A POEM BY DONALD HALL

jean michel basquiat

                    CREW CUTS


Men with crew-
cuts are impossible, like
ice-shows. In airport bars, all
winter, holding stand-by tickets,
they wait for a plane into
the next territory, and confess
to puzzlement
over the Oriental mind.

Later, they want to drop eggs on the Russians.
Later, they want to keep
violence out of the streets by installing
a machine gun nest on every corner.
When they discuss women, they are discussing
a subjugated race rumored
to have cached away huge
quantities of ammunition.
They lounge on the porch of the Club, in darkest Africa,
pith-helmets over their crew-cuts, drinking
pink gins, laughing at the natives,

while the tom-toms start
to beat in a million kitchens, and the sky lightens
with a storm of Russians with hair
down to their shoulders,
as inscrutable
as the Chinese, and as merciless as women.


                               --- Donald Hall

jean michel basquiat

 

 

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