POEM: SOME POEMS FOR A DAY OR TWO, AND AFTER THE APOCALYPSE by ANDREW BACEVICH

 

How 'Bout A Cuppa?

You drink your tea,

Three cups a day,

By baskets drawn

From yesterday.

By withered skins

And drier bones,

That shatter glass

More than will stones.

In truth, withheld,

Far better times,

We let ships sail

To take what’s mine.

Where beauty etched

Upon a map

Yields mountainsides,

Now free to tap.

Thus, in the land

Where tigers roam,

We set our traps

So far from home.

Not for the wild,

Nor for the tame.

There’re set for those

With long last names.

So,

Enjoy the bud.

Enjoy the tip.

But know just why

You have to sip.

 

Still Life

Her belly, grown round 

and melon-taut,

is like ripe fruit spilling

from grocery store shelves, 

whose rich drawers hold

plums and apples, peaches,

and grapes. Pears

with their pleasing peasant shapes

are posed in rows 

by long, framed hands.

All around are baskets 

brimming with saucy cherries,

dimpled strawberries, 

fresh-cheeked lemons

and limes. And strange kiwis, 

with their tart, hidden flesh 

are also revealed.

As well, dark-skinned olives and dates

abound there, and seedy figs, too. 

Bright tangerines glow, 

having been pulled laughing

from sun-drenched limbs!

O, there are dozens more,

and portraits, all,

of the season’s true disordering

by time’s impatient hand.

 

Life’s Little Rule #1

Taste it going down—

You won’t want to taste it

coming up!

 

Hurry Exit

Driving along, 

following a winter’s road

closer and closer

to where you would

finally stop.

And seeing ahead 

to an exact spot

where all the wheels 

stop spinning,

if only for the briefest time,

you’re comforted a little,

knowing there’s a still place

to get off.

 

God Has Left the Machine

When they finally invent

the Perfect Machine,

the one without any moving parts,

that doesn’t leave space

between a question and its answer,

a machine no longer needing

time to record time—it’s then I think

I’ll go for a swim in liquid nitrogen.

I’ll dive deep into that pool

of space-cold blue,

back to the beginning,

to the absolute zero of things

until I’m frozen solid this time,

and perfect.

 

Walls of Grey

There’s a cave I once lived in a long time ago.

Just how that I got there I never did know.

With stalactite chandelier and fur on the floor,

It had some comfort, and then there was more:

With paintings on walls by folk long away

Who had left little else to mark their stay.

By drawings of things never meant to be.

There were beasts of the earth and beasts of sea—

Great swallowing things too terrible to name!

Made by some god who was playing some game.

Many with wings, many more had sharp claws.

They’d long spiky teeth in long spiky jaws.

They’d coats of many colours, all sizes and shapes.

One there was different and wearing a cape.

It stood apart from the rest on the walls,

Its shape, a mere outline—the crudest of scrawls.

It had a round face with rounder, dead eyes,

A little, round mouth to spit round, dead lies.

It had things there to take, more things to hide,

Things there to run with and things there to guide.

It appeared on the walls in sim'lar ways,

With purpose and cunning, born of the day

The artist first saw it on a darkling plain

Travelling past Eden, if such I must name.

The creature, silent ghost, haunted my stay

In dreams there at night and during the day.

I’d watch it change in the light of my lamp,

Pacing about like a wolf round a camp.

Just what it was or from where it came

I never could gather, nor ever could name.

Awake or asleep it would only tell

Where heaven ended and the start of hell.

I stayed there some time (bones piled on the floor).

I stayed there in vain, still wishing for more.

A predecessor’s gift? Or a caretaker’s curse?

Only if today is decidedly worse.

 

“Shhh!”

Why do we whisper

When no one is near?

Do you insist, Sir?

The coast is well clear.

Why did we take her?

Remind me once more.

Now that it’s too late,

To even what score?

Which boys become men?

Which women stay girls?

What is the town’s name

Where the black smoke swirls?

Why are we here, Sir?

Why can’t you just say?

I do all you bid, Sir

Each dawn of each day.

Were we once like them,

All fleeing the Beast,

That walks on two legs

And always will feast?

 

Saving Grace

White Wing!

The sun’s rays reach you

beneath the clouds.

 

Cut Rock

The brook’s only song—

So often heard,

and misunderstood.

 

Animals Say 

the Darndest Things #3

“Surviving,” hoots Owl

to the hungry wolf,

“is just a matter of time.”

