The White House
By Joel Craig
He knows how to do what he sets out to do
with perfectly obvious procedure. The sea
is dark and forbidding. The horizon
is dark and forbidding.
Even from a distance, the less said the better. The colors in some of these landscapes
are perfectly desperate.
In a portrait there is never anything wrong
with the mouth. There is never anything wrong
with anything. Machines are not choosers.
The next best things are certain. Heaven
knowing the next best things. The young
can explain it, but who would they explain
it to? More promise than performance
as all sorts of things begin to interfere.
An energetic hostess seated me at the counter
next to a beautiful woman. It is possible
the timid portion of the population
unless held firmly in check will imitate
the silliness of timid people of years ago.
Supplication is valued. As soon as I learned the facts I gave up
on the exchange. She wanted something
mysterious, as if everything were the same.
Life changes and so-called truth changes with it. The businesslike
haste of the surgeon as he scolds the public.
To look at him and the thing he can never look at
shudderingly as the blood is drawn
is the duty of every patriot.
In a constructive age such as this I should have neglected everything
for the supreme duty of aiding
in the reconstruction.
I took my courage, which starts everywhere and goes
nowhere, and spoke to her. Here
one can unquestionably infer the inside
from the outside.
The leaders of the free world, assembled as if by magic,
seem to have the enemy at their mercy.
It can be argued that Christ himself spoke
to the mob. The crowd will stop
to see almost anything. The crowd will stop
to see something about almost everything.
Copyright Credit: Joel Craig, “The White House” from The White House. Copyright © 2012 by Joel Craig, published by The Green Lantern Press. Reprinted by permission of Joel Craig.
Source: The White House (The Green Lantern Press, 2012)