Each launch begins with a prayer
until I have a puncture, a rip, a tear.
Mayday!  Mayday!  Mayday!

I am always falling
either to the earth or to the stars,
falling forward to God the Father
or father to son.
  
To survive I move in the vacuum
between calm heartbeat
and silent in-breath,

hurling to my final mission
to repair a disconnection
of a mind that can
***** life with a thought
or by sniffling
a remembered tear,

knowing not whether to
****** the monstrous soul
or to hug the last, lost dead part.

I swim through
the waterfalls of mars
knowing I never really knew you
nor am I you.

“Stay where you are.
Do not proceed any further,”
you hiss in loving defiance.

In the space in between
I see that madness is
never once thinking of home,
being free of all moral doubt.

Tethered to the umbilical
I cut the insanity to the vacuum,
suffocate the space between
with love,

until I can no longer see
what is not there,
until I miss what
is right in front of me.

In the after-burn from Saturn
I am looking forward
to the day of my self return.

I will rely on what is closest to me.
I will live and love.

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.

the
   devil
         put the
              warmth
                          down south
                                             so man
                can call it
Paradise.

In a realm of two moons and three suns not
afraid to be besieged by everlasting brightness,
where everyone speaks from their heart spires
and devils and scorpions cavort with sprites,
magic coexisted with every day miracles.
People would cross on invisible bridges
as easily as Jesus walking on water,
on their way to their great soul’s quest.

Now as tablets led to handwriting and
then to thousands of computer fonts,
where seeking adventure becomes
short code for finding death and despair,
where sprites now dine on pixie sticks
and fairies no longer spread their dust,
where those who believe in magic are greatly
outnumbered by those who don’t,
where everyone’s top half exists
with their bottom self wandering about
and never finding each other,
where wizardry is replaced with technology-  
the common light bulb and automobile-
is when wonderment gets consigned to the
bottomless pit of foolishness.

Then magic waits in hidden castles,
patient not for those who have it
and don’t see it, but those who need
it the most and know that it reveals
the truth behind the disguises,
waiting for that old broken stead
to reveal that its Pegasus
and that spell they chanted
to lead them back home to
the magic of their parent’s’ embrace.

Many say the last thing the dying see
is the flap of dove wings
or Jesus caressing their hair.
  
Her hallucinations were full of Him
smiling at her, speaking words
she could not understand.
  
And when I draped the
blanket over her cold feet,
crowned with the blue bruise
of all her past complications,
she was convinced I was Him.  

I played the game.  
“Hush, little one.  
I am here for you.  
Do not be afraid.”
  
I left for a moment.
I wept.
She had fallen asleep.

Before I could
return the next day,
she had passed.

Her eyes were closed.
Her mouth was a half smile,
as if she had heard a bell,
had tasted the sweetest thing.

I wondered what was that last
great thing she had heard or seen,
but she had taken her memory with her.

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.

The port rests on my high right chest, a pink crater,
a  cleanly folded linen shroud kissed with tears
wheeled from operating room to recovery  
by melting folds of scrub blues with iodoform scents.

The fragrance of me is creased into a tucked blanket,
monitors on my legs and arm caressing rhythmic,
sounds dissolving into the hum left in a plastic wind-
wafting hints of my odorless crenulated alchemical cure.

My wife holds the origami of my old self in a
blue zip lock hospital bag that opens with a
singe of nitrate, the final aroma of good cooked food
settling on a rack then vanishing into a memory portal.

I smell no future,  just the staleness of hope and fear
as I uncrease myself into my clothes and stand unfolded
at the exit, in the threshold of a shadowless sunlight
whose sleeves I sniff for the blossoming plum tree.

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.

Her mother’s tale of the red string
foretold that Miko and Makoto
would be together,
tied little finger to little finger
by a taut invisible  blood line.
What she didn’t tell her
was that the line would fray,
break, need to be
retied over and over.

In their wedding photos
Makoto would stand stiff,
sincere in his white suit,
chrysanthemum in lapel,
hands by his sides,
close to her but
never really touching.
Miko in her red-white kimono
was almost a shrine
with butterfly ribbons,
a sigh more than a smile
adorning her face.

She imagined years
of ritual devotion
turning the gown gray,
the white high heels into
black sensible pumps.
Her gaze would eventually
never match Makoto,
it would rest on her feet,
turn inward until
she saw only herself
alone on the shore.

