I Consign

 If there are those who have died for love

let me be among them

rather than those who died for hate.

For I would not be great in

any single thing

if it would not be

love. 

And hate is not great

to be with in life,

or to be with when late.

And so among the lovers doomed

who bled their breaths out 

while their passions bloomed

across piano keys

or canvasses or 

the bodies of their lovers,

to be among these

I consign my spirit.

I have loved too well

not to have done so wisely. 

To have loved greatly is

no shame

and to love broadly is 

the best game in town.

Let me lay myself down

having been down. 

The brightest of goofs,

the quintessence of 

saps, the homo sapiens, sap. 

I loved, therefore I was. 

My only because. 

Imperfect Sacrifice

 I'm sorry to tell your tale

because you were human,

and if I am honest,

no human is good enough

that someone would not see

the perfectly decent reason

you "had" to be dispatched.

Even if it was part your humanity

and part their invention.

Even if you spoke untruths sprung from 

the lies that murdered those around you.

Even if your anger was 

altogether understandable if, and only if

they could stand where you did. 

They don't and say:

You should have forgiven like a saint.

You should have pierced through 

the fog and foghorn of war. 

You should have written purely

of beautiful and doomed things,

never the ire of nationalism or

the pride of seeing oppressors

(or so supposed)

brought down. 

They will deny it was wrong because.

Because.

Because. 

The cause.

I don't believe in angels. 

I've never flown a kite. 

I believe in freedom and

the imperfect power of poetry

in the Celtic tradition of some of my ancestors

to lay a curse in verse that

circumvents the power structure

to create a new channel and do

almighty things. Not because poets are perfect people.

(Fuck no.)

Because we are fucked up enough to be recognized

as very human and make, therefore,

the perfect imperfect sacrifice--

we do get gone,

but the words live on. 

And you saw the arrow aimed for you

and named it. And I am not

going to name it anything else. 

A slaughtered goat

that purifies no gate

imperfectly made

in a world of hate. 

Diligence

 The house that

is no more

had people who are no more

but parts of the house

and the people remain

and the diligence is

retaining the parts

that were alive

while the parts that were 

a building are removed

and this is more painstaking

and fraught than

you want to know. 

Especially when in your heart 

you want the parts that were living 

to be alive. 

And I don't know what therapy

fixes it when

no 

one 

is.

The Pillar

 She knew in her mind that

she was not to turn,

as her husband would not turn, steadfast to

G-d, but the screams of

destruction from the skies

reminded her of the cries

of her own daughters

in the cradle,

and more from instinct

than with any intention

she looked to the 

target of the wrath

and felt her limbs

turn, immobile and helpless

and tasted salt in her mouth

as if she drank

her own tears.

November 30: As if Playing

 Look at them all, 

as if the children they were,

scheming and playing

all in the yard.

All in the yard, they stay

young men, and

dreaming

of a time when the lessons

weren't so hard.

The world is a yard

by a foot and half, 

a map on which 

they blueprint their 

moves

as if building war engines

from blocks to be 

used in a yard where 

some are armed with bullets

and others with sneers

and rocks. 

They go to it as if playing.

Playing, as some play asleep

and some play awake. 

The tin-can telegraphy of 

war plans ignored

because another game

seems to have more reward:

it could happen and has.

Too sadly I'm saying that

lives like broken toys

were lost

while the grown-ups

were playing.

November 29: Honored in the Breach

 There is a kind of decorated scoundrel

who exists as an example

that certain honors don't come

without a cost,

whose wake leaves such a toll

that certainly their soul

must be included in the 

ranks of the lost.

There are those who have been feted

having been fated

to do the things that ordinary men

would spurn,

that generations unborn

would read their biography with scorn

at the horrific legacy

they have learned.

Such men lead nearly blessed lives,

have fortunes, friends, and wives

all too good you well might think

for all they had done,

and when their end comes round,

in retrospect it's found

they did even more foul horrors

under the sun.

But having come to a close

in that ultimate fixed pose

they escaped disgrace

to their face

and sadly, "won". 

November 28: Justified

 The greatest sins (rape, torture) were triumphed eventually

with the greatest of pride; "Come and see

(click the link) that 'we' were justified."

The tit for tat that tattered the centuries

with war was glowed up for the new era

and everyone wanted more.

It was fought in press releases and with

the best intentions, and by people

meticulously checking their mentions.

And one side won but lost and the other

lost but won, and for a certain kind of mentality

that was part of the fun.

And no one really scrupled over how it 

all began. Stories differed, and kept on 

differing. Right according to plan.

And once over, those distant people felt their various

wounds and traumas, while nearer home

they threw a party to toast the end of the drama.

"Modern warfare, technological triumph,

tribute to our age": whatever. Rituals were

needed to sanitize the filthy remnants of rage.

The ancient horsemen rode with honor in the

ghastly parade. (Between you and me, to see them;

we all should have been dismayed.)

