Woke Yokel collects the Yokel songs written between 2018 and the present End Times and marked black for George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter fist. The Yokel reflects their white privilege and the events following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Drugging the Patteroller
I don’t identify as a white man.
Yes, I’m among the privileged.
Try to pin me if you can!
Identity slick as a corn can.
I tried to run, but I got bridged.
But I can always pass for a white man.
I’ll take the lutefisk, you take the spam!
The powder on my nose is smudged.
Typecast me if you can!
Hiding here behind my fan
(other improprieties have been alleged,
such as preferring not to be a man).
My forebears came from a northern land,
but the boundaries have become all fudged.
Pick me out of the lineup if you can.
Going right from the frying pan
into the fire with the plans I’ve forged,
but the police always know I’m a white man.
They don’t try to shoot me, but they can.
2019
Fare You Well, Juliana
We sang Shallo Brown
at the Dubliner shanty sing
(alternatively called Shallow Ground)
last night. Brown’s close to the bone—
too close to an ankle ring
for comfort. But we sang Shallo Brown
on that St. Paul pub ground,
and we really managed to bring
it this time! We were on low ground
as we crossed the sound,
carrying a forbidden thing—
Shallo, Oh Shallo Brown.
But the crowd really got down
with us when we sang, My master’s
gonna sell me.
How shaky is the ground
we're standing on?! Soon all of us will drown,
unless we can sprout wings.
Treading quicksand!
Shallo, Oh Shallo Brown.
Walpurgisnacht
Is America turning its back
on the Enlightenment beliefs she was
founded upon
on the eve of Walpurgisnacht?
We’re already putting sacks
over our heads so we won’t have to gaze upon
the corpse of America, who turned its back
on everyone who isn’t rich and white.
Does America know that the season
of the witch is drawing nigh—Walpurgisnacht
in broomsticks? That’s the night when all the
black cats
walk under ladders and the grid is blown,
America lying on its back
in the middle of this grave-side fight.
We’ve all got one shoe off and one shoe on
in this dire dance of death, this Walpurgisnacht.
But let me declare: the Druids did right
when they tried to hold their own against
the Saxons.
America must get away
from being white!
Turn Turn Turn Again
Treade a worme on its taile it must
turne agayne—
that comes from Heywood’s Proverbes, 1546.
Turn, turn to the wind and the rain.
When the worme turnes and strikes, I'll
sing the refrain:
Snake bite! Snake bite! I need a tourniquet!
Tread a worme on its taile it must
turne agayne.
Dylan used these lines in his strange
Percy’s Song,
which used to seem inept to me but
now seems prophetic.
Turn, turn to the wind and the rain.
Poor humankind! prayed Agnes,
daughter of Indra
in A Dream Play by Strindberg—
a modernist classic.
Treade a worme on its taile it must
turne agayne.
When the water rises, will the wormes
all drown?
Afterwards the earth will be dry as a brick.
Turn, turn to the wind and the rain.
Poor Percy, crash survivor, sentenced to
ninety and nine
hard-rock years under the lash of pricks.
OK, my friend Percy, turne agayne,
Turn, turn to the wind and the rain.
© John Wenstrom
2020
I Love You but Jesus Loves You Best
Grazie, Claudia Rankine.
Poems can’t right wrongs.
They only register, they don’t initiate.
Villanelles are yokel songs.
I don’t even live on a farm—
villein is a far cry for
the likes of urban me.
You shot the wrong
queer, Mr. Policeman!
Just their bad luck to be the subject
of a town-y blues song
like Stagolee or Frankie and Johnny.
Rubber-tired wheels of fate.
Unmatching, wrong
face picked out of the crowd—
whomever we felt the need to repudiate,
serenade with hangman’s songs
or set free at last to join the throng
now storming the gate.
Poems cannot right wrongs.
Villanelles are Jah songs.
Walk to Denoyer Park
Walked to Denoyer
Park by the railroad
tracks, taking pictures.
Photographed several
hobo
encampments along the way.
I didn’t feel unsafe,
with a fifty-yard
overpass-trestle wall on either
side of me, but near
the highway I interrupted
a woman peeing
behind a shed.
She apologized, but I was the one at
fault. Did make it to Denoyer.
A snowy day.
Had my work cut out
walking home from Denoyer,
done taking pictures.
Sleeping Through the Riot, May 28 2020
Mayhem risky and irrational—
I’m afraid it helps the authoritarians, but what
the fuck?
None of us is more than a scared,
vulnerable animal.
