This World of Ours

This world of ours, so big so round so blue,

Once imagined, is a whole lot of world more than

Enough for the likes of me and you.

Unknowable, held together by the felt glue

Of mystery, with or without any mysterious plan—

This world of ours, so big so round so blue,

Coughed up magma to grow green and fluid; grew

A soul, spread itself thin through thick & kin,

Enough for the likes of me and you,

In the eye, ear, the breathing beneath our shoe

And in the visions unveiled by the messianic man,

This world of ours, so big so round so blue

In sunlight, in darkness, as if by heaven's cue,

With a sidekick moon's radiant wingspan

Enough for the likes of me and you

  

Who need it like love needs to stay true

To our home of selves, and we best better can—

This world of ours, so big so round so blue

Enough for the likes of me and you.

At The Border

They hardly set their bags down and were wanted for urgent discussions. The details, where they had come from, what they had done in their home countries, what manner of religion they practiced, were already known. They were escorted to separate rooms, empty but for immigration officers on wooden chairs at metal desks with paper and pencil at the ready.

In the first room, the mother was asked to draw a portrait of her daughter. It didn’t have to be good, said the officer. That was a relief to the mother, but she still felt that she had to draw something that resembled her daughter, that it was important to get it right, and she was never any good at it. Her hand was shaky, but she managed to draw a little girl in a summer dress carrying two bags that nearly touched the ground beside her.

In the second room, the father was asked to write a poem about his loved ones, a short verse that captures the essence of their beings. The officer was a bit impatient with the father’s expression of bewilderment, so he repeated the instructions, adding: don’t worry, we know you are not a poet. The father started jotting down words and arranging them into lines and crossing them out, replacing them with others, tapping his fingers on the table.

In the third room, the little girl sat with her hands beneath her thighs, her shoes dangling above the floor. The officer pushed the paper and pencil towards her, and then got up and left the room. The little girl didn’t touch the paper or the pencil. She just sat there with her hands growing numb beneath her thighs.

Extempore Exercise in Five Movements on the Death of the Master

1

Soon it’ll be a capital crime to aim a spot-light

At the mean face of the future, the past gone

Nowhere. Like poor fishermen, we prawn

The warm engulf of vanities, parasites

Of sea, sun, air; even among the erudite

The hook gets baited (rubber longjohns

To protect against chilly tidewater dawns).

The whole business gives me a wound-tight

Fright. Hail Masters, full of grace! Amen!

The majority never know what hit them,

Don’t know his name, his poems; like lambs
Led to the table, they're eager to send

Others to war for the taste of local hams,

And others for security terminally penned

2

And others blinded by their own wise light

Stare off as if being was all about being gone:

Gas, flesh, bone; the survival sense a prawn

Has scuttling the currents; fighting parasites

And ship-sized fish makes for an erudite

Denizen of the human reef. Dicks, Johns,

Toms and Harrys: O bombarded dawns,

The sound of fury and glories tight

To the line—what works gets the Amen!

I’m afraid it may all be a crock o’ bull: them,

Us, the others, as if the fuss for smoked ham

Were incidental to the sow. Wolves eat lambs

On wide open plains under stars that send

The kind of poems no mortal’s ever penned.

3

Every image appears in its own word-light.

For seventy years you wrote about being gone

From hatred, suffering, the hunger. A mere prawn

In comparison, I’m a sinecure’s parasite,

Slack-jawed with self-love, as erudite

As a goldfish flushed down the john.

You made gospel out of all the meaty dawns

In a top/bottom squeeze, bound up tight

You traveled among us, and them, with them

For us, writing about women prepping hams

In camp kitchens, farmers skinning lambs

From branches in village squares, the amen

Of a grandmother with the eyes of a penned

Animal, witness to what God saw fit to send.

4

In prose and poetry you lit the flood-lights

Above our path, paving the way—now gone,

We walk in darkness. The toxic prawns

On the menu are the true poems of our parasite

Natures, what lies out of range—erudite

And empty, feasting like bulging Johns

Cashing in orgasms for amnesiac dawns

While night-shift girls work a pimp-tight

Schedule. To whom shall we send an Amen?

