American Marxist

•

“What are you,
some kind of Marxist?”
he asks me,

after I tell him that
working people didn’t create the crisis,
we shouldn’t have to pay
for it.

What is more,
we should nationalize
the banks and oil companies.

“You could call me that,”
I reply.

“That is funny,”
he replies,
“You don’t look like
a Marxist”.

Maybe that is my problem
I later think,

suit and tie
and briefcase
for my job
as a computer programmer

a month after the national conference,
a year after the split
with the LOC.

Maybe that is my problem.
I don’t look like a Marxist,
making my way
not through Russia
or Germany or France,

but America,
crazy America,

juggling marriage, children
mortgage, union,

even as I seek
a working class revolution
in the belly
of the beast.

I get in the car
and drive down Route 23,

Route 23, where the nurses struck
at the hospital
to keep their pensions
last summer,

some called the settlement a victory
in a town where a company
last year moved
its production overseas,

some called it
because they did not win
a cost of living increase
a defeat,

Route 23, past the broken schools
and abandoned factories,
where all roads seem to lead
to the shopping mall,

where the conditions
for revolution
are so ripe
they are somewhat rotten,

where Lenin said,
there is a class war
going on
even in peace,

at the 7-11 I stop for a snowcone,
look up at the stars,
my car drinking thirstily
from the lip of the gas pump,

at the stand nearby a newspaper
says we must bomb another country
if we are to defend the cause
of freedom and democracy,

our capitalist way of life
which is on the blink.

I look up at the stars,
shining in the night sky,

I am in New Jersey,
and I have to get to a meeting
about the fightback
in New York City,

but I stop for a moment and look up
at the stars tonight,
as the car drinks thirstily
from the lip of the gas pump,

the theme is not since the robber barons
have so many
been exploited
by so few,

the theme is not since the thirties
has there been such
an opportunity
to unite the many,

I look up
at the constellations
twinkling
in the night sky,

Big Dipper,
Seven Sisters,
Orion,
Cassiopeia,

I look up at the stars,
twinkling in the night sky,

though I have to be
in New York City
and I have miles
to go before I sleep.

What does
an American Marxist
look like,

I wonder.