My grief is stillborn, not consoled by the hope
of replacement of another good little boy or girl
with brown paws and a gentle lick,
another Anne or Tom with eyes that cry of heaven
and a bright mind that can write lines of cerulean clarity or calculate pi to the twentieth decimal,
a wife named All  or a husband named Trust,
a mother named Everything who can  feel,
understand the 10, 000 aches of my  soul,
or a father named Generosity who is there
for every birth, graduation and funeral.  
Everything and All that is  trusting
and generous can never be replaced.

My grief is a suicide that can’t be understood
by the generous and trusting,
everything that has come before
and everything that will happen since.
My grief is not yours and yours is not mine.
I can’t share it with you, only bear it.
All we have in common is tears
that fill a cup of pain and enough salt
to line a Margarita glass, the next
bunch of circular steps till the watch stops
and someone opts us for ash or six feet under.
You cant understand anything of my grief
until you have lost your Everything and All.

My grief is space, a dark, long, lonely void,
like a lost astronaut spiraling away from earth.
There is no consolation in the idea
that at least he won’t be suffering for long,
that God won’t give him more than he can bare
and then some. He doesn’t care that he has all space
to feel the slow asphyxiation that comes
with the release of gravity.  His parents will
still be earthbound, feeling the heavy loss,
forever looking up and wondering
why the sky took their joy away.
The world will let them cry just
as I cry for his floating away.

Tell me a story when I grieve and cry.
For I am a poet and need the comfort of words.
For I need the art that lives and can be passed around.
For I need to know what you don’t know.
For I need to show Everything and All.
For I need to imagine everything you can’t.
For I need the action of your kindness and time.
Grant me your generosity and trust.
Grant me the power of your pardon,
the grace of an honest look,
the sincere utterance of I’m sorry,
for when you lack the words
I know all the generous, trusting, healing ones.

There is no sky or earth
in the white van that crosses me over,
nor in the drywall coop painted red
where white men with tattooed arms
stood up and sit down, up and down,
unleashed erections pivoting
and searching for the best angle
to penetrate my forever painful ***.

I am called “pollo”, chicken,
“nuevo carne”, new meat
by the coyote who drove me
and the gringos who maul me,
their millet dollars tossed into hands
waiting unsmiling at the ajar door,
passage paid with my legs,
eggs for pollos not eaten.

Across the hall I hear the cackling
of men orgasming into torn sheets,
a softer clucking than the maras gangs
of Tegucigalpa roosting the food market
and the barrios for ****** violators.
In Honduras anyone can ******
a woman and nothing will happen.  
At least, in Texas they bury you.

They promise half of half of half of profits,
less than 50 pesos, dollars on a $50 John.
They dress me in corpse rags that
stink of gasoline and last *******;
feed me grain, maize, rain barrel water.  
My nakedness kills fleeing for freedom.
Nobody will risk saving a puta, *****
from a charcoal window stash house.

I dreamed once I could wear silk dresses
or richly sew them together for a small,
life with a good man and brown-eye kids.
The Chinese girl smuggled in from Fuzhou
can aspire to own a nail salon, or work
a massage parlor run by Sister Ping’s heirs.
Biloxi runaways can traffic on NY dreams.
I have only violation and suicide.

I traveled the border crossing between
Tegucigalpa and the American Dream,
enough  to forget why I crossed over,
times enough until I wasn’t me anymore,
to pace back and forth, scratch at
and settle in the straw of forgetfulness,
American in I have a  heavy debt
that only heaven can release.

The Sumatran orangutan, gardening her spot  
comfortable in the canopy and lush tree top,
nursing her young month-old,
fell fiery below, seventy-four holes
in her when the shooting stopped.

Four air gun pellets pierced her left eye,
two her right, leaving her darkly blind,
a howling Homer, Milton in orange pain,
bereaved, childless, now a wild-less refrain
scratching the earth for any hopeful frame..

Her collar broken, lacerations from sharp objects
on her upright arm and leg, one left finger a socket.
Her fiery camouflage that hid her in the canopy light
is singed in the clearing flame, her skin turned night    
just another victim of human slight.

