Had a dream last night. Traveled to a city like Boston or Atlanta. Attended a Neo-Nazi/White Supremacy rally. Somehow managed to slip through the police barricades and heavily armed militias with a fold-up desk, a chair, and a typewriter.
I set up my poetry station like I was supposed to be there and sat down. Took my hat off and stroked the feathers. Pheasant for abundance. Stellar Jay for creative spirit. Flicker for speed and agility.
At first no one noticed me.
Then the poem requests started rolling in. I looked into those pale devil faces and wrote poems for people’s mothers, about love and travel, about new beginnings, about politics. The most popular topic as usual was dog poems.
The typical dad joke came and went with frequency, “Haven’t seen one of those in a while”, noticing the typewriter.
I nodded my cap and typed on.
The entire time I was combatting my fears. Fears that at any moment someone was going to come over and attack me. Throw me out. Take my typewriter and smash out my teeth with it. On the surface, I maintained my composure. Focused on the poems.
The attack never happened. They didn’t see me that way. To them, I was one of them. A white man just there doing his thing.
Funny thing, I’ve found. Everyone likes a poet and his poetry. Even a fucking Nazi. Those that don’t, just don’t notice me. I’m invisible to their eyes as long as I keep typing. White privilege is a mask that means I can appear anywhere with usually not too much confrontation.
That is where my power lay.
Every single one of those Nazis was a bad tipper, but that’s not why I was there. In each poem, I wrote secret messages, there for their eyes to read. For the poems about mothers, I reminded them of Mother Earth pillaged by our fathers and fathers’ fathers waiting patiently for us to return to honoring her. For the poems about love, I talked about consent and how hearts connect across the universe conjuring magic that only two lovers know. About travel, I wrote about the main reason for travel is to broaden one’s views and learn about the diversity of the world taking in all this culture and finding ourselves. About politics, I wrote about our real enemies: the corporations that own our politicians and pit us against each other so that we fight one another while they rob us behind our backs. With dogs, I wrote about the wisdom of our animal relatives and how we’re all wild animals ourselves.
As my confidence gained, I started to write more radical things. To bridge the worlds and send light into the darkness. The words just kept flowing, transforming the requests into a seed for the heart.
To say this was a dream is short-sighted. It was an absolute nightmare. Surrounded by all of that heavily-armed hate, and all I could do was burn sage and light incense. All the while writing poems that I thought at the very least would garner some type of verbal barrage followed by physical assault. Just dealing with these alt-humans and their completely backwards viewpoints made my stomach sink. Had my heart giving me chest pains. Really increased my anxiety.
But each time, just like always…the response was gratitude and a smile or a “that’s awesome”.
The dream made no sense. Even in it I was confused.
I was almost driven to write a poetic response to the next Nazi who stepped up with any topic and have it speak to him more directly saying, “You’re a fucking Nazi. Go home. We’re tired”, to see if it would get the expected response. But in the dream, I lacked that kind of bravery. Lacked the same kind of bravery that it would take to punch each one of those Nazis. Wasn’t sure if being direct would have any effect anyway.
All I could hope was that those tiny pages of light, planted seeds that would eventually grow, crack right through the fascist concrete exterior and blossom renewed hope in these wayward children.
At the end of the dream I burned all of the money. Some watched me with open stares but most went on about their business. I packed up my poetry office and walked off back into the shadows. I awoke and realized I was never there to begin with.
In the dream, I think I must’ve been tired of marching. Awake, I wonder if doing this in real life would be good medicine.
The Life and Works of Marshall James Kavanaugh 