Illegal

Illegal immigrants are dangerous. They rob, they rape,
they cheats, they spreads disease.

They make committees who do not keep their words,
they make beehives for us to work. When things get
worse they stretch their reach in the name of charity,
they shrinks our heads in the name of territory: they say
look, there’s gold, pick that up for me and make a
slave. Then all you know, knowing nothing, is no doctor
or book can cure your sore ass, your bent knees, the
ravages of some disease tearing up by degrees.

They make soup kitchen charities like Al Capone, no
mercy to those they know: murder is the treaty known,
don’t look, don’t plead, slaughter is your fortune told.

They impose high ideals and low defeats, always
something you must live up to, invoking religion or
some other big smoke choked with lies and fantasies.

You beat yourself, you beat the neighbor, you beat
the world and rail for some savior who’s asleep in
the cold under blankets of disease uncontrolled. You
stroll and bleed, you ache to please, you wish to climb
some Texas tower to eliminate monsters in your sleeps.

For relief some goodwill, some perfume, some visions
made of the unreal rich and famous: celebrity’s my aim,
fame the game away from the swollen ego which lacks
a discipline to create yet cannot speak but in clichés.

They cannot accept their nature, thus no apologies
unless too late for the party favors. They do not wish
to know for what they weep, for what they stage
until much later comes as an idea: the ideal to which
they pleads guilty, now get on with it, stranger.

This is them, that is me, which is you, confess your
hatred, your special inability.

Illegal immigrants from countries known and blamed,
we are them they are we, this is the danger.
Illegal immigrants from house and home, from isles
of sorrow and unknown responsibilities:

this is us, illegal immigrants making dust of dirt and bones.

Illegal immigrants are dangerous, ask any Indian, inquire of any native.

©Dean Baker

from Steel Butterflies

‘Poetry that is classic and timeless.’

‘Vital, intense and uncompromising – singular in clarity, artistry, and authenticity.’

‘Work which illuminates as it informs – a reviving sense of discovery and perspective.

my books on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Dean-J.-Baker/e/B00IC6PGQM/

Measuring Gravity With Grace

This is not my life or destiny, I have
not been breathing my gratitude to become

Invisible among those who are themselves so
transparent that I can

See through to the other side where a figure
stands now proclaiming the virtue

Of his identity with solemn vows and meanings
whose significance escapes me even now

As I search no longer for the mystery
nor attempt to measure gravity with grace

©Dean Baker

my books on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Dean-J.-Baker/e/B00IC6PGQM/

I Used To Loiter Endlessly

I haven’t felt good forever
I’m not going to tell you about it
outside the realms of poetry
and the women
plus the rhythms of music, there
isn’t actually anyone who cares
to hear the sad dystopian tale
of an artistic loneliness since you
decided we share the same problem
but separately

not all of this could be known
not all of this could be known together
not any of this would be shown
by the solitary sharing
the fact that somewhere along
the way
a passenger fell off the train
beside the river I have not visited since
when I used to loiter endlessly
on the lookout for the arrival of beauty

©Dean Baker

my books on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Dean-J.-Baker/e/B00IC6PGQM/

The Myth Of Liberation

You became the man
you always wanted to marry
I could not long for you
as the woman you tried to bury
Now there are no choices
open anywhere,
in mangers or in stables

So you join the women’s club
with their venom to feel as one; among
the defeminized angels of love,
abandoning even the sacred heart
you mean to carry in the dark:
perhaps forever, Joan of Arc,
that would not still the many voices

©Dean Baker