My thanks to Words & Sports Quarterly for publishing my poem about how America handled Muhammad Ali and his (spiritually & politically astute, prescient) conscientious objection to the Vietnam war. From the “we pay you (and get paid) to see you suffer, so shut up and amuse us” school of politics.
Before the poem, here’s my tribute to Ali, first written about a decade ago, for The Weeklings (#rip), and featured in my second collection of non-fiction Murphy’s Law Vol. 2.
I love the ‘60s and write often about the significant things that did happen, did not happen and should have happened during that decade. In terms of import, be it artistic, social, political, cultural, opinions on what matters and endures about the ‘60s says as much or more about the person offering an opinion. In spite of my interest and enthusiasm, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have wanted to be a young man in the ‘60s. Sure, I could have been witness to too many milestones to count, in real time. I also could have been killed in Vietnam, or in the streets, or fried my greedy brain with too much LSD or, worst of all, somehow been a Nixon supporter. Every event and individual from this seminal decade has assumed mythic status, but so many of the figures we admire were not admirable people. It’s worth the gifts they left, we say, often correctly. But has there been a single period in American history where so many people get too much credit for talking loud and saying nothing (unlike, say, the cat who wrote that song)? The older I get and the more I learn—about the ‘60s, America, myself—the deeper my awe of the man who changed his name to Muhammad Ali grows. Is there one figure (don’t say John Lennon) who humanizes, epitomizes, the racial, sociological, human upheaval of the era? Here is the rarest of folks who was the best in the world at what he did, at the height of his ability to make history, and money, willing to sacrifice it on principle. And more: a cause that every year is proven more prescient and unassailable on both moral and military levels. April 28, 1967, a little over a month before Sgt. Pepper initiated the Summer of Love, Ali made a statement as brave, audacious and impactful as any of that—or any—decade. Look: we live in a time where we can boast about our beliefs and have our righteousness measured by likes and follows, all from the safety of an overpriced coffee shop. As such, I’ll continue to be humbled and inspired, as a dude with big hopes and modest abilities, by the icon who stared down doubt, ignorance, security and compliance. Ali is the exception to the way we’re ruled, and how we roll, and like the rest of us mortals, his biggest fight took place outside the ring.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, 1967: MUHAMMAD ALI REFUSES ARMY INDUCTION*
It must have been something to stand, looking out
at the smoke-lit masses, most dressed for weddings
(or, more appropriately, a funeral), having thrown
down dough and placed their best bets on which
black man would beat the other’s brains in, alive
at the end of fifteen rounds (if necessary), to be crowned
king of the ring, and realize: these men could make or lose
money on what you did with your fists & those same hands
aren’t fit to shake or touch their wives, or do anything
other than serve for or clean up after them, the same
as it always was until certain two-faced & gullible types,
guilt-ridden about God’s will, turned this country inside
out—and where does it end, lying down with animals?
It must have been something to know these same folks—most
safely past draft age—would see the flag to which they pledged
allegiance happy fighting to the last drop of others’ blood & stay
heavyweight champion of the world, also KOing the proliferation
of Communist rebellion, a kind of one-two punch to sustain
a great white hype, reminding certain folks about their place
and why they best be content w/ table scraps, all other things
considered, and had a few battles in the South gone differently
we wouldn’t be in this mess, and anyway, what’s done is done
but how dare any of you people get uppity enough to even think
twice about who’s in charge and writes the checks; don’t forget:
you get made and you can get unmade—that’s the American Way.
(*On April 28, 1967, with the United States at war in Vietnam, boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the armed forces, saying “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.” Ali was convicted of draft evasion, stripped of his title, sentenced to five years in prison, and banned from boxing for three years.)