Perhaps now you are a God, or just like them:

Brodsky, your soulmate; Ginsberg, the ham

Who left us love songs naked as lambs

Sheared for cloakrooms. Could you please send

Angel reinforcements? I fear being penned!

5

Today at dawn I stirred to kill the light.

On the radio, news that you were gone.

(I have a new poem about a soulless prawn,

A week old pincer-clinging parasite

On the Frigidaire air, as if erudite

Flesh could leapfrog into holiness—John,

3:13, pinky-ringed in a lavender dawn.

I should have known to seal it up tight

With prayer, with a bomb's heartfelt amen.)

And now you’re dead, bright shade among them,

Angel of song, keeper of the lambs;

Out of heaven’s clay you were made and sent

To harden in the fires of what you penned,

So we sheep might avoid the void of an end.

Sea of Seasons

On a late November day you arrive,

A low sun to whet the shadow's edge,

Counterpoint for the eye at the window

Thinking of the days unreal years ago,

Winter weekends full of a bell’s tones

On the footbridge that spans the globe

In the Christian Science Church,

While you made the custodial rounds—

Hello, Hello, I'd say to the giant stain-

Shape of Russia, the Soviet monster

In red, in my father’s head and yours,

Hello Africa over the railing, England,

China at my back. November cold

On Clearway, concrete, asphalt, brick

Cold, while here it’s all green and brown

Weeds in the field, young birch trees

Bent clinging to the last of their leaves.

A wall of wind crosses the road, waves

Hit home and I think of the fortress

On Castle Island at our backs, Logan

Across the channel, the great cargo ships

From a four-cornered world unloading,

Loading up for journeys of a lifetime;

A mackerel jig on your line. What a sight

To see those dead fish with their eyes

Staring, heads chopped off, gutted

And filleted on the dock, someone else

With a bucket, a live one too big to turn,

Dive, to surface before dinner. Yes, yes,

I'd cry for a melting softy ice-cream

Cone on the rocks along the shore, gulls

Sailing for scraps on the fishy breeze.

You'd hold my hand climbing down

Where the waves clapped into crevices

And the seaweed gave the motion form,

Food and cover for starfish and crabs.

You loved the summer sea, winter seas

And November at the window watching

An ancient seabed shaped by the wind

Ten thousand miles from your grave,

I think of us together, and hear it

From some other world in the days 
Before I knew what November meant, 
What seas and seasons I'd come to navigate,

That someday you'd be gone for good

And leave me at the water’s edge.

I Mourn All The Shotgun-Dead Ducks

I mourn all the shotgun-dead ducks

Pond-gone, now less shade than sorrow,

The spotlit movement on the bad-luck

Border: brown-skinned swarms on-the-go

Scaring the demo out of democrats

Gringoed from gradeschool to trim the fat,

Dress the meat, and never take any shit—

It’s victory to the vipers in this snake-pit!

Only kissable necks and a sandy beach will do

For my grieving—O sensible superglue

Joining the world to my oyster

Of touch and taste I’d never cloister

For a pearl. I have a few good seasons yet
To reverse what made my feathers wet.

Coffee With My Wife

There’s a lot of sad stuff

To get beyond if you wanted

To live a life that’s unhaunted

Coming and going’s enough

Tough surrounded by fluff

To ignore in the passing

Like spurned upturned lovers

Hearing songs from shore

Calling without promise

While whoever wherever lights

Up like a star in a moonless night

Deaf and dumb to process

The heart’s feeding protocol

One morsel at a time crumb

After crumb until psyche’s fall

Is fast enough for a run

At scaling its mindful heights

And moving past the sum

Of its daily lethal delights

And all the sad to overcome

When finally back at home

To work the tiny tasks of life

A cup of coffee with my wife

Heartpain plenty of her own