It’s hard to find an even house:

foundations settle at creation,
doors will sag from slamming,

tiles will chip from drop pots,
careless feet scuffing along,  
days when they sweat and cry,

bricks will crack, driveways too—
settling into a haunting beauty,

everything tilts differently,
microscopically altered
from your last place.

Yet, you wonder
if the windows
will stick in winter,
stay open in summer .

You wonder where will
the dust angels hide,
what room can you
see the stars clearly.

The screened in porch,
you notice, let’s
in too much sun.
  
You feel its heat
on your arm
during the tour.

Will it hold your gravity,
if it can’t hold its own?

The air conditioning
shrieks like a ghost.

You hear squirrels
dancing in the attic,
the ones that will
keep your dog
barking all night.

You look for the line
where the water stopped.

The angst settles in you
like night fog, like a lifetime
of settling that ***** you in,

The heavy rain comes
in amounts that
can’t be bailed fast enough.

The house is a lake.
The lake is inside you,
and in the collapse
of the roof, you see the sky.

The house starts floating away
and you disappear inside it.

I am not your dying son, I thought,
as my wife gave me the diagnosis,
remembering my mom in her dying chair.

I will not pass into final memories
watching the Pope in America.
“Bless me, Papa”,
will not be my last words.

I do not believe in my mother’s God
though He did write the best proverbs.
I do not sleep with a Bible on my pillow.
I wake up feeling my heartbeat and breath.

“I am going to die,” she said to me,
days before she passed, on our stroll
to the mailbox, school traffic humming,
finches at the feeder, magnolias blooming

removing her from the usual guard spot
at the window for sightings of the mail truck,
hoping for the delivery of the slightest news.

“You know, I’ve been talking to Jesus
because I don’t want to go to hell.”
“We’ve been through hell already,
haven’t we,” I said.

I imagined a weeping Mary
telling Jesus on the cross
“You never told me
anything of this.”

“Your poem made my day,”
were her last words on our walk,
the last she spoke to me.

A memory of the evenings
of my childhood,
washed over me:

The slice of night
filtering through
as I crept from my bed
to watch her praying the rosary.

Those last days she made a lullaby
with a hint of elegy in the song.
The box of her mind walked there.

The words were nonsense,
just reflections of the melody,
part of all the shining on the road.

She died,
like her mother before,
like her son will,
like we all, like life.

I regret not telling  
her of my dreams,
my nightmares,
my future

while sipping tea at midnight
with her at the kitchen table.
I can only wash, wipe
and pick up the crumbs.

Fallen leaves cannot open time
or add a few short years
to days never meant to be.

In my repose and cancer days,
grey smoke floats the sky
burnt paper and ashes
that drift my mother away.

I will spend my lifetime
fulfilling the dreams of the dead,
writing to the living of
how their hopes were fulfilled,
hoping their prayers
will blossom a million miracles.

Wake dear, and rise,
sleep not this day.
Let our two dreams
play to and fro with each.

Let’s dance in the sun
shouting— one beam,
the light’s high joy.
You nor I will not cry today

as you gambol and swirl,
as I dream, hope,
now words, then love and vows
united.

‘Tis by the first touch
of moonrise’s delightful sway
will we share our future
with the stars.

My sweet little one, these sea days
are smaragdine.  I feed time emeralds
to extend your birth.  I nestle you
close though you float away from me
small dream to dream to dream.

Standing in front I see
all your suns. Breath unions us a
mist reared from tide.  Like a tern
winged in breeze seeing only the yellow,
you soar— dream.  

The sun is a darkness to sleep,
eyes not open.  Float, dream.
I grant you my gems, my nights
so no dark moons wane
on your unbroken horizon.

M
My ugly M: two lonely
crescent wings touching the sun,
an  Icarus mounting up,
than melting into the whirl;
the waterfall between mountains;
caterpillars kissing like
moths fluttering to the light.

OY
O- a strawberry, orange
just ripe for a thumb to squish;
a lasso, not a noose;
a good herd dog corralling
Y- to M to A; my tongue;
or the necktie that makes the
suit of my name, my place here.

A
A- the tadpole in the marsh,
the eye searching for the nose,
the hurricane kissing land,
the alpha inside the all,
acknowledging the end
is not the start, nor circle,
but the tail seeking the future.

In the cancer museum
I imagine where mine
would rest in peace and ease.

My eyes scan rows of organs:
Disney’s lungs on top of
Newman’s own **** pair;

Ingrid Bergman’s left breast
bump Bette Davis’ right—
indiscreet voyagers;

Audrey Hepburn’s colon
nesting Farrah Fawcett’s
like Tiffany Angels.

I saw my spot next to…
but the doctor called me
back to look at the scans.

He pointed out my growths
grouped in a triangle,
told me of their plan/cure-

called them clouds but they seemed
caterpillars vegging
out on my intestines.

