They say the Marseillaise was

a blood song

that ran cold over time

as the French became desensitized

to the work of the revolution

the distance in time

allowing for a certain forgetfulness

a human contrivance, oui,

bestowing a feeling

that we are better than we were.

Our history shares

the dementia

of forgetting the fire of the forge

until at times

a spark is rendered

blood is heated

and all become touched by the flames.

 

–Danny Grosso

After all these years

still there

pulsing current

yet slow

yet urgent

a bass line of sadness

running through our lives

the echo of a convulsion

the sting of the wound

only comes after you see it

on television.

They were fighting over a gun

in a hotel kitchen

they were pointing to the horizon

from a motel balcony

while their friends lie wounded

beneath them.

They were running through the streets

beating their neighbors’ long-haired kids.

They were sleeping among the long wet ferns

when mortar fire awoke them.

The afterbirth of a movement

is often unpleasant

the anti-war movement in October

Nixon in November.

The Soviets must have been amused

at the level of passion

in our struggles

to abate their crumbling empire

but who knew back then

what the universe really looked like

inner turmoil was all we could see

in our cities, in our living rooms

in ourselves

made all the world

look just just like Khe Sanh in June.

 

–Danny Grosso

 

 

 

 

The bell rang three times back then

or someone caused the sound

a custodian, or principal,

or robot with a lightbulb on its head.

Air raid warning

ding ding ding

telling us death

could be coming out of the clouds

heavier than hail

louder than thunder

and forcing us under our desks

to protect us from something

the blast?

the fallout?

As if.

As if.

 

Playtime yes

and sometimes they would lead us down

into the shelter

where we would chatter away the hour

and marvel at the size of the great iron boiler

another symbol

of industrial power

of fire and heat

of the nation.

 

All of this exercise

under desks, underground

taught us nothing of the kind of horror

hanging in the skies

everyday every hour

from planes on endless flight patterns

or satellites making circles

around their prey,

but it did tell something

of the seriousness of the times

and later, in retrospect

how important some things might be,

JFK disregarding the advice of his generals

envoys nudging despots away from madness

teachers calming frightened kids.

 

Spy craft

the careful calibration of power

a world lucky enough to have a noble person

sitting in the big chair

refusing to turn a schoolhouse drill,

a lesson in preparedness,

into another lesson

in bellicosity

and the effects of atomic shock waves

one where children

hiding under desks, or

huddled in a boiler room

just disappear.

 

–Danny Grosso

 

 

 

 

All around us

are people

some so present

they tear into

your personal space,

some distant

as mist on the horizon.

There are ghosts

that remember the world

in the time of its infancy

and of ours

and as they wander untethered

by the demands of their former selves

they sometimes pass

a campaign poster,

hover over

the rusted remains

a button

proclaiming the successes

of a failed candidate

in an election that for a time

seemed all there was in the world,

vital to everything,

the future,

the viability of a culture,

life and death.

And yet they remain

these ghosts

some maybe, unknowingly

still of this world

wandering through the streets

that once raged like rivers

of protest

that somehow endure

never succumbing

to apocrypha.

Relentlessly comes the future

victorious is the new

and still we persevere

no matter who is elected president.

 

–Danny Grosso 

 

 

At the correspondents dinner

they joke about

a room full of narcissists.

Everybody laughs

self consciously

for a few seconds

and then it’s almost quiet

and amid the chairs squeaking

and muffled grunting

around the round

tables

a man waits in vain

wanting only to hear his name

spoken from the podium

and a woman checks her teeth

in the reflection

of a shiny knife.

 

–Danny Grosso 

Editor’s note: Lou Morelli is a Chicago musician, tech savior, and honorable friend of this site. He asked me to collaborate with him for the above post.

-D

Lift twist bend release

I sing

Sweet dreams are made of this

silently, maybe

the machines are so loud

I could be screaming

without drawing a crowd.

 

Up by the bootstraps

pound of the heel

Mr. Laffer’s curve

runs away from here

past the ones in the middle

the country held so dear

to recessionomics and atomic fear.

 

All that’s left of those billboards

they put up in the 50’s

of the dream and the car and the 2.5

is the photo I saw in the library

and the dreams our fathers keep alive.

 

Lift twist bend release

the guy next to me sent

by football coaches

some college in the south

of some renown

to slim him down

bulk him up

So we move like twin arms

of the same common brain

one after another

or dancers

with a 3 second delay

He drinks gallons of water each day

I sing

 

Sweet dreams are made of this

screaming and not drawing a crowd

The Soviets said they had a plan

yet now they’re meeting with the actor man.

 

Lift twist bend release

Ten hours in a tin can

in a hot summer when it was not yet morning

in America

not in the Midwest

not in this factory.

 

–Danny Grosso 

One of those wet mornings

more than dew

less than rain

when the first of the sun

moves like slow glistening arms

and the front yard looks ready to leave for a party

wrapped in cellophane.

Summer’s coming.

 

At the water’s edge

the gap between worlds is tiny

or not there at all

the sea mixes with sand and sand with sea

blue and yellow

become green

and sometimes

red.

 

Bathers lay or frolic

stand in footprints made once

by soldiers

landing or repelling.

This place between worlds

where memory ebbs and flows

tides of pain and bliss

history and ignorance to it

or just willful forgetting.

There’s the sun, after all

and the breeze in the sea air

filled with voices

between the worlds

ebbs and flows

remember, forget

remember, forget.

Summer’s coming.

 

–Danny Grosso

 

 

 

 

The suits now look like they did back then

a little shinier

a little slimmer

on the men rushing around him, past him

through him.

He is reminded that a legacy sometimes

has no physical component

brick and mortar

or fire

or sons.

He likes to go, in times like these

walking past the building they named after his brother

and further out

across the river of history and away from the white stone curtains

that hide what he knew before, and more

what he’s learned since

out to the old General’s land

to the flame still alight

two stones there now.

Light changes so fast now.

No accounting for time,

one instant a nighttime blizzard

the next a sunny cherry blossom flurry.

 

–Danny Grosso

 

 

 

 

While seemingly new

and inspired just today

or yesterday

when the pink flesh

turned acid red

or maroon

like a Midway lineman

just into the scrum

This feeling that’s become

a movement, a fire, a vocation

desire

has instead been among  us

about and within

longer than memory

past both elation and chagrin

suviving even the pall.

Ask the Haymarket marchers

before the bomber came to call.

Ask Teddy’s Progressives

Henry Wallace’s too

all those marchers

on the Washington mall

Paul Robeson singing

Woody Guthrie and all

strumming together

on ox carts and boxcars

This Land is Your Land

an old classic now

but it was sung among those

with the Populist vow

long before twenty-somethings

attached to their phones

were dreams of their fathers

were frightened or sour

or just wishing for something

that’s just not allowed.

The massing together

of those who’d disobey

is a natural result

of the American way.

 

–Danny Grosso