This Memorable Day

[John Young]

And an admirable role model for the Simian's memory:

An avenging rebel terrorist shot Abe, not Grant, who
suicided himself with whiskey and self-pity, after lollygagging
in the animal-beshat White House, lost that, took up liquor, 
became a helpless drunk, friends caretook his inept pickled 
carcass for a few years then he wrote a vain, distorted book 
about his carnaging of the rebels, and worst comedownance, 
got entombed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, so it is 
said, but who knows what military-industrial effigy lies in that 
grafitti-and-dogshit-smeared pile overlooking beshitten 
liberal-elitist, nest of rebellious vermin Columbia University, 
Riverside Church, the National Council of Churches, and best,
squalid, infested, periodically ractist white-massacreing 
Harlem.

Still, when you visit Grant's Tomb you see mostly well-dressed
African Americans studying the memoria displayed welling tears
at the piles of war dead, the freed slaves, the army grunts and
officers gauntly posed in muddy filth. A tourist bus roars in, pinky 
blobs waddle into the high-domed gloom, see no cafe, no gift shop,
come out to circle the monument looking for something to
buy or eat or video. Nothing there like the rest of the homeland
shopfested US. What the fuck they mouth, fart, scratch, heave
their globs fore and aft, struggle to re-mount the bus, stare out 
the dark glass at me in my Swift Boat get-up, jesus-bearded,
gut abusting, carrying a Viet Vet begging sign that says 
Apocalypse Now or Else.