FREDERICK POLLACK - POEMS

The Rabbit
​

Frederick Pollack

​The tagger isn’t in a gang;
the gang didn’t want him. Freak.
Nerve damage. Will be killed
because he’s a freak but mostly because
he tagged. A shape based
on how his own name sounds to him.
On a sign asking people
to care for the pocket park
it’s in, local initiative,
flanked by a church and the parking lot
of the plant. Crap, bottles collect;
someone tends. Someone tried
to rub away the tag.
By the time she crosses the parking lot,
his sister has twenty minutes
before she must return
to the plant.  Eats healthy: stuff from home.
Rabbits have begun to enter
this region. She had never seen
a real rabbit. Six feet away,
one stares. She hopes no one kills it.
It’s sideways to her, doesn’t watch with
both eyes, like men or dogs,
only one. Is it sick?

OK Boomer
​

​At first there were only computers.
I sacrificed small animals to keep mine running.
Eventually we made a separate peace.
Separate, certainly, from its purposes.
But the means kept multiplying,
and were repeatedly explained to me,
in simple terms, with progressively less patience,
by people I liked less and less.
The end remained unclear. Why did you do that?
Why, while doing it, would you take
a photo of it and broadcast it to the world?
Is that person an athlete, musician, prostitute,
or anything worthwhile? What is a “meme”?
Is it a value?
Is it ethical or aesthetic?
Can you tell? What exactly is a “neckbeard”?
Why is someone who wears one
contemptible? Do I have one?
Is it better or worse than the hairs coming out of my ears?
They aren’t hairs, by the way.
I communicate through them with Galactic Central,
which accuses you of lack of imagination.

Rest Assured
​

​Seeing in you perhaps the privileged classes
whites
men
father
themselves
Preparing to flee then fleeing preferring
the filth outside to yours …
 
Rest assured:
 
If you live long enough
they give up nagging you to change
It would be physically impossible
and anyhow they’re gone