Both loved communism and women.

They would have drowned in Harlem or East LA.

They would have been knifed for ten bucks.

 

All the words and guns, passion and women

would have been wasted on red-eyed youths

who want only to live out a moment of death they make,

then strut away in a swagger of bloody power.

 

The “politics” of life is different now,

the International is silent, forgotten and dead,

but growing in the swamp are the offspring

of old ideas, and they don’t give a shit.

 

When one doesn’t give shit,

it is shit they get:

in the form of ignorance,

in the form of hatred,

in the form of indifference,

in the form of weeping,

in the form of nightmares,

in the form of hopelessness,

in the form of bloody concrete,

in the form of grand mistakes,

in the form of no identity,

in the form of no memories,

in the form of stupid liturgies,

in the form of death.

 

Che is remembered but not emulated.

He is a ghost.

 

Pablo is remembered

but cannot be emulated

since he is a Chilean poet

who had sex with the sea,

who had visions of dead roses

that told him of mercies

we cannot embrace.

 

Choose Che and you choose war and lost hands;

choose Pablo, and you choose words

that may touch you, but leave you weakened and alone.

 

In the end you are alone anyway,

so, why bother to choose….?

 

Write your own mysterious fortune,

either with your blood…..

 

         or with another’s?