{"id":80073,"date":"2014-11-25T13:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-11-25T18:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=80073"},"modified":"2014-11-26T11:51:09","modified_gmt":"2014-11-26T16:51:09","slug":"the-ballad-of-ferguson-missouri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/25\/the-ballad-of-ferguson-missouri\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ballad of Ferguson, Missouri"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A man unzipping his fly is vulnerable to attack.<br \/> Then the zipper got stuck.<br \/> An angel flies in the window to unstick it.<br \/> A drone was monitoring all this<br \/> In real time<br \/> And it appears on a monitor on Mars,<br \/> Though of course with a relay delay.<br \/> One of the monitors at the Mars base drone station<br \/> Is carefully considering all your moves for terror output.<br \/> But not to worry. Forget about about about it.<\/p>\n<p>The body of the man you were<br \/>Has disappeared inside the one you wear.<\/p>\n<p>Reminds me of the story of the man who had nipples<br \/> Where his elbows should be and whose skeleton<br \/> Was on the outside of his body.<br \/> The guy walks into a shop on Madison to buy some clothes<br \/> And buys some and walks out wearing them<br \/> Wearing them and into the Carlyle bar.<br \/> One of the waiters, originally from Algeria of all places,<br \/> Recognizes him and says with the strong accent<br \/> He has despite many years of living in the United States:<br \/> Your usual?<\/p>\n<p>A man has disappeared inside his corpse.<br \/> His corpse has disappeared inside a cause.<\/p>\n<p>Reminds me of the video of Robert Kennedy<br \/> Announcing to a largely black audience at an outdoor campaign rally<br \/> At night in Indianapolis<br \/> That Martin Luther King had been shot<br \/> And killed and by a white man.<br \/> Martin Luther King is dead.<\/p>\n<p>Skin color is the name.<br \/> Skin color is the game.<br \/> Skin color is to blame for Ferguson, Missouri.<\/p>\n<p>The body of the man you were<br \/> Has disappeared inside the one you wear.<\/p>\n<p>I wouldn\u2019t want to be a black man in St. Louis County.<\/p>\n<p>A man unzipping his fly is vulnerable to attack.<br \/> Then the zipper got stuck.<br \/> An angel flies in the window to unstick it.<br \/> Here comes light-skinned Billie Holiday, Lady Day, no angel!<\/p>\n<p>A drone was monitoring all this,<br \/> Which appears on a monitor on Mars,<br \/> Though of course with a relay delay.<br \/> One of the monitors at the Mars base drone station<br \/> Is carefully considering all your moves for terror output.<br \/> But not to worry.<br \/> Fuhgeddaboudit.<\/p>\n<p>Reminds me of the story of the man whose smile<br \/> Shot out flames and whose skin<br \/> Was on the outside of his body.<br \/> The guy walks naked into a shop on Madison Avenue to buy some clothes<br \/> And buys some and walks out on fire wearing them and goes straight<br \/> Across the street in flames to the Carlyle bar.<br \/> One of the waiters looks as if he\u2019s having a stroke<br \/> And raises his hands in Arabic,<br \/> Palms in, and murmurs a prayer,<br \/> And brings God a glass of humble water.<\/p>\n<p>You can change<br \/> From chasing Communists<br \/> And chasing Jimmy Hoffa, the mobster union president<br \/> Who however supported civil rights,<\/p>\n<p>And change to blessing and being blessed.<\/p>\n<p>Some victims change from a corpse to a cause.<br \/> You can change<\/p>\n<p>Reminds me of the video of Robert Kennedy<br \/> Announcing to a largely black audience at an outdoor campaign rally<br \/> At night in Indianapolis<br \/> That Martin Luther King had been shot<br \/> And killed and by a white man.<br \/> Martin Luther King is dead.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Frederick Seidel received the 2014 Hadada Prize. This poem will appear in our Winter Issue, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/subscribe\">available next month<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A man unzipping his fly is vulnerable to attack. Then the zipper got stuck. An angel flies in the window to unstick it. A drone was monitoring all this In real time And it appears on a monitor on Mars, Though of course with a relay delay. One of the monitors at the Mars base [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":770,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[498],"tags":[780,15073,712,16188,681,3306,4339,165,16189],"class_list":["post-80073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-2","tag-civil-rights","tag-ferguson","tag-frederick-seidel","tag-jimmy-hoffa","tag-madison-avenue","tag-martin-luther-king","tag-missouri","tag-poetry","tag-st-louis-county"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Ballad of Ferguson, Missouri<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From our upcoming winter issue, a poem by Frederick Seidel.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/25\/the-ballad-of-ferguson-missouri\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Ballad of Ferguson, Missouri by Frederick Seidel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"November 25, 2014 \u2013 A man unzipping his fly is vulnerable to attack. 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