“…the country around us is a circle sunk in the mirage.”
–Tayeb Salih, The Season of Migration to the North

Trudging a barrenness
soaked by illusion,
heat-warped.

Why is there a projection
upon the air? Tireless dictator
can’t succumb to the desert—can’t.

Underneath the shaping
of haze, underneath meaning
is you tethered to wandering.

But a lizard is a lizard–
the cloak of meaning
makes you more.

The country is projected
upon the haze. It is yours.
It has meaning. It is meaning.

Another culture, the sun,
mingles with its air, dissolves
its definiteness.

Now your country is
transitory: the desert becomes
realer than a mirage.

But the sun’s pressing
can’t be all. There is something.
You walk closer. It moves.

Death throbs throughout
her body. (She pushed
the needle, and her eyes
are tethered to the empty,
white ceiling.)

Her mind clings to Michael
who’s fixated on the swings.
He is released and attacks
the playground. Why is he so
happy? Finally, his eyes pull
away from the sand, he waves.
She tries to push a smile,
but she can tell–from his changing
face–he is learning.

The bugs don’t disappoint—
their bodies pop as the light-beam snaps
life away. You like it as well
but in the man, shredded by bullets,
on a show watched by millions.
Something within tunes us
to the greatness of others
dying. I know it’s wrong,
but I’m human, and there are bugs.

I worry about the husky gentleman
that shot Lennon, not because I fear
he’ll come after me, but because he might
be reading this poem. Some bad ideas
are planted by words–their meanings
irrelevant to a brain saturated
by mania and lust. Yet, I still worry
that my innocent verse might form the fuel
for some catastrophic force.

But what if nothing occurs? This poem could enter
for a moment and leave forever, only imparting
a few more minutes filled, or it could be fuel
for a warmer Wednesday evening, leaving
the body more content and the mind
unaltered. . . Somehow, the husky gentleman
has gotten smaller.

The sky is in a fit.
The land whispers
To the wind
To engulf
Our flames.

And when the sun returns,
A few more will have to be buried.
This isn’t our land.

Outside glows, snow sinks
between grass blades
I catch a baseball.

Priest pushes my hand
to know the candle’s flame.

The red wick watches, I fall
into the burning.

Heads bob over waves, another couple
passes. Bennett on his bath towel,
burying his fingers in the sand,
legs pointing toward the sea.

Tries to escape through summer’s haze,
but only recalls the room some years ago:
students speaking of Antigone and he
finally uttering a thought, but his thought
Is thought superfluous. A silence entering
Bennett. Bennett becoming that silence.

But suddenly he is here again,
watching the muttering old man
with his metal detector.
The old man stops, his ugly
voice hushes, and bends
down to grasp the Earth.
He wonders what is there.

The mob of eyes watch
from the stands the shivering thing
preparing its plummet.

But the thing’s eyes behold
the clouds swelling
with blackness, a storm
somehow trapped
within the gym, bouncing
the springboard
with merciless air.

It was once a lauded machine,
piercing through the water
like a diamond. But, now I see
some pale creature, its little head
watching waves in the pool
distorted by the storm’s will.

Boos and jeers mingle
with the storm’s howling.
I want the diver to dive,
to defy every force,
to sustain an elegance
before the destructive
everything. But it just stands
there, contemplating.
And now my voice joins
the disgruntled chorus.

Finally, the diver goes
slowly down the ladder.
The wave of boos overpowers
the storm’s wailing.
I look around, and next to me
is a child staring into his phone,
I grab it and launch it
into the air, but the phone
misses the diver and plops
into the water. I watch
the diver descend as the child
scolds me for my faulty throw.

I.

They move away from the sky
to surround a certain park bench.
Everyday, at noon, a hand is there
with the bread.

II.

A crow with a treasure
in its beak, hops away from the rest,
to a nearby puddle. It stares
at the water before dipping
its bread, and swallowing.

III.

Noon again, the birds wander
around the grass, heads cocking
and making noise–their hand is gone.

IV.

A head emerges from a hole
in the bush, its eyes wary
of the world’s movement.
Its furry body appears
in the open.

