young woman, “mom,”
Who was a single mother. She was darker than him. Maybe half Italian?
He used her living room table
For war games. Cotton balls as puffs of smoke. This ranks
Pretty high in my amusing memories. Models of German and Russian tanks.
He knew facts of the Eastern Front in World War Two
And was amazed, but chuckled about it, too.
It’s how a growing mind contemplates
Woe. It asks how this horror compared to that horror rates,
And laughs, even as it ravenously debates
The choices a young man must make,
As it has, then eats, then has, then eats its cake.
He pronounced “the crawling chaos” in scary tones and laughed,
Aware of how ridiculous it was to admire H.P. Lovecraft.
And this would go on in a drunken haze,
Jokes about H.P. Lovecraft amusing us for days.
Ich bin white. Hetero and white.
Therefore I speak from a frightening height.
We discussed King Crimson and Emerson.
The 20th century, in the kitchen, limped on.
Halloween and the World Series. Laundry. Then to the bar.
Later to a party. I felt pale, and wished I
Were more interested. A freckle on her thigh.
I was gentle, and listened to her
Describe Tom Augenthaler as a cur.
Who was she? What was going to happen?
We can’t all be failures by gradual degrees.
Some fall. Some open a box. And remove mighty armies.
Going back to the beginning of time
I imagine every race indulged in sin.
(The air up here is thin.
Poetry slowly invades my skin.)
He left Wall Street. History and similitude
Are how we, who inherit the world,
Laugh. We laugh, and lose the world.