I've Been No Nuke

"It was Wallace Stevens who thought of the poem
as an oral event."--Diane Wakowski, from a reading
in Pittsburgh, 1980.

If you told me you was pro-nuke
and I told you I was once no-nuke
HEY
maybe I was
plumb crazy wrong.
I think I was mixed
with
feelings of anger, of love,
of fear, of the Eve of
Destruction, of Hiroshima,
of gooks, of
unsettling vendettas,
of Abbey Hoffman's book,
of The Theory of Leisure,
of Bierman and Gould's
Philosophy book;
so let me take it back
the way I shouted my
bandwagon performanace
like an oral event of turning
on the shower and singing
up a storm
and tell you that the only reason
I'd been no-nuke was
because Jane Fonda
was on the platform like
a Barbie doll with her case
about it
and she'd been my favorite
actress
and if I meet her, all I
want to say is
come to bed with me,
you daring Venus,
Missie Sex Queen of the
Appocalypse Then.
Forget your ex, Jane.
Come with ME for the
silent night.
I'll raise a banner for
the cause . .
but, ah gee. Catching
a sure home run at the
ole' Forbes Field is an
extinct exclusive fantasy.
Forget that that Tom Hayden
was legend,
if not President of a
philosophy.
He's the kind of guy who
mooned
my half-sick books
declaring
Port-Huron activism
when I picketed
around little Irwin Tower
and asked for forgiveness
for knowing that he was
too smart.
But us now? Naaah.
If I told you I had
really really been no-nuke,
and I told you are so pro-nuke,
you'd just yell back I was now
so pro-nuke too.
It's our opinions,
prophecy,
Balzacanne petunias
growing higher and higher
in the flower gardens,
products of our environment.
It's my ingenuity wanting to
argue about
how to incorporate sci fi
and Dr. Strangelove's
numbers 13 & 36th
American dream on finding
Alex riding Satin the wild
stallion.
It is the finale of the world's
best nuclear economy package
findings its way
into the home of some poor
village foreign to this
country.
Yes Jane Fonda loved Vadim
and soon after
was immortalized by him.
But that was then
and who is getting immortalized
by now?
So forget that I was no-nuke.
Diane was as pretty in 1980
as she was eating a college dinner
in some posh place with us in l969.
Oh!
Look at the way this little girl's
face is crying in her Rice Krispies
over how much sheer energy
it takes to dream her up.