IN CONSIDERATION OF CORPORATE POWER HERE IS
A SEEMING SENTIMENTAL MESSAGE IN BOTH TONE AND FEELING RE
GARDING A NATIONAL DILEMNA: FOCUS IN TRUTH ALWAYS ON THE HUMAN

Well I getta letter in the mail asking me to write a Val
entine poem for a publication called valentine so I say
(to myself) okay, and look it up in the dictionary, not
surprised by what I find, so decide to write it out the
way it comes: an old-fashioned little number in a hi-tech
youthful enterprise, which means it reminds me of the
past, and of a certain year...

and I dunno know if it's me who gets this way and that
here, and over there divided, or if it is the way these
little numbers affect reality... I say people always come first
                                               although I know
first the holidays serve corporations and their greed,
like at christmas poor people go deeper into debt wanting
to be in the spirit of things.  Thanksgiving, too.  The
corp execs know this, and you say he (me)'s gonna say
that about Valentine, St. Valentine's Day, too?  That's
true.  That's
           right.  I am.
Chocolates and sugar-filled junk (ala Easter), hearts, like
rabbits.  Made real cheap but what ya don't know is what it
means, what Valentine's Day means to young people more and
more it's becoming a legit love day, or a day to be senti-
mental.  I discovered this on a teaching job in 1985, spring,
House
          of Detention for Men on
             Rikers
                   Island.

                           A lot of guys in prisons write poetry
         to their girlfriends
                          back
                          home
                                in rhymes like the Hallmark
                greeting cards
                              use

except there's something desperate in them, cause these young
guys are alone, scared, 'n miss their mom.  They don't come to the
writing workshops or to school naw they don't take English as second
language class maybe some do, sure, but in the faith they express
in their cellblocks, writing her a poem, for Valentine's Day, I
saw a poem a kid wrote to his mother, in chalk, on a small black-
board, rear of a classroom,     near the windows, you know what
it said, it said dear mom I miss you, I miss you and I love you
I love you mom that voice that handwriting (we know) is a shoot
ing star high high in the sky, and makes corporate Americe irrel
evant, unnecessary and vague, like ink in water, it dissolves...
in the blood of a young man in prison.