If the Earth blew up from the center,
in a hot, red explosion,
and turned to nine colossal rocks,
and you stood in your yellow kitchen,
then froze?

America on a map!
Imagine the northeast corner.
I am in Vermont riding the Amtrak southbound. It's raining.
The clattering of wheels tearing through rusty iron tracks.
Forehead against the cold window's glass,
I hear a steam whistle.
I look out the window: grey, drizzling.
We roll,
past the barbed-wire fences that crown the prison fence,
past great, soggy fields littered with old tractors, and misty mountains far behind,
past brown silos that rise up, thick and crowned with silver heads,
past a deer leaping through a rainy field,
past a propane company--five great, white propane tanks,
past a marsh, harpooned by a telephone pole--a sparrow jumps off the wire,
a cemetery on a green hill,
little brick towns,
the Interstate--rainbow colored tipi in a field behind,
past a great, charcoal cliff, hard with sharp creases like a crumpled piece of black construction
        paper buried,
past a Sunoco station--green dumpster in the parking lot,
into a thick wood--past the cold rocks,
past brown leaves poking through the dusting on forest floor,
past all the pines, which have dandruff,
past twiggy sapling branches, only leaves withered and curled like dried jalapenos,
over a bridge--the great, cold river, wide and glassy--islands of ice and snow--the riverbank dirt is
        hard.
The bell dings thrice.
The train begins to slow.
It stops, jerks me back in my seat.
The steam whistle blows.
I look out the window.

Concrete platform, dark red station & roof,
a crowd of boys and girls, standing with perfect posture in sharp blue uniforms, hats adorned with
        golden crests,
they march on the train
and fill up the seats
of The Great Metal Snake: hollow and in it people sit,
The Great Metal Snake: slithering down the state,
It will leave me in a small city soon,
at an overcast station,
and slither down to D.C.,
and slither back, with the oily clatter of spinning iron wheels . . .
We took the snakes,
out of of our nightmares,
slimy green sliding through cupped hands to jump and bite your cheek, hanging like a lanyard,
or sliding through the sweat of jungle-floors waiting to bite ankles,
or coiled in redbarns, on piles of hay with spiders dropping down cold open windows in front of
        full moon,
full moon: silver train wheel.
I hear the steam whistle.

We took the snakes,
out of our nightmares,
dissected them with scalpals,
nodded and walked to the drawing board then built.
Decades later, the unveiling:
The platform crowd leans over the tracks and looks,
the bell dings thrice,
the steam whistle hisses,
the engine is coughing,
wheels are chugging--
around the corner He came,
with great, clear eyes like glasses:
black, iron Anaconda of Industry.
His brothers are barreling
From New York to Sacramento,
Siberia to Stalingrad,
Italy to France,
under the English channel,
down Africa.
From Burlington to Brattleboro--
barreling down the state--
I am riding His brother home.

The lake is like an old mirror.
A great rain cloud hangs.
The boats zigzag.
Their sails are whipping.
On the wet docks, men scream.
The bells, the bells,
and a floating yellow raincoat.

I staggered through the desert, dressed
in brown rags,
ripped. I was surrounded by flies.
They picked at my sweaty forehead,
spoiled my food.
I had in an old wicker basket two crisp apples,
which are brown
now, thanks to those flies.
My feet are dry, cracked and ******,
not from flies—
from hot scorpions.
They hide under sand
and pick at my feet.
One day I left my house n’went for a walk; kicked open my front door
        walked over the old stone bridge over water bright and blue, for
        miles and miles,
on footpaths by little rivers, through mossy forests,
knee-deep in marshes,
hiking over rocky, cold mountains,
stammering across the plains.
I saw the desert:
punched me in the gut.
Beautiful,
I thought—
immortal.
A great tornado of sand
came whisking from the dunes. I checked
my watch: The glass was shattered. The hands were bent crooked.
I unstrapped
my watch and threw it
on the edge of the desert and
I sprinted toward the endless tan horizon, kicked off my rotten shoes
        to feel the hot sand between my toes and ran. I fell and fell asleep.

I was bored in my old, old house.
The floor was always swept to shine,
my bookcase:
big, glossy, oak monstrosity.
And no, I did not have a wife,
or children.
I lived in a sunny village,
paved with stone.
By the fountain, birds sang, merchants sold felt and mallets.
I’m too tired for explanations.
And besides,
there is no trick, I left to leave,
to run and jump and roll and howl.

I knew it would end,
like this or something similar.
I decided to
just lie down,
and the vultures came like a great black cloud to circle,
and the heat,
the headache,
my body buzzed cooled a dizzy, breaking feeling came and body was freed
        like ice smashing to shards . . . on desert floor, old rags drenched
        in sweat-body.
I open my eyes wide.
I keep them open.
Tears come to my eyes.
I let the sun blind me.
I turn over on my side and close my eyes, see red.
My eyelids are hot.
The vultures caw
and shriek like
squealing pigs.
I’m dizzy and my head feels thick.
The vultures will eat me,
rip my skin with beaks,
and the flies will buzz around me
until I’m bones, but
I came here just to come here,
and I lied here just to lie, and
I lived just to live,
so then I’ll die now just to die.