V.

Rabbits wait underneath
the park benches.  The swings
have stopped moving.

VI.

Squirrels journey from their tree,
past the bike wrapped in rust.

VII.

A small dog walks alone across the grass
followed by a pink leash, into
the brown hawk’s vision.

VIII.

The birds have flown,
marking the sky with their formations
and the rabbits cross the empty road.

The pit of hell eclipses the ******
toilets in the mind of the lone security guard.
He had informed the right people
of the breath of feces spoiling the air,
the spilling of porta-potties dampening
the earth and a girl’s smelly shoes.

But now a man onstage informs, “Um,
there’s a fire…” The mountain of flame
overtakes the crowd. A 10 year-old barks
at the *** onstage. The last guard
ditches the show.

And Ted tosses an empty can where others
have piled, smells something. His friends
were taken by the crowd, purple darkens
on his arm and he wishes he was less bored.
He follows two pretty girls (finally!) but a group
of pale apes finds them and coerces their flesh to be
revealed. He tries to catch the cacophony in the air,
but noise bludgeons. Soon smoke
engulfs the night. Ted makes it home.

The sun doesn’t startle away
the heft of last night’s image.
There was the street light and the twitching
eyelid, three teeth coated in yellow.
A bellowing that smothered
and the feeling that the old man did not know
of himself.

The contortion of skin: his face,
gapped. A voice lashes at the air.
There are no words. Arms stretch.
There are the hands. A mistake.
He shambles and swipes, finally
he pushes a fist into you, creating
the fall. Now his nails claw
at your chest. Your hand thrusts
up into his gray face, then you push
him off and stand. You throw
the old man down and pummel
his chest with your boots, marking
the ground with flesh, and then
you are gone.

And even though you left him strapped
to the street light’s glow, memory
tightens as you walk down
the harbor, letting its breeze
know your neck.

Stanley is the kicking,
the spinning in the park.
Our days are finally taken
over by a frenzied life.

The biting tells
us he is too much
for others. The TV is great
for him. Life is still.

He sleeps. He doesn’t tell
us about his favorite shows.
There is a sighing. A change moves
throughout the house.

Stan is all upstairs,
we only hear his door
and the screams
of video games.

Is present once again
in his blackened room,
hears songs in the trees.
The window glows: the sun
reaches all, and doesn’t care
about your comb-over.

Darkness leaves the world,
life refills the street:
cars commuting, bodies shifting
across concrete, passing
familiar others. Emil enters.

He watches the girl
over there: greasy black hair,
paled skin. She is pretty
in her damaged way.
Emil shoves away
Those thoughts, bites
into his McMuffin:
these are getting better.

Slow through the park,
Emil lingers. Joggers in their routes,
a Frisbee keeping itself in the air
until sputtering in the trim grass–
Emil overlooks everything.

He sees the marks glow
underneath his secretary’s
sleeves. He staggers over,
smiling, “I heard what you said,
that your girlfriend broke-in
and bit you in the arm.
If you need to, you can
stay at my place
for a while.” She smiles
a smile Emil’s been aware of
since middle school,
when girls wouldn’t even look
at him and his acne-scars twice.

He opens his door, and walks
within the black, only outlines
of things show. He flips the light
switch. Only he can alter this world.

He shrinks to a hush
below purple sky – this air,
soft and beckoning,

carries a mute voice
that teethes at the brain, killing
the pull of his son’s

image. Now two eyes,
paled and tearing, watch the speck
of light grow greater

than the stars. His arms
raise to the light like a babe
grasping for papa.

Peculiar life pushes into brown bodies
that scrape the tile outside. A brittle leaf
is given action and moves toward the chairs,
but then quiets. Another moment and the leaf
tumbles away from the shade. There is no life
other than what the passing gust allows.
No life there, just the wind’s pulling, and the mind
giving life to the wind.

She lost that light,
the only thing that shone
in Philipsburg, Montana. She’s been away
for fifteen years, still remembers them
begging her to stay, but she left
to make herself into something
great. Now, she isn’t
the star of any place, still waiting
tables until lunch is over.

