Reflections on the Homeless Man in the MAGA Hat

I.

The hanging tree
Says “marry me”,
Carved by the knife
Of Lady Liberty
In impeccable bloodlines.

The slaves were not slaves,
The dead did not die,
But these, these …
In vehicles rumbling
With gold exhaust plumes
And jeweled bumpers
Like upholstered elephants of yore
With Emirs fanned by fronds
Of rock ’n’ roll
With their entire sheikdoms behind them
As they disregard the curbside powerless
No matter how much they wave

Their HappyCups^TM in desperation.

There’s no justice in the world
Though there are those who seek it anyway.

II.

She wanted me to play
With boys my own age
She said,
The one who taught me
How the world is insufficient,
But these boys were just neglected,

Swam in the latent violence
The therapist coaxed out
With the foam-covered shafts
They used to pummel me.
He liked the way I was present for them,
Or maybe he wanted to diddle me,
At any rate I was invited to a Red Sox game
As if this was a real family
And we could eat at least hot dogs together
While we seethed in our animosities.

I still feel guilty for saying no.
How could it have been so hard to refuse
Gifts to the homeless
If I had a real home
Or professional intervention
If I was actually sane?
The thought that still taunts me
Is how disappointed he was,
How hard he tried to get me
To change my mind, his voice
Of despair, as if the angels
Sent a guide down here
To re-arrange some chairs.
I’d like to think he knew
What I knew, 

That creeps with badges

Don’t seem like the law
But still he seems as clueless
To any flaw in his constitution
As my family, friends and dog,
Who said it’s only a baseball game,
Can’t you be friends with anyone?
The fact that time has revealed 

My instincts as correct
Makes the pit in my stomach worse,

That I couldn’t be strong enough
To serve him.

That’s the scam, they say,
But what if he really believed it?
Like I believed in my own madness,
My need to be left alone?

An old friend, the best in all things,
Especially human compassion,
Was sent away last week
For a long, long time.
His crime was too heinous to say,
But nobody who knew him
Was really surprised,
For he had that gleam in his eye,
To serve or to die.
It was like a cancer invaded his will
And the truth long repressed
Had to speak in his voice.
He mentioned the priest,
As a confidence, in passing,
As if he hadn’t prepared to share
That since we met,
And he said it helped him understand
The pain others felt.

We give and give and give and give
But it’s only what we offer.
When the other side asks
For what’s needed
We don’t know, we don’t know,
The pathos for others
Bleeds into terror
And nothing short of our soul
Gives more than a voyeur’s silence.

III.
How many children are in these boxcars?
How many sex slaves will it take
To deliver this evening’s propaganda?
How can compassion fight evil?
When the emperor smiles
At the subjects in chains,
How can our hearts freeze
In the face of his misery?

Too powerful to be sacrificed,

Too weak to end the bleeding,

And he, after all, is the one who

Fears judgment from subjects

Whose judgments are all of

Themselves, under his watchful eye.

So tarnished with horror

At the depth of his secrets,

Compassion is all he can see.