January 18^th, 2003: NYC to DC

6am. At 125^th Street & Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, right downstairs from Bubba’s economy office, united workers hawking their paper want to know if Jenn’s from North Korea while brothers and robust-breasted black matrons are loading on to the bus. Biracial lesbian couples and earnest 30-something white boys born hundreds of miles from here load on to the bus. Less than twenty degrees in the air, daybreak still less than a suggestion in the sky. Coolers filled with God knows what, liters of water more dear than gasoline in this year of our misleadership 2003. A young man hands out muffins to the busmates, I hand out protest pins—The Government says War, the People say No | Dissent is Patriotic | War Is Terrorism Too—the whole stash snapped up quick, wish I’d brought more, brought hundreds, wish I could pin every living body in this country and put a neon peace sign on the forehead of George W. Motherfucking Bush, right on top of the triple-sixes hidden under his thick presidential skin. Truly, a master thief: presto change-o, and a country we could have been proud of disappeared. I would clear-cut and strip-mine the White House. I would plumb the oval office for its oil, drilling the core out of anything(body) in the way. And fill that barren shaft with hanging chads.

Jenn is half asleep already, her babyface slanted toward the window, CD spinning like mad beneath a gloveless hand. Last night she showed me some of her new poses, yogamistress balanced on nothing but two flat palms in the back room where I struggle early mornings with the simple forms. She taught me the subtleties of down dog and half lunge, the Burmese meditation splay. Now, she’s conked out, dead to all the buschatter.

Do some of these women have sons in jail? They seem so comfortable boarding a predawn bus with basketfuls of home cooking and magazines to read. Like the mothers of perpetrators, who ride north every fourth Saturday with whatever comforts they’re permitted to bring, holding their own sore hearts on the sideline, never admitting how much those visits cost.

6:30, the bus rolls. At the Cathedral, Jenn’s head lifts. Do you know what church that is? St. John’s fierce white statue unearthly in the vapor of streetlights. Ed’s our captain, takes down names and promises that all of us will return tonight. I’m startled by that, hadn’t thought there was a chance we wouldn’t. But sure, anything could happen in this suddenly unrecognizable America. We could be met with clubs, machine guns, cattle prods, tear gas. We could be taken, held without phone calls, like undocumented Moslems at the INS. M Street could become Tiananmen Square, voices silenced, incipient voices warned off, unprotected backs shattered. Anything could happen. The furious tongues of a goddess might lick across the government’s three blind eyes and water them open, silence the wardrums. Bush might glance out his bulletproof window and suddenly be able to see. A half-million refusals. The vast joined throats of NO.

It’s nothing like a regular commute, riding on this single-purposed bus, no one afraid for their bag. Lincoln Center irrelevant and bright. Murky cobalt slowly overlaying the city’s black ceiling. Homeboy, sprawled across two seats with an earwarmer pulled down over his eyes, dozes toward peace. Woke up extra early to fling his sleepy body at the place where bombs and mayhem are not. He looks tough, but doesn’t want to fight.

7:20. Jersey smokestack in flames, a quarter of the horizon carpeted in greyblack smokes, not a firetruck in sight. War coming, the country burns preemptively. A full moon, fat and pale in the western sky, inspects our conflagrations. Have we been riding for an hour already? Ed’s cell phone number on the infosheet, a woman sharing an orange, David Hykes’ overtones in my headphoned ears.

10:30. The bus roof leaks at rest stops. Cinnabon, Starbucks, fifty women queued for toilets. Peace pins. I’ve already heard the word Vietnam today more times than any other single day in the past—what? 20? 25?—years. Tangle of gray hair and reading glasses. One quiet child with a talking game. We’re in Harford County, Maryland, according to the highway sign, still at least an hour out of DC.

I’ve heard the arguments, that peace activists don’t provide viable alternatives. As if, snatching a match from the arsonist’s hand, we must then find him something else to do. As if it’s not enough to say: this murdering, we will not have.

January trees naked on the roadside. A pulse in my wrist. Across the aisle, a woman drops her sunglasses, scrabbles in a bag. “We’re a half hour away,” someone says into a cell phone, “are you wearing enough clothes?” Subzero DC rendezvous. To count on something other than spilt blood and pulverized sections of desert.

Ten minutes out we have a footwarmer love fest, the little magic sacks of heat passing up and down the aisles. Free buttons, food, footwarmers: like sitting in the lucky seat at a baseball game, catching foul ball after foul ball, seeing your flushed face flash on the closed-circuit stadium screens.

The Glav’s Travel bus drops us off one block from the Mall. Why didn’t I expect the signs?

            Stop Preemptive Fundamentalism

            No Oil Colony in Iraq

            Bombs Can’t Destroy What Inspectors Can’t Find

In the shivering hands of a child: My President Is Teaching Me To Kill

            No Proof, No War

             “We must learn to live together as brothers
              or perish together as fools.” Dr. King

The green is a tangle of signs. I hardly take in anything of the rally until a fierce speaker onstage says “Jesus didn’t say blesséd be oil. Jesus didn’t say blesséd be Enron. Jesus said blesséd be the peacemakers!” and the field ignites in scream.

            Who would Jesus bomb?