Famine taking his narrow, satisfied bows to

the most cheerful harvest song, to celebrate the dead fields

where nothing natural went wrong.

Broken ships and far-flung shipments to needless

distant ports left so many cupboards

intentionally bare, the margins brutally short.

War, that old charger, riding in his bloody medals

to a martial drum had success with the rumors of

his name and from where he would come:

"From everywhere, from all sides, trust no one!"

with messages confused, the people had

destroyed themselves, not knowing they were used.

And Pestilence, the opportunist, showed his face and let

the mob applaud, have done his best to direct the arrows

that were once slung only by God. 

Death led the way, and also fell behind and showed them

to the portal, with nothing more than these words to say:

"Remember, thou art mortal." 

But not today for that brave multitude, that owned: they showed out,

they ate, they became epic and immortal

apotheosized, heroic, digitally great:

the antlike soldiers, who memed and considered

all this war an op, having created great war machines

in Adobe and Photoshop,

drenched themselves in fake blood as people with

real blood died, they fought a great war to be

seen, and felt very justified. 

November 27: Fears

 Having given to fate

a hostage, it's you

that suffers terrors, insensible, alarming

on their behalf,

a vital organ attached by a nerve

but let free. 

The nightmare of colic, fever, 

the broken bone, 

even the thought that

they won't be happy.

And when that nerve has been

stretched until

you don't know where or how

they are now,

even worse than death

things at last

appear.

Life can be terrible and it isn't true

that you don't get more than you can 

endure.

There's worse than death to fear,

and that is

it's horrid comfort to you:

nothing to fear after,

evermore.

November 26: Libraries and Lighthouses

 The wonders of the world arrive

through sweat and tears

of human labor

and then 

are unmade again.

Libraries are burning

book by book

and the 

light of their immolation

must tell

you:

here are rocks

that would surely shock

the strong ribs

of your fine ship.

But we cannot sail on

for treasure beyond price

may well be lost--

what is the cost

of danger--

if to save a thousand worlds?

Cast anchor at your

distance, and let the lifeboats down.

November 25: Eruption

 Red and white up from the 

dark belly where no eye

saw the light from the great heat

stirring, churning,

under the terrible pressure:

the violence of shifting 

plates, the rock and the hard place

that is also rock, streaming free

upwards no more

to stop it from happening

it 

finally

explodes.

White then red

then

black.

November 24: Under the Pomegranate Tree

 "then she turned herself into a seagull

and he became like

a snare for her feet."

And under the pomegranate tree, 

grandmother's voice became small

and the sun on the white houses

seemed harsh but

the sky, dark, like wine pressed

long before.

She changed the subject.

"Medusa was fortunate, Athena did love her.

She heard her little prayer

but could not stop her noble brother,

and gave her the face

to make men leave her alone."

We knew men were not heroes

and neither were gods when she said it

and listened as if turned

to stone, and she said at length as the 

shadow of the pomegranate 

spread, "We don't 

have that gift," she said, "And you

will never be a bird. Never 

a fleet-footed Atalanta,

dodger of men, even if I warned you

of the golden apples in your path. 

I can't give you anything 

to make you free of the 

grasp of man or God, 

but one alone:

to make yourself into a tree,

and cast your roots so deep into the earth

that you drop your regards to

Persephone and cast

your branches so high

maybe they will see you from Olympus.

But be so still no one hears anything,

not even the wind in your hair

like the leaves, even the leaves of grass

that tell the tale of the asses' ears

of Midas. I have 

even been a tree, fallen but not dead."

Fallen but not dead. and still

leaves shooting, still roots casting

deep into the soil of us.

I believe we learned.

November 23: Grandmotherly Kindness

 Mother Nature is also 

Maiden and Crone,

the potential for all things,

and herself alone.

There is twilight wisdom 

under the great moon

amid the falling leaves,

when she fucks off

by herself to do as she pleases

and deals with her salty 

kindred and their

civilized diseases

with corrective dispatch.

She will catch you as you fall

but snatch your ears 

for you and your edges, too. 

She is closer to heaven and

its counterpart and has learned the art

of the Holy Headslap.

She bites not to be mean

but to teach you what teeth are

for. And what's more

what sharp teeth she has! 

You will face death in many forms 

before you eventually pass,

but if she can help it, not

disgrace, because she raised the ass

you mean to show. And if you know

you know, she has beaten it

only to give you leather

for the steel of the world. 

November 22 (belated): Thankful

 As you consider your

many blessings, mentally set a place

for those who don't sit

at any table, and say your grace

not for what you have been given,

but for all that you have not,

all our sins might not

be shriven,

but at least we can say

we never

forgot.

November 21: Quenching Fire

 The red-hot iron

must be touched with water. 

Brittle, fragile

is the steel

held so long in the flame

but dousing

keeps it all from breaking 

and gives flexibility

we can fold into

new hardness. 

