THE GAZA ARCANE

1.

shema hear me,

a child born 

and raised originally

in Superman’s 

capitol of Death,

whose rule is trumpery. 

This stack of 

matzos I fling

one after another

across your Rosh

Hashanah clear

to your Yom

Kippour

like a paroxysm

of memory,

a matzography

of unforgettable

irony of ironies:

you, who were

so holocausted

by the nazis 

have created

the largest

concentration camp

in the world,

in Gaza, yes

we in Gaza,

when Sari Shobaki 18,

Amir Al-Nimra, 15,

Louay Kahn, 16,

Kami Halas, 14,

Nasser Shurrab, 18,

Louay Hasan, 13 

organized

a series of non-violent 

protests calling for 

the return

of Palestinians

exiled all

over the world,

you murdered them

in cold State blood

or sniped their

legs or slingshot

arms off and—

irony of the ovens

where the nazis

incinerated

so many of

your families—

those New York

settler thugs

celebrating a 

wedding were

crying out:

“Ali’s on the grill”

referring to

Ali Dawbsheh,

whose 18

month-old body

they’d burned

to death.

2.

Dilapidated shacks

or even tents 

in which we live

all crazy now 

without a capitol

and filling with

aparteidoia.

Gaza, we’re Gaza

who may rainbow:

Dareen Tatour,

you magnificent,

“terrorist” poet,

and you, 

Ahed Tamimi

who physically  

Took on a couple 

of Israel’s cops,

you of a family

of grassroots

activists, 

sister

of Razan Al-Najar,

that glorious

21 year-old

who gave her 

life helping to

nurse the wounded

in the protests.

We don’t hole up.

We stuff malice,

be terror cool,

steer no one wrong,

even as arms are torn,

even as wounded legs 

are smoking.

————————————————

THE MOTHERLOVE ARCANE

1.

The talky, yabbery 

empty-headedness

of It, which is the 

USA, Hollywood 

be its fame,

approaching the day 

devoted to the body

from which we all came;

the screamingly funny, 

lethally hysterical,

digitally channeled 

situation comedy,

the humiliating 

Mommaday,

about her who 

sustains, nurses, 

fights for, grows, 

suffers, possesses 

and lets go of us, 

who has her own 

job, puts in her time 

like any man, puts in 

more time than any 

man, makes less bux 

than most men, 

is more enslaved, 

more burdened yet 

smiles through all 

fights. loves saying 

Nice, and fights on.

2.

I love you, Momma, 

even if you’re three 

years dead, love you 

in any woman. You 

made me a Red, 

or rather lead me to 

the hallway where 

Terry Winter read me 

poems of Paul Eluard

before we necked 

and afterward gave

me the address of  

Young Progressive 

League. Anybody 

stupid enough like 

Henry Miller to say 

he hates his mother

can laze around 

anarchist heaven 

with the rest of

the famous flops. 

Anybody says a

word against—I  

mean Motherland,—

I’ll be happy giving 

him a red nose

courtesy Nellie 

my momma, my 

bowler, cane and, 

between my lips, 

the rose.

——————————————

THE TAFT-FARTLY ARCANE

1.

As we’ve seen: it’s a law

that’s the essence of evil,

71 years old and enacted

after World War 2 in 1947:

with peace rallies sprouting

allover European countries

that had enough of Death,

and the workers here were

picketing allover the land.

So the fascists in Congress,

wanting to break the hold

of the New Deal over the 

union workers, and sensing

what was to come a decade 

later, with the Black workers

breaking segregation chains,

enacted the law, making it

Illegal for any union worker

to have anything to do with

Communism and, among 

other things, making illegal a 

Solidarity Strike of one union

with another, in effect killing

the working-class movement

by amputating the possibility

of its growing larger than any

single union’s demands.

That law was the Taft-Fartly

and that law is the Taft-Fartly

and it stinks as it’s always 

stunk, smells to high heaven

and, even after the fall of the

Soviet Union, the corporate

takeover of communications

and the trans-globalization of

1,000 sickening billionaires,

it remains the back-breaker

and ball-buster of the whole

working-class movement,

the intimidating foreshadow

of the McCarthyism that in

a couple of years would lead

to the televised insulting of

those who for most of their

lives had dignified workers.

2.

No longer the Proletariat, we,

with our computers, androids

and other instruments of the

technology epoch making us

into a pushbutton Planetariat

capable of rapidly organizing

strikes and Solidarity Strikes,

but for that Taft-Fartly smell

forcing all fingers over the

noses of the whole citizenry,

and even the undocumented

doing the dirtiest work for the

less than minimum, for those

mickey-mouse-dumb wages,

have to hold their noses, the

stink’s so devastatingly putrid;

because the wills of the poor 

and the homeless, of those

men, women and children the

robots have tossed from their

jobs, are dreaming of the strike

that’ll multiply with others in the

Solidarity Strike that’s gonna

create the movement of a new

Planetariat which is gonna lower

the boom on the capitalist class

by first getting rid of that vicious

law that’s been used by gangs

of trans-globalized thugs, those

investors in death by war and 

famine who’ve amassed those

billions till now. But no more!

We’re gonna butt-plug the ass

of Taft-Fartly so that it dies of 

its own gas, and the Planetariat

becomes all our future at last.

———————————

ACTA  

En nombre de quienes lava ropa ajena  

(y expulsan de la blancura la mugre ajena)  

En nombre de quienes cuidan hijos ajenos  

(y venden su fuerza de trabajo  

en forma de amor maternal y humiliaciones)  

En nombre de quienes habitan in vivienda ajena  

(y aun los mastican con sentimiento de ladron)  

En nombre de quienes viven en un pais ajeno  

(las casas y las fabricas y los comercios  

y las calles y las ciudades y los pueblos  

y los rios y los lagos y los volcanes y los montes  

son siempre de otros  

y por eso esta alli la policia y la guardia  

cuidandolos contra nosotros)  

En nombre de quienes lo unico que tienen  

es hambre explotacion enfermedades 



All poems Copyright Jack Hirschman