Great gusts of wind rattle the windows,
howling, howling,
I sit at my desk,
and peer out my window:
A lit door in a
driveway, I see it through dancing
twigs through black of night:
the house of my neighbor

He comes to the door in a grey robe, opens it,
his sniffle echoes to my window,
an orange cat runs out,
skitters with soft paws across the cold pavement out of the spotlight-streetlight, behind a
           dumpster,
The wind, the wind,
it's shaking my building,
it's whipping the belt of his robe.
I close my eyes.

I open my eyes.
City Hall: white steeple, gold dome,
City Hall is illuminated purple out the window,
out the window:
streetlights, lit windows, dancing trees,
I focus my eyes, see myself.
I look angry.

Sound of a siren,
I look down,
back,
in the driveway,
blue and red lights,
a squadcar is parked.
I can't do this, I think.
I'm tired.
My building shudders in the wind,
don't want to say too much,
don't want to say
too little.

I know that when I die,
I want crow's feet
next to my eyes.

Life is sweet and sad, I think.
I'm sitting on a desk chair made of wood.
I hear my heart beating.
Living is strange, I think.
It's night.
I look out the window.
I see the reflections of the things on my desk:
a yellow bottle of Bayer,
an empty pack of rolling papers,

It's 1997.
My mom is standing over the sink, rinsing out a plastic gallon-jug of milk.
The kitchen is sunny.

A photograph, taken at dusk, of Tokyo & Mt. Fuji looming behind,
a line, running horizontally across the middle of a photograph;
below it, the city: a field of lit buildings & streets,
buildings: blocks & cylinders of rock, metal, glass and light—
streets: human rivers of car-lights,
the glowing orange Tokyo Tower rises like a great sword to fight the sky—

above it, the mountain: great, wide cone of rock & soil, with a cap of snow,
wisps floating up its ridges,
the cold, purple sunlight kissing its backside;
his peak is looking down at the city.
It is waiting,
like a grandfather,
while the wild, excited boy, pours Elmer’s glue on orange construction paper,
         ruining the rug,
the mountain is waiting.
The mountain is stronger,
and when the children move out,
he will rock in his chair,
as always.

Blaze of a rubble-car a man in faded jeans shouts, hurls a bottle -- smash -- a thousand shards of
        broken glass shine orange on crowded street.

Shouts, cries, infants sobbing loud---sirens, car alarms, a man ***** back his hand,
         holding a brick---the crack of a driver's-side window breaking. Wild yells---everyone is
         sprinting. Fire & wailing.

Sunny afternoon---birds sing in treetops; a woman under shade on sunlit grass in brown rags & an
         old hijab sobs over a slab of concrete, decorated with flowers
and a photograph
with a golden frame.

A field of barley,
shining to the horizon—
it sways with the wind.

Looking at the bay,
fog blankets the lake,
ships zig-zag, leaving trails.

The sky is clear & bue,
sea aqua to the horizon—
a shark thuds the hull.

We chased the heavens
out of the sky, into space.
They start on the ground.

‘Sticks’ and ‘stones' may break my bones,
But themselves are only words
Everything is touching, so why are you blushing?
You fools, Iraqis are Kurds.

Eyes open,
a fly on the white ceiling ---
the fly jumps

Like nine men stood in a circle, threw spears at the same spot of ground,
and the spears grew into a tree ---
like an old hand,
like an upside down, petrified giant squid
          with its head buried in brown dirt,
like nine crooked, branchy masts
the tree out my window ----
half its leaves are dead & dangle like little brown crispy bells;
half its leaves are green & on underside have yellow veins.
It's fall, October.
Under its shade, shadows of windblown leaves flutter on packed, cold dirt.
Top three branches like a trident against blue sky
          (three small clouds track past),
Top of the top leaf, a sharp angle,
At bottom, nine trees growing in different
           directions from the same spot, gnarled roots,
           old and  twisted.
Branches sway with the wind.
The trunks are still.
"Why are you writing poems?" he says.

                                                          ­                                                                 ­                 *--- Burlington, 2013

North America: Hornets buzz in a stinky green
         dumpster
Pidgeon's feet clasp the edge of a skyscraper
          rooftop

South America: Moonlight in the jungle ---- rain
          pats a thick, fleshy leaf ---- a yellow eyed
          panther slowly blinks once

Asia: Edge of the desert ---- a boiling mirage
          scorpion skitters across dry, cracking soil

North America: Wyoming high plains ---- cool
          gusts ---- hulking, brown bison chews grass

Africa: Wrinkly old woman in a hospital gown
         squeezes the cot's cold metal bars, then feels
         nothing, squints at the florescent light above,
         then sees nothing, listens to the drone of
         medical machines ---- silence

Europe: A  child is born in the sterile light
        of the delivery room, naked, slimy, sobbing

