Michael Simms: Black Brick, Yellow Brick
I will die in Pittsburgh on a beautiful day,
A day, I imagine, much like today.
I will die in Pittsburgh. Don’t turn away –
It will be a Monday, like today, in Spring.
Yes, it will be Monday because
This poem arrives on a Monday
With its rhymes all awry
And never so much as today
Have I felt so alive.
Michael Simms is dead. They beat him
Because he was guilty and also,
As you know, he was innocent.
They held him in quarantine
And beat him hard with questionnaires
And with taxes. The witnesses
Are the beautiful Mondays,
The radiant Tuesdays,
The Wednesdays that belong
To someone else in another town.
-- after César Vallejo
Copyright 2020 Michael Simms
I love this.
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Thanks, John!
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Love it! Especially it “arrived on Monday with its rhymes all awry.” If I hadn’t read Vallejo’s poem I’d find it disturbing.
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Thanks, Arlene! A balance in the poem between being lightly ironic and deeply disturbing?
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