Makoto would spend
long hours in his cubicle,
drawing house after house
for others to live and work in.
At home the drawings would
fall into an exhausted heap
on the living room sofa
forming a charcoal pillow
for his weary head.  

Miko would put away
the uneaten food,
separating half  
into a bento box for
Makoto’s next day’s lunch,
the other half reserved cold
for her own silent noon meals.
She would dry her hands
on the old never worn
yellow girl’s onesie cleverly
repurposed to a dish rag.

Her mind drifted back to the time
they visited the Snow Monkeys of
Jigokudani bathing in their hot spring.
She would watch a mother macaque
and infant slipping their fingers
in and out of each other forming
rose strings in the slow rippling splash
until the last echo almost touched her womb.
She listlessly gazed at her feet as she
listened to Makato denounce
the silly animal antics she delighted in,
how he snarled out without regret
“Akachan wa noroidesu”
(Babies are a curse.)
Nevertheless he gladly purchased
the commemorative photo of them,
taken at the park’s entrance,
of them posing stiffly because
it echoed their wedding one.

On the bullet train back to Tokyo
she felt sick and rushed to the toilet.
There, Miko knew the yellow secret  
bought at Akachan  Honpo the
day before and hiding in her purse
would become a dish rag.
In the hygienic blue flushing water.
her hope turned to grief
and her grief became a silent wail
that emptied out, a crimson string.

Seated in her assigned chair
she glared at Makoto
staring out the train window
searching the darkening horizon.
He never turned his face to her.
He didn’t even know she was next to him.
Miko stared at the walls, stifling a sigh.

Inside her the red string
shriveled, then broke.
Her sky rearranged
to a desert. Her precious
water evaporated.

She awoke to Makoto,
saying not a word,
entering and shuffling
to the sofa.  

The gas stove hissed.
The yellow dish rag
laid close to the flame.
Another uneaten meal
existed unwanted on
the dining room table.

Miko, this one time,
never bothered to
awaken Makoto.
She walked to the
balcony searching
hard for but neither
finding sky nor horizon—
only houses,
some which Makoto drew,
surrounded her.
She put little finger
to little finger together
then pulled them apart.
Looking down,
Miko knew she
was destined to fall.

Stardust,  
the hardest thing to hold on to,
forms our guardian  angels,
the ones that sway us
to our favorite tree,
settling each branch
in a sugary light.

We scamper
towards it,  all the dust
of sun and star reflecting
golden in our faces,
adorned in the
red and white regal robes
of our younger self.

God particles
surround us,
their soft collisions
cooling on our skin,
filling us with dreams
of things we may
never know again.

For now,
we fly on our
given golden wings
into our angel’s sway,
for they called us little birds
and we believe their very word.

We soared
with them in their heaven,
pausing only briefly
on a branch of sky
to sit and cuddle together,
whispering how they
value us in our ears,
their gift to us held tight.

From
the farm shed
our parents call us
and we settle on
the vernal, yellow
nimbus of earth for
one last celestial dance—

waiting
and knowing the empty pair
of red and white dance shoes
they gifted us, that are sitting
on the floor like a callus,  
will someday be given a
reason to move once more.

1.

The motherless-fatherless God
orphans the world in His own image,
His experience, His own elevated thoughts.

Yet He is unsatisfied, unhappy for
His creation is not perfect enough.

Even the little man with His breath-spark
is an unfulfilling design, in tun dissatisfied.
  
Everything has weight but
nothing has fullness.

Only the birds achieve effortless flight
and the planets spin easily in space.

2.

Creation shatters in the layers of night
and reforms in the weak rays of dawn.

The moon shows the scars of His longing
and the sun the flame of His abandonment.

In punishment He permanently
orphans the land from the sea
and the earth from the sky.

In scorn He lets His man creation
people the earth and die too soon,

the posthumous orphan left-behinds
of His own abandoned dreams.

His child cries out “Father!”
on his forsaken cross.  

Only the Romans sate
his thirst with vinegar.

He can not listen, only turn away
and resume creating and
spinning far better worlds.

3.

The orphans of God feel the fatal loss,
the doom of the abandoned earth,
and refuse to cringe or weep,

hoping the manner of their death
shall redeem their birth in His hope
even as they lurch toward the grave

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

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.