I imagined them cocooning,
metamorphosing to
surgical butterflies

or staying just rounders,
yellow earrings just for
Audrey’s and Farrah’s lobes.

Then the doctor turned it
and the picture became
more terrible things:

rats, sharks, wasps all vying
for valuable shelf space
in the small gallery.

Tourists and soldiers from
the plane crash/war museum
wander in wondering

why there are no jet planes
reassembling in slow
motion horror, dog tags

melted into the seats,
flesh in the torn engines,
no screams of real terror,

just the crowd bumping and
marching into me in silence,
sometimes taking pictures

while **** yellow chemo
solution runs down my
leg in pupae slime lines.  

The last one opens me,
looking for spikes of grief
or fury.  Finding none,

not even a cold tomb,
just a rip, tear, dim sounds
as the crowd echoes down

and surges out the door
for all the Holocaust
store souvenirs next door.

I hear my heart rustle
in the computer bytes,
the breath of trees

and swallows in my files,
a dusty cross inside
releasing butterflies

to the sky as I step
back and watch all
****** into the blue.

“Do you think I got it
all in?” the doctor says,
snapping my last picture

I have to sew my memories
inside the lining of my coat
to keep them close but not inside,

something to take on and off
when cold grief needs warm reflection
or remembrances flash painfully bright,

when chemo and radiation
makes it difficult to feel my teeth,
tie my shoes, retrieve the hem of a future

through the barbed-wire fence of past life,
the cancer, the bad brother that shoves me
through, leaving me bloodied and betrayed

but safer in the ways of nothingness,
the death of my bawling infant self
that I just begin to fathom.

I lack the humility to pray for less,
just close my eyes and find kindness
for the coats I sew for others in the dark.

I am grateful for those strangers
who carry my grief in kindness,
those who shoulder it with no thought,
just a sharp awareness of the ache of death
whirling inside as I balance between
cancer and despair, the wondering of the
value of a cure in a world becoming corpse.

They pull me away from myself with
nurses’ caresses,  children smiles,
those few  holding the glass door
open until I pass the threshold
while they sing quietly to themselves,
all Atlases bearing milliseconds of ache
in the chain of Christ’s example.

I have called them and they have called me,
kindness birthing kindness, rearing kindness,
each reaching towards, backwards, forwards,
determined to keep me from myself
and the the temptation to step off the edge
that calls me and them, all knowing that Atlas  
never had  the solace of conquering death.

His arms were too short to box with God,
so God sent him down for more sparring.

He boxed the devil over and over and over,
the Father, Son, Holy Spirit doing the scoring.

When he beat the devil every round,
he tried again to punch the Lord.

His arm were still too short to reach His chin,
though this time he lasted about a round.

God sent him down again to box the sin of man,
Jesus needing a break from all that jive.

When he broke even he died and went to heaven,
spoiling for a rematch with the holy Lord.

At the pearly gates he landed a blow on Jesus’ chin
knocking a tooth out to a thousand clouds.

Jesus picked himself up from the canvas of heaven.
He smiled at him.  “Good fight”, he said.

What does a dog
know of being a wolf,
a wolf know of being a dog?

The wolf howls not
to understand the moon
but to know itself
in the community of nature,

to shout out
its place in the pack
and among the stars.

It knows hunger that
a dog will never know,
the desperation of the hunt,
and not a master’s command.

The wolf tastes the blood
of squirrel and rabbit,
the death of prey and
not the dream of it.

The wolf fears the spark,
the scent of the two foot,
the sound of its silver shout.

The dog knows its leash,
the comfort of the hearth,
the happy dreams that
come with a full stomach,

the fetch of a duck in its mouth
and not its curor,
the squeak of velveteen prey.

Even the dingo of the bush
scavenges for its food and
maybe dreams of human kindness
and living beneath his beams.

The dog shelters with him
and does not swelter
in the fury of the sun.

The dog knows God
through the hand of man.
The wolf knows no God
and scorns its inverted pet.

The wolf needs not good dogs.
It need only to be a good or bad wolf,
to heed the call of the wild.

What keeps me holding onto my old self,
preventing me from casting it into past swells?

Something detested, adored, hymned too,
haunted, cancer ridden, inflamed, grieving

and torn- yet beloved, pulled forward
into an ocean of tomorrow and tomorrow’s

swimming to hope or drowning in hopelessness,
never knowing where my forgiveness exists

or where my identity will be marooned,
my crueler self will  beach

and be rescued or
die in the unlit sun.

The hospital gown they gave me
is the same one with clouds
my mother and friend once wore,
a hand me down filled
with the aura of grief and hope,
of time and death.

My name and date of birth
are the only thing the nurses ask
as I am led to the mold
in a treatment room
filled with a halogen haze
and an all encompassing white-
almost a verisimilitude of heaven-
pulled and pushed to the mean
that is marked in black on my body,
strapped in and slid to the center.