    
                                    *--- Burlington, VT, 2013

O four twenty six AM night in small city apartment bedroom studying alone, under stars, under
             roof,
Steaming green porcelain teacup on sill of window propped open by ownerless two
            by-four
O Steam, rising into cool wind, swirling, disappearing in howling black night to silver
            maple leaves on limbs of giant bushy tree lathering in wind.
Desk light, O, my desk is covered in court cases,
Fugitive slave in shack by river staring glassy-eyed in oil lamp at pink dawn weeping,
***** in rags shuddering in corner sweating, lacerated by whip of laughing bearded
    man in gallon hat
and my spliff ash on twelve scattered pages.
O awe, teacup, steam and cool wind dancing, tree
    fanning in great commotions of wind-breaths through the window
Buzzing on energy pill I sat in black leather desk chair gazing, stood up, walked quietly in socks
    and grabbed the mug, extended my arm ***** out window in icy air
grasping Olympian Statue of Liberty torch of steaming green tea I brought my
    head through window looked up and cool-eyed I saw a star.

Ulrich finds comfort in knowing
he could seek a lethal dose of medication
to hasten his death.
Ulrich was standing
next to the governor on Monday afternoon,
sun pouring in the oaky office,
as he signed
the bill into law.

Doctors and hospitals
and state officials
are scurrying to prepare.
Soon, the state Health Department
will get forms ready.
The lethal medication
is a liquid that the patient must
self-administer.

Hastening death;
akin to
yanking out feeding tubes
and removing respirators,
is not suicide, they say.
The underlying illness
would be listed
as the cause of death.

Matte grey metal rises and falls
splashing gently in some blue open ocean.
you can hear the ***** creaking, the stressing
like old giant door hinges.

A hundred feet up,
crisp red flags are whipping,
and down on the wooden deck
a line of sailors
salute the endless sheet of water.

Automatic doors part
and he faces –
with exposed skin brown and **** cloth –
the produce section,
little feet padding calmly across the cold white tile.
He pauses before a bumpy ***** of red onions.

“Ahima,” he whispers.
Low in the blue Idaho sky,
near Sand Hollow’s green ground,
a Grumman Ag Cat
applies insecticide to an onion field.

On a grey day
in the green sea,
under the moon,
the wind howling,
the waves walloping,
enveloped in slime as a newborn,
on the cold wooden floors
of a glossy blue jack boat,
with a thick, white canvas sail –
born alone –
whitecaps rolling and breaking
flurry blistering,
the small boat,
like a model,
rocking,
is blown in all directions...

Trapped lying back,
like a turtle,
knees and elbows wiggle,
suddenly the malleable hand clutches
a near dry piece of bread on the floor
and swats it into dry chewing
swallows –
thirsty...

A hard wave pushing
up and back
the little body flips,
moving on hands and knees toward
a jar of water
at the tip of the hollow bow while
crawling past,
the rough-hewn mast,
a wave hiccups and
the soft shoulder bumps –
like clay it’s remolded,
one up, one down

dragging along, limp
a tumble over...

A fast gust and
a whirling gyration
of a tip,
the too-weak weak, small hands
that tickle when trying
to twist the metal lid
off the jar,
leave the thirst caking
the roof of his mouth desert,
tongue parched.
waves sprinkling
a cool mist
on those tender cheeks.

A heaving swell
billows
the swaying jack
and wheels the balmy tot towards the flat-backed stern.
on his way rolling
he collides again with the mast,
and his workable spine
folds in two:
he is dead.

An awesome tempest
that will come in the morning
has sent scouts,
and with them whispering hums of expected carnage,
that rattle the polished blue clapboards.
The floor had been dry once,
under the moonlight –
on that orphic birth,
the whole floor,
everything but the damp shadow
of primordial ooze
underneath the fretful body, kicking and clawing to flip,
had all been dusty like a shop.

And in some moments,
when this poem wasn’t watching,
the unsubstantial body would run one of the tenuous fingers
from one of its embryonic, plushy hands

across the coarse plywood –
slimmer than a board an amateur martial artist
might brag about breaking,
And he would build, along the wood floor,
little trails of dust, his extremity mindlessly tracking
to create aisles that
ants might march through,
the little walls of the finger’s wake like tan snowbanks.

The gale came and passed, and in the sunny blue morning we found
that the boat had kicked the mangled infant’s body out
into the clear sea.
Cheeks no longer dry like sawdust,
eternally pruned, saturated:
sponge of a boy who spent a dead lifetime
floating through the great storm,
water lapping over his face
with the sort of
pothering, hasty turmoil
that would dilute a breathing man to madness
but had come and
with salt
cleaned his face and body,
with the sort of peace we’d like to find
on shores.

Imagine
a chimpish, greasy teenage boy sprawled out diagonally
on a boring
sea-foam living room couch,
And he’s just staring
at an old television set, trimmed with brown veneer.
The glossy bubble’s pixels don’t move, but their colors change
like a Chameleon, mixing in the infinite palette, creating the illusion of the program.
And the flat, piercing bad speakers,
from their machined gills are humming, whispering eternal frequencies
But he is staring,
just staring,
with blank eyes.