I loved this old crooked tree
that refused to grow straight
with the sky but willed itself
to stretch with the horizon,
limbs resisting what every oak
near it wanted— to kiss the sun.

It had a brother, long since cut down,
its stump never uprooted, ground to chips.
Decades of weeping, trying to caress its kin,
had left it defiantly stunted, a hunchback
to its grief, its refusal to be another proper tree,
limbs desiring earth’s comfort to cloud’s hope.

The tornado swept south and
my old brick house was
left a blasted finger to its whims.
The old crooked tree was uprooted
like all the others oaks, yet granted the mercy
of caressing its waiting brother in its final fall.

My wife spent the time after the uprooting
like all the others after the storm,
dealing with the adjusters, collecting
the ashes, saving the memories that remained.
No thoughts of trees preoccupied her
and I was convalescing from cancer surgery.

Before we moved into a temporary place,
before the winds of rebuilding where beginning,
I asked for a quick drive by to see the damage
because I only ,imagined the destruction
from the aching confines of a hospital bed
and needed to firmly root it to mind and soul.

The reality was a little worse than the imagining.
The roof was gone, only an L of bricks remained.
The PTSD, anxiety, the sheer exhaustion
was already planting in my wife.
I cried for her. I cried for the last sight
of the old tree hugging stump, earth beneath.

The blind do not need blindfolds.
They wear shades just for us
even as we turn our eyes away.
We give them a stick to see.

The one-legged woman
stands just as tall
as the two-legged man.

The blind man in the wheelchair can go far,
but he can go twice as far if he holds on to
the frame of the friend peddling besides him.
The water basin in his lap is for all to share
for the sun shines brightly and makes us thirst.

at what point do shadows become
numbers and numbers become dust

is it when sunlight and moonlight cross
the eye into our anatomical darkness

when the zero circle helixes into short
existence a rose, a cell, a dying memory

when raindrops no longer liquefaction,
leaving umbrellas a meaningless prop

or the grid that passes over unnoticed
during the slow, long ride to the hospital

maybe, the strobe of light that moves
from office cubicle to office cubicle

possibly the shadows that dance while
you clean precisely calibrated glasses

try to focus on those rain smeared
figures now in your field of view

remembering they once were you on
the half lit steps staring into the dark

watching the three triangle flapping
of the crow over the tarmac

I did want to do it with dead flowers
the pressings of leaving here—
flowers made of truths held openly in front
from a  fallow field  left to nettles,
the broken pebbles hammered by a vengeful sun.
I plucked it up, plucked the good root
of all our great hopes and best dreams  
and watched my life parch, shrivel and die in my hands
and heard her cry out
as if this left her incomplete,
clutching nightmares in her small arms.

Shout into the eyes
of sunlight
of the boy who dances in the light.

Every dragon’s death
foretells this child
onto even the smallest realm.

The Phoenix is an ally
to the boy
who forges worlds.

The stars proclaim his shine
this boy who dances in the light.

He is the boy
who flies
into the sun
and does not dissolve.

His chariot with flashing wheels
races with the rainbow.

He is the boy who
sells the golden trinkets
with 1001 truths in the bazaar.

Even the baubles know not all his stories
of pirates, pashas, tigers and kings.

After all has been vended
this boy with the wondrous tongue
will wipe the sweat of his brow
into the most damask bottle
and proclaim it genie’s breath.

The Hudson sleeps
and the clouds sweep
over the moon.

I promise little dear
with this small  tear
I will always love you.

Sleep, sleep, sleep
peace, peace, peace
the promise I grant you.

This song is the fact
that your star remains intact
in my heart, steady and true.

The river’s lull,
the moons’s full glow
will always pull us through.

The path will be rough.
The road back tough.
Yet, my cloak will  surround you.

Startle not, this wet drop,
is but my love pulled tight and true,
My love pulled tight and true.

Around me, within me,
within you, around you
sings the song of just us two.

The song I sing
is but the sad  tune of this night.
It will not be the story of you!

My life has been rapture,
rupture and strife
like all others in life.  

But you shall be more than my sorrow,
more than my wants,
more than my sad thoughts.  

You will be the moon song.
The one that everyone sings
to overcome the night!

It’s just a matter of just time,
of just time, just  time,
time, time, time…
,

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.

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.

The pond was a quarry first,
a blast furnace to the colonies
where trains ran across its field.
“Iron Ore Bed” map points called it.
It was left to the rain when it dried up.