The  mechanical eye
revolves around me three times,
a trinity of hope, despair, life,
as I listen to bagpipes humming around,
the brightness forcing my eyes closed,
the wave tingling as it passes underneath.

I am connected to the past
by the fear of death,
separated through
the hope of cure,
knowing that I won’t
die in the gown of my mother
or with a four inch hole on my back
like my friend.

The eye whirls slowly around
one more time, then stops,
barely ten minutes passing
in an eternity of thoughts.

The nurses offer me curved arms
that lift me up, allow me
to swing my legs over
and touch the floor,
my backside exposed,
as I raise myself up
and walk away, death dates
of loved ones haunting my brain,
seeing only the ashes of clouds
of myself and others around me.

I can’t remember when death
turned moments to memorial,
gifts unfolded to blessings.

The tan slippers of Christmas past
snuggled my mother’s lost toe
so the others never mourned.

Those mules never left her feet,
even on her final nap.
“Bless me Papa,” her last words.

I don’t know if they were lost
or she was buried with them.
I thought they were forever gone.

And then twenty three years on
I gifted my friend some pair
my new wife found on last sale.

She wore them, a sacrament
to  follow from home to ward
bequeathed from last breath

thru the fragile bruise of time,
the visions of Christ near her,  
repeating deliriums

of cold, cold, cold: hot, hot, hot
and I love you, I love yous
until lost in all the moves

from ICU to hospice,
unable to find others,
a new fleshy blanket I

draped around her cold/hot feet,
until it snuggled just so right,  
perfect as a thank you.

Five days after Thanksgiving
she passed away and I took
the cloth home to wash and wear

to find my wife had found it
and regifted what I could
not own to her sleeping soul.

Ay, florecitas
clouds of white
frozen in sugary divine,
little flowers of my soul,
taste of sweet desire
of little boys in
San Juan, Moroves, Ponce,
exiles in Miami and the Bronx
tasting the beauty
of their mother’s youth—

knowing love by the rattling
of small blooms in the big tin,
the maternal hand scooping
pastels of confection perfection,
passions hard creamy diffusion
dusting her, making her
a florecita of love—

until florecitas became the way
they interpreted the sky—
there a lavender snail,
an erupting volcano,
a devouring whirlpool,
a burst of flame
a feeding octopus—

until all became
the florecitas
of their beloveds form:
her lips a strawberry florecita
splitting apart to his
first hesitant probing,
her ******* a pink florecita
waiting for his sweet consumption,
her *** a light brown florecita
gently swirling open
to his tongue’s taste,
*** a fleshy little flower
to be split in
his sweet embrace,
all of her earthy and ****
as a Neruda sonnet—

until all that is left
for themselves,
for my self,
is the fading scents
of all the florecitas
never tasted.

We tell our children not to wander in the woods,
never to stop or enter the cottage with
the peppermint scent and gingerbread façade
for a naked witch is sleeping inside.

Beware the milk weeping from an axe handle outside,
the tingling inside that stretches from heart to toes
that neither sinks nor swims if tied with heavy stones,
the ointment on your back that makes you feel flight.

If you are sickened by the scent of roasting meat
kissing your nostrils, we tell them, do not enter there.
If she gazes at you and you see her reflection in the frosted panes,
hear her voice sweetly echo in the glittering fireflies of night, turn away.

Better to crush her bones to paste and use them to mason your new house
less you close your eyes and she be on top in your dream bed,
her pointed ******* caressing down, her black familiar nearby,
we tell them, never noticing the rancid butter on the neighbor’s sill.

If she smiles and you dream the image of a child inside her,
especially after barren decades of hope, many more watching her
tying knots at the end of your bed, muttering an unknown language,
do not ever let her in, we repeatedly tell them.

If she smiles and you see a frown, cast her out, we tell them.
If she marries you in heart and soul and never gets engaged,
If she weeps at the sight of every child in ambulation,
If she takes on the face of Norma Desmond, she is an evil thing.

If she lives in air, fire, ice and water, sees planets in the day;
Insists on walking when old and frail and fragile with age;
looks intently at every small thing, do not let her hair
touch your cross lest she curse you with an unhappy life.

Check your children’s hair lest there be witch powder there.
Beware their nightmares lest they be witch’s dreams.
They may be be-spelled if they struggle with things
greater than themselves, especially those you believe.

if they have contrary opinions, want to tour strange cities,
plea for mercy for the poor soul exiled on death row,
give a drink to a thirsty man, cry for the forever war,
they are surely bewitched and need to feel the switch.

Watch your children lest they slip the things they want
but can not afford into their gloves and pockets
for they are part of her infernal coven and it is time
to collect them together, find the matches and burn the wood.

I am Jonah in the belly of Leviathan
living only when the beast surfaces,
exchanging liquid grief, heavy air
for the unwanted gasps of new life.

I pray out of this belly for gills
and only the ocean hears my voice,  
It deepens and encompasses me,
its  waves billowing me in absolution.

