false hopes, 1980

asleep in your husband's arms
I hope you are warm & comfortable
the universe is iranian at heart:
capable of execution without trial

the man howls yeah he knows
how stupid it is out there
just a state of being
jive people keep these lists
you know, how old it all gets
—need reasons but maybe
end up on some manson's altar
so keep your eyes open
to the hard facts

there were so many false hopes
handed us
so much nazism was there
to see
it is surprising we can laugh
so much

This was written just after the Hostage Crisis in Iran that destroyed Jimmy Carter's presidency. I firmly believe there was a fix between the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Republican strategists. Did Reagan know? Hard to say. In any case, this poem uses the iranians to represent the sudden change of chaos. The reference to the nazis comes from several of Janne's poems that function using Nazi as a synonym for evil in the unviverse. In my generation the third reich dominated all other forms of evil, mainly because they had such great uniforms. Larry Smith once wrote part of a novel that spoke about the nazis having stolen sex from everyone else. And that was true in the fetishistic aspect of speaking. We all loved those boots, those riding crops. The idea of torture is so catholic and completely hooked up to our sexuality. Alison certainly had that deep within her in those days.