Poetry
The Ballad of the Girly Man
For Felix
The truth is hidden in a veil of tears
The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear
A democracy once proposed
Is slimmed and grimed again
By men with brute design
Who prefer hate to rime
Complexity’s a four-letter word
For those who count by nots and haves
Who revile the facts of Darwin
To worship the truth according to Halliburton
The truth is hidden in a veil of tears
The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear
Thugs from hell have taken freedom’s store
The rich get richer, the poor die quicker
& the only god that sanctions that
Is no god at all but rhetorical crap
So be a girly man
& take a gurly stand
Sing a gurly song
& dance with a girly sarong
Poetry will never win the war on terror
But neither will error abetted by error
We girly men are not afraid
Of uncertainly or reason or interdependence
We think before we fight, then think some more
Proclaim our faith in listening, in art, in compromise
So be a girly man
& sing this gurly song
Sissies & proud
That we would never lie our way to war
The girly men killed christ
So the platinum DVD says
The Jews & blacks & gays
Are still standing in the way
We’re sorry we killed your god
A long, long time ago
But each dead solider in Iraq
Kills the god inside, the god that’s still not dead.
The truth is hidden in a veil of tears
The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear
So be a girly man
& sing a gurly song
Take a gurly stand
& dance with a girly sarong
Thugs from hell have taken freedom’s store
The rich get richer, the poor die quicker
& the only god that sanctions that
Is no god at all but rhetorical crap
So be a girly man
& sing this gurly song
Sissies & proud
That we would never lie our way to war
The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear
The truth is hidden in a veil of tears
Contributor
Charles BernsteinCharles Bernstein’s most recent books are Pitch of Poetry (2016) and Recalculating (2013), both from the University of Chicago Press. He is the co-editor, with Tracie Morris, of The Best American Experimental Writing 2016 (Wesleyan University Press, 2017). He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is co-director of PennSound.
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