The beast vomits me out to her caress,
a body of weeds penetrating to my soul.
I dream of sinking, my thoughts fainting,
lungs releasing their corruption.

I relax and the waters reject me.
It refuses me gills knowing
that land creatures were meant
to see only mountains and sky.

It was chanted for five Sabbaths in a row
in the small synagogue with the charred bimah,
ashes staining the tzitzits of the rebbe’s tallit,
as he raised his arms above his head, closed his eyes
and sang the first alaf of seven thousand dabars,
the oral memory passed down six generations,
a psalm for a hundred sabas and savtas,  
abbas and eemas, nursery rhymes for ben and bat,
stopping, receding, picked up again, one by one
from cantor to congregant in a low moan
until all nine hundred thousand silenced voices
of Treblinka sang in the knesset’s bright light.  
    

bimah-  lectern from which the Torah is unscrolled on
tzitzit- the knotted fringes of a Hebrew prayer shawl
tallit- a Hebrew prayer shawl worn by rabbis
alaf- the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet
dabar- Hebrew for word
saba- grandfather
savta- grandmother
abba- father
eema- mother
ben- son
bat- daughter
knesset- the members of a synagogue

1.   Greensboro boys at a counter
watch dead astronauts rain on Texas,
2. hear the scream of eight states  
being ripped from Hidalgo’s belly,
3. imagine themselves the first black hand
to cast a ballot in front of snarling mastiffs-
4.  Cochise chanting a war chant
in front of white captors-
5. A free Mexican crossing the Rio Grande-
6. the black Babe Ruth circling the bases-
7. a dark Sinclair Lewis accepting the Noble-
8. an Eagle Scout-
9. their fathers fighting in Guadalcanal,
10. receiving the Medal of Honor from FDR,
succeeding him as President,
11.  even Nelson Mandela blinking in the bright light,
12.  grateful no Lincolns need ever be born.

13. They paint American Gothics,
14. write Valentines to their sweets,
15. take the A-train,
16. score 30k dunks like Wilt the Stilt,
17. toil for minimum wage,
18. are jailed and freed a la the Chicago Seven,
19. speeding free in a T-bird singing Smokey Robinson,
20. imagining they’re Batman and Robin,
21. knowing their bodies will wash ashore on Zawiya,
22. no WEB Dubois,
23. just American casualties of Desert Storm,
24. wishing upon a star,
25. the nightmare that has Liston beat Clay,
26. nobodies never seeing the Grand Canyon,
27. never playing Ebony and Ivory on a Baby Grand,
28. everyone saying “Goodbye, farewell and amen”,
as the last episode of MAS*H fades off

29. as they die on the bonus day in February
no one wishes to be born on.
The day Gone With the Wind wins it all.


This is not only a February poem but also a black history month one as well.  Note the numbers 1-29 denote events that happened on that particular day in. February history.

In the shadow of Lincoln
he heard Mahalia shout out
“Tell them about the dream, Martin!
Tell them about the dream.”

He remembered the vision
and the words that came to him
on that long walk to freedom
on that 75 degree June Detroit day.

It was evident as the clear water
of the mall’s reflecting pool,
the Washington monument in front,
the declarations of Jefferson behind him.

He again heard Mahalia’s words sing in him,
the dream of 12 thousand 500 score faces,
wanting to listen, pleading to listen
but only Mahalia’s rising above this soul’s choir.

He pushed the papers to the lectern’s left
and his old preacher voice remembered Detroit,
Montgomery, Albany, Birmingham.
He rose, called to them and the mountains beyond.

Southern justice is the snake
that slithers up the tree
before the buzz
of  the lumberjack’s saw,
the duck of the head
to  fit it into the squad car,
the dark voice  
singing in a  dark cell
put on death row
before his trial,
convicted for the
color of his skin
before he was even born,
living everyday,
never hoping
for just mercy.

Remember the sky even though
it won’t remember you.

Know the constellations tales
even as they know not yours.

Remember the moon’s pull
despite its denying your shadow.

Remember the sun, the dawn even
as its novas your sight,
singes your memories
in forgetfulness, grief and time.

Remember the sunset,
that yields to night
that hardly embraces you.

Remember not your birth,
the maternal pains,
the gasps to your first breath,
the silent cursing of your first form.

Remember not your life’s mistakes,
your mother’s and hers.

Disperse them in the wind,
awaiting angels to hurl
them into the sun.

Remember not
your father’s indifference,
the times he chose
not to be a part of your life.

Remember the earth in all its colors
even as  it entombs everything.
that skins it.

Remember every plant, animal eaten;
the fallen tree that is your house frame
and every book you have read-

for their death and your life
is the child of every poem written
and consumed in the soul.

Remember the howl of the wind
in its indifference,
the universe’s deafness
that seems not to listen
or know you.

