I wanted to tell the street,
the tar, the grass, the blue,
the morning you died.

The crows, the wasps,
the bees and butterflies
already knew.

The roots of the earth
did not embrace your ashes
nor did the sky,

just the wings that
soared in between the
sweetness, beauty, and grief.

I was wrong to believe this
world to be your only one
or that I would bloom in you.

Your life was a darker fruit
with rains that fell cold
with your sadness and tears.

I could neither make you happy
nor save you— just love where you
rooted and carry you when you fell.

I can neither eat the honey pollinated
in the knot of your stunted tree,
just endure the stings of coming grief,

nor dip my hand into the freezing creek
that floods your lonely roots
without losing my heart.

I just can weep, grieve, try to sleep
on the other side of the bank among
the broken reeds and mud.

A deaf republic can’t afford
to sit on its hands,

killing its sign language
in willful silence,

letting memory erase
the fear and the truth.

The disease existed.  
The shrouds too.

Concrete does not
pave over the blood.

A stroll in the park
does not tamp the pain.

The Punch and Judy show
is but the pantomime
for the forgetful.

The only sound heard
is the singing of
marionette strings

culled from a pile
of burnt violins.

When the air turns
khaki and violent,
the crowd disperses,

their hands in their pockets
signing and forming words.

In a silent closet at home,
the last parents teach
their children to sign.

The children sign
to the doors, windows,
the grass, the trees, the sky

anything with
the shapes of ears
before ears were banned.

They are shoved into the silence,
the one that speeds down the road,
bumps and rattles disguising muffled horrors,
handkerchiefs in mouths, gloved palms
over squeezed lips tight as a kiss.
These are the ones soldiers are told to ignore,
to turn their backs on- civilians, friends,
family- just listen to the chain of command,
follow through on their one and only duty.
There is only them and the next green man
in front, and the next, and the next, next..
forming one long unbroken wall
to stem the disease in front of them.
The doctors and nurses are dead,
and now they must wear the masks,
glove, gowns the hazmat suits,
spray the disinfectant like Agent Orange
on everything that moves, eats, drinks, dreams.
The trucks in back are filled with those
surging to cross the border in front of them.
It could be Canada or Mexico, or just those
wanting to escape the land for the sea,
the ocean, to swim, sail in hopes of
finding their private island to populate.
The rich have bought their own countries,
separated themselves with a technological
continental drift that they do not share.
The middle class have marooned themselves
on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
fighting for sustenance with gulls, *****, sharks.
Only the poor are left— and them—
the green men who pledged loyalty
to the Constitution and now know
just the orange beast who tore it up
and rendered it to ashes, the Congress
inhabited with lawmakers with
hands over their eyes, fingers in ears,
and palms over their mouths, that
know the knowledge and meals
the beast provides only to them.  
Freedom they know is not free.
it comes with the ****** of those
who disagree, those disloyal to the beast.
The green men are fed on K-rations, MREs.
Their Bibles, Korans, Torahs, all
their sacred knowledge, has been burned
and doused with ****. They know they and
the poor are the **** of this deaf republic.  
The green men hear the screams
in front and inside them.  They remember
when they fought for freedom and liberty,
or at least when it had meaning.  They dream
of the past, when America before the beast
was great again.  Their present eyes see only
themselves and the poor.  Those who sleep
in torn open air tents and live in cages
because the prisons overflow. They
close their eyes and they dream as
the poor surge forward to the border.  
They are too tired to stop them.  Nor do
they want to. They only just want to rest
and wait for the call of the next American Revolution.

My silent little dear
snoozes in his cradle
beyond the noises
I can no longer hear.

The quiet drip of
rain and sink,
the swoosh of
inside air circulating,
the vibrations of life
I can hear only with
mental captions on,
are the inaudible sway,
that separates you from me.

Can you hear my smile
with closed eyes,
will you love the
silence or the noise?

Will you delight in
birdsongs or  
in fluttering wings?

Will you laugh at
the music of the spheres
or delight in quiet
thoughts and contemplation?


Child of my April dreams
and September haunts
who breathes in the
whitewash walls of my soul,
what you choose to see or hear,
at first walk, I will protect  
under the signing of my hands.


*This is a poem about my looking back at my baby self, before I contracted Scarlet Fever and became  near deaf, wondering what I would choose if I had the option to hear or be deaf.

When he cried on the cross
he made me believe in Jesus.

When he blessed a devil child
he made me believe in His Word.

When he mated death
he made me believe in the light.

When he ate a wild strawberry
he made me know love.

When he held his son in a new land
he made me feel the wisdom of fathers.

When he showed the hidden Kroners
he made me feel total shame

When he held his dead child in his arms
he made me understand the resurrection of grief.

Max you made me forever hunger
for the million lights illuminating the dark
upon which I build my celluloid church.


The Max von Sydow films referenced in order of appearance:  
The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Exorcist
The Seventh Seal
Wild Strawberries
Pelle the Conqueror
Shame
The ****** Spring

The wolf watches and asks me questions:
can I watch you eat,
watch myself absorb into you,
play with the cancer.

She questions everything:
even if I want to live,
die now or die later,
although that is
unanswerable or unquestionable.

That is the statement
life wants, love needs
in its haste to sweep up the ashes.
It wishes to be recognized.

I don’t know, I think,
knowing the wolf can hear me—
life, love, everything, everyone too.  

The answer is somewhere
on the drive to Graceland
as I stop to watch
the wolf suckle its cubs.

Maybe I just want a good death
that makes it hard to grieve
among the ashes of Nagasaki.

Life always wants the tableau,
the memento mori to remember
the repetitions.

Inside the wolf I can hear
my mother, grandmother, ex,
soon my father screaming,
moving, just going down, down, down….
into the silent cry of memory.

The wolf looks comfortable and wordless
as she listens to worlds turned to juice inside.
“It was good to know you,” she said,
as if she had known me my entire life.

Aye, chihuahua, canis familiaris,
land piranha nipping at Aztec heels.
 
Aye chihuahua!
 
Heart of a Techichi warrior
becoming yipping snarling *****,
eyes pulsating, patellas luxating
at the stench of **** erectus
US-es post-alus carrier-alopulus
approaching, adorned in
sky colors crowned in ivory pith.
 
She is fed on belly rubs and Kirkland’s
grain free turkey and pea stew
in the red can, served in a faux
Wedgwood bowl which she gently
mauls in her tiny maw with the
crooked right canine.
 
Queen Sharma is a diminutive avenger  
who brooks no men, except Daddy,
yet dotes in squealing delight
at the touch of women and children.
 
Her territory, a peed-on scent trail,
extends from Guinevere to Lancelot
to Tristram to Merlin to the end
of Camelot Lanes, Streets and Places.
Neither hated squirrels, rabbits
and other canine species are allowed.
 
She can neither jump on the sofa
nor forge mighty streams.
What she lacks in peripheral vision
she makes up for in astute echolocation
and good stiff sniffs of her nose.
 
Yet she has a deep dark secret
that stains her royal dreams.
The scruff under her neck to the chest
in the russet form and color of a fox,
which she struts with a rooster’s pride,
is the product of her Chi-Chi mater
cohabitating with a spritz of Pomerania,
making her neither chihuahua nor pomeranian,
but yes, an adorable pomchi!
 
Yet that neither bothers her nor me
as she paws at the bed covers draping the
leader of this pack, burrowing under to
be close to my side, and dream dog dreams
of walks and car rides and never leaving me.
of walks and car rides and never leaving me.