Saturday, August 20, 2011

623

The greatest poet of his generation
Reaches out for validation
Like a little boy saying, look, look, look
And you can hear the applause of a book

In the wind.  Assholes are born, not made.
They live in their own perpetual shade.
When others breathe deeply with sun on their lips
They lose their grip.  They grade

Themselves higher than the rest.  They test
Our capacity for forgiveness,
For empathy with the worst of the worst.
I think I have that, and it's for the best

When dealing with the greatest poet
Of his generation.  After all, he's not
Only an asshole.  Something in his verse
Redeems his petty space on earth.


Monday, August 1, 2011

Obama Lines

Can't wait for Obama's memoir. 
All those hopes, then the way things are. 
A ripple crosses the pond.
A sour note in God's song.

Friday, June 3, 2011

(Sappho: translated from the 7000 plus versions in all known human languages)


He is More than a Hero

Obviously he’s with the gods, that one
Facing you, leaning over the festive table to feast
On that voice and that sweet spellbinding
Laughter of yours—that’s why the caged

Bird beats its wings against my breast
At the sight of you.  Only silence makes sense
With my tongue a sacked temple—a quick
Burning cooks me from the inside out— 

I’m blind; and my ears drone like shrine
Gongs hammer-struck.  I’m pouring sweat,
Shaking in my seat; my skin’s pale as grass.
And, it seems, this close to death.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

1492


God-fearing Crew

Imagine it’s 1492.  The homeland has vanished
Into the blue.  You’re hungry and thirsty, angry
With everyone else on board.  You’ve worked
The rigging for over a month as if playing chess
On a tightrope in a Barcelona wind.  By the time
You reach the Bahamas you can’t even stand up
On the beach without swaying side to side.  When
You recover from the journey, and the shy locals
Show up as naked and loving as the day of their birth,
You can’t help but want to fuck everyone in sight. 
And you do before killing them.  In between, you eat
Fruit, fish and sleep in hammocks.  You make rum
And fun and long for the broiled hams of Granada.
You’re not the Captain, not the 2nd in command: this
Bloody sex is all you’re likely to get of the enterprise.
In the end, it’s the Captain who gets the blame and fame.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Bury it and forget it

Soldier On

It’s forbidden to say they were stupid
Or to use a synonym, that they didn’t know
Our leaders were lying, that their henchman
Had conned the nation. It’s forbidden
To say they sought thrills, young men
Out to discover killing a human being,
To be in righteous battles like in movies.
You can’t say these men were thinking
About becoming heroes to their loved ones,
About getting the one-up on schoolyard
Friends when they get home, about landing
A job as security guard or a policeman
When no one else is getting any kind.
You can’t say that they killed foreign kids
And women, blew families away just for
Vanity.  You can’t even say however one’s
Tempted country right or wrong was the idea.
Only families can say that, which is why
I told my brother just bury it somewhere
And try to forget she ever happened.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

The Art of the Possible

First they trim the fat.   Then they cut the meat from the bone.  Someone soon comes to suck out the last of the marrow.  Then someone else arrives to lick the bone clean.  If you’re lucky enough to find a way, you can drill holes in the bone and carve out a mouthpiece.  Then you can pipe songs about going hungry, about the winter cold, getting shafted.  Thus (while they prefer what turns to dirt) the bone lives every time you blow into it.

Friday, April 1, 2011

In This Day and Age


He refuses to say homeland.
He refuses to say lord.
He refuses to say sign on the dotted line.
He refuses to sign.  He refuses
To say homeland.
He refuses to cry over spilt milk.
He refuses to get over it.
He refuses to leave it behind.
He refuses the past that is not the now.
He refuses the future that is not the past.
He refuses to say homeland.
He refuses Motherland and Fatherland.
He refuses to say get on your knees.
He refuses Hands up and up against the wall.
He refuses to look through a microscope.
He refuses telescopes and riflescopes.
He refuses cameras but accepts the birds’ view.
He refuses God walking among us.
He refuses to walk with God.
He refuses a God you can walk with.
He refuses to let it rest.  To kick a dead dog.
He refuses to enlist.  To heed any call.
He refuses himself and the horse he rode in on.
He feeds the horse he rode in on first.
He refuses to eat.  He refuses no crumbs but the table.
He refuses to abide by certain anythings.
He refuses to accommodate the armed and dangerous.
He refuses not to be the armed and dangerous.
He refuses to concede the point.  He refuses the point.
He refuses to wave a flag.  Wear one.  Hang one.
He refuses not to burn the flag.  Any flag.  The flag of home
He refuses to take down under any circumstances.
He refuses to refrain from corrupting his children.
He refuses children who are corrupted.
He refuses a wife who is a wife.  He refuses a life that’s a life.
He refuses sickness and death to a mirror.
He refuses to clean the rain droppings on his window.
He refuses to say the day is anything other than a day.
He refuses to be spared.  He refuses to spare anyone.
He refuses to work on it.  He refuses working.
He refuses to live alone and with others.
He simply refuses.  He refuses to say
There was no other choice.  Choice refuses
His refusal to choose otherwise.
He refuses with all his heart and soul.
He refuses to dismiss heart and soul and refuses
To admit to one or the other pale as bone.
He refuses to unbury the bones.
He refuses to string them together and scare everyone.
He refuses to string them together and belittle everyone.
He refuses the cause that’s a smaller third doll.
He refuses the doll without a voice.
He refuses to be a doll with a voice.
He refuses to voice the doll’s point of view.
He refuses not to adopt a point of view
He refused not to adopt yesterday.
He refuses to be a butterfly with a pin through its neck.
He refuses to move when the lights flash.
He refuses flashing lights.
He refuses the flash that isn’t in the sky.
He refuses it outside the inside of mountains
He refuses to refuse and refuses not to.
He refuses this day and age.
He refuses this day of rage and day of me.
He refuses days of me.
He refuses to countenance days of me.
He refuses whatever is not me.
He refuses whatever is not you.
He refuses to refuse you.
He refuses to refuse you in this day and age.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

