One called Victor, a Dutchman,
The other a Scotchman called James Gregory,
And the third being a negro named John Punch.
They had run away from Virginia, were caught, tried, and sentenced in 1640.
The Dutchman and the Scotchman were condemned
To serve out the remainder of their indentured servitude
Plus one year.
And the third being a negro was condemned to serve out his life.
John Punch became the first piece of chattel.
And so, we took his time.
Eons passed.
One man might own a hundred lifetimes.
One fattened tick
That could never live a minute longer
No matter how much time he sucked.
No matter the genteel civility lavished on his equals.
The tick’s cause was lost:
Chattel disfavored;
Wages more efficient.
And criminals… who cares what happens to them?
Oh, by the way, if you don’t have a job
We’ll have to arrest you for vagrancy.
And now we have moved on from that barbaric dispensation
All the old problems have been solved.
We join together in harmony
And ignore the strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Every day in the paper I read about time.
Time taken before it was due.
How much time does it take?
Historical Memory
Postwar Reaction
Had the Nazis won
There’d have been a
Nationalist Atlantic Treaty Organization,
staffed by high-ranking Wehrmacht officials—
men with names like Speidel, Heusinger,
Gehlen, and Globke.
Perhaps a man named Werner
would build rockets for the Reich
under the stars and stripes.
There’d be an industry for tracing ancestry.
People might say things like:
“I’m 47% German and 33% French.” And respond:
"Aren’t you glad to know that you’re pure?”
We’d compete for purest blood,
and purest German grammar,
and German ideals—
such as Efficiency,
Individualism,
the Value of Hard Work,
and Law and Order.
The police would be held up
as heroes
and paid as such,
with bonuses for cracked skulls
and hidden lists kept confidential.
Had the Confederates won
There’d have been a white supremacist United States,
with a white language,
and white neighborhoods,
and white committees deciding
who speaks
and who dies.
They’d issue identification cards:
Eyes: blue
Hair: blonde
Blood: Hexadecaroon
Neighborhood: Birchwood Reserve
The police would stop you
if you looked like you didn’t belong.
Villains would write our textbooks,
name our schools,
tell our stories—
and we would call them heroes.
Sophistry and Solipsism in the New Millennium 