In my sleep, my social conscience becomes a
locked confessional—
vaguely aware of the wailing fire trucks—
life-berth risky and provisional,
in spite of all the bullshit in my education and
in the media.
Nothing but a curled-up vulnerable animal—
not thinking about the Black Lives Matter sign
on my front lawn—oblivious of my
privilege, unearned and disproportionate,
depending on forces that favor me
and ignore most black people.
See me lying here in bed, a soothed
vulnerable animal
feeling in my own bones what white tranquility
means! But proud mayhemmers may break in,
set fire to the house, and destroy this scared,
vulnerable, fatally-human, animal.
Disobeying the Curfew, May 30 2020
Trying to use my body to think.
My body says I'm tired.
Time to say goodnight to Facebook!
How many deaths will it take
by COVID or by fire?
Trying to use my body to think,
and my body says I’m on the brink
of sleep, so I’ll pull the covers
up and say goodnight—
body serving brain a mickey,
kissing all my cares
goodnight. I’m letting my body do my thinking
for me, while I feel my tense neck
rubbed and soothed by your firm fingers, Dear—
until we say goodnight and I close the book
I’m writing in.—OK, I'll get out of bed
and walk out into the yard!
It’s dark, so I’ll use the night to think.
Time to bid these evil times goodnight!
© John Wenstrom
The Old White Dude's Song
Have to wrench myself away from Facebook.
I doubt if my posts are particularly helpful.
Mostly, I want to defer to POC
and younger folks.
I am a person of luck,
and my perspective may well not be helpful
to those who are trying to audit the books
of privilege. Better defer to POC
and younger folks
for clues about how I should think about
the baleful
times we’re living in. Facebook
is just a gold brick,
everyone clamber-clamoring to be among
the kind and helpful.
I want to defer to POC and younger folks
for direction about what tasks I
should undertake,
or even if I can be helpful
at all. But it’s OK for me to post poems in our
little Facebook
group. They also serve who only wet the bed,
said Milton, in a post that feels helpful
to me today as I browse Facebook,
occasionally sharing posts from POC and
younger folks.
Groggy Morning Thoughts, June 1 2020
Something on Facebook about the White
House burning,
Trump in a bunker.
Thoughts turning
to the Second Coming—
that Baby’s a stinker.
AFL-CIO headquarters burning?
I’m not learning
very much, as I hunker
down in my notebook here, watching
the bobbins pirning—
as old white chili-cooking
queers are prone to do, stomach churning.
Can’t stop what’s coming.
It’s just all-out war.
Well, I guess the White House isn’t burning.
Or is it?—It’s hard to be certain.
I just remember,
a tanker truck drove through a crowd
yesterday, setting
my apprehensions blazing.
At Least Poems Can Be Pretty
Nothing for it but continue on.
at least there’s an icy wind in my face!
Some day waking to see the dawn?
It’s easier to keep on writing poems
than to help do the work that needs to be done.
What excuse
do I have for continuing on?
Another stupid question: By whom should
the work be done?
I am an old biological male of
the Caucasian race,
hoping to wake from my white nightmare
and see a dawn
of humanity. But not exactly pouncing on
chances to promote difference.
Nothing for it but continue on
and not worry about the snakes I tread on.
I only have one thing to contribute
and that’s my prettiness.
I don’t want to wake and see the dawn
if it’s just going to be the same old ugly sun.
The dark night suits me—I’ll find my place
in it. Nothing for it but continue on.
Some day we’ll wake to a black dawn.
© John Wenstrom
Spending Down My Accounts
Windy and cold today, after temperatures
in the ‘90s.
I had to put socks on—LOL!
Sitting here trying to count up my life-equity.
But it’s not the heat, it’s the horniness.
I wish I could take my socks back off and walk
out into the yard,
but it’s too windy and cold today—after a sultry
week of fires and helicopters.
I was afraid white supremacists were going to
burn the house down.
May I count that toward my life-equity—
why I deserve to live so easy and carefree,
owning privileges I’m embarrassed
to say out loud?
But I wonder if this cold wind
is making me more susceptible to the
COVID disease,
as if I didn’t have enough to chuckle about
without that—afraid my Karma-equity
is about to run out. But I still have tunes to play:
I record them on my Samsung phone with
a metronome—LOL.
Praying for temperatures to return to at least
the mid ‘80’s.
Living on Jones-equity!
Property Damage
Hannah Arendt says more Jews would
have survived
if they’d raised more hell,
but few had the will to try
to topple statues of Bismark or spray
graffiti tags on the Cologne Cathedral.
