Charlie Gomez Staggers Over to Bill Sims: John Lennon, Rosa Parks, Caesar Chavez, Mahatma Gandhi, Mormonism, and Standing Up Against Prejudice--Sort of

Earlier today, a friend posted some anti-Mormon propaganda on facebook.  Then one of my peers in my MFA Writing program posted a news story about Mormons, and although it was mostly accurate, her comments were not.  As I respect both these individuals, I simply corrected misconceptions, and I thought “that is that.”

                Then, while packing for our permanent move to Dry Creek, I came across an old poem of mine:

Charlie Gomez Staggers Over to Bill Sims

                                                                Ever kiss a Mexican farm worker?

                                                                                No.  Don’t believe I have.

                                                                Pucker up fat gringo.

                And I realized that although I’m male, white and working on becoming fat, like Bill Sims, right now I’m actually more like Charlie Gomez because I really want to post, “Ever kiss a Mormon?  Well, pucker up, bigot.”

                I never know how to appropriately respond to prejudice because it’s almost always perpetrated by good people, and yet left unchecked, it’s dangerous.  I’m also aware I’m probably Bill Sims as often as I’m Charlie Gomez, so I don’t feel like getting on my high horse.  However, I came across another old poem of mine that might help me reply in some way--though I’m not sure how yet.  It’s long, so I’ll copy part of the poem, try to figure out how it pertains, then copy some more.  Hopefully, by the end both the reader and I will be enlightened.  I’m writing on a hunch here:

Jed Tells a Woman from Niagara Falls How to Get to State Highway 257

                You just go down a mile and turn left

at a deep black thick muddy road,

squishy and there’s some wagon wheel tracks--

no, not wagon wheel tracks,

just some 4-wheel drive tracks

in this deep black muddy road.

It’s called Henderson Road.

It’s deep-black-muddy

and heads towards nothing

but a big, long, hump-back blue ridge.

You’re not sure if it turns around it

to go around it,

or if it dead ends

at Skull in the Rock.

Maybe the mind is the “deep black thick muddy road.”  That may be a bit of a stretch, but let’s go with it, just in case it works.  We constantly perceive, often without any frame of reference, from the time we are infants, and these images, these sounds, smells, impressions--well, they lay down tracks, but overtime they become indistinguishable and unchecked, go nowhere.  Perhaps.

And anyway, on Henderson Lane,

to the left--

yes, to the left--

there’s some picket fence--

no, not just some picket fence--a bob-wire fence

and these old cedar-like post,

but they’re not cedar, cause a--

well, they’re just not.

Here, to me, the poem clearly becomes a metaphor for the mind.  But not just any mind.  An uncertain, intuitive, rather than a knowing, logical mind, like when Lennon writes--

No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low.
That is you can't you know tune in but it's all right, that is I think it's not too bad--*

And behind it all

is a muddy field,

a thick, muddy field,

with alkali on the surface.

and so the mud is deep and black

with white scum on top.

Our thoughts are not solid, not clear, there is no surface.  What appears to be concrete is really just a thin, crusty layer.  Underneath everything oozes.

And in the field is a steamin well,

a sulfer spring, yep,

a sulfer spring.

and the steam comes up,

and it’s hot, steamy and stinky,

this rotten egg smell,

just some real organic crud going on.

Clearly the unconscious.  Perhaps prejudice that seeped in long ago and is now bubbling to the surface. 

And the cows just stand around and stare into the steam

with these dazed, dull, stupid eyes.

And they never move,

or hardly ever move,

the big, stupid Hereford cows

with the dull brown stupid-looking eyes,

fat and bloated, starin across the steam,

looking blankly at each other

like friends at a funeral.

 Clearly you.  But also clearly me.  We are the big, stupid Hereford cows in the eyes of the oppressed.  That’s how you view the world when you are mistreated.  During my ninth grade year, we moved from Utah to Richardson, Texas, and I was too innocent not to share my religion with others.  As a result I was persecuted by other innocent, but extremely ignorant students, most practicing “Christians.”  That’s not a judgment, just a fact.  A year earlier, I’d persecuted an openly atheist student in Utah along with my peers, so I’m no better.

Still, as I wandered those halls in my silent protective shell, I saw cows--lots of them.  I think that verse is worth repeating.  This is how the oppressed view their oppressors:

And the cows just stand around and stare into the steam

with these dazed, dull, stupid eyes.

And they never move,

or hardly ever move,

the big, stupid Hereford cows

with the dull brown stupid-looking eyes,

fat and bloated, starin across the steam,

looking blankly at each other

like friends at a funeral.

Mob mentality.  Dumb.  The poem goes on much the same, but I won’t continue as it has some language in it that I won’t use now because of my religion.  Still, it’s impossible to leave out one part:

                So across the street

Is a corn field.

It’s just slowly slopin, slidin, oozin

brown field of corn

that’s been out in the sun, oh at least thirty summers,

rained on, just a stinkin, steamin compost heap

of earwigs, potato bugs and slugs.

The whole field’s just oozin, oozin

toward the river like a glacier

That’s where Charlie Gomez finally staggers over to Bill Sims:  Ever kiss a Mexican farm worker?  But only a few of the oppressed have that in them--the rare, vital Rosa Parks, Caesar Chavez, Harvey Milk and Mahatma Gandhi.   For the rest of the overweight, underweight, feminine, wrong religion, unattractive, shy…

no, it’s not like a glacier.

A glacier is a firm statement,

a solid thing,

an energy that says,

Get the F*** out of my way!

And this field doesn’t have that.

It’s just a slopin away,

a slidin into nothin.

Obviously, my own interpretation of my poem is forced.  Poetry occurs on an unconscious, not conscious level.  If you can paraphrase a poem, it really isn’t a poem.  But I do know after years of prejudice, after rejecting my religion, I became that sloshy field and I was "slidin away into nothing."  Then, somehow, like Charlie, I found my glacier-energy.  It was a hymn, a Mormon hymn, almost forgotten, a hymn that reminded me I Am:

Come, come ye saints
No toil nor labor fear
But with joy, wend your way
Though hard to you,
This journey may appear,
Grace shall be as your day,
Tis better far for us to strive
Our useless cares from us to drive
Do this and joy, your hearts will swell
All is well! All is well!

Why should we mourn?
Or think our lot is hard?
Tis not so, all is bright
Why should we think to earn a great reward?
If we now shun the fight
Gird up your loins
Fresh courage take
Our god will never us forsake
And soon we'll have this tale to tell
All is well! All is well!

We'll find the place
Which God for us prepared
Far away, in the West
Where none shall come
To hurt or make afraid
There the saints, will be blessed
We'll make the air, with music ring,
Shout praises to, our god and king,
Above the rest these words we'll tell
All is well! All is well!

Any large religion at times takes stands on political issues based on their core religious beliefs.  I think both the public and its members not only have the right, but an obligation, to react according to their conscience.  But it is one thing to challenge an issue, which is intellect, and quite another thing to use that issue as an open-door to express hate and then substantiate that hate with inaccurate propaganda.  That’s called prejudice. 

© Steve Brown, 2012