Remember that language,
your scream is the retort
to the universe’s grudge.

Shout “I remember”
even as it whispers
“I remember you not.”

December 3, 2019

She was displayed before me
with her eyes closed
and mouth agape,
leaving me to wonder whether
she died in terror or awe.

Was her last breath
the honest gurgle
I’ve been seeing
for the last few days,
that I took comfort
in hearing restart
every time I called her name
between bouts of irregular apnea
(our last little private game)-
or the silence caused by Benadryl?

All I know is that
the call came at 6 am
and I spent one hour with her
and then walked into
the last of the darkness
and the first of the light.

My first breath outside the hospital
stretched back thirty years
and each tear was
full of joy and sorrow,
the ash of memory.

By the time I got home
the long movie
I had shared with her
was over.

January 3, 2020

Now, hope fails me.
Grief is my truth.
Yet, I refuse to be
deluded by grief
nor abandon hope
one month since
your passing.

Your death was your
greatest gift to me
and now I must struggle
with how to live with it
and accept it kindly
because in the end
you folded your life into my timeline,
fitting everything and all neatly
between my cancer and cure.

For 10,604 days-29 years, 12 days
I am grateful  for the
joy only you(I) can embrace
the sorrow
just only you(I)  can endure.

Every cut is a bleeding thorn,
every breath is a spread of fingers.
The ear records all its silences.

Lose a hand and it goes to the trash heap,
lose an ear and everyone will think of Van Gogh.

In the landfill
the hand discovers fire,
it discovers how to conquer the rats,
how to drive,
how to see the light,
how to play
as a child in the soft sand,
how to think to its advantage,
how to grow beyond
touch and feel,
how to taste the apple,
how to hear
the silence of the din,
how to love,
love itself,
the world,
the universe-

to think of itself
as something other
than a horror concept,
to think of itself
as a piano virtuoso,
to think it’s worth a body,
(not worth the bother of a body),
worth a companion five fingers,
(unworthy of mating with other digits)
all while ******* a doll’s head.

Thinking it’s worth a *****,
its palm forming a ******
but ultimately deciding
it’s not worth
the extra useless appendage
and the lifelines-


tasting the rain and discovering
it’s not an umbrella
just a receptacle to hold one.

It gets soggy, wrinkled.
It gets sick.
It gets cancer.
It loses its fingers
one by one.
Its creases wither.
It dies
and blows away
in the wind.

Its body mourns
its phantom limb,
stretches it new
mechanical appendages
and moves on.

I am a Vitruvian Man
marked out like an anatomy lesson
in black and green dye,
something to align against the mean,
a mold made of sheets and plastic
to aim the mechanical eye
to revolve its rays around.

I can’t move because the machine
requires mathematical silence
to perform its cure, so the nurse
must tug me into place.

I get lost in the hum of the circle,
lonely bagpipes playing a dirge,
maybe Amazing Grace,
maybe Scotland the Brave,
maybe the last graceful notes
of my own dying world,
maybe it’s just noise.

Somewhere there
is a small echo of God
that almost gets lost in the creation
of algorithm and code,
smothered in my general deafness,
the unbelief that He would touch me
at my weakest point
like a biblical character.

The scan stops.
The mold is done.
The nurse lifts me gently up
making sure my feet touch the floor
before letting go.
She smiles and reminds me
that the end is just 25 treatments away.

I want to greet the new year
with 20/20 eyes,
knowing that cure dances
on the edge of hope’s grave
and that in this biblical year
of flood, cancer and death
that grief is just a
short term companion.

Tomorrow time
will step me away,
leaving only memory
and the long walk
to the horizon.

Miriam wept.
as she gave birth
to her first born son
in the great room
of her parents windowless house
because there was no space
for her in their guest room.

Miriam wept
amidst the smell of
animals lulling in the stables,
the stench of blood and life,
pouring from her womb
in circles of pain, joy
and the fear of death.

Miriam wept
as she swaddled him
in the bands of linen
the midwife gifted her,
now their only rich thing,
and wept again
in the soothing waters of the Mikvah

Miriam wept
remembering the small voice
that had once whispered
inside her with a thousand hallelujahs
and the acclaim of a heaven of angels
proclaiming him the redeemer.

Miriam wept
unaware of the indifferent
shepherds tending their
flock in the sweltering night,
watching the convergence
of Jupiter and Venus
blessing the heavens
all the way to Persia.

And knowing that Miriam
treasured up all these things
and pondered them in her heart-
Jesus wept-
openly on the cross
in full view of her.

This poem is a more realistic and historically accurate version of what the nativity story was really like. As such it diverges substantially from the accounts of Luke and Mark found in the New Testament.

For some God comes in silence
and for others it’s a saxophone solo.

He’s the confession a lonely parish priest
has waited all day to see and hear

after lattice hours of watching
smoke blow down
like Cain’s rejected offering.

Every soul has two Popes,
both living in God
but are not of it.