When his parents bought the land
twenty- five years before he was born,
the field was overgrown and the pond
was weedy and inaccessible.

Over the next few decades,
they cleared the area all around it,
diverted a nearby brook
to flow through it.  
It became the center of their life.

It was sixty feet deep with water
that was clear and warm.
It teamed with small trout, pickerel
and bass, shoals of gentleness that
passed by him and his cousins as they swam.  

Great blue herons, snowy egrets
would feast their briefly before
their Souh American migration,
always mindful of the need
for even quick hellos and goodbyes.

In his presence they would dip their wings
and then rise majestically over the pond
above the beech, birch and ash,
vanishing from his sight, beyond the horizon.

And then, always the rain would come,
the pond shimmering in the downpour
washing the pond mud and silt
from his arms and legs, the last
streaks of it from his hair.  

Afraid he would be struck by lightning,
he retreated to the screened in porch,
with everyone, out of the rain, playing
Monopoly in the coming firefly night.

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

I don’t get the feminine luxury of being
twenty-five  again every birthday past fifty.
For a year I must live with the snide joke  that
my actual age is a congress of crows position
illustrated in the karma sutra  (page 69).
Biologically I feel ten years older.  
Facially I look fifteen years younger.  
Every year there will be a different  joke
for the new number and another birthday.
But they say age is just a number .
You just  live with  the joke until
that final one comes up.

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.

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.

At lunchtime pigeons and pinstripes dance with Rockette syncopation in front of Radio City
following the lead of thirty balloons encased
in vinyl tugged down the 50th Street station.

A chauffeured limousine pops out
a freshly groomed and leashed Pomeranian
seeking reunion with her dowager owner
getting purple locks and cuticles nearby.

At the columned entrance of Manhattan Bridge
two lovers kiss at the Canal Street stoplight
while a Vespa owner stops near the pedestrian
walk to hitch the love of his life in full stride.

Black children in bowlers and their Sunday finest
share a car in the Connie Island Cyclone
with Hasidic eyngls from Avenue J
carefully protecting their yarmulkes.

In the South Bronx the children of 136th Street
practice belly flops on an abandoned mattress
before chickening out on the adjacent kiddie pool
decorated with aqua waves, clown fish and mermaids.

The Monday field trip will transport ten
young Harlem poets to the Schomburg Library
to eulogize when Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka
danced a jig on the ashes of Langston Hughes.

One will write a Christmas story about the time
Richard the reindeer took the Roosevelt Island
tram to bring  presents to the orphans
after Santa’s sled had fallen apart.

The rear view mirror showed the car on fire.
Metal no protection for burning flesh—
burning down to the color of the night—
a bright reversal reflected in white.
Maybe charred bone? Not hell. Neither heaven.
Police, EMTs too late to save the
tissues smelling like pan steak, fatty pork—
blood emitting its metallic compounds—
the burnt liver of organs— spinal gel    
a musky, sweet perfume less offensive
than wires, plastic, alloys, the circuitry
melting down every(all)things to its base.
He (it) never saw, tasted, felt the crash
coming from the back/front/side. But I did.

My dog finds a conch nestled in the sand-
half dead, half alive- in the foaming tide,
She paws at its exposed pinkness
ignoring the hermit crab seeking shelter.

The conch shrivels beyond its lip
the scent of dead flowers pouring out,
my dog in a frenzy to taste its exotic flesh,
this beautiful creature sheltering in place.

Resisting the urge to pluck it from its shell
I pick it up and toss it beyond her scent,
beyond the fear, disease, the quarantine
I must always return to in silence.

As the shell sinks back to its home,
I now know everything dies in the sand.

As I exit
the world of green dinosaurs
fused from abandoned rusty automobiles      
and steaming in  the sun,
a child offered me a giant peach
harvested from a Palisade tree
grown in the valley’s katabatic winds.
  
It tasted of harsh-sweet stolen pleasures,
lust and greed and love and dried fruit,
full of Ute tears and diverted waters,
memories between prayers and laments  
buried deep, sprouting new
on rolling plains laced with spice
breezes and Buffalo.

It had evolved flesh pregnant with two hemispheres  
to be split midway
by thumbs meant to be coated with pulp
juice pooling to palm lifelines.

