Havik: Inside Brilliance

Johnny Reb
Poetry
Ben White
Rio Rancho, New Mexico, USA
Johnny Reb
Had a statue
In Richmond
Alongside Lee and Davis
That they finally took down
In a time
When all of America
Needs to fold up
A Confederate flag
And give it to History
On behalf
Of a nation –
A union grateful
Johnny Reb
Was killed and defeated
In his lost cause
After the local aristocracy
Fooled the poor white boys
Into thinking
If they didn’t fight
They were no better than the
Blacks,
And being better than the Blacks
Was all most of them had
As they charged up North
To defend Dixie
And the culture of oppression
Not realizing
They were as enslaved
As the slaves
If not more so
As the graves of war
Ignored the purpose
In the service of the South
Where they were trapped
In the persona
Of Johnny Reb
With cornbread pride
And pork-rind patriotism
Where loyalty
Was sliced off the high hog
To convince them
They were blessed,
Just, and loved
By good-ol-boy Jesus
Who rode with them
As far as Gettysburg
Where He discovered
A gilded pretense of freedom
And abandoned
Those wood-slat worshippers
Retreating back south
To watch Atlanta burn,
Charleston choke,
And New Orleans slide
Into her own
Decadent decay,
But Johnny Reb
Still found a way
To keep inheritance alive
With his back turned
On God
And a lot of God’s children
As he got off his horse,
Turned in his rifle,
And starved on dirt
And dust
Creating a new God
To trust
Who was forgiving,
Loving, kind,
And white
Ready to fight
Dressed in sheets
With an unholy faith
Preaching
Inhumanity,
Inequality,
Injustice,
And fire
Burning at the end
Of a rope
While celebrating
The hope of regaining
A moonshine lifestyle
Beneath the cross
Where everything lost
Would be restored
While nostalgia and poverty
Went hand in hand
And the past was cherished
Where purity
Had not perished
In the fantasy
Of ideas held by the race
Still longing to chase
Dreams of superiority
By keeping
The minority
Frightened in the night
Excluded from the law
And segregated from the
Constitution
Of agitators up North
Who might travel
Back and forth,
But who would never understand
The Southern man
As a tragic Greek figure
Having suffered so much
At the hands of aggression
When the lesson
To be learned
Was in watching
The residual impacts
Of the Union’s victory
Turn into racist policies
And prejudiced practices
Throughout the South
But in Northern cities as well,
So even 40 years
After Johnny Reb fell,
He got his statue raised
And praised
For Southern Heritage
Memorialized and recognized
As having some kind
Of American spirit
He never really had –
He was just a kid
Given bad advice
Ready to sacrifice his life
For a fundamentally
Counter-Christian cause
Convinced he was right
And righteous
While his white
Skin and whiteness
Were turned into values
And given credit
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