Or maybe,
she never starved for anything
larger than a lifetime of wondering
about TV shows and of hoping
for a gentle moment–she waits
because she’s never thought
of anything more.

So, there is nothing
that can arise from this
except for the ultimate
leveling: Maya Angelou
and Wallace Stevens: equals,
until opinion renders
their worth.

And the canvas colored
by Magritte’s vision is equal
to a child’s ***** matter
framed in a special place,
until your eye comes
and favors one over the other.

Yes, I’m ready to accept
this fate if it means no one
can ever declare
that my **** stinks
and makes the air faint.

Air slips through the forest
thick with howling.
The heads of trees guard the sky
from my desperate eyes.
Darkness wraps around
my hand.

Now I reflect on the dying
car, the clogged freeway,
not getting my promotion.
And Lena, filled with clinging
images–based on the neglected
text messages–curses me
for running-off with the barista.

I walk alongside my roommate
from college, “life is like a forest,”
the bush rattles him out. I stop
and change direction. I’ve changed
my direction before. Now it’s a poem
that glows before me. You must change
your life. I didn’t need this, I didn’t.
I would have changed.

It took him six tries
to get it up. His *****
was somewhat
defective. His body
was a greasy blob
and after he came,
he vomited on the bed
and kicked me out,
threw a bottle at my head
but missed terribly.

and when he died
I defecated
all over his face. Seriously,
**** that guy.

“The horse is awkward
as it tries to tear itself from the gripping
mud. Spit slung the air, and grace
turned to the ease of slipping.”

The poet relayed this
tale, told me it represented
humanity. He also said
that the artist pierces
the dirt of reality, receives
music from the noise
and chips the impenetrable
block to grab its beauty.
And so the poet tried to pull
the horse from its mud:

“I watch its fading
to the muck—there is the eye that defines
it. Hours fall, I finally head to my room
and try to pull the horse. But the horse’s eye
is only silence. I see it—but no words, except
for the mud and the greatness of its hand.”

A nothingness wrapped
in mediocrity owns this
wall, owns your gaze.
Mere sheets and hints
of printed words pinned
to immensity, slathered
in greater glumps of white,
but the description makes it
less as you learn the painting
somehow represents
the communities fractured
by Eisenhower’s highways.
You look at it, then back
at the description. You step
away and travel to the video-
foot exhibit—a boot decimates
pumpkin pie on a screen,
and all you can do is thank God
that there isn’t a description
for this as well.

The body sits, watched
by birds. Some rest found
in the dark palm
of shade. He imagines
the desert
pushed underneath
the largest ocean
which is guiding him,
slowly like the air,
toward an end.

But desert returns
and the dirt is dry within
his hand.

A thing that blossoms from the air:
the air; nothing blossoms
from you. The earth is itself, and fills
its own definition for the eyes
to claim dominion over
progress. Cause-and-effect isn’t
the mind’s sculpture, but the universe’s
movement to the self. The canvas
isn’t marked by the empty; the painting
is without our hands, painting its own
form, and moves us to itself. It is
not ours, but we become it.

Another building jumps
into the terrain, its lights charge
the hollering in the barbershop.
I remember how you hated
those who defended the sanctity
of this place, now you stand there
alongside the protesting.

‘The renewal is eating-up
the neighborhood,’ you say,
‘this is our home,’ but this is no home
for rising. Even when they level
the derelict charm of tenements,
there will always remain those who yell
at the progress of things. You stand firm,
believing in the value of this place
and this life, and you will teach
our child to value the comforts
of squalor. You see me behind a counter
to feed our son, but I won’t see him,
bitter, or worse, in love with this
hole. I’m leaving, but you will always stay–
Fear is your life.

“Behold the fragility
kept within this space.
I used to be the voice
that made their souls,
but behold my fragility,
kept within.”

But no light has been
erased from those eyes
which hover higher
than the muck of living.
Nothing has faded within
this singer, not even the song
shackled to her weakness,
its dying unheard.