I knew it fed me its sweetness
in cupped hands, not a gift
but a sacrifice to be sniffed
and tasted like an old vintage
barreled decades for a loving tongue.

Its red blush collapsed into
a  tawny mass that matched the day’s light,
remaining fuzzy flesh a gold skull—
the ancient colors full of guilt and redemption
and red shame and love and twilight,
a thing existing slightly
out of season, fully sweet
yet almost taboo, almost cursed,
the lustful last bite of life.

I bought a half dozen more peaches from the parent
standing slightly just behind the child
busy cradling them into a paper craft bag
rolling them into darkness far from light
and the frozen extinction crushed
by the din of overpass traffic from above.

I noticed the sun fade from the earth,
a scorned lover removing her gaze,
until there exists a tattoo
memory of love and ripening peaches.

I took the small change
aware that the peaches would rot to
mold, uneaten, unwanted, the pit unplanted.

Notes:

A katabatic wind  is a drainage wind, a wind that carries high-density air from a higher elevation down a ***** under the force of gravity.

As when his son, a pensive animal lover,
on his first hunt,
had to face the doe in his scope,
his first **** lined up for the taking,
breath held firmly before trigger plunge,
the forest circling, fear trembling his lips,
doe moving from view, gaze,
his father behind, a looming granite mountain
crushing him
like an avalanche of scold that he could not,
despite his determination,
could really climb from,
his finger unwilling to pull the trigger,
even with his father
tugging his arm in death’s directions
as the miss hit sap and freed doe
from their sight.

so facing his death
the father gripped the old bedsheets,
trigger fingers cocked
and son did not dare
slap his hands
away.

In the Charleston marketplace, a boutique auctions off
detailed limited edition replicas of black history: a slave
who hugs his chains upright over his porcelain hands,
is sold for $1200.00 to a man with a black Amex card,
a horde listening to the Emancipation Proclamation
goes for the same amount, Malcolm X gets $1000.00,
MLK just a little less, the OJ bobble heads sell for $60.00  
in the store’s gift shop while the white Bronco in
slow pursuit complete with flashing police lights
and breathless live commentary garners $2400.00,
Rosa Parks languishes at the rear eventually getting $300.00,
Eric Garner, Treyvon Martin, Rodney King are
part of lot sold for $500.00 clearance and a free
Black Lives Matter T-shirt, George Floyd gasping out
“I can’t breathe,” enshrined in a porcelain halo nabs
the same price, while the last figurine, of his murderer
being embraced by a very happy Donald Trump is
purchased by a man in a MAGA hat for $10,000.00.

It wasn’t
all the popcorn, hotdogs, candy
eaten in the dark that killed her.
Those things just caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all the boxes piled high
and then tumbling on her that cracked
her head and made her a corpse.
All that junk just caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all those clothes hung up on clotheslines
strung through her small apartment
that garroted her red, white and blue.
All that designer stuff just caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all the pots, pans and dishes in the sink
that needed to be scrubbed squeaky clean
that drowned her in less than a foot of water.
All those cookbook recipes just caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all those mops, sponges, buckets and brooms,
the bleaches, ammonia and other chemical cleaners
that gouged her lady parts and asphyxiated her too.
It’s just all that housekeeping caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all those books in floor to ceiling IKEA cases
that bibliated, Dewey Decimated her away.
It’s just all that knowledge caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all those fine soaps, shampoos and conditioners
that shrunk, desiccated and dissolved her away.
It was all that cleanliness that wasn’t next to
godliness that caught up with her.

It wasn’t
all those un-filed files that shocked
her coworkers, just her decapitated
head rolling on the company floor.
All that work just caught up with her.

On her tombstone it was etched:
LIFE FINALLY CAUGHT UP WITH HER.

The poet makes his gun out of any old thing:
sticks of words,  bird song, the swish of trees,
the pitter patter of the growing city around him,

The poet’s gun is never just a gun.
His poems are never just words.

Today, the poet’s gun is a rose—
thorns of wounding,  
warnings to admire its scent and beauty
from a respectful distance.

He fired it in the air knowing
that a gun that is a gun
is a little brook of death,
but since his gun was a rose,
it was dangerous and beautiful.

His verse exploded
blooming petals
shedding its crimson
like dew on the water.

It felt like rain.
It felt like pulsing veins.  
It felt like life being knocked over.
It felt like love bursting through.