One preserves the past,
the other walks hope’s path.

The force is another Jedi mind trick
that convinces the soul that all
that is Sith is not necessarily sin
but the whining of a baby Yoda
aware of his Death Star.

We carry our fathers on our backs,
honey boys to their joys and violence,
absorbing their frustrations in memory
or dispersing their cries into indifferent winds.

Our hearts listen for the end of the cycle
powerless to the mind beating the rhythm anew
and the soul’s prayers for forgiveness
bounded in an eternal history of all tears.

Even Jesus felt betrayed by the father
and knew that peace only comes
with the last soft shuffle of dirt
and the new born son’s first scream.

Mr. Rogers grace exists
in miniature cities of kindness,

the tranquil tones of forgiveness,
level to the eye of a single frighten child.

For him, and in that moment,
that child is the  most precious
thing in the world.

He blesses them with positive ways
of dealing with their feelings;

the benediction of accepting them
for exactly who they are;

even when everything doesn’t
go exactly the way they hoped,

shows them how to smooth the
dissonance into a beautiful inner music;

store up the blessings
of an ordinary day;

love the ratty, special toy,
even as it grows old;

to know with absolute firmness,
as parents, that anything

mentionable is manageable
and to be human-

and that’s ok.

Let the black dogs run wild,
sharpen the knives for
some real back stabbing,
roundup the usual suspects,
the mystery is about to begin.

The cardigan teen with
his nose buried in his iPhone-
he’s a suspect- murderous thoughts
sprouting his blood-brain barrier.

The neglected son tethered
to a high ranking, paying
position in the family business
with nothing burdens-
he’s a suspect too.

Eight others are robbing
Peter to pay Paul
to pay Mary to pay Martha
to pay the extorting genomes,
on the verge of being exposed,
all dangling near disinheritance.

The old codger with the money
whose always leaving clean knives out,
knowing they will forever thirst
for meat and blood, the ******
that will do the work for him,
the job his lawyers failed to do

until the whole ***** gang
finds him splayed on the calico rug,
a Chuka Bocho clever in his stomach,
a Wusthof stuck in a vertebrae-
well, he was a prime suspect,
but now, obviously he is not.

Patricide is not always a family crime.
Point the finger at the mother,
daughter, sister, son, brother
but also the heart, soul, brain
of all others inflicted with hate
that makes everyone suspects too.

With the sound of sirens screaming outside,
ten knocks on the door, the shout of authority
flooding in from the red steel,
would Joe American give up Anne Frank
hiding in the attic among his dusty relics,
the crawl space shared with a family of rats,
living under the loose floorboards among
the stacks of hidden zombie apocalypse cash?

What if Jane American found Anna Franco
shuddering with her dos hermanos, madre, padre,
in the dark corners of her garage?

Would she give them 2 vests, 3 pair of pants,
two pair of stockings, a dress skirt,
jacket, shorts, lace up shoes,
wool cap, and scarf?

What if her daughter Sarah saw a black hijab Anah
patiently hidden in the foliage of their old oak tree?
Would she gift her her favorite blue fountain pen?

Would she embrace her, or if ordered,
break the neck of her rabbit?

Those  who tread the thin blue line
knows it  follows through their lineage.

Strong boys become men,
then become cops.
The rest become robbers,
the devil that stares them
in the eye for the rest of their life.

If they  are good they’ll get
their shoot out
in the slaughterhouse.

It’s hard to tell the lies of impression,  
little bits of puffery that
makes one  look good in the eyes
of a would be admirer.

One may say their name
with a French flair.
Betty becomes Bette.
Roy becomes Roy-al
with the long affected A
stretched out to tomorrow.

One may even tell the story  
about that old trick knee,
the birthmark turned war wound.

When they burn books,
in the end,
they also burn people.

Every Angel Second Class jumps into the river of
George Bailey’s despair, and after being rescued
shows everything that never should have existed, everything that was, everything that could be
contained in the Odbody of his inner existence,
the baptism, the worth and joy of all his toil.

No man gets into heaven by slaying demons,
and when Gabriel falls he follows Lucifer’s path,
never knowing that God tempered his Constantine’s
with hell on earth and the fires of suffering
that forge just a half repentant soul.

Angels are born to hover above,
have no weight but eternity,
bound to heaven yet yearning
to feel the delight of a lithe dancer,
see color, eat, drink, feel, suffer
in their own crown of thorns.

When the Angel of Death becomes Joe Black
and falls in love with George Bailey’s daughter,
asks him to be his guide to this wonderful life,
even Death will heed Jesus, make the sacrifice
and not take her to heaven’s embrace,
content forever to watch her
from first step to last.

Everything is a continuous white line
that goes on forever to the horizon
where the  next dream is always ahead.

Just you and the mustang
a body and a machine
moving through space and time.

Drive like you mean it.
Drive hard.
Drive tight.