More Jews would have survived
if they’d staged more riots
in the ghettos. Life was already hell.
If they rioted, what could they lose?
Most gentiles were insisting their own lives
mattered, as if anyone had ever called
their supremacy into doubt. No resistance
can survive
our white autocracy,
whiteness insists, though it's a bald-
faced lie. We must try
to defund the enormous whiteness-Reich
we live in (though there are no real
white people).
Hannah Arendt says POC will survive
if we all try.
© John Wenstrom
The Social Contract in the US
I suppose the Social Contract
still operates in the United States.
Our house hasn’t been set on fire because of
our Black
Lives Matter sign—yet.
Disabled or retired friends still get their social
security checks
(Say, what?). The Social Contract—
All people shall have the same rights—
survives, at least for most white men,
in spite of all the hatred
spewed on TV and by the White House
occupant, and of the inevitable disorganization
of the progressive left.
Because I pass for a white male
property owner,
the Social Contract
protects me and people like
me—lucky and fat.
If I were black,
I might be arrested and shot
for jay-walking—my confirmed practice
because it’s safer
than walking in front of cars. So far, the
Social Contract
works if you’re not Hispanic, Islamic, Native,
Female, Queer, or Black.
If I Can, Don't Know When
People check in on me to see how I’m doing.
They message me and text me.
I don’t think it’s because they’re worried
about me,
exactly. They ask me how I’m enjoying
my day or respond to photos I post on my
Facebook story—
just checking to see how I’m doing.
And I never fail to put on
a good face. But what I find concerning
is that some of them do seem a wee bit
worried about me,
even though times have never been
better for me.
I’m certainly not rueing
the day, close to a decade ago, when I stopped
doing paid
work and took up rhyming
full-time, along with singing and
banjolin-playing.
Don’t worry about me,
you people—my pot never stops boiling,
and my skillet’s always good ‘n greasy.
You can check and see how I’m doing.
Well, the rooster’s sittin' high, and the
hounds are trailin'.
© John Wenstrom
I'm Wearing My Mask
Grazie, Paul Lawrence Dunbar
I feel fat.
I looked at myself in a store window yesterday.
I had my COVID mask
on, for the matter of that,
wondering how much shame I’ll have to pay
for my fat
midriff, bulging over my belt.
Other than that, I looked sexy
enough. I had my COVID mask
on, as I said, and I was wearing my blue
Bluff Country
shirt—doing my best to look away
from my big fat
Samsung phone, with the orange God-
face and all the other scary
images, which are but a mimed masque
of the nightmare we’ve tasked
ourselves with witnessing
in our fat
opulence, as the financial markets
feed the white dream from day to day.
I feel fat,
but look who’s wearing their COVID mask!
If I Had My Way, I Would Tear This
Building Down
All the things we have to worry about!
Hard not to worry constantly.
I have to give a special worry-shout
for my resting heart rate—
up to 61 on my Fitbit LED
this morning—just one more thing
to worry about.
And I wish I knew the approximate amount
of direct repeat we can expect from history.
I'm supposed to give a mighty shout
(plus, a devastating tootle on my nose-flute)
against this sinful town, but I’ve been
tured to salt
because I’m worried about
the lost thousands who don’t matter to God—
while Lot
takes his righteous ass out of the city.
Why was God so worried about
Lot, of all people, while He let all
those Sodomites
burn? In later days, Lot’s drunken body
was no pretty sight, but his line continued.
Let's all give a fuck-the-patriarchy shout!
Throw Away Your TV
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Gil Scott Heron
I grew up in the land of the brave.
Why did George Washington chop down
the cherry tree?
Those who think they’re free are
easy to enslave.
In school I was taught the faith
that we Americans are the only ones
who’re free.
Yes, I grew up in the land of the brave,
but I never did believe
the lies I learned in my history
classes. Those who think they’re free are
easy to enslave
was never a nave
of the temple myth passed down to me,
growing up in the land of the brave.
Are we content to let our trained docility stave
off the truth of what our eyes too plainly see,
that we who think we’re free
have been enslaved
to whiteness and the terror spread
on the air waves—
unless we have the sense to turn off the TV?
We grew up in the land of the brave,
thinking we were free. We were
easy to enslave.