Fire forges and

removes impurities,

and weakens, too. 

Steam releases the scale and 

solidifies.

Sometimes we all

could do

with a good

quenching.

We could learn from water

having come through fire.

It is a way to

endure.

November 20: Rain

 Even the grass can

collect rain, you might think.

Who could be 

so bereft of place

that not even the sky

was theirs? 

But no.

Not a well.

Not even a jar.

Broken pots and broken heads

spill drops alike.

Who in the world are you

when not

even God's rain is yours?

Even the grass can collect rain.

You might think the grass

is over you.

November 19: Well-lived

 There is clearly much left to do,

and though we may fail, we will

get on with it, to do our best,

to persevere, and lead

even where others don't care to go;

for this is the business of living, you know.

You are not perfect, but you must

push on. This is the lesson

for after I am gone, to build

a place though one may not see

the success of the future family

I have made that space for,

or to give attention to the dignity

of those whose dignity is not seen,

though that sight was prayed for. 

And if there is any legacy

I leave, let it be service, for I have done what I would

and that, after all

made for a great life.

November 18: Pandora's Pithos

 Hope is the little bit left in the jar

that will get you through the next night--

and maybe one more.

It's the distance you can still go when

the going is hard and

too much of you is too sore.

It's the part of the paycheck you have left in 

the week, and the paycheck before 

your rent is due.

It's the one phone call you know

you can make where someone is going

to pick up for you,

It's the time you have in the twilight

where the doctor stills says "She's just sleeping:

wait and see."

It's the time left on your own clock

wondering if this is all you'll do--

or be.

It's the forgiveness you have for the

people in your life who always 

are getting you mucked up--

And maybe the faith you have in mankind

knowing we're so 

perennially fucked up.

I don't care where you're from

or who you think you are,

but I know we're all just keeping something

left inside our jar.

November 17: Without Resignation

If I had a platform, like a great

blank canvas I think I would

paint the true and the good, and the

not-so-good, and still true--

this is what the artist is meant to do.

I don't know what else the medium

is for, and it doesn't stop

in time of war: the canvas only now shows

the death of horses, the murder of musicians,

the destruction of a shop.

Poetry has been written in foxholes,

poetry has been written in internment camps

and while following dead bodies piled high

in a cart. There is no renunciation possible

from the human business of art.

We pick up a pen to change the world,

and though we might not change it,

to put it down is like saying we'd rather

watch it all drown. 

The poet doesn't acclimatize but is

the barometer. The poet does not sanitize but tells

what has been needing--we are not here

to whitewash the blood but to

give voice to the bleeding. 

To shine a light in the fog of war

or cast the landscape in a brutal highlight

like the flashing of shells exploding--to find

the lyricists who bring the music of the

horror to mind--those you could do

without resignation.

An example: I could tell you the oil fields

of this war are orchards and that blue gray smoke

had risen above green-gray leaves like a pillar

of warning by day and the horror of 

losing one's heritage at night, or explain

war sometimes has profits that never

find their way into a bank: not money or blood.

The fallen dancers bleeding at the legs,

the born-to-soon and too-soon-to-die,

the poet trapped in the crumbling of a city,

the false meteor shower of a war-drenched sky.

The beliefs like excuses, the expressions of cause:

I could unwind the layers of gauze

where a limb was splintered and now a red

line of careful stitches replaces that part.

And you can fill in the rest.

No resignation, only art.

Only still trying one's best.

November 16: Tribalism

 They will come to this excuse

from the pacifist Left or the Libertarian Right

and attack people in the darkest alley

or even in broad daylight.

They'll say they've learned the secret truth--

hidden all this time--

the same one dug up again and again

to justify any crime.

And wrap themselves in the knowledge

that every "might" was a "should"

because those guys over there are bad,

and us over here: are good. 

November 15: Noise to Signal

 The louder you are

the less I hear

as you drown out your own words

with a roar

and all I see

is the blur of your acts

sinking your message

in the deep.

Perhaps I am more

persuaded by facts

after all, but don't

mistake inaction for sleep,

I am getting on in years

and I fear I save my time

and words in

making sure I am correctly heard,

the better to be understood--

are we good?

November 14: More in Disappointment than in Shock

 I've almost gotten used to us,

humans, I mean,

in our capacity for sheer viciousness.

Oh, I get my temporary shocks

from violent images

and am surprised by specifics

of what and where--

and don't think I don't care!

But consider horrific

 terms like "collateral damage",

"child soldier" and 

"corrective rape" and

here we are:

elevated apes

who learned to sharpen rocks

and then

developed entire cults and rituals,

language and signals,

to sort out what we

do with them.

November 13: Declined

 The sins of the fathers

get delivered to sons--it's true.

They're also sent to daughters, too.

I guess the useful lesson I've learned

is that the package can be returned.

Sometimes you need spare boxes,

you need receipts,

you need to lay everything out

nice and neat,

taking careful notice of the 

addresses and names--

and just ship that nonsense back from

where it came. 