The gun was a rose
and the gun was not death.
Out of anything he made it.
Tomorrow, it would be water.

Losing
a child never known
a mother known

love found
love lost

memories remembered
memories not remembered

old man’s tears
grief in womanly rags


heartbreak

These are the things he scribbles
in the little white paper of his brain:
catch the movement
of passing shadows in a window;
search the clouds
for the feathers of a robin’s wing;
listen in the spaces of music
for the laughter of angels in hiding.

These are the things she knows today,
yesterday and maybe tomorrow:
that car mirrors, puddles, all silvery things
reflect unmated and backwards smiles;
that fluffy clouds contain the best animals
but layered ones hold all her best dreams;
that Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah
leaves her aching, reaching, unformed.

These are the things their future holds:
she will be his forever song,
the smile that remains in the shards,
they will be the only mirror they know,
that cotton days will pillow their dreams
and nimbus nights will rain their pain,
their life will be Hallelujah and prayer
and tiny angels will be their best dreams.

A fossil in foam, five toes under a formed sole,
preserves the flight of a thousand border treks.

A layer of thermite and blood settles the right pad
of every hastily fled soul, a rusty preservation
of the ash of those who were enflamed.

Their left clod is encased with the dirt of broken roads,
the green of weeks of refuge in the forest from patrols,
the gray movement from villages to mountains and back.

At night they would mend and repair, knotting
broken y’s with twigs, rope threads, thatch,
anything that will last one more day.

The young’s heels are scuffed with the abrasions
left from the playful kicking parents endure
carrying them on their shoulders.

The old heels are full of the bristle
of slow moving donkeys led
by sons and daughters taking turns.

Under the shelter of grey canvas
their trek ends with fresh water,
food, a sturdy cot and new sandals.

The old plastic soles will rest in honor
on the mantle of their new hut,
ready for the next journey.

For a week
a blue fly
buzzed around our apartment
subsisting on our Pomchi’s water,
kibble
and kitchen counter crumbs
and dodging attempts
by my wife to swat it.

I used to catch flies
quite easily in my palm
and release them back
to their natural estates
but since my colon surgery
the bugs are always winning.

Today,
there was a grey spider,
maybe a brown recluse,
silently gazing
at the bathtub drain.
I could not find a container
to capture it,
so I turned on the faucet
to the lowest cold
and highest flow
and watched the creepy crawly
circle the drain three times
before it vanished
into the mercies
of the Chattanooga sewers.

I was convinced  
that it could survive
by rafting itself  
onto to the nearest ****,
both a source
of refuge and sustenance,
that my Puerto Rican
family of Marine Tigers
living in Miami
(at the time
when Castro refugees
all mythically made
the 330 mile trip
on ten fallen coconut palms
thatched together,
and audaciously declared
eight street,” Calle Ocho”
and their new land,” Little Havana”)
contemptuously called,
back in my racist youth,
a “floating Cuban.”

When I came into the bedroom
my wife was waving around
her big brand-new blue fly swatter,
the one she bought at Dollar Tree.

Our Pomchi, also on the bed,
resting on her back
with her legs up in the air
and stomach joyfully exposed
was barking for a good hard belly rub.

Whack, whack, whack
went the fly swatter,
squarely hitting our little girl
in her sweet spot,
generating ******* squeals.

The blue fly,  
affectionately    
called Mike Pence
for its habit of landing
unnoticed on
any old white thing for
two minute and three seconds,
and now, a visiting family member
that had overextended its stay
more days than
were humanely bearable,
was buzzing around my wife’s head.

Its movement was noticeably slower
and when it landed on the faux leather arm
of my multi position reclining chair,
I was almost able to snag it in my palm.
Too tired to buzz afar,
it rested again on the arm,
weakly regurgitating its own spittle.

I called my wife over,  
a former professional chef
and therefore an expert
in the art of
preparing, cooking and eating
dead things,
knowing she be eager to try out
her new instrument of death.

A sure aim sent the Blue
to the skin colored **** carpet,
and in its last struggle
I started to sing inside the only
song that would be
a proper elegy:

La cu-ca- | ra-cha, la cu-ca-ra-cha
| ya no pue-de ca-mi-nar
por-que no | tie-ne, por-que le fal-tan
| las dos pa- titas "de" a-trás. —

("The cockroach, the cockroach /
can no longer walk /
because she doesn't have, because she lacks / the two hind legs to walk.”)