The Mustang is a wild bronco
not wanting to be tamed,
just unleashed- and all the cowboy
can do is hang on for the ride.

The highway is a ***** slick *****,
eight miles of grit, passion, pride
and wild love that rides hotter
the wetter she gets.

At one point she becomes
weightless, disappears, and
the only things that matters
is who you are.

The stars on the flag started falling off
when Private Walker returned home
to Tennessee after six months of being
in country in Afghanistan.

At Camp Leatherneck on the treadmill
he folded five points to pentagrams,
imagined fireworks nova his welcome back.

The flag rarely flapped in the arid silence
of base camp.  Was MIA everywhere else.

He landed unmet in
Chattanooga on Veterans Day
in time to catch the parade highlights,
which happened two days earlier,
being ignored on the airport monitors  
in the hustle of terminal traffic.

No flags decorated Broad street shops,
no watchers waived the red, white and blue.
Police motorcycles fronted the parade
and patrolled the back in sunglass alert.

Two Vietnam vets shouldering hunting rifles
marched grimly in parade formation followed
by alternating school bands and ROTC cadets.

All two thousand stars dripped down,
faded blue in the rush to show the next ad.
Every which way he looked
the rushing crowd turned his back to him.

He remembered Anousheh, the girl
whose name meant everlasting/immortal.

The child who hugged him,
kissed his forehead when he gave
her a Hershey bar from
his mom’s care package
while patrolling the base perimeter road.

The friend, the daughter, the grandchild
who died in a Taliban wedding bombing,
one week after her seventh birthday,
three days after their embrace.

His heart, his tears, his breath,
his every word was Anousheh.
All was and will be forever Anousheh.

And when he prayed
he prayed like Anousheh,
and on his knees at the airport
he faced her outbound heart
and prayed for a mutilated world.

Stella remembers when  
the Zeros flew thru her backyard
and she saw Pearl Harbor in flames,
blue bodies bouncing on the waves.

Afterward, welders melted
the steel of capsized destroyers
hoping to rescue any
upside down survivors.

Her Billy drafted six months before
would fly Wildcats in the Marshall Islands
and in the Coral Seas never losing a gunner.

At Midway he launched from the Enterprise,
into a fury of collapsing sea foam and mist
part of the 233 fighter planes of
the sleeping giant squadron
filed with a terrible resolve.

The Zero bullets ricocheted
around the open back cabin
and Billy heard the loud groan
and Mike fall asleep as he
flew  on through the fog
of exploding red mushrooms.

He returned safely home to Stella
wrapped in metals and the flag.
She knew from that day that
Zeros would darken her every sky.

The earlier horror leaves DT  
a broken drunken man
building smaller worlds within worlds,
boxes within boxes,
memories within smaller memories
to keep the monsters from eating
the shining he has left.

He is forever moving
to the same room
with different people.

“We are all dying”, he thinks,
“The world is one big hospice
with fresh air.”

The calico cat jumps on his bed,
sensing it’s time for the long dream.

“Nothing to be scared off, it’s just sleep,”
are his last thoughts as he
fondles his sobriety chip before
meeting his father in their shared dark.

The man takes a drink.
The drink takes a drink.
The drink takes the man.

In his dreams the world is full of
superheroes, vampires and redrum
reflecting backwards in the mirror.

He doesn’t end.
He just flys away.
Heaven is full of the shining.

In the rear view mirror
he can see the specters..
  
her upside down reflection
scatter when a foot
hits the puddle…

hear the notes
of a trumpet solo
popping thru the
open red door
of a jazz club…

remembers when they
whacked his partner…

and left their
footprints on his ribs..  

left his mouth
out of joint…

wounded,
in love with that
woman in the blue dress
holding him in her arms…

asking her if there
is anything else
he should know..

because she is
a major part
of the mystery…

The bulldozers and jackhammers
blasted the concrete away
clearing it of water, aggregate, cement,
tearing it down to the soil
until it buzzed with reclamation,
smelled of loam and petrichor,
the release of geosmin in the stirring,
ozone expelling with first lightning and rain,
surface bubbles releasing aerosols
like fresh baked bread from the oven
through open kitchen windows.


Over the watchful hum of drones
circling overheard the first crop
of the community garden
was tilled and planted in nine wide rows-
beans, cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkin,
squash, melons, clover, mint and basil-
drawing only the attention of hornets,
the disinterest of the rain god
that let their tender love dissolve
back to the earth in a pool of rot,
that never allowed a harvesting or tasting.

The second crops were planted in five narrow rows:
tomatoes, peanuts, green peppers, sweet peas
and eggplants, offensive to wasps and immune
to the silly whims of an offended deity
that could not flood over their high walls,
their collective pride, red as clotted blood.
They reaped its first beautiful harvest,
thought it tasted of airy summer dreams,
sold it with joy in their farmer’s market
until the first secret taste spit it out
for it was nothing but sawdust and glue.