Heck, just write

"Return to sender,

wrong address"--

you do not have to accept 

any of this mess. 

If they try to hand-deliver,

refuse to sign.

"I did not order this:

package declined."

If they leave it waiting on the porch,

maybe hit it with a torch.

But if you weren't there where

the trouble begins,

maybe you don't have a use

for those sins.

You have your own stuff

for which to atone,

so just leave that old man business

alone.

November 12: How Deep

 How deep, then

can any infamy go

before you admit you 

chucked your soul

right out the window?

And any upward

gentle draft of

your future sailings?

In the rearview mirror's aft,

amid frantic emailings of 

your dire fundraising,

The crazing of your

support, sport,

is that you came up short

in figuring out why you were

supposed to box with the world

whilst hitting yourself in the face.

And yet you don't bear disgrace from

these my humble lines--

they describe too many politicians,

all too many times.

But I'll blow up your spot

by rhyming you out

for how you shot

your shot.

November 11: A Sharper Fang

 I've thought about her,

now ten years gone, 

her obituary: Mother of Martyrs,

and how she buried sons

and still wonder.

Did she raise them to be

IEDS or did she compromise

to retcon their fatal trajectories

by saying she wove into their

lullabies, in 

a voice sweeter than lines

of any poetry

that they lived but to die

for God and country?

Because they were formed under

her heart and must have once

given delight to her eyes--

but in her heart did she 

determine nothing better for them lie

in all their future

than to be buried under a flag

of a place to be defined?

She just comes to mind

this day.

I still fail to understand.

There still must be a

better way.

November 10: The Tree Where No Tree Needs to Be

 I heard the song in a dream,

like a vintage record on wax,

"Only a tree, where no tree needs to be..."

and it haunted my head with

the earworm-sense, the nonsense

atavism made me want

to find it on a record: where

was this tune?

But the tree is: "we",

the tree where no tree

needs to be is life as we know it,

here in the zone of things

evolutionarily possible

in the way we 

empirically know them. 

It doesn't have to be this way:

we where we are, but it is. 

And we are making this place a place

where we will not be,

butchering the tree by 

degrees, hacking off smaller limbs

then larger.

When are we

hacked off? 

Maybe in the stochastic flow of time,

the randomness of space,

there's no reason for this place

we call "Human Civ."

But we are a part of all the things,

the birds and bees and fish and trees

and I'd far rather we

all live.

November 9: What Grabs You

 Skeletal fingers,

chalky

in the dying brine

clutch at the water:

whited columns

in a graveyard to be.

We ignore those clutching hands

heedlessly.

They say all that has touched 

the tide

some time 

will be claimed

by the tide

again, someday--

and I know it's true

however far inland

you try to

get away.

What made you

grabs you in

the end.

November 8: Moral Clarity

 You see it by the striking

of a match in the dark,

from the first spark,

until your

hand burns.

Who learns?

November 7: Empowered

 Ever since the first breath you drew,

the only home you ever knew

was the length and breadth of you

and who should say that some part

of you is down to someone else's say?

Not for nine months--

not even a day. 

Not if you are coupled,

not if you are alone,

not if you are a ten-year old child,

not if you are grown,

not owned by your Daddy,

your husband,

the state,

not owned by the Church,

and not owned by others' hate.

You are not to be weighted in the balance

by your abuse or your health:

your choice is yours.

You belong to yourself.

November 6: Without Reason

 The internet showed me a video today

that I never asked for,

the image of a child with a head

like a broken, empty cup.

There was nothing that could

be done for her, and the man

who held her looked as if

he wanted there to be something

he could do, and I did too.

Before anyone asks, I'll tell you,

the child had no nationality, no identity,

no religion, nothing to argue over,

nothing after the crown was gone,

that her father once kissed and her mother prayed over--

it was without reason,

and any further words just feel

like dirty excuses in a sinner's mouth.

November 5: Acclimatize

 You could say that we acclimatize

when we acquiesce to, say, shootings

and don't react when maybe one child dies

and a dozen are wounded: why?

Small fries. It sits in the shade of a Columbine

or an Uvalde so barely a dent

in our newfound capacity to accept

human death. 

A Katrina is a several months or years 

notice: though the wreckage in human time

for proximate humans still endures

and a Maria? Seems forgotten in less 

because something in horror inures

one to horror. And so now,

an Otis can barely signify. 

See--we mentally acclimatize,

and can ignore

that a Category 5 can now sneak up

on a shore before an evacuation can even proceed

and a Cat 4 or less could wipe out

a community steeped in need. 

We don't bat an eye. 

Like we shut out Rohingya or Uygurs or the Congo or Sudan.

Everything becomes an also-ran

until it runs down your street.

And maybe even by then, it still won't compete. 

We tell ourselves comforting lies.

Open your eyes.

Refuse to acclimatize.

