Morbid Poems 4 Morbid People

by Heironymous S. Anon-y-Mous

i be a honkie without a horn

i am a licensed poet

but my poetic license

has been revoked

i am a licensed writer

but my licentious writings

have been bespoked

i am a licensed speaker

not to lie

but to make sense

i am not black

but all i lack

is the b

i am a white

monkey

i am not gay

although i gaily live

i am not queer

so i do not

make inquiries

i am not brown

so i cannot

bake brownies

nor do i fit the equation

to be an asian

i am not a transvestite

i am a scribe

so perhaps i can transcribe

i am not bi-sexual

which be most vex-ual

as a card-carrying hetero-sexual

my citizenship has been revoked

i be straight

when i be born

i be a honkie

without a horn

Dedicated to VIKKI GIOVANNI, whose ill-cho-sen incendiary words in her vile poem may well have been the spark that sent Cho on his mission of death. 

Let's hope not, but it should be considered in the investigation.  We have to be careful of the words we use, because they can live on for many years, like an unexploded bomb in a cellar, waiting for someone to disturb it.  We have to be careful of our actions as well.

BREEDING. 

My father was far from a wealthy man, an adaptable man though, so when he lost his business during the depression, he got us through it by becoming a working man, a ticket seller in a booth for the Electric Ferries  that crossed the river between New Jersey and New York, then a worker in a ship yard, a machinst making machine guns during the war, a salesman selling records and phonographs after the war, then owner of a small business laying floor tile and linoleum, and an optician in his later years.  He was adaptable.

He was brought up in a German/American household, a father who was a ship's cook and a mother who learned to run a restaurant.  Her father had brought her, as a child, over from Germany, and he drove a horse-cart in New York to support his family.  Immigrants, working immigrants, hard-working Christian people. 

He was taught to be honest, and to work.  He did not have a college education, neither did his brother or sister.  His brother owned the largest optical shop in New Haven, Ct., and his sister married a hard working man who later became President of a ship repair firm. 

Like all the families in our neighborhood, we were taught a work ethic when young, shoveling snow in the winter, cutting grass, pulling weeds, working in a hardware store for $3.00 a week, delivering newspapers.  Steve Cerra, the Italian barber lived across the street, a Jugoslavian family a few doors away, an Irish milkman next door on one side, four brothers and sisters (who had lost both parents) on the other side, all up and down the street, every one in different occupations, but all with a work ethic.  Most all common ordinary working people, store clerss, secretaries, druggists, soda fountain owner, and all living the American dream, not wealthy, but good honest hard-working people, good neighbors who helped each other when there was sickness or a death in the family, whose children were respectful of all the adults in the neighborhood, who played togerher mostly in harmony and having fun. Hardly a college student around, but still, they got along. That's what I call "good breeding."

RESPECT: 

We were taught to respect our elders, but also a respect for all people, and their background did not matter, race, religion, didn't really matter.  Were there differences, were there preferences?  Of course.  Yet, I never saw nor heard of my father being disrespectful to anyone.  That's the way I was brought up.  And that is the way most Americans are brought up.

My father was not perfect, I am not perfect, nor are most Americans perfect, and neither is our nation.  On the other hand, we all, too, suffer slights, indignities, disharmony in our relationships, and yes, all, at one time or antoher, in one form or another, yes, suffer discrimination.

Throughout my lifetime, wherever I traveled, I felt respect for my fellow man and did not villify anyone because of race, color or any other preference.  In school we were taught to get alone with each other, and although every one, at one time or another, had disagreements, most passed on.  I see ten times as much disharmony today as I ever heard of then.

We're actually teaching disharmony, we're teaching racial hatred in schools and colleges.  We're teaching young people to take offense easily under the guise of doing exactly the opposite.  No wonder we have so many allergies today; we're developing them on cue and becoming super-sensitive.  Our hearing has so intensified that we can pick out a key word from an innocuous sentence and make a full court case out of it.

We've forgotten how to ignore, how to forgive, how to live in a world that we make more complex every day.  That's so sad for us and for our country.