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
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.
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