She will suckle her ghost child five years until mature
for the pain she has there is no real animal cure.
Use to solitude she is now truly truly alone,
even as the human rescuers reset her broken bones.
For in the war between good and bad man she is the lure.

Spared the ignominy of being a rich Clint Eastwood’s pet,
she will live out her life in sanctuary and uneasy stress
away from those who fear a Planet of Apes,
a refugee of the Air Gun War with her own tamed space,
PTSD, therapy, rehabilitation and very high tree state.

In Elsinore the poppies grow
Despite the constant selfies show
     That stake their place in yellow high,
      No birds photo bomb their big I
Show not seen by same throngs below.

We are the influencers you know.
We shine, svelte pose, for good ad flow,
     Post for your likes, so we can lie,
        In poppy groves.

Take your quarrel elsewhere you trolls:
You will follow us we all know
     Your phones, held high to your good side.
      Poseurs keeping faith with the lie
That your green screen poppies all grew
          In Elsinore fields.

I have something I must confess to you
I pick my nose, eat all my buggers too.
This causes distress and disgust I know    
still off the floor I’ve  eaten food that glows.

Science says that it’s all just for the best
for I immunize against just those pests,
my antibodies delight in the twirl
of not taking a break from this ill world.

Be too clean enough, watch your body die,
a clam unable to grow pearls inside.

The history of hay fever  attests
it started an aristocratic pest
until more begats trickled it to the rest.
Years later immunity herd resets
made your older ***** hand many bros
less the cause of your sneezing and your woes.
Now cleaner living, hygienic hands,
less man, swing it back to the wealthy clans.

The fate of humanity all well depends
on the fact antibodies never end.
Evolution favors the hardy bugs
making man one of its many doomed shrugs.
Disease, extinction, not in human plan,
he will fight, fight to be part of this land.

Vaccines have prevented much needless death
giving antibodies a daily test.
We have avoided all that still does ****
yet  allergies still make one run to hills,
allowing even worst auto-inflamed chills.
Giving all your antibodies a rest
is not the answer for ****** distress.

Time to adapt bodies to the new world.
Not **** both good and bad in the big furl.
Let it listen, learn and train friend from foe,
not pay attention to the ad man’s show.

Man has conquered this small space to survive,
he must evolve away to really thrive.
We are unsafer when we **** all risk,
to immunize, immunize is the trick.

So I will pick my nose, eat my buggers,
knowing I am creating new lovers
not afraid at all to hug each other.

a black cowl is over her
deliberately shuttered
in an unlit windowless room
so when I open my eyes
she is invisible,
a lemon whiff
peeling away,
a piano c note
on a whole beat
struck three times,
to tingle skin,
ping the tuning ear,
enough to know-now-ow-w
the first great rain of her,
the steps to her
now a thousand
clear receding lights
causing blinks
needing their
very own cowls,
leaving her-er-r
r last lost space

The weavers of the plains are tireless workers
poor but honest, always trusting the generosity
of an unlocked door to let in a husband working
nights at the print and design shop, finishing that
last small sign full of eclairs glazed with the most deliciously  appealing serif  font for the new
French bakery off of main and twenty-third

or the plumber who heard about that
slow running toilet on the second floor
who leaves the bill neatly near the vanity
knowing the check will come with
the Wednesday amble and update chat

or the mechanic who can be trusted with the
keys and a blank check  on the front seat
of that old blue Ford that is leaking green.

The weaver mother with seven children,
threads pieces for their school newspaper,
spins fine clear aqua yarn showing other kids
how to swim, substitute teaches so that she
can bind their minds into a chalkboard panel
of good knowledge, even drives the school bus
if that is what the thread requires to be strong.

The weaver farmer sees the Nebraska soil
is thready, dry, hard to till,   harder
to water, that crops can’t be harvested
without the abundant help of others.

In it they see a tapestry,
the people it’s colors
everything needing a tight loom
for it to work, survive and thrive  
and bind forever together.


So, they are intentionally local knowing
machine yarn eventually unravels,
that good thread can’t be found online,
and that the best panels in the tapestry
are the ones that come from common life.