November 4: The Map

 The map has lines and no people on

and the question isn't: where have the people gone?

Or: why don't the lines, in real life

actually exist? Because if you look down 

from a plane...

you see no borders, unless you are insane.

Although sometimes there are walls.

Fences. Fortified defenses.

Maps are not like holy

scripture and the lines themselves

can change--after, for example,

wars.

Or maybe they are just like scriptures,

after all.

Sometimes ancient lines persist,

and sometimes, they must fall.

The question is: what is your map

and can you keep the people on

your mind,

when all the lines have gone?

November 3: Gifts

 I drank and spoke with the oracle again

and she spoke in riddles

like she does, because

she doesn't like to talk to men,

nor even the female of our kind.

Anyway, I brought a bottle

and she brought her glass, 

and when we were eye to eye and off our ass

she said something I kept in mind:

"Wisdom is an owl nesting 

in a yet-unplanted tree.

Truth is water from a well 

not dug, and peace is 

the tree the owl sits on,

and while some people bend the knee

because knees bend,

to pray or to yield,

or to kneel on someone,

there's something else that could be done. 

What if people just saw the needs

and tried to be the

means? So here are seeds

and a shovel."

And that was about as clear to me as 

the things she ever says could be,

and I get the big

idea of our revel; 

she meant "dig". 

November 2: Irritation

 His name in my mouth like an ulcer,

spoiling my appetite,

dull and metallic.

It brushes the sharpness of my

teeth with

dazzling pain

when I have to say his

name again

(and somehow I always have to).

The center of attention

he is, like sand in an oyster

making a pearl of 

no price.

Am I being too harsh?

No. 

This is me,

being nice.

A corpse at every wedding

and a bride at every funeral,

a dull blade at a beheading

and a cover price for a free for all--

a menace to country

and an offense to God

with a bad-fitting suit

and hair so odd

it folds about his skull like a nest

for departed origami cranes.

He could stain a black hole. 

If the world were to devour him whole,

I think he would make the crater sick

him up like ipecac

and look none the worse,

and I wish his hearse would be 

a fly-ridden sanitation truck.

Fuck! He should greet death

on a prison toilet and be captured

on a million cameras

for the tabloids to devour--

and that's the mildest thing I'd shower him with;

the acid of my words--

not literal vitriol.

And why do I assault him thus?

I must admit.

It calms my soul.

November 1: Worse

 Truly indifference is worse;

nothing personal, nothing at all different from an inconvenient chattel

needing to be moved from the hall, a body standing in the way moved so violently it suddenly lay

and the mover no more moved or shaken watching it fall than if it were a leaf.

They see only how many more leaves need raking, and clear them all. Indifference is worse. That's my belief.

This Dangerous Place

 This poem is me

as if it was requests hour at the radio station

even if you are young

and don't know about request hours

or listen to the radio.

What if I dedicated my dial

(what even was a dial) to you--

you people in dangerous places,

you people with loved ones in dangerous places. 

Me and poetry are not a safe space

because I come to lyric

when time and space

don't rhyme and rifts and shifting

action spill out of tune and I

am bereft of prose because I am deep in the

"Who knows?"

And that's why I want to hold you here

where I find it dangerous to be--

you in all you are and I where I am trying to be

feeling the part where art bridges 

tragedy and fugues itself into

multipart harmony and 

something something directs a prism 

to where others try to see and witness the full spectrum

as if that was an epiphany

that could be cantilevered by poetry

as never was in prose. 

This dangerous space is for who knows

what, but I put my pen in it and like a grenade 

pull the pin out

hoping understanding 

explodes. 

Charged

 You are your brother's keeper

after all, though you don't know him,

or even trust him any further than

you honestly would throw him.

He doesn't look like you, or

not enough, but if you and

he were standing together

faces in a mirror,

you'd be stupid not to see the 

relationship between you and he. 

His family died in a tragic thing

we aren't going to talk about today

it doesn't help us in any way,

except that they were your family, too.

and if you knew that--

what would you do? 

Maybe feel like you should feel badder or madder

or that their deaths mattered.

He doesn't feel like you do

or not enough,

and wants to fuck up you and your stuff

and though your faces aren't

mirror perfect your twin

wants to start ancient angry bullshit again,

And your "stop" isn't enough for him,

And his reasons aren't

enough for you--stretching morality too.

I don't know what you are supposed to do

but you are entwined 

and some fucked ups will dine

on the horrible opportunity the 

family feud has afforded.

And serve both of you 

like a dessert

and call it "peace". 

I don't know

 I don't know if you know

that "from the river to the sea"

means not liberation

but depopulation of people

who came here to be free.

I don't know if you know

that saying something a million times

doesn't make it entirely so,

even if a little bit is. 

I don't know how people live in a prison

without knowing

who the criminals are,

and despising them first

and foremost,

for the sacrifice of the innocent,

for the demand of the humane urge

to call it liberation--even when it is just death. 

