The Sweep

 The inheritance of 

any of us is dust, and the 

birthright to settle anywhere

somewhere, 

the length and breadth from

scalp to toes, 

and the city ordained it wasn't so--

settle your dust elsewhere!

And in the cold of night

surrendered the meager things

of warmth and comfort to so much dust

and scattered belongings and persons

to the winds.

To the winds. When earth was the only home

that man would ever lay his form down,

of earth made and nurtured and all these

scattered dust motes once were enumerated humans

man and woman born. 

Where would they go, these forgotten children of your 

own ribs?

Where would they go, these houseless sparks of life

Once nurtured in human arms and human breasts

to be embraced by asphalt and condemned

by appearances and propriety to 

be embraced by the dust from which they came--

though in their dignity and vulnerability, they are

the same? 

The shame,

to deny a place at the table for those 

upon whom so much has been imposed.

To sweep away with indifference beings of 

dust, but sentience. 

and call it anything but violence. 

The Field of Yellow, the Field of Blue

 The earth tells the truth

the grain is true

to the soil that nourishes and the water that 

grows it, and in the stem and 

straw tells the tale

of the richness of the place:

the gold rising to the blue of a sky 

untroubled by fear and terror,

though fear and terror 

surely exist. 

I wish your skies so blue,

so clear, 

no trouble could exist even in the imagining,

I wish you fields so golden,

no one there would ever know famine,

Even though this fear is always

in the blood and muscle of our dwelling even in 

the richest time. 

The gnashing of teeth hungry for bread,

the gnawing of stomachs that have not been

lately filled. 

And I wish you would not know the tremor

of the terror by night and the sound

of the deaths you have escaped, but someone else 

surely knows. 

I do not know how to love you, but with 

baleful warnings and my entire heart. 

For if mankind suffers, we suffer all, though our experience

is not the same. 

I am bowed by your courage,

and will always recall this blue sky, these amber waves. 

This nation, made dear to me in a brutal struggle. 

I stand with you, and 

keep you in my greatest esteem. \

Eight Was

 The world stopped for you

at eight.  The amber of time

froze you there:

infinitely eight. 

But time proceeds

for the rest of us, 

and who you might have been

evolves with those who

yet have memories of you. 

Eight was too young

and always is,

even if the age of reasoning is 

here; the baby teeth and baby cheeks

are those of a bud

not the full flower of the 

gorgeous life to be. 

Eight was

the full sum of your years but not

the full sum of your life.

We are not immune to tragedy

but see it in its starkest relief

when we see it 

and you are eight.

And we are, for this moment at least,

so very old, and 

tired of this.

Built

 I am all

boundaries like a property map

and scaffolding of 

scar tissue

and nets of 

projected nerve--

an edifice, a public monument,

an institution of self.

My foundation is dug

deeper than I want to know,

fathoms in the earth,

My spire to be

is beyond the bounds of

atmosphere.

Yet here am I

a work in progress

sorting out the many ways

that I 

am built.

The Problems I Have

 The trouble with me,

the problems I have,

are made of flesh and bone and bad

ideas, and

exist wherever

bad ideas and flesh and bone are sold. 

Because I know right now

that flesh is tragic

and needs proliferate, 

and my sadness is for 

as much a thirsty human carapace

as for the genius 

child within.

But imagine a hundred cults without vision or 

a thousand militias without

a cause,

but some dumbass speaking could make them

so,

so,

so much a thing in motion. 

And I welcome my unexternalized 

sorrow 

for it has not

yet made of me a fascist. 

My problems are small against a fucked up world

is all. 

I resist hating others for my mortal condition.

And if I stress this point, 

could it be enough?

Impatient on a Monument

Tell me what you

elevate

commemorate

memorialize

and I will show you

your examples

your values

your character

for these monuments

are not mere

milestones

idly marking a path

with just

a number along the way:

a concrete literal fact--

but the time it took to

render the hairs on

a horse's ass

as lovingly as

you tend to your own face.

Marking Quarantime

In the absence of the flow
of time as we knew it
we were restored to the
rhythm of daily bread,
and the need to wait
for the organic rising
of water and flour and yeast
and the nourishment
that comes from the
marriage of work and time.

In the absence of certainty
we cast the bones to
divine our fate and drank
wine to fortify the nerve
to take another day and
the next, and another,
watching those gamble
with life and death,
and drinking in the waste.

In the certainty of need
we gave to one another
the gifts of bread and love
and felt the pain of
absence and understood
anew the shattering loss
of a world that was
the loss of life, through
whatever disease
struck off our
beloveds.

And so we learned:
Life was short and
necessary, and suddenly,
we had all the time in the world,
and in the midst of dying,
there must be a rising--
of blood and sweat and tears
and the nourishment
that comes from the
marriage of work and time.

We must mark not days,
but history, for we
are perishing from our start.
It is not from nothing we come,
and to nothing we go,
but from and to everything,
and that thought
should also be
our daily bread.