            How Many Body Bags Equal A Barrel of Bush Oil?

I hear Jesse Jackson introduced, hear almost nothing after he takes the mike. His voice is hoarse, but much too low. His oval office voice. The one he used there, then, when he was welcome. Never now.

            We’ll Vote this War in 2004

            Saddam: Get Out!

            Inspectors: Find Out!

            Dubya: Stay Out!

Boy in a tree, climbing barehanded. Magic marker on the back of his shirt says Welcome to 1984. Maybe also the year of his birth. Now three in that same tree, the Asian girl not much of a climber. Child voice behind me says there’s a helicopter up there.

            We Have Guided Missiles and Misguided Men

            Start Seeing Iraqi Children

We’re marching now, headed for the Navy Yard, chants starting up:

                        Exxon, Enron, BP, Shell

                        Take your war and go to hell

            Saddam is Bad

            War is Worse

I told the Code Pink crew: “You ladies are fucking beautiful. You’re beautiful.” Then fisted my heart and kissed the fist toward them as they cheered below fuchsia umbrellas inked over with slogans and peace symbols. One wide sign carried in twenty hands, a sweet-hearted barricade walking.

            Freezing Our Butts Off For Peace

                        One two three four

                        We don’t want your Daddy’s war

Chant and read, read and chant. Drop Sanctions, Not Bombs

            No Attaq

                        USA, you decide

                        Justice or genocide

            War. Is your SUV worth it?

            Military Solutions are Problems

                        Hitler rose, Hitler fell

                        Fascist Bushes, go to hell

            Axis of Weasels

Idle cops by idling motorcycles. A single helicopter, circling.

            Earth to Bush: No War

                        George Bush, what do you say?

                        How many kids did you kill today?

Joint compound drums. Water-cooler jug drums. Megaphones. The slow car passing a microphone out the window. The poet.

            Stop US Before We Kill Again

            Illegitimate President

            Illegitimate War

                        What do we want? Peace.

                        When do we want it? Now!

What do I want? Peace. Love. Serenity, safety, confidence, grace, and every subtle sustenance of the walking soul. When do I want it? Always. What else do I want? To understand why this hurts so much. How can I be so happy that we’re here, doing this, and so devastated that we have to be here, doing this? Woman become compass, full circle. Spinning dial. DC @ the North Pole…

            No mas sangre fria

            Peace Begets Peace

Cops among us now, bikes growling. Difficult to write in gloves, in cold.

            Violence is the Product of Uncreative Thinking

                        Hey Hey, Ho Ho
                        We won’t fight for Texaco

            Give Pizza Chants

I hear Peace/Now ahead of me and No Blood For Oil behind. Asyncopated protest, hoarse for peace. Fight AIDS, not Iraq. Yes. The helicopter circles. Flanked by motorcycle cops, their chant of silence.

            Preemptive Peace

At the Navy Yard, all causes meet the spurned war: Vieques, Palestine, Roe v. Wade. Each speaker fierce and brief. A terror of clarities and measure of musts. Consequences. The gaps of love. Who would Jesus bomb?

            Evolve Consciousness

            Not Armaments

5:50. It’s warm and bright on the bus, frozen protestors comparing daynotes as they straggle in and struggle out of 2-3 layers of pants and fleece. Some have held on to their signs. No Blood for Oil. No War on Iraq. In the Taco Bell bathroom, folded signs on snapped sticks were stashed behind the toilet, dozens of them jammed into trashbins along M Street, four signs propped in a private yard on New Jersey Avenue.

Louise leans over to tell me about a sign abandoned on the corner, says it would make a great shot but I’m all out of film, and glad to be, my apprentice photographer’s heart tuckered out after sixty frames and countless chants, all those hours in the cold.

Pops limps up the aisle, upside-down sign immaculate as the stickpin in his Sunday morning tie: Bring Our Boys & Girls Back Home. Our oldest rider returns—seventy-five years if she's a day, traveling with a middle-aged daughter. She came to press her dessicated body on the door behind which the hungry war slams itself sidewise against splintering wood, wanting to get OUT quick and chew SOME(any)thing up. All of us—how many? 10,000? 50,000? half a million?—shove ourselves against the outside of that door while uniformed Winkies winch it open, slow and inexorable as the shrinking of old human gums. Will that door open before the rotten teeth fall out?

Two women who sat directly to my right on the ride down have not returned. Their seats are piled with bags. The bus waits for them, but will not wait much longer. We’re all tired and cold, want to make it back to Harlem before midnight.

My brain is a backward movie. The boy climbing the tree. The repeated reflex toward tears through and through the day, unexpected salt rising in the back of my shocked throat. I saw buses come in from Ohio, twenty hours out.

Say: no more Bushit. Take the war toys away from Junior.

A man sticks his head onto the bus, waves, blesses us, thanks us for coming, wishes us all a wonderful ride home. Who is he? Head pops out, disappears.

(Earnest bodies pushing closed that door. Molars loosening. Monsterbreath. Still anybody’s game.)

An imbalanced planet spins into the long familiarities of night. Shadows, stars, a quiver of exhaust as the bus starts up. Pushing the patient wrapping, pushing. Soon, a snap.

Jackie Sheeler