We like purpose, after all. 

the sight of a tree where no tree might be, but also could. 

The signal of hope

in a dark place. 

Sometimes I sympathize with hopeless causes, 

but I don't know

how hopelessness becomes so intrinsic

that beheaded babies feel like

something you have to argue

about instead of just not--thinking about how it isn't so

or was maybe not so bad? 

I don't know if the people

who want a solution have a solution,

holding it so close to their chest we see no outline

of anything but their disdain for the status quo. 

You know: people existing. Here and now. Rejecting

the Eternal "No."

And the people who sacrifice you

to sacrifice them? 

How they stay? I do not know. 

I only understand why they need to go. 

And why anyone would stand in that way:

I do not know. 

Returning

 I dreamed I came to

my parents' house

after they and I had been away

and I went inside and they

stayed outside two gray shades

by the door.

Nothing looked as it did before,

there was light coming in

where no light

needed to be,

and dirt like a landfill

all across the floor.

For a moment I pawed

at the dirt with my hand

looking for what was theirs and

what was mine,

but as the light came down and 

illuminated the grass

growing up from the dirt on the floor,

I knew I didn't want to be there

anymore,

and I followed the 

gray shades out the door.

You Don't Know

 You don't know the wonderful people

you are wanting to kill. 

The sweets and tea they would give you

if you stopped by their place

and the names of their children

and the names of their dead. 

You don't know how they pray

or the secret thoughts they have

that prayer is not enough,

and the times it feels like so much. 

How can I tell you they don't know you

but they would understand your rage

if it came to them from just you:

one person, telling them the horror 

from your soul, and you would know them by the 

horror they can also tell. 

We are born to feel pain

but to bear it together

lightens it. 

And if we could bear with one another better

we might survive anything.

You don't know:

we might!

The Seasons and You

 Though we were overdue in spring,

my love, I was glad I had this summer with you,

and am content I got to see the changing

of the leaves, and will watch them

fall again, with you.

We have made great greenness

from the spring of our lives,

the shoots of a family, the legacy

of work, 

and there is no more than I could ever want

than our memories, 

our fig and vine,

you singing beside me

in the wilderness of our twilight

years,

and peanut butter ice cream.

The cold winds blow 

through the hollows

of my bones, that still make blood

cells red and white,

from long memory,

and if I enjoy you as the leaves do fall

and as the snow may fall, 

then I consider myself blessed

more than any man deserves,

though he stood on a mountain once and 

observed the whole world,  once.

Though the ears might 

fail and the eyes

fail to see, we still have more time,

you and me,

and nothing finer in my life

greets the dawn of my day

better than the light you are

and past this winter even still...

Falling Every Year

The man is falling again 

head first, 

in the pose of the Hanged Man in the Tarot. 

This is what I notice, because I do. 

Suffering is as unavoidable as rain, 

and death comes for all of us. 

Could it have been avoided? 

We don't avoid the falling every year, 

but I don't know that we have the lesson 

down to heart yet. 

The cards flip over: 

the tower reversed 

and this poor soul plummeting. 

A card presented to us until 

we nearly forget this was a man.

The Ithacan

 What if I alone were to hear these sirens,

and survive the impulse to plunge

while bound?

And all around me no one else

heard the sound

but could see my ravings, unhearing?

The fabled tune that makes men mad

fascinates as it destroys

but how can I resist the lure

of doing what was not done before?

I yearn despite my fearing.

Tie me to this masthead

as if I myself were a siren carved

in place,

for I who will know death

must surely face

with open ears

the language that allays my fears

and would drive me to that other

home that is not Ithaca.

Tree of Life (revised)

 The trunks smolders,

but maybe it will live.

The branches are in trouble.

The roots are in trouble.

We are

in trouble.

The fire drove living

things back

to the sea.

We can never go back to how 

it used to be.

Or even a fortunate tack.

 Life will puncture you

if you are lucky

and take the hot air out of you

sometime before you've risen

so high those around you

seem small.

Some days I see some

balloon-headed fool and think,

"Where is that cosmic arrow?"

It will come both a little too late,

and still be right on time.

Unaffirmed

 "God is in charge"

was the affirmation, "So be not afraid."

And while he wrote it

a baby was born with a tumor,

a thousand people died of preventable 

causes, flies surrounded

a starving child,

prisoners sat with faint hope

of seeing freedom,

a wife was beaten while her children

watched and

dozens of judges took

millions of dollars 

in bribes. 

If I believed in the 

first line of this poem,

what would I dare to do about the rest? 

What could I do even now?

Job once was asked where he was

while Earth and Heaven were created,

while he sat on a pile, bereft

and blighted.

We all have questions,

don't we?

Requiem for A Singer

 Truth is the gift people don't love to accept,

Shuhada, though you realized its worth.

