With Style!
a dedication to my enemy, inspired by "The Pledge of Allegiance," by Sam Pink
art by Sam Pink
You can find the link to this weeks poem right here:
The Pledge of Allegiance- Sam Pink
“I was in my room after work / staring off and flicking a lighter.”
The Pledge of Allegiance is sort of like a Koan. Which is to say, I kind of don’t want to analyze it, and want it to entirely exist inside you.
So instead of a line by line analysis or anything, I’m just going to tell you about the one person in the world I really hate.
My girlfriend’s best friend was flying into the city to visit and so we were like “what are we gonna do,” and of course we arrange to go out dancing. So we do the whole thing, hopping from bar to bar, ending up at a rooftop club, whatever. I love dancing but I never stopped being grumpy about it.
It was a fun night. A long night. And by the end of it all of us were pretty drunk, so we left and tried to find food. There was a halal cart just a couple blocks away, thankfully. It was starting to get cold, and the sky was all bruised up. I ordered two chicken over rices.
White sauce, hot sauce.
Out of nowhere, my girlfriend’s friend screams! I turn around and am wondering what’s the matter when I see a huge cockroach making a beeline for her ankles.
I have killed so many cockroaches. Back when I started the job I’m at now, I was working the back shift, and me and this other summer kid would have a running tally to see who could kill the highest number. We both worked different shifts, so there was no way to check the other guy’s score, but I knew he wasn’t lying because I won by like thirty roaches.
And I knew I wasn’t lying because that wasn’t the kind of thing I would lie about.
So anyway, I ran over and stepped on the cockroach. Then I kicked its corpse into the grate above the subway.
But here’s the problem: I did it with style.
I guess it seemed like I enjoyed it. So this other guy who had been waiting for his chicken over rice looks at me, and he’s like “why’d you do that?”
“A fly came out of nowhere / and flew over the lighter / right as I lit it.”
I must have just stared at the guy. That’s a bad habit that I’ve picked up. I heard it was an interrogation tactic, because people always try to fill the silence. They can’t help it.
But I mostly do it to give myself some time to think. And this time I really didn’t get it, was this guy picking a fight with me over a cockroach?
“I just think its kind of a dick move,” he added. Helplessly.
So he was. I sized the guy up. I’m a kind of skinny, not much use in fight. But this guy might be even worse than me. We were about the same weight class, but his shoulders were more stooped, he looked a little more lifeless. You have to be ready to fight any moment.
“Hey, it was just a cockroach.” I tried to reason with him. Both of us had punchable faces.
“To me,” he said, “you are a cockroach.”
You have to be ready to fight at any moment. So I stepped towards him but felt my girlfriend’s hands on my shoulder pulling me back. The commandment to be ready to fight at any moment also means you have to be ready to escape. Because you don’t have a nature. And sometimes they are the same thing.
It was better for everyone and from every standpoint that I didn’t fight that random guy over a cockroach. My chicken and rice was ready at the perfect time, so I was able to leave with my dignity intact. But it wasn’t better for me, I don’t think. I think the world has been off ever since.
And so I went home. I ate my chicken and rice. And everything felt off.
Because that guy was right. I should have punched him for it.
We are cockroaches to each other.
And that’s what Sam’s poem made me think about. I remembered that guy. And how easily a human transforms into a cockroach. And that all of us, have within us, this special power to change them back, called Love.
“Because its pain and death / to my enemies / and everlasting life / to the ones I love.”
But if I ever saw that guy again, I’d do it with style!
-BP
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