Peacocks

When it’s done right, the third movement
of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 3 rocks harder
than nearly anything else in music, except
perhaps Raw Power by the Stooges.

You can’t look this up anywhere, and no one will tell you this
but me.

Now listen.

We know the empire is corrupt and we’re pretty sure
they put a man on the moon, and I know
that these days of distrust give me pause
and give me gas, that less-than-exquisite feeling
of regret,
in which case why should I bother describing these sounds?

Hearing music is sometimes like dancing
out of one’s tight pants and into someone else’s tight pants.

A woman in her evening gown who pulls a bow across taught
strings belongs with a half-dressed man rolling around on broken glass.

When they first got together they just went
ahead and did things.

One of them didn’t like to dance, but that’s how you grow.

It’s like when a peacock flashes its feathers and you look right there,
like you’re looking at someone’s ass.

With your lips slightly apart, your index finger moves like a snake charmed
to meet
your chin, which you point downward as if
to say, “Thanks,
I know.”

-Jose Padua

America: a Pornographic Film by Glenn Beck

White people have won the world
for everyone. The dog wags its tail
on the clean lawn under the American sun.
White culture has won the world

for everyone. A truck moves down
the highway at 80 miles per hour. Christianity
has won the world and everyone else is
dead. We converted those we could and

those we couldn’t were pumped full of lead.
Their bodies rot in the sun as we smile, plant
a flower, and eat the world’s biggest
hamburgers under American power.

Five years ago, in New York City, there was
a dark place called Harlem. Out west in California
there was a yellow place called Chinatown. In
Washington DC there was another dark place

across the river called Anacostia. All across
America the colors were drifting from town to town.
In Asia there was a place called India where
it was too hot, and next to that a place called China

that was too Chinese, and a place called
the Philippines where they were obscenely
philippine and Africa which was always
too African when we were obviously not.

We worked hard and we prayed, bonding
brick to mortar, we were not in Asia, we
were not in Africa, we were in America
in North America. We mowed our lawns

to a uniform green shine, we mowed our
healthy minds, we played our games the right
way then we sealed our borders. We sat
on our decks, fell asleep with beers in our

hands, and we were proud and when
we spoke we were loud, and we shunned
the dark views that lay in the terrible shade
of the cities, and we listened to the right news

because we were Americans in America not
in Africa. When beggars came asking
for money we asked them for their papers
and when they showed us no papers we kicked

them between the thighs, we beat them
with bats until they started bleeding
from the eyes, until they learned that without
hard work they were being left behind.

And the sun shone on our white power
and on our beautiful flowers, and we
laughed as the sun shined hour after
glorious hour and we held our heads

high for our battle with the government
state, and we grabbed our guns and
declared God is great, God is great.
We shot people who knocked

on our doors—they were slain, put
to rest. Then we travelled over oceans
to their homes and strapped bombs
to our chests. They didn’t believe in Christ

so they couldn’t be saved, they deserved
to die. It was time for them to go, say farewell
to their evil ways. Goodbye, devil, goodbye.
We were butterflies become death bombers

like pale, weightless saints, and we rose
to the sky where angels were our pilots,
to the glittering heavens above. We are
like he machines that make what the world

wants to take, but we keep everything human
through our violent acts of love. And now it’s
time to spread the heavens to taste the succulent
virgin taste. Baby, I’ve drained the color

from your cheeks, I’m onto you like glue.
Baby, baby, what you wanted to do to me
I’m now doing to you. Baby, baby, this is my plane
and I’m doing it because America is great.

-Jose Padua

This Is What Happens

Why should I feel guilty
about the pile of semicolons

on the concrete floor? Yes,
I summarily deleted all the

tedious acronyms, mixed
in several instances of the

so-called passive voice,
added the word fuck just

for you to see and what’s
more changed it all from

third to second person.
Yeah, how do you feel about

that? Does it make you want
to give everything the fuck

up? This message is being
given to you by me. If I were

putting it in an envelope
I would seal it with a drop

of melted red wax. This is
what happens when poets

attack.

-Jose Padua