from Heroic Age


??

Spring’s shoulder stayed winter.  Her feet were yams.  When she curves her back for a rake, you want to jump on it and relax, smoke a cigarette and watch the sun for the first time in dark months of rooms.  Her feet are yams, ankles held together by vines.  She wears a black scarf, black skirt and black cardigan over a black blouse.  On her legs gray lintballs climb beneath her skirt.  Midwife to the soil, she’s dressed for the Grand Closing.  You want to hug her but you don’t.  She’ll turn oak post, steel beam, concrete pillar.  The transition will be unbearable.  There's work to be done.

??

It was an automobile.  A steel trap.  A contusion on a sharp left.  They brought it home, put it in the bathroom in a box on a bed of hay.  She refused to go to school.  Leave the house.  She slept under the sink.  Her friends forgot her.  Her notebook forgot to tell her.  Forgot to explain it all.  To remind her.  She brought gifts, carrots and lettuce, cabbage and a bowl of water.  One morning next week, nothing but the hay.  It escaped, they said, right through the open door; back with its family now.  In the evening her mother added salt above the boiling pot.  When ready, she cut the flame and drifted upstairs.  He stuck a fork in it.  She sat on her hands at the table.  Herod said: “Eat it."

??

Don’t tell Papa, she pleaded.  But Papa was told.  He gathered the linens, bleach and a washtub from the basement.  She stuck her hands in the tub.   The linens whipped up a whirlpool; grabbed her wrists.  They tried to pull her in and drag her to the bottom.  She struggled to rescue her bloody hands.  Something was drowning in there.  Something small, a bird’s heart, a song.  Later, her mother hung the line.  She wrote in her notebook: I’m a woman now.

??

It keeled over in its own dung.  She gathered it up, held it to her breast beneath her coat.  People wanted to know why her heart appeared to have grown.  On the bus they snatched glances, whispered to their partners, snickered at the back.  She stepped off and walked through the city unseen.  When the vet had a look, he told her to roast it.

??

I came to kill, to give birth.  I came to wipe things clean.  I came to purify.  You’ll know me by the shine on my boots, the sparkle at the ends of my fingertips.  By the breadth of my wings, the cut of my suit.  When I speak, even the deaf have to pretend to be listening.  Even the dead, the unborn.  When I speak, love hurts like it's supposed to.



Tuesday, March 15, 2011

from Epoch of Heroes

8
His mother became a carpenter, his sister a bricklayer. His father drank time, and his brother sat against the trunk of an oak. One bird pecked at his brother’s eyes, another fought off an interloper, while another was happy with a worm. His mother built three chairs and his sister built a mausoleum. They sat inside together waiting for the door to close. After a while they stopped breathing, but even that didn’t help.

14
She stopped tending to the chickens, keeping the goat out of the garden. She stopped feeding the dog. She lived in the well like a lost frog. When it rained she felt better, like a lost frog. Men came to replace the men who left with grumbling machines and the language of prisons. She was a frog in a well. They buzzed against the walls of her mind like flies in a glass room. When they landed to rest, she sent her frog tongue to greet them. The flies left flying captured her and put her on a train. She felt like a frog on a train. Others cried out, but she was silent as a hitchhiker. As a hitchhiker frog on a train.

17
He’s in the yard with his shirt off and a towel over his knee. He shaves from a bucket of cold water. Snowflakes melt on the surface. All the kitchen windows face his way; all the kitchen sinks are full of admiration for what he’s done. All the kitchen eyes have their eyes on him. He molts in broad daylight. Only the mirror refuses to see him. It hangs from a crooked wire with a chip on its shoulder. The attention’s warm as an incubator bulb. He’s the oldest egg in town.