 

SOME OF THESE poems are downers, man! They make me want to reach for the Xanax. They're mostly oldies, but thank the gods for “Saving Grace”.

I remember looking up into a sky filled with thick columns of dark cloud, coloured here and there along the bottom with purples and reds. Their masses shifted and flowed, filling out toward the horizon, with the sun shut behind them like a prisoner. It was a dull fall day, cool but not cold. “Dull and Dreary” I’d marked on my calendar. (I record the weather each day; I keep looking for a pattern, a sign or something, anything really.) When I looked again there was a flash of white and the shape of a gull’s wings was visible, etched high up against the wall of  grey. That’s all. Just for a second, then it was gone. But it was enough. Later, I scratched out what I’d written on my calendar and wrote, “Something Else”, instead. 

As for the poems—use them for a day or so, then dispose of them in Time’s Recycle Bin. (Maybe they can be used by someone else. It never hurts to recycle!)

 

I thought a short review of Andrew Bacevich’s excellent, new book, After the Apocalypse would lighten the mood. Though, the “Apocalypse” he refers to here is the abysmal year of 2020 that we’re only just now surfacing from, gasping for some Covid-free air.

 

BACEVICH IS AN  AMERICAN PROFESSOR EMERITUS of history at Boston University, and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington D.C. He’s a retired Colonel in the US Army and a Vietnam vet who writes extensively on American foreign policy and military matters. In his latest book, he says America received four blows to its body politic in 2020: The last months of the Trump presidency, Covid-19, an economic meltdown and simmering discontent from the citizenry or, as he puts it, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—Rancor, Pestilence, Want and Fury.* His premise is that America is increasingly out of step with the rest of the world because “those charged with thinking about America’s role in the world cling to a series of illusions that derive from a conveniently selective historical memory.” (4) In turn, these illusions have distorted how successive American governments handled domestic issues and these illusions have significantly affected American foreign policy, as well. Bacevich is particularly concerned with the later, and he says

“The premise of this book is quite simple: Regardless of whether our self-inflicted contemporary apocalypse leads to renewal or further decline, the United States will find itself obliged to revise the premises informing America’s role in the world. Put simply, basic U.S. policy must change.” (3)

 

Adding,

 

“Our Apocalypse didn’t come out of nowhere. It had antecedents, evident in the very way we have packaged the past—what we have chosen to remember and what to discard, what to enshrine and what to ignore.” (4)

 

Basevich’s writing style is ordered and to the point. His book provides a compact critique of such illusions and self-deceptions as: “America the Good”, “American exceptionalism”, “Pax America”, the “American Century”, “the Monroe Doctrine”, “Manifest Destiny”, the “Global War on Terror”, etc., illusions  Americans and their leadership have held, in some cases, since the nation’s inception.

The so-called  “special relationships” American political elites tout the U.S. has with certain countries is one example of their misunderstanding of how actual  nation-to-nation involvements are formed.  Bacevich cites the case of Sino-American relations, which were cordial during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, when American Christian churches established missions and evangelical programs throughout China, operating there for decades. As well, American businesses traded and had commercial ties with the Asian nation. Americans saw their role as helping the then-impoverished Chinese develop an “Oriental Christian” (54) civilization, a kind of amalgam of Eastern and Western religious beliefs and social mores. They saw America as having a “special relationship” with China, one characterized by friendship and goodwill. 

 

That all ended by 1949 with Mao Zedong’s Communist takeover of the country¹.  American elites felt they had “lost” China. But Bacevich points out they never ‘had it’ in the first place. Americans saw their involvement in China as benign, even benevolent. But American companies were as exploitative there as any other. After Mao’s victory  Americans, in general, felt a sense of betrayal but Bacevich points out such emotions are based on a false premise, an illusion, of what they thought China was to them and what they assumed the Chinese themselves saw as their relationship to the U.S. The Chinese chose to go their own way. Of this, he says

 

“This was propaganda [Elites’ portrayal of Sino-American ‘goodwill’] designed for domestic consumption. And like all propaganda, it consisted of half-truths packaged with untruths. In fact, both before and during the war, [WWII] Americans availed themselves of and abused their privileged status in China. Rather than enhancing mutual understanding, the wartime expansion of the U.S. military presence in China produced just the opposite—contempt on the part of GIs, anger and alienation on the part of Chinese who came into contact with U.S. troops.” (55)

 