© John Wenstrom
Waiting for the Big Shoe (When the Rooster Crows for Day)
Then they started to take back their clothes Hang ‘em on the line. It was January 6th, you know, And everybody was feeling fine. Zimmerman
Different kinds of birds roost
on the same clothesline—
chickadees, white-throated sparrows—
they seem to get along fine.
Different-believing people stand
in the same check-out line.
Do they have the same joys and sorrows
as one another—just different bums
in the same breadline?
All must resign
themselves to God, in spite of all their worries.
I hope we’ll get along fine,
whatever happens, however His
thumb inclines.
Soon enough we’ll be resting
with the Pharaohs,
anyhow, hanging on the clothesline
of history with our jeans and socks
hanging down
(before we went back in the house and
shut all the doors).
OK, we're cashing in our get-along
for a new kink in the evolutionary chain.
Is that Clarence Darrow or is that Ed Sullivan
up there on that clothesline,
crowing the sun up fine?
Brain-Eating Amoebas in Texas
More bad stuff from south of the border—
brain-eating amoebas in Texas.
Are they just part of the natural order
like poison rattlesnakes and spiders,
residing somewhere in the hierarchy
of Linnaeus—
a ways east of Eden’s border?
The amoebas live in the Latin quarter—
just more devil-spawn to tease us.
We’re the kings of the natural order,
anointed stewards of this former garden,
so we must rid our fields of weeds—
unspeciated—from south of the border.
God told us the ground would be harder
here than it was in Eden, but He never intended
brain-eating amoebas to be part of the order
of nature. But I wonder,
does God love us, or do the brain-eating
amoebas love us
more? Bad seed from north of the border
elected with Linnaeus’s ballot-sorter.
© John Wenstrom
We Don’t Need No Riley Boys
Grazie, Ray Davies.
The Proud Boys won’t let girls
into their organization.
But it’s a shook-up world—
boys nothing but shameless churls,
lurking on the back streets of our transgressions.
We want girls
to join our party because they know the rules
for mixing a miss-identity libation.
It’s a shook-up world
(martini-shaker of pewter)—
our transcendental federation
of girlish boys and boyish girls!
Some of us “boys” want to be girls, and we
have a little curl
right in the middle of our determination.
It’s a shook-up world.
So, going with how our true heart feels,
we’re hereby resigning from Boy Nation.
Not interested if it’s just more boys.
It’s a shook-up world.
The Television Has Brainwashed Itself
I just slept for what felt like a long
drink of water,
but I still feel sleepy.
Why doesn’t matter.
Don’t ask how come I keep on getting fatter,
nor yet why I've become so scared and weepy.
I just slept for what felt like a long
drink of water,
but my Fitbit didn’t count it because it was
less than an hour.
God, this American time is creepy!
Why doesn’t matter—
just a lot of mansplain-y chatter,
soporifically drony and grindy,
meaning drained from the media
like sump water—
not truth but only signage.
The remedy's to turn off the TV.
Words like socialism and fascism don’t figure—
we don’t get to know one another
by deciphering our blather.
I’m just wishing for a friend who’ll
understand me.
We were thirsty, so we slept for what felt like a
long drink of water.
Black lives matter!
Tourist Destination Near Eads, Colorado
Do I need better resolution on my
phone camera
if my quarry is a moment not an object?
The Cheyenne and Arapaho
had no cameras
when they were slaughtered and scalped
at Sand Creek,
but I was able to document
a couple of the moments I was there
using my crappy old Samsung.
Some of the massacred Cheyenne
and Arapaho
(or pieces of them) are still resting
in that shaded earth.
Not clear if it was hundreds or more
than a thousand
because we have poor resolution on
our historical
perspective. Remember the Alamo!
we holler, as we trample
all memory of the Cheyenne and Arapaho
at Sand Creek beneath our sandal soles—
camera resolution good enough to hide
any moment.
We don’t need no stinking cameras
to forget those Cheyenne and Arapaho.
© John Wenstrom
End Times
When I Rise Up in the Chariot in the Morn
Grazie, Langston Hughs.
It’s been a while since I’ve written one—
one you know what—
one raisin in the sun.
I’m missing all the fun!
I’m afraid I’m drying up,
it’s been so long since I’ve written one!
One what? One poem,
another to load onto the truck—
my chariot of the sun,
shining all bright and golden.
It doesn’t matter if I stop—
I’ve written enough of them.
Can’t wait until it’s Spring again—
don’t know if I’ll write
more poems, but I’ll toast my raisins in the sun
until they’re all wrinkled and brown!
Then I’ll preen and strut
till time and times are done
in my invisible sandals of the sun.
