by Ed Sanders

Ahh the days when some in the audience
tossed potatoes
at the opening of
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring

or catcalled sans merci
the opening night of Ubu Roi

or took to heart the Futurist manifesto
The Pleasure of Being Booed!

At the opening night of Robert Wilson’s production
of Lohengrin at the Metropolitan Opera
(in March o’ ‘98)

-even though he’d triumphed there in ‘76
in his collaboration with Philip Glass for
Einstein on the Beach—

had the Futurist manifesto read into his face
as some in the audience
—shree!—
at the fall of the curtain
—eee!—
uttered forth what one reviewer called
—eeek!—

“banshee shrieks of apparently homicidal intent”

toward the good Mr. Wilson

At least there were no stink bombs
such as those that hailed William Morris at Oxford
during a speech on Socialism
one afternoon in 1885

by Ed Sanders

I know I know
Charles Ives & Wallace Stevens
both made their money
in the insurance game

But I tell you
the insurance game in New Orleans
was also evil
very evil
evilest evil

The emperor of evil
& the dollar bills of denial
walked hand in hand
through the shrouded wards

0 Charles
0 Wallace

Can’t you dangle down
to the water
with rafts of reprieval?

No you can’t
you can’t

because
the insurance game in New Orleans and the Coast
was evil
very evil
vilest evil

by Ed Sanders

Four days I sat in the attic
with 27 cans of beans
we were going to use on Labor Day
and some coca cola I drank very slowly
to make it last

Finally I bashed and bashed
with a can
till I created enough of a breach
to pry open the smallest slit in the roof

0 my God!
one of my neighbors was floating with
her hair entangled in a tree limb

A helicopter flew me away
I wound up in Utah
where I’m waiting for Jesus
or anybody

to help me home.

That’s what my mother always said:
The river always pours toward poverty
You can’t lose the same house twice

but once you get to heaven
the water makes God’s bread to leaven.

by Ed Sanders

All the people born
with anvils in their souls

—unearned suffering

All the children
that had to work in mines

got TB   got black lung
so many died young

—unearned suffering

All the back breaking work
milling and killing
cleaning up slobs

making the calm life glow for a few

—unearned suffering

The River of Malice
is one strong force
to block
bread and roses
& every chalice

but did not Martin Luther King
speak of it that hot August day?

Did he not offer the hope that
“unearned suffering is redemptive”?

Is it really that? Oh I wish it were!

August ‘63 was for the “veterans of creative suffering”
—before the time of murder

But 2005 saw unearned suffering
worthy of the days of Poseidon