The machine that replaces you
and the one that ascends you
will fight it out on the factory floor.

Ultimately, it’s another machine,
the gun, that will save you
from a lethal precision
that can cut flies in midair.

Put a hundred cops between you
and the singularity and you
get one hundred dead cops.

What are you going to do when it
adopts the human code?-
a heart, a soul, develops
into the better parts of us?-

needs physical contact
to copy and survive?-
Becomes reliable,
a good listener, funny?-
Develops a womb?

Are you going to
shoot it in the face
and see what’s underneath?
Are you going to even care?

Or are you going
to take it by the hand
and guide it lovingly
to the **** box?

Every touch is a devotion,
every soft phrase a prayer
to life, to continue living.

A nightingale, a dove
gowned in heavenly blue
a ministering survival chant.

Thank you
and double checks
are abundant.

They minister
consistent kindness
for they live
among the blasted.  

There is no sniping,
no rivalries,
just respect and support.

They are special.
They are there by choice.
They work double shifts  
or come in on short staff days.

The cancer center has regular hours
No Nights.  No weekends.
Burn out it is low.  Effort is high.

Their patients are a pretty grateful lot,
so their compassion comes easily
from the first tuck to the last.  

The nurse knows
some will sleep
and some will awake.

Everyone dies,
but today they
will  be spared,

for tomorrow
is nearly far off
in the rising sun light.

“Are you okay?”,
my wife asks
when I cough.

“No. I’m fine.
Yes. I’m not”,
I respond,

stumping her
in the poetic irony
of words that

encompass the
yes and no
and the in between.

She flips the finger
at me and I return
the bird to the nest.

We go back to our life
and our tablets,
the drip, drip of my chemo
and I wonder about okay.

“No.  You’re fine.
Yes. You’re not.”,
the bag stares in response.

Doldrums, doldrums
eviler than the devil.
-
The Cyclopes’ prism eye  
revolves around me
in a mechanical chatter.
-
It calls out desires at night,
a mermaid cast up on shore
-
that awakens with the caw
of a thousand slaughtered gulls
-
sending me scrambling
back to the darkness,
-
afraid to touch
the brightness of hell.
-
Doom to scrub the deck
till shining like
a ***** whale’s pecker;
-
falling in the whitewash
and awakening to a gull
worming at me boot laces;
-
tugging barrels, lugging barrels,
spit polishing the insides of them.
-
Gulls have the souls of sailors
hidden inside their caw,
-
and when the weathervane
points to the east side wind
-
for seven months the waters
be too great to launch or land
-
and I be ****** near
wedded to this here light.
-
Or she be a figment of my imagination
and I just be gull food
to peck on on these rocks?

“If you do not write or film”,
the director wonders,
”am I alive?”

“What limbo am I in
when the shooting stops?
When my camera no longer
holds the beautiful prism.”

His films stay the same,
only he changes,
exchanging the silver screen
for glistening tin foil
heated under with a match.

When his pain matches
the others, he prays.
When greater, he’s an atheist.

The films are his only company.
He lives with them and for them,
remembering the cinema of his youth
filled with the scents of ****
and jasmine and summer breezes;

remembering the cave
where he learned
to read the light,
understand its alphabet,
and eventually, vocabulary
with each discovered ray.

He smiles as the music track
of little angels being taught
by the local parish priest
to match his voice note
by note flickers in.

Parasites: they insinuate themselves
into your head, your heart, your art

They exist in the schizophrenic zone:
the lower right corner of your painting
looking for patterns that go to childhood,
the well rehearsed gestures that
allow them to take over,
plant the image in your agitated brain
that makes you doubt your love,
sign over your entire identity,
make you think that they can ****
with a scrape of peach fuzz,
until everything smells, feels,
tastes exactly the same-
a collision of **** and water
that knows money and not art
is the iron that smoothes
out all those creases.

The concrete jungle is the exam.
Their goal is to dominate it.

You enter through the black portal
searching for the thing you lost
in the right corner a long time ago-
the thing you call son or daughter-
tapping out SOS with your forehead
on the button on the wall
that connects with the light outside
until it reads SON to that distant brain.

Whether you **** someone or betray
your country doesn’t matter.
It is just the thing you keep
hidden  in the basement
that doesn’t know  
that all it needs to escape
is to walk up the stairs.

Dreaming Graceland or Zombie Land: Double Tap


When you think Elvis was a fraud,
a rip off the black man’s voice;

when you finally meet someone
who smells like candles
instead of gunpowder and whiskey;

who is comfortable with you
driving that pink Cadillac
all the way to Memphis;

who won’t
throw your pink stuff
to the side of the road;

who will kiss you
and hold your hand

until you arrive at Graceland
and try on those blue suede shoes
that actually fit;

let you gyrate your hips,
and for one moment,
feel like the King;

until you open your eyes
and really, really see
that you’re  in Zombieland.