Wide-eyed, shaven artist,

you bore witness to it

and by trying to make others see it too

there were those who rejected you,

even though your voice 

was that of an angel,

and your halo made

of righteous flame. 

But if to say what you feel

is to dig your own grave, why not then

dig one you can stand to lie in, someday? 

Is there a reward for compromise

either in heaven or--? No

no, not even here,

Not for a house in Antigua or

all the fame they can cram you with.

You did not want what 

you did not have because you had 

your whole soul, and you were right:

we need more tearing up of idols

and binding up of our broken selves. 

A Very Normal Bomb

 Nothing will ever even get around to normal anymore--

it will just be new, then new, then new. 

Things can change quicker than you were prepared for,

and your temporary comfort won't be spared.

Think of it this way: someone set a time-bomb,

and it's been ticking your whole life in the background.

You could learn to live with a time-bomb.

You could even learn to love a time-bomb.

Maybe you find the ticking a reassurance--the sound

you've always heard--but softly. A little reminder of

mortality is all. But if you love something,

wouldn't you want to hold it all together? 

If you knew it could all blow apart; throw your arms around it;

try to defuse it, get to the bottom

of what makes it tick? 

What if your beloved was about to ring an alarm?

And then.

And then. 

Nothing would ever be normal again--

it would just be nothing. 

Normal was a time-bomb in your bed.

THAT is what must be unlearned. 

Do Not Forget This

 She was

caught in a snare we would

consider too cruel

for animals,

a teenager who traveled

a long way, tired and pregnant

and she twisted there, caught on the wires

like a fawn trapped

in the shepherd's fence

meant to separate the domestic

from the wild.

And bleeding she plead with her eyes

for herself and her child.

She was bound to a fate

of captured or drowned. 

But then she found,

deeper than the razor cut,

the hope was bled

from her body,

the future she fought for

fallen from her form,

and the silver lining of the American dream

was understood to be steel

and the promise of it--stolen. 

And do not forget that, 

because your ancestor fluttered in a womb

like hers

and a golden lamp lit their way.

And say what you will:

the dream of America beckons still.

Visions in the Water

 The things that will wash up on your block

had species, phyla, names if you want,

but they won't look like

anything they were supposed to.

Unrecorded, their offspring dissolved, 

the last of their kind

swept off the fifth step from the bottom

of your bungalow, 

advertised as two miles from the beach.

Extinction will have

a street name and address

but not a marker. I guess you might 

watch extinction from the second floor

and still not grasp its reach

as you dip your oar in the water

to get eggs laid

in air condition--

guaranteed not spoiled today.

You will know by then it wasn't always the way--

but still not understand

why the vista of the ocean shames

you now, fearing

you will see in it a vision

of what washes up next.

Barely

 Barely healing on a Saturday

from death by a thousand cuts

all week,

after I had kept going with

lashings of antiseptic

and tightly wrapped

in bandages like a mummy,

I have time now.

I unwrap to soak myself

and there's a terrible sound.

I let the wounds flow

and wash them clean.

Sunday I'm almost fit for company.

Monday comes and

I'm fit for work.

Broken in the Depths

 To break with

the rules and to use these

materials, 

despite all warning;

to reverse Noah, to

submerge and not to

float away from disaster,

but to view death as if

preserved in ice--

a specimen removed from the

current threat--

disrupted the pact between 

us and the deep. 

The intent to view death 

through a porthole,

fulfilled faster than eyeblink, 

as death rushed in, mercifully

faster than understanding could or 

last regrets.

We who lived with their

indeterminacy, 

the Schrodinger's sub, 

imagined horrors within horror 

worse than life itself.

The lungs of acid, brains of fire,

hallucinations of sirens,

Titanic ghosts,

kamis with mouths like lampreys,

shimmering things with seaweed

in their claws,

to depict an underworld with

laws not like ours.

We imagined last conversations

with one another and with a Maker

who understood and did not

forgive and doesn't,

silent as the water still and deep around them.

And yet the water came in

waves like blades in the pressurized depths,

crueler than any human cut-

cleaner overall. 

Tragedy holds no thrall for me,

I leave them here and for all time

the guests of the sea.

Neither deserving nor undeserving,

just unfortunate and fateful, 

unheeding of warnings,

the victims of the depths of curiosity

and the heights of hubris,

Icarus in his fall,

to something lower than the land

is all. 

My Identity is Not in Your Mouth

 Your definition is not for

my liberation

for every time I've been defined

it was to leave pieces 

of myself behind

and make boundaries where

I could not be.

No one has any right

to go around

defining me.

Define the shape of my lotus feet

and narrow me with whalebone.

Tell me I need to be escorted

with some kind of chaperone.

Deny me banking--

deny me cars.

Give me a separate entrance

into bars. 

Deny me jobs, bastardize my kids--

these are the results of the 

"defining" you did.

Choked with a halo,

burdened by wings--

women have been circumscribed

by the definition of our things. 

