So as Susan mentioned, I worked with Code Pink.
I still do activism of various kinds,
and I'm very distressed about drone bombing
and among a million other things that I'm
distressed about that our country is engaged in.
And I really don't feel like we should all sit silent.
Bob and I, we don't have enough time to do as much protest
as we want, but we went down to Creech Air Force Base, which
is in Nevada outside of Las Vegas,
and we just stood out there with our poems, and signs,
and stuff, for a couple of days with some other activists.
And we just read poems and this kind of goes into that.
It's a haibun.
We were talking today in the class about haibun.
It's a block of prose with some little lines of verse.
And I did want to say that at Davis-Monthan they
also fly the drones from there.
And so you can protest those once a month,
and it's a good thing to do.
You just go out there, stand with your body
with a sign just saying you protest.
It's not hard to do.
"In High Desert Under the Drones."
"We are Western creatures.
We can stand for hours in the sun.
We read poetry near an Air Force Base.
Is poetry pointless?
Maybe its points are moving as in a fire.
The enlisted men can't hear.
Practice drones fly overhead to photograph our signs.
They look like hornets, Vespula with dangly legs dipping
in rose circles with life grains.
They photograph shadows of the hills
where coyote's eyes have stars.
They could make clouds of white writing, cilia, knitting,
soul weaving, spine without nerves, dentures of the West,
volcano experiments, geometry, weather, breath, and salt.
Young airmen entering the base stare from their Hondas.
They are lucky to have a job in an economy like this.
The letters of this poem are also lucky to have a job
for they are insects, and addicts, and thieves.
Volcanic basalt recalls its rock star father.
Creosote and sage, stubby taupe leaves greet the rain.
We hold our signs up.
We're all doing our jobs.
Trucks bring concrete for the landing strip
they've just begun.
A cliff stands out in winter.
Twin ravens drop fire from its eyes.
My inner life is not so inner and maintains the vascular
system of a desert plant.
I'm grateful to Samuel Beckett and to my high school boyfriend
whose drunk father yelled when we closed the door
and read The Unnamable during the Tet Offensive.
They prepared me for this.
Outside the base we see borax mines in the distance.
The colors of flesh, brown, black, peach, pink, bronze.
We stand there as the young airmen
settle into their routines.
The Gnostics noted it is difficult to travel
between spheres.
You've had to memorize the secret names
and the unnamable haunts every aspect of your routine.
The names grow heavier as you carry them
between the spheres."