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Tacoma poet Luke Smiraldo's reading of 'The New Math' was a highlight of the ENOUGH IS ENOUGH antiwar rally, or as Smiraldo would prefer to say, peace rally, which kicked off a week of Puget Sound antiwar demonstrations in Tacoma's Wright Park on Sat., Mar. 17, 2007. -- His performance of "The New Math" led to many requests for the text, which is here published for the first time.[1] -- UFPPC thanks Luke for permission to post this copyrighted piece, which is also posted on the web site of People for Peace, Justice, and Healing, and is now available for re-reading at other events this week, and later....
1. Poem THE NEW MATH
By Lucas Smiraldo© Have you walked long enough? How many marches
divided by rallies
multiplied by the square root
of community actions
balanced by radicals
on each side of the
the equation
and reduced down
to a single chant
are enough? Have you walked long enough? How many projectiles
accelerated past the point
of armor piercing
repeated exponentially
does it take
to mean enough
dead 19-year-olds
with funerals scheduled
in Fargo, North Dakota,
Albany,
Spokane,
Tacoma,
Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio,
Macon, Georgia,
Bozeman,
Honolulu,
and
American Samoa? And add to this
six-year-olds
wandering into
Kirkuk, Fallujah,
and the outdoor market
in the Green Zone
at the exact moment
a 16-year-old martyr
pulls the string
on the vest
so that neither of them
will walk out again. Have you walked long enough? Take the equation
I have just given you
and write it on
the plank of a schooner
which packed 800
Africans in the bowels
with one inch
between them and
one hour of exercise
on deck
each day,
then have
three million
incarcerated black men
sign off on it,
have it notarized
by the Puyallup tribe
drag it on to the
Pine Ridge
Reservation
where the Ogala Sioux
will meet with
the Blackfoot
to discuss why all the
sovereign Indian nations
don’t have a single integer
in the equation to
represent them
and decide, with help
from the Iroquois,
to shatter
the plank
into one
thousand pieces and
give a shard to
every Indian nation
and write the number
of Indian dead per clan
and add this to
the theoretical
deaths
of Iraqi
women who were
walking past the wrong
café at the wrong time
on the wrong street
and caught a whiff
of the detonator chemical
before their life was
reduced
to a white sheet of
paper
as all the numbers
in memory
were erased. Have you walked long enough? How many spreadsheets
must we build to
inventory all of the
rural counties
bowling leagues
family albums
reunion rosters
community college applications
secret Santa lists,
and anniversary announcements,
and we must now
have these names
subtracted
until all that
is left
are the
surviving,
less than whole,
numbers. We are less than
whole
numbers; We are less than whole numbers,
and I am thinking
the Aborigines
of Australia
are right,
that a march is not
the answer; Point A to Point B
does not equal
Outcome C
that
we citizens need to
activate
chaos theory
in the form of
a walkabout,
one extended journey
of a thousand days
in which we invade
a thousand lawns
listen to a million stories
sit down with
descendants
of the middle passage
who suffer
from 400 years of
bracketed silence,
share fry bread
with
Wilma Mankiller
to receive some
advanced calculus
relationship instruction
and still we must keep
walking
infiltrate rational equations
which have been
renamed
“collateral damage,”
“acceptable loss,”
and “casualty estimates,”
and cancel those numbers out,
so many theories to
cancel out
so much walking to do
choreographed
in a walkabout,
and yet we are left
without
whole numbers. Have you walked long enough? We have barely begun. This violence
begets equations
which cannot be totaled
in marches,
but on the top
of our chalkboard,
which includes the
geometric map,
let us slap this
word problem to
be charted and solved: (Don’t forget it,
all equations
are reduced to
this core
phrase) Start the Peace. Not Stop the War. But Start the Peace. Start it at the gravestones
of the Fargo, North Dakota, dead
spin it outward
toward the Pine Ridge Reservation
where the people wait
to regain their numbers
surround the veterans
in tangential circles
of family concern
let them cry out
their fractions
in the integers
of missing limbs,
broken bones
and the lost innocence
they can never regain. We have taken this
from them
listen to them wail
in fractal equations
which keep growing
like bent tree branches. We must let our
veterans
keep talking in
circles
not boxes,
not filthy boxes
not Walter Reed boxes
but community circles. Start the Peace. Start the Peace
as we all wonder,
we try our hand at
radical geometry
try to find the common link
between the poor white
boy in Bozeman
who enlisted for
the shimmering promise
of the only college credits
he will ever know
and the Puerto Rican
living in the Bronx
who told his Mama
he would have to be
the family hero
in the absence of
another man. Start the Peace
and let them know
that the military
does not replace
a fair economy,
that war condemns
thousands of American
third world towns
to one choice only -- Sacrifice your young. Role the dice
and pray it don’t
come up snake eyes
staring lifelessly
at an empty sky. We make hundred
of thousands of families
bet their young
to the tumble spin of
three precious outcomes College
Permanent Disability and My Child, No More The game is fixed. We mist solve the equation
and Start the Peace. If,
and when,
this war is done-- We are not-- we must still Start the Peace. If the rallies remain
written in White
we have much more
to do
we have got to join
the people of the Y axis
with those of the X
find our common point
initiate this epic fractal
written by our heels
and Start the Peace. Have you walked long enough? Will the killing never
cease? Stop Chanting
“Stop the War!” Pick up the chalk
and write Start the Peace. --©Lucas Smiraldo. First performed at Tacoma, WA, Peace Rally, March 17, 2007.
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