Critical Poetry—John Cantey Knight (Metairie, LA).                           For more highly critical verse, see Critical Poems.    
 

Metairie is in Jefferson Parish which is above Orleans' Parish. For all practical purposes it is a suburb of New Orleans but owned and operated by whites and Harry Lee, our Chinese-American sheriff.  My great-great-great grandfather owned slightly over a hundred slaves. The first slaver's crew should have been shot and the ship sent back to Africa.  Georgia Military College provided me a hell of an education.  In retrospect, I'm grateful. It forced me to see the real world for what it is at an early age.  If you conform, if you do as you are told, if you bite your tongue, if you do not question authority, you are left alone until you are shipped out.  A lawyer and psychiatrist later, I missed the party in Vietnam. The irony is that in a few months I will be retiring from the Department of Defense.  Hopefully, I can be productive.

Alma Mater
                   For Tom Young
|Hail to thee, our Alma Mater,/ May thy cause prevail,/ And thy name fore’er be honored—/ G.M.C. All hail!
          —Refrain

I never understood the concept of Hell until detained in Macon one hot July.
          —Elmo Ellis, venerable 1960’s Atlanta radio commentator

Milledgeville the old state capital stands solemn

sentinel no more than thirty desolate miles away

guardian to the state’s insane and the morals

of ladies to be confined at the Women’s College

Elmo missed the mark by these few piney wood miles

mistaking Hell’s center for Macon not near enough

but I understand having returned after

a thousand‑year leave from Milledgeville’s heat

and barren parade grounds of Georgia Military College

for Hell is all about this place hotter

than the disembodied spirits of the Confederate

dead rising in waves of heat from the street

Returned to pass Culver Kidd’s pharmacy

and remember the fountain cokes with cherry

the face of my first true love Claire a straw

stuck between the red gloss of lips

I stand with my wife in this rising heat

know this is a part of me uneasily dead

as I point out this landmark or that point

of memory and realize the small fortunes

in quarters for starched rigor mortis military

shirts and pants purged by the laundries of

Milledgeville the fitted Eisenhower jackets

Confederate gray with sun‑bright brass

shiny smooth by Brasso the hated hours

like dull atheists rubbing rosary beads

the revulsion of two years of my life

spent in ordered pursuits of enforced

discipline making mirrors of shoes

to catch my unhappy fifteen year‑old weary

face martyred by Gillette safety razors

still folding underwear even now in small

tight squares of discipline reduced to this

Returned in fiery visions of heated air

recollected in circles walking dizzy miles

the weight of an empty M1 (Yes sir, I remember

sir—Weapon, sir!)  those precious afternoons

taken to march endlessly in the bullring

shadowed finally by the stark dirty beige stucco

of barracks and high granite steps

of administration where the commandant sat

air‑conditioned like God in Heaven’s keep

until time taken for discipline’s sake became

Time devoid of meaning in repetition TIME

robbed from hand in seconds minutes

hours TIME stolen quickly disciplined TIME

in processions marching to mess standing

for inspections TIME measured by half-dollars        

tossed on wool‑clad green bunk beds taut

the snap of attention and heels hitting walls

imaginary dust on white gloves or handkerchief

TIME dumped on floors with Aqua Shave

and toothbrushes footlockers TIME overturned

Two years of time upon Time upon TIME

of watching straight forward centered

those that made it lord it over with cool

crisp voices and authority and power over TIME

masters of TIME the sparsity of my TIME

gentlemen with boys’ pasty pimpled faces

shooting pool and betting on cards at the “O” club

dilly dallying while details outside sweated picked

up their cigarette butts thrown casually

Can I ever understand this ruled discipline

of detail and verbal abuse that orders men

for battle and kills the individual

and grounds TIME into forced mincemeat

this discipline of war that men released

tossing Charlie from camouflaged helicopters

or charred the flesh and broke bone on tank exhausts

meat well-done like slabs of beef on suburbia’s pits

cold‑blooded discipline of drunken power

stabbing the wombs of almond‑eyed prostitutes

Discipline convoluted discipline declined

discipline wound tight tighter a watch spring busted

broken by POWER this was the preparation

No my gentle wife never understood

this is where I slept Manget Hall and died

I was in “E” Company then moved to Band

this is where I marched suffered sweated

fifteen years old and learned to hate

intensely like Milledgeville’s July heat

and dreamed pleasant thoughts of Viet Cong

stripping flesh by seconds minutes hours time after

time from these bastards these little pasty boys

with pimpled faces TIME exploding in arrogance

on booby‑trapped commodes deep in Vietnam

or fragged by their own men in battle death TIME

hot as napalm exploding wildly palm trees

and jungle almost as hot as Hell’s fire

perhaps hotter than Milledgeville’s July.  In time

26,280,000 seconds 438,300 minutes 7,300 days 

the POWER twenty years two decades later a generation

after… for all of eternity I finally forgive you—like shit!

The Snake Had Tenure

Beginning in the beginning there was the Word,

and the Word was God, and there was no writer's block

and no taking the Lord God's name in vain.  The sentences

flowed like milk and honey across the pristine, promised

page, and metaphors and similes flowered, and hyperboles

and poetic license brought forth fruit, and all was good.

And there was perfection in the Garden of Creativity

until the woman, tempted by a professor of literature, ate

of the fruit of criticism and brought to the poet sour

grapes of "the yard needs mowing, the trash taking out, why

don't you get a job?, my mother was right."  Pissed, God

covered the Tree of Immortality in a dense fog and evicted

them.  The poet withered at a dip shit, government job. Under

his breath, he muttered "goddamn" a lot.  The woman

complained monthly for twenty-nine years about the cramps.

With ten more years till retirement, the poet in his cubicle

read that the professor of literature was caught flagrante

delicto in a public toilet with a hermaphrodite, pubescent boy

and a Stephen King novella.  Inspired to write a poem,

the poet read on and thought, who would want to live forever.       

Well known Circles

You ask who I am?

Don't words and clothes reveal me?

A double breasted suit of silk

and mauve bow tie are mere affectations.

My tastes are fin de siècle,

although I adore Hemingway.

I, sir, am a literary man

of distinction, refinement, and poise.

I run in well known circles

of glittering cognoscenti

and have a preference for aquavit

at brunch on the rocks

while watching the sunset on Costa del Sol.

(Only recently, while in Venice,

the spirited great granddaughter

of Victor Hugo I interviewed.

We discussed the avant garde

while viewing the canals by gondola).

I call the world home

when not entertaining in New York

or visiting friends in Roma.

I have an eye for up-and-coming genius

and uncovered young Petra Calzone,

the fabulous Neo Fascist poet.

When in Firenze, I'll introduce you.

Such talent and fire, the man has

an angelic smile and arrogant dark eyes.

My name, you ask?  Enough!—

au revoir, I must rush to catch a jet.

My name, my name, sir,

is known by the cognoscenti,

but a name isn't important

unless the circles you run in are.