Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LURID LIVES: A CHICAGO RED (IN A GRAIN ELEVATOR), by CALE YOUNG RICE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LURID LIVES: A CHICAGO RED (IN A GRAIN ELEVATOR), by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I've got the sack, have I, and I can go?
Last Line: So bloated with the fat of food and fortune!
Subject(s): Communism; Money; Nations


I've got the sack, have I, and I can go?
I needn't mouth, toothless, about it either?
My fangs are out, you're guessing, from now on?
By God, and if they are, isn't there reason?
Haven't I bitten enough at hands like yours,
You 'wheat king of the prairies,' to be toothless?
Haven't I gnawed at cunning lies that strangle
A poor man's guts and tell him slenderness
Of belly's good -- better than rich men's fat?
Haven't I, day and night, never weary,
Sunk my teeth in the gilded rotten heels
Of your curst labour-grinding money-gods? ...
And do you sit there swiveling in comfort,
With twenty million dollars in your pockets
And twenty million thefts upon your soul,
And smile,
And think: 'The old goat's Heaven is Bolshevism,
Damn pity he can't go and chew his cud there'?

You do, smug and contemptuous; and you sneer, too,
That now I'm off I'll talk myself cross-eyed!
A lie! It's looking upon the looting likes
Of such as you, who're crooked as hell-claws,
Who only know one straight line in the world --
To the nearest pile of pelf -- that twists my eyes!
It's knowing how you slip the price of bread up,
You and your kind, a thieving cent or two,
And then how, with the profit pouched, you see
Upon each coin only, 'In God We Trust,'
Not starving faces staring at your greed --
Women's faces, little wizened children's,
In Europe there, or every-hungry Asia!
It's knowing how the jazz of gold deafs you
To the rattle of bones, that are so fleshless worms
Couldn't live on them, into unnumbered graves!
By the blood of Truth it is! And what's your answer?
'This is a free country. Take away
The right of a man to make all that he can,
Or confiscate his money when he's made it,
And the spine of civilization breaks in two.
While as for Europe, let her work and pay,
Not war; let spawning China cease to breed
Superfluous hordes if she dislikes famine ...
I had no children till I made a fortune. ...'

You pea's-cod of importance, with your 'I,'
That's but a flimsy futile ark of self
Upon the Flood now beginning to rise!
When will you learn the only safety for it --
And for humanity -- is to invite
All into it, and then rename it 'We'?
When will you learn God gives the soil grain,
Not for your greed, not to be garnered up
In wormy elevators and gambled with,
But to feed hungry lips?
When will you grasp the new gospel of Christ,
That workers only shall inherit the earth,
And that rewarded work alone is Heaven?
Never, you think, never, while such flaunters
Of red rags as I, with bile for blood
And dynamite for brains, keep raving it?
Then you will, so help me, when you see
How Revolution that is surging up
Already at the sluice-gates of the world
Shall ...'
God! It's all useless; for no tide
Of rage can ever overwhelm a land
So bloated with the fat of food and fortune!





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