I imagined it
crying out
“Help me! Help me!”
like the half human,
half insect creature
caught in the spider web
at the end of that
old Vincent Price
creature feature
were death by big rock
was a mercy
compared to
arachnoid decapitation.

Whack
and the Blue’s head
was severed
from its thorax.
Whack
and its wings
flew East and West.
Whack
and its abdomen
closely followed.
Whack
and its legs
buckled under it.
Whack
a final time
to make sure
it was dead.  

My wife had
over-killed,
and the worst
cardinal sin,
had over-cooked
something that
was meant
to be tartare.

Still our Pomchi
sniffed, licked
and eventually ate
the Blue,
her smile
declaring it
the best thing
she swallowed
all week.  

For a half hour
my wife rewarded her
with the swat, swat, swat
of blue belly rubs.  

Note:
Marine Tiger was the ship that carried people from Puerto Rico, and so the white people in New York started calling all the Puerto Rican people ‘Marine Tigers.’

It soothes me to keep
the clutter of the past
in picture albums
on my cell phone:
mother’s yellow dresses,
ashes in weighted urns,
brittle  
birth and death certificates,
enough heirlooms
to make a portable history,
things heavy enough
to resist memory’s drift,
for when
the hills blaze up
and I have to evacuate,
leave everything behind—
I am ready to
be an immigrant
once more.

Rising from the watery mist the
grey sea church blesses the waves
and prays to the sky,
lonely, unadorned,
a silver carven wing,
folded in limbo,
as its sea bells peel out the
redemption of sand and stone.

Its three pillars  
drawn from sea’s breath
are stained aquamarine,
and on its grey stone altar,
embraced with God’s gentle love,
nestle the souls of sea birds
home at last from their long journey
and the hazards of ocean and sky.

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.

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.

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.

Bury  them with their Motanka,
doll tight in their hands.

Dress them in that  yellow
fleece wanted and put back on the shelf,

two wreaths of  roses and gerberas
adjacent their crypt,

filled with their birth smells,
the sandalwood,  jasmine of the crib,

a towel and a bowl of water
near to wipe their tears.

Flood the nave lightly  dark
so they may chase the path of birds.

Recite the names they gave
the fowl, flowers, everything.

Only you must remain ignorant
of the sun and the dark.

Only you would pray to re-turn
amniotic time to have them again,

nine months to split the seeding moment,
to be be flesh renewed, a new word within you.

Only you will thirst to
return drop by by red drop

the blood spilled from them
to the wanting womb.

Only you will drag their sled
from church to cemetery.

You will feast with others
on the third, ninth, the fortieth

day of their passing, feast again
on the sixth month and the annum,

for each one day past Easter
for another forty Provodies.




Notes on the Ukrainian funeral rites and rituals mentioned in the poem:

On the days of Ukrainian funerals, a bowl of drinking water and a towel are left for the dead as a spiritual offering. This is done because it is believed that the soul of the deceased drinks the water and uses the towel in order to wash away the tears along the way.

Moreover, Ukrainians abstain from drinking water in the presence of the body of the deceased.

Another Ukrainian traditions is to use a sled to move the body of the deceased from the funeral service to the burial site.

They have a feasting ritual in which members of the community join to feast on the third, ninth and fortieth days after a death has occurred. These feasts are also repeated on the six month and one year anniversaries of the death of a person. Ukrainians also commemorate the lives of their ancestors on the days following Easter. It is believe that this puts the spirits of their ancestors at ease so they can continue to rest in peace. This Ukrainian remembrance festivity is referred to as “Provody”.

The mainly faceless Motanka dolls can be found in every region of the Ukraine.  They are a symbol of women’s wisdom and family bounds.  In Orthodox Catholic regions of the Ukraine the face of a Motanka is made of a cross— a symbol of not only their faith but also sun and light, not only a good luck charm but also a symbol of well-being.

The child looks out her toy window
and imagines her adult self sailing  
on the blue ocean of the old hat box
that holds her communion veil.
Her childhood dances alone
along the berm’s dawn light as
the sloop plies onto the sand.
They hug and gallop horses
******* in the vanishing mist
while Tess, the sea turtle fairy,
prepares a picnic spread on
play plates filled with strawberry
swirls, blue napkins tucked into
triangles, and origami sandwiches
with the crust cut off, of course.