The size of our breasts,

the cut of our lips, 

the swell of our asses

and the width of our hips--we've been

callipered to excess for

our callipygyny by scientific tongs

and measured like 

an anatomy of wrongs.

Our literal clitori a mystery, our G-spot a

Shangri-la, our existence supposed to be

babies,

who knows whatever else for? 

Don't ask the definition of

what you would rather not even face--

Human.

Just fucking human. 

And don't get me started on race.

Unfinished

 The objection to the poet 

in a form

suggests a mind unborn,

embryonic, 

dystonic,

dysfunctional

and unfinished,

kneaded like a dough but half-baked before rising--

and that's unsurprising.

The general stance of the book bans

is a celebration of ignorance

and a quarantine from the contamination

of mental exercise and elaboration--

the fear of an excitation of 

sympathetic responses and 

personal expansion of the mind:

which I find poetry has the power to do.

The bubble parent wants a bubble child--

a sphere so clear yet fragile

to the wild

notion of the experience of

other skins

and other lives,

and wilts at difference instead of thrives.

They want not a world, but a womb,

to protect an unfinished mind

but they finish it with a tomb

because who can find

a future where avenues of struggle and strangeness 

aren't confronted? 

The journey of a hero shunted to the journey 

of a child, from playpen to playpen,

building up blocks as one does, 

and knocking them down again. 

I can barely imagine

the foul strangling harpy,

her talons clutched round her offspring's neck

who would so faintly damn an infant mind

to a brutal life-in-death

intellectual heck.

Bereft of the muses, perpetually unamused,

blinkered and blinded,

politically confused,

the target of propaganda,

calumny and grift,

alienated from humanity and

caught in a rift--

this Sheila Scylla, this Cracker Karen,

maybe it were better to 

be wholly barren, than to

wipe the landscape clean for the child you farrowed.

an innocent today--

perhaps a monster tomorrow. 

(From the objection to Amanda Gorman in a Florida school district by a whole ass fool. And the school district agreed?) 

Facing Her

 I hear you say all you can say

to deflect the incoming

barrage, and

the rifled barrel of your mouth

aims at a none-too-distant

target:

the broad acceptance that this reality

can be borne no more

and we can not stay hostages

to the rifle bore.

So, before you say another word

in defense of this disgrace:

tell me what you would say to 

the girl

without a face. 

Not some trick of rhetoric, the faceless, nameless child,

her features obscured because she never existed--

no, this wild

moment in the life of a man

who felt for a pulse and turned a head

and saw a bloody hole instead--

if you insisted

for once and all the necessity

of this obliterated 

face, as if to ruin the humanity

of her, to erase a whole life?

Then you would deface the world.

Because what sacrifice on your 

idol's altar ever is enough? 

What shed blood, 

or shredded bone? 

You have made a gilded idol

of Cain's brutal, fratricidal

stone. 

Those that the Gods Have Stricken

 You don't touch them,

not a hair on their heads,

though they rave

for the sake of the widow and the 

widow's son,

that your days be long and safe from the grave--

we knew that once, everyone.

There but for their grace go I--

and this once led the comfortable not

to deny the bread

to the hungry mouth or to be oblique:

Bind not the mouth of the kine

that trod the grain. 

We lost this wisdom and should seek it out--

and know one another again.

The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

The dust is thick on his sandals and in his hair

and you have denied him everywhere.

Enter the singer, his throat dry and

his body tired, although once he danced

with grace and ease.

He shouts that he hungers--give him bread.

Is he to be stoned, instead?

He thirsts, would you have him drink

bitter gall--or poison: think!

Do you treat him, Samaritan, for this dis-ease?

Or have you slain your brother in the midst

of his pain? 

And in your own way

carry the mark of Cain?

When You have Fallen

 If I were to believe in heaven

(although I don't, not really)

it would be here,

in the notion we could redeem

one another eventually

even when we are too broken

sometimes to even

pick up ourselves.

There is someone who wants to lift up

even you. 

It might not even be a scam.

Bonsai:Sickly

 They trimmed you to the quick

too much and twisted you

until the sap would not flow

to all the parts of you

that needed to thrive

and now you are here,

shrunken, barely alive,

wondering why 

the work they made of you 

was not a success

having done nothing for your 

happiness

and everything to make your

bonsai brain this mess.

I could tell them first of all

you were never a plant,

and tend to you like  

I was a good aunt and could

fertilize you and realize

a new you

with care I never knew--

or I could have you learn to do you and flower on your own

by showing you 

what should have been shown to you

from the very first--

the life force uncut just bursts

and you will find a way. 

You will find a way. 

Unravelling

 Call it emotional scurvy

after a diet of nothing good

that every wound thought healed

unraveled in my blood

and scars thought past and

survivable look

like I have been through

the wringer again and

gums softened, claws curled

my weakness apparent to the world, 

see in this my past pain.

Jesus be a fucking orange,

someone, feed my life.