19
She gave them all names. They gave her a name in turn. She set the sun on fire when she emerged. The clouds rushed away. All the trees waving blue flags abandoned her. She heard their cries of joy. Joy in their cries. The men that arrived didn’t kill themselves. There was only sound. Each face was like the other. Each hand had five fingers. The arms were like snakes; they hissed and tightened their grip. She could smell last year’s apples fermenting in the grass. She didn’t feel a thing and then woke up. She called out their names, the new ones the men left behind.

24
She married a spoon. A ladle. A hammer and a nail. They lived a honeymoon in a tool box. There was a slight breeze off the sheet-metal. SS Bliss was sailing in. It was sailing out. It had yet to make port. It had radioed the master. Preparations for boarding were underway. She spooned out helpings of love like ice-scream. He hammered it melting to the dock. Once aboard, she ladled tears for soup. The waves upset the bowls, clogging all the bulk-heads. He got fat and couldn’t swim ashore. She said the toolbox was dragging her down. By the time they jumped ship, they went straight to the bottom.

29
Ghosts return to the woodwork. The house is a site to visit. A notebook fills in the gaps. She takes a trolley to the edge of town, takes a bus to the last stop. She walks through the village with her head down. Even the bed-ridden know she’s there. Even the rafters, the floorboards. A sign: the name of the village, a black X over it. She rests in the tall grass at the edge of a wheat-field. The next page has a man and his son in a wagonload of carcass. Flies conduct a seminar. They talk of the children. It’s because of the children. For the children, they will fly to kingdom come. She draws a crooked blue line from edge to edge. On one side, he stands with a rifle. On the other she stands with a spoon. A battle is about to commence. She lets the wagon take her along the blue line. Hooves like hail hitting the roof; the iron roof on fire pouring down on the flesh of its guests. The house is a site to dig in. The house is a yardstick. The gaps remain gaps. She returns to the woodwork of the page.

38
The goat has spoken. The chicken is going down with his brethren. Trucks line up in the darkness. A string of red lights, sawdust flies and a sound like ammonia. The numbers are in the numbers. One driver leans against the cab, a cigarette in is hand. He puffs and puffs like a little chicken factory. A processing plant. He wants the men and women inside to speed up the dirty work. He can’t wait to get on the road, to be between places. Every time he stops he needs a shrink. Stopping is bull’s-eye. The goat told him that; and looking around, he trusts the goat.

44
He was from a country without a past. He invented it anew every morning. He signed peace treaties in the afternoon. By nightfall he was lurking in wardrobe. His code was Xeroxed and passed down. His agents memorized the juice, defecated the pulp. Hard as we thought, we could do nothing to outwit his ops. He was on the lookout for holy mushrooms in the sauce, dark patches of slander amid the veggies. An evil eye tiptoeing behind a lid. He triple-locked all his locks, spent his evenings cleaning the barrel. You could smell the lube in the pit of your stomach. Tomorrow a new flag will go up the pole. You have to be a well-oiled machine; you have to purr to survive.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Metaphysics

I think Lazarus should have stayed dead.
Mary Magdalene should have thrown the rocks.
Judas wasn’t a scoundrel, I mean, his buddy
Knew he would do it, could have stopped him
Had he wanted to, hell, he would have done
The same thing if the roles were reversed. 
I think squeezing through a needle’s eye
If you are not a piece of thread is masochistic. 
But being a rich man’s good, almost everyone
Wants that.  Bread makes you fat and warm. 
Fish though generally a healthy-diety type grub
Carry a lot of mercury in their flesh.  I think being
Crucified, whatever method, would answer a lot. 
What do you think?  I guess it depends how 
There you are.  I see myself snapping the whip,
Keeping all the losers where they belong.
Truthfully, though, I feel this whatever.
What about you?  I’ll be remembered by my son’s
Son, and he’ll be remembered by his, and, well,
Could anyone ask for more?  Not this ingrate.
Imagine like if Herr Hitler had had a bigger heart.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

In the Village


Today, so far, resembles yesterday.   
A few unexceptional exceptions: the clouds 
Move a little faster, there's a rabbit 
In the yard gnawing the bark 
From the willow I felled
Last year but failed to gather, 
The fire's taking longer to catch, 
And I have a pain in my neck.  
Also, it's today, and practically speaking 
It's right now. I wish it were yesterday 
Again, just to keep tomorrow back.  
The last thing I need is tomorrow. 
Tomorrow means yesterday is with the others,
A and today too, which I regretted seeing 
Go. I don't like to lose things, and especially
Not days. I remember yesterday
I said: "Today is the day." 
But now it is the day I had in mind, 
And I should have done it 
Yesterday.  I should never wait 
To do yesterday tomorrow, since tomorrow 
Has its own that needs doing.  
I don't know what they are, 
Because it's still today, which looks exactly
Notwithstanding minor differences—
Like yesterday, which I suspect
Will resemble tomorrow. I hope 
Tomorrow rebels and proves me wrong.