The adult stares out her picture
window and before noticing
the green lushness of all things
just outside her purview,
catches the reflection of
her wrinkle hands atop
her wrinkled knees—
and the stale crumb
from her breakfast toast
falling to the floor
for her cat to sniff.

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.

As the moon dips behind
Earth’s faint outer shadow
in penumbral eclipse
an imperceptible darkness
seizes my soul in fear

I wait futilely,
like the ancients,
for the next
blood red cycle
to engulf the world
in ignorance and violence,
the next monster
to bite the earth
into a crescent slice.

They once watched
Luna dance
before Apollo
and gift him
her halo.

Now it’s
just the umbra,
the wispy white haze
shining in the daytime sky
left behind
when the new moon
glides in front
of the sun.

Bury me not in a high tomb of gloom
on days sacred to all your lonely heart
nor scatter my ashes in the pale moon
on June’s or September’s early-late start.

Mix me in with all my good beastlies‘ dust,
one third reserved for Elsi’s sweet embrace,
two parts crushed into diamonds that not rust
worn near heart or hurled to a far star trace.

If thy can’t bear part with my ash and bones
plant me in a petunia ***, blond bloom
monitored by your sweet echoing tones  
growing forever in our living room.

Either way I was loved, I cried, I sighed,
I aspired and created all under your tide.

It comes like He came
on the longest, darkest night
of the longest darkest year
proclaiming all
the glory of God and the
beauty of planets and suns.

The old gods have been
exiled to the sky
and their movements
are barely the echoes
of the Grand Breath.

Apollo and Selene
have long since danced and
and their brief kiss
eclipsed the day to night
prompting the Huemul
to seek the Araucaria’s shade,
the Hornero the Ceibo’s lower boughs.

The Geminis brushed the
skirt of Europa with fire
and Orion’s arrow
glowed brightly
in the harsh dark
winter air in anticipation
of their passing.

Each score years,
in the nadir of winter,
Jupiter and Saturn
form a conjunction
barely the width
of three full moons
in the southwest sky
that shone the brightest
two millennium past
in the Bethlehem dark
and blessed the child
gazing up at
His Father’s  creation.

Would be tyrants
may clumsily plot
the overthrows of countries
but the stars remain
fixed, determined
steady and unmovable
to even the strongest
push of Hercules
and indifferent to
the troubles and strife
beneath them.

Yet The Breath
impels the planets
to revolve around
a million suns
and hope is greater
than those who angst
over tomes that proclaim
the end of everything
and the prophets
that declare
the end of all time is nigh.
  
The barred owl who resides
in the old knotted elm,
who persists to live in the hole
despite the attempts of crows
to chase it away
knows that the generosity
of every inhale and exhale
is but the revolution of a
breath greater than itself,
one with no beginning or end,
just the explosion
of the original blessing.

Jupiter and Saturn will always
revel in their holy conjunction
and take delight whenever
the sun and moon
breathlessly play tag
with each other’s shadow
knowing that its light will
shine score years
over a thousand Bethlehems.



Notes:

Selene is the Greek moon goddess.

The recent lunar eclipse was the brightest in both Argentina and Chile.

Heumel and Araucaria are deer and tree
species of Chile.

Hornero and Ceibo are bird and tree species of Argentina

Death, I notice, often comes
with a smile and a kiss,
a tender tuck of blanket into legs,

a pull to the shoulders
making shroud complete,
a tender whispered secret.  

“Good bye” or “Good life”,
it might be saying.
But so does love.  

2

The  light of the cancer center
is so clean, clear and bright
that it makes me squint

pondering whether the jovial trucker
with the Tennessee drawl
and the St Nicholas beard and physique,

on his fifth dance with the Big C,
that started in his eye
and remission to his liver,

is a harbinger or heavenly host,
a glint from the gaze of God
or the last secret whisper of love.

3

When he is awol the next week
I assign him to the casualty list
knowing that I am the lucky survivor.

I am the thick among the thins
and he is the blessing angel
destined to return to the Lord.

I live with the ambivalence,
the hope and the guilt,
looking for dancers among the blasted.

4

I refuse to name my cancer
not granting it control
or even the idea of breath.

The drugs, however, that’s different.
Oxaliplatin is oxygen.
Leucovorin is lungs.

They pour into my port
and in the liquid air
I learn to breathe again.