Hmm. Begins with a reference to
the (famous?) burgeoning scraggly beard,
which got shaved off on occasion, sure. Well, look, it’s hardly an auspicious
start, promising one of the great English language poems, but whatever. “Shadow
& act, shadow & act”. Is this an oblique reference to Plato? (Doubt
it.) Something akin to yesterday’s poem, the call, and my response? The
cowering person projected via
holographs and megaphones into persona?
(Not quite seeing that.) It feels deep, and it’s repeated, so it seems
important, but I can’t reach it. And then comes this:
Better get white
or you' get whacked,
or keep
so-called black
& raise new
hell.
I've had enough
of this dying.
I’ve had enough of this dying too. On this day today, the city
of Baltimore is nursing some grievous wounds. Yet another black man killed
while in police custody, his spine broken
in three places. Go ahead, explain how he wasn't mistreated if his spine was so shattered. Ten thousand protesters in the streets for days, then the riots broke
out, fires and looting, phalanxes of riot police subject to cascades of bricks,
some injured (but no broken spines), and now here come the news agencies
because this shit is juicy. Better get white, or you’ get
whacked? I’ll say.
Except the poet is still talking about
his beard. “Dying” doesn’t refer to
ceasing to exist amongst the living, it refers to the chemical changing of one’s
hair color. And we get back to the beard again in the third stanza. “It’s
easier to vomit than it was, / beardless”. It reveals a steely-eyed bitterness
in this one coming through for me. There are other images and messages in the
poem, but this matters most to me today, as Baltimore smolders.
Because here’s the thing: “Better
get white or you get whacked” and “dying”: They’re not about a beard either.
The pun on “dying” is deliberate; the puns on “white” and “black” are
deliberate: race or hair color, depends on your angle. They give rise to a
metaphor. The “tenor” of a metaphor is the root-level image or concept being
conveyed, the “vehicle” is the substitution that carries the tenor. The tenor
is sometimes only communicated through allusion—you can’t prove it in a court
of law—but poetry doesn’t give a damn about law. Nothing on this poem’s surface,
the vehicle, is legally about anything other than grooming habits on a poet’s
ugly mug. But put “black,” “white,” “whacked,” and “dying” together and the
alternate meanings of the words, each with a radioactive aura, reinforce each
other into a tenor about race and violence. The radioactivity grows to dangerous
levels: You bet this poem is about
race and brutality.
At the end there: Alcoholics
vomit pretty routinely, don’t they? So there’s that. But how about one more
subtle, implied double entendre? Rather than “I’ve had enough” of this “dying,”
I’m sick of all this dying. There’s the poet’s comment on he
why thinks whacking a black man because he’s black and you’re angry is behavior
that’s acceptable. Get it? Myself, I could never, ever be a lawyer because my
brain is not wired in such fashion. I’d rather empty outhouses. But, times like
this, they prove their worth. Sic ‘em on the brutal tenor of violence and apply
one last metaphor: You’re going to the
big house. The Vehicle: The “big house” is defined as a larger-than-average
domicile. The Tenor: prison. Where murderers belong.
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