He reminds us that such illusions among elites still have currency today. As recently as 2018, in a speech by Vice President Mike Pense, the VP reflected on the time when, “America and China reached out to one another in a spirit of openness and friendship.” His comments, Bacevich notes, are a false rendering of history, equating America as benevolent and good and China as having wandered from the path and away from their warm embrace. “In fact, the special relationship with China was entirely the product of American imaginations. Here [the VP’s speech] was a classic case of special leading directly to self-deception.” (56)

Bacevich, throughout his book, argues for a more realistic interpretation of America’s strengths and weaknesses, and what it’s true relationships are with other countries². In this section on “Special Relationships” Bacevich examines two other countries, Britain and Israel, who fall under this heading. He says the “special” relationship with Israel is most problematic. American support to that country, in armaments and money since WWII, has been wrong-headed, he argues. Israel is not of strategic importance to America. America can and should, according to Bacevich, get along without it. Having “special” ties to Israel constrains and distorts America’s relationship with the rest of the Middle East.

 

“Today the U.S.-Israel relationship qualifies as special in the sense that the executive and legislative branches of the United States government are uniquely deferential to the Jewish state.” (66)

 

For example, Israel’s main challenger in the region is Iran. But Iran is not any kind of rival or threat to the United States. Yet, America is forced to treat it as such because of that country's on-going struggle with Israel. Bacevich says this relationship “has the effect of locking the United States into a confrontational posture toward the Islamic Republic” [Iran]. (68) Not a good position to be in. Israel gets American military, financial and political support for its ventures, but in return the United States receives very little. Israel and America aren't "special" friends, anymore than Iran is a threat to the continental United States. This is another example of “delusional” thinking and misconceptions that lead to a false interpretation of what country-to-country relationships should be.

There are many examples Bacevich cites of “false narratives” or “revisionist’ histories that act to hobble rational thought, on the part of American elites and the public, concerning America’s past and present, and what it future should be. Such narratives occlude realistic examinations of the America’s place in the world, the limits of its power, and its often incoherent foreign policy. For example, most Americans would bristle at anyone calling the United States an “empire”. They see their country as a benevolent republic spreading freedom and democracy wherever it goes. Ask any number of other countries who have experienced such benevolence their opinion and you’ll get a quite different interpretation. America is an "empire" in all but name.

Bacevich’s ending chapter includes a description of a 1999 New York Times magazine cover which depicts a (white) male’s clenched fist painted with the colours of the American flag. The caption reads: “For globalism to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower it is.” (171) I think it’s fair to say that anyone reading that today would find such a statement absurd and wholly disproportional to the actual reach of America’s power on the global stage.² And that was only twenty years ago. Basevich cites multiple failures of American foreign and domestic policies in 2020, including Afghanistan, the Covid-19 response, mass unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, a fractious population, etc., not to mention the impacts of climate change, as proof of a superpower “already on its last legs.” (171) The grossly-inflated Defence budget has taken trillions of dollars away from the country and into the pockets of defence contractors and onto the battlefields of distant wars. This money could have been used to help Americans deal with the travails now being wrought by the "Four Horsemen". Basevich warns such policies must change if America is to survive.

He says that, unless Americans accept the reality of today’s world and acknowledge America’s true strengths and weaknesses, and its true history, it will continue along a path of illusion and self-deception that will leave the country less and less able to confront the challenges that lay ahead.³ 

 

Cheers, Jake.

 

 

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*Climate change is another (on-going) one, with record temperatures, forest fires, droughts, floods, etc. It acts as a force-multiplier intensifying the attacks by The Horsemen.  

 

1. It’s interesting we never say a Capitalist takeover of a country. Just sayin’.

 

2. Madeline Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State (1997-2001) during the Clinton administration, during a 1998 NBC-TV interview said the following:

 

“But if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. [Italics mine.] We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us. I know that the American men and women in uniform are always prepared to sacrifice for freedom, democracy and the American way of life.”

 

This illusory, jingoistic and martial world view would help create the “forever wars” of Afghanistan, Iraq, and all the other conflicts America would initiate in the following decades.

 

3. Some of his most interesting discussions are on how American foreign policy today is infused with a need to be dominant, to have a “full spectrum” response when confronted with intransigent foreign governments including, if not promoting, a ‘militarized’ diplomacy that has seen American boots on the ground in numerous countries, particularly since 9-11. Based, in part, on the illusion that America must be the “world’s policeman” and defender of the “free world”, a role it adopted during and after WWII, and one that now, surely, is seen as out-of-step with the times.

 

 

Bacevich, Andrew. After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed. Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company. New York, 2021. Print