I thought I saw your face again
in the distorted grain from the security camera of a bank
holding a weapon designed by Uzeil Gal
and signaling with your arm to flee

I thought I saw your face again
in the crowded subway’s blur
between 7th and 9th
on a poster advertising the capture of political terrorists

I remember
that we drank together outside of an art event dedicated to the memory of those who had been killed by so-called “Communist” regimes in the “Eastern Bloc”
You were younger then
and could reconcile what you had deigned from the International Socialists Organization with the political praxis of The Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei
You tried and just could not get your point across
…Louis Auguste Blanqui and the Sûreté…
I just laughed and let you vent
I just
staved off the jealous urge to ask about Marie and insult you in a language that you couldn’t have understood
I just
thought of you as a minor autocrat whose single-minded devotion to the revolutionary cause was motivated by a distorted lack of self-esteem
I just chalked it all up to that you felt that you were being persecuted
I didn’t
know what happened to her
I didn’t
care about your weltanschauung

I thought I saw your face again
on television declaring
a set of principles
a sincere admonishment of
exploitation, subjugation, and the “operational elimination of any free and genuine expression of dissent or différance”
I didn’t
judge you then
I couldn’t
reconcile
my paracosm
with the exquisite noise
or ecstasy of realization

So, this is the real world.

SOME PEOPLE WORRY ABOUT THE WEATHER
Some people talk about the Reichstag
Some of us can read it in their eyes
the disconsolate stare of an old lover’s last goodbye before committing a public suicide

There are people, here, who turn those posters into shrines
a newspaper article upon the assassination of an officer of the Federal Intelligence Service in Germany
a promotional photograph from Love is Colder Than Death
and Gustave Doré’s The Children’s Crusade
above the nightstand that houses a few melted candles and an old jewelry box where this former film student keeps a collection of polaroid photographs
I was here a few years earlier
when she was only nineteen
and I just couldn’t seem to convince Michael to play guitar in another room
The candles were still there
but there was no record of your political acts
just a poster for Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

SOME PEOPLE WORRY ABOUT THE WEATHER
Some people have already fled
to the disparate pockets of resistance
along the broken city steps
where the vendure grows and the honeysuckle dangles
over the slanted rails and galvanized steel wires
a flophouse beneath the bridge
in what once was a self-contained community
for civil engineers

The cul-de-sac isn’t on the paper route
and most of what almost everyone finds out
is from passing conversations
or caught in the radiating gaze of a television set
afraid to shed a tear
lest they discover
that a world is at its end

SOME PEOPLE WORRY ABOUT THE WEATHER
Some people will just never understand
that you were in love once
or that the General Directorate for External Security in France was right to describe your acts as having been made “in desperation”

I remember when
you scaled that monument on the bridge
drunkenly singing "La Marseillaise"
waving a roman candle
clutching the granite hilt of a sword
as you fired over the river

SOME PEOPLE WORRY ABOUT THE WEATHER
You don’t.
Do you?

I thought I saw your face again
in a dream
where an actor delivered a monologue
upon the marble steps
of the capitol
You raised your hand and took a bow
I never thought that I’d see you smile.