thirty years
since Mark gunned you down
thirty years, passed
like a long sleepless night
that ends with taunting morning light
no brilliant sunrise grandly pronouncing
a glorious new dawn of man
although that would have been your plan
with your entreaties to give peace a chance
and imagine, imagine, imagine

now I kneel in this rain gray park
like a reject from some holy ark
a pilgrim in doleful disappointed pose
after seeing what your earthly brothers chose
was not to imagine a world of peace and love
but to wear reality like a cast iron glove
making mockery of your martyred chants
proceeding like a billion scurrying ants
deaf to your childlike pleas

across the soaked soil where your ashes lay
yesterday and today…and tomorrow
I feel the soggy sorrow
that you would have felt
if you could still see
all the rage of humanity

I knew Pearl, comely, calm Pearl
eyes as blue as the skies
that warmed her sands
where we walked and talked
dreamed the days away
her voice so sweet on the Pacific winds
it made me forget about home
I was breaking daily bread
dipping it in the
yellow yolk promise of eggs
when little gunner Joe
said come down below
to see the kitty he found
crouched in the shadowed corner
no bigger than the rivets
get her some milk he said
when we placed the offering in front of her
she roared a lion’s roar…
and the roar kept coming
and the young living
thing
disappeared into the darkness...
the stench of smoke
the screeching screams
the fierce rocking of the hull
and blackness
which came too fast to touch
all spoke with equal madness
telling us doom
can come on a sunny Sunday morn
in Pearl’s land
falling,
is something we all know
in the flat land of dreams
in the lucky light of day, and
on that Sunday morn,
in the boiling bowels of our ship
slowly,
with some giant hand in command
the water, the water,
the water we all had grown to love
now taunting our feet,
then our knees
the pounding began
the eternal pounding
the pounding of the hopeful
in Pearl’s blue skies
and our pounding,
the pounding of the ******,
without any eyes
the water
now at our waists
now at our chests
and then only our frozen faces
against the hard steel that had been our home
had the last few breaths of air to breathe
heard the last few gasps of desperation
and the feeble futile pounding
of those in Pearl’s darkened sun…
now we rest in this sunken tomb
the guests roaming above
with cameras and tearless eyes
for they were not
the ones who heard our cries
those who did, do not return
for Pearl is no longer a sunny beach
and a stroll in a dream
but a place where the pounding started
and never stopped
and where the world changed forever
when the first bomb was dropped

the car seemed to be gliding on glass
the last inconvenient instant before impudent impact  
the mangled mass of metal and his black crisp body
a spectacle for the masses, all 4 of them  
2 volunteer fire fighters and 2 EMTs
later, his father, blind now in one eye
from America’s diabetes, had Ramona  
drive him to the spot, to the dead oak
as big around as an oil barrel  
dead long before Paul’s 1996 Ford Escort
decided to take a go at it  
daddy had to see the place  
that infinite space between  
yesterday and the tomorrow
that would never come, even though
he had already seen, through his one good eye
his boy’s charred carcass at the county morgue  
resting on a silver slab, the clean and cold bed  
where he would spend his last night
before the fiery furnace,
Ramona and he could keep his ashes
no need for a big service, no money for one either  
but Dub, “Paul's boss down to the auto parts store,”  
opened his wallet as wide as it would go
for the cremation and a nice urn  
Paul would be missed, by Daddy and Dub  
and once in a great while, in the fast and furious world
of the flat gray town where he lived and died  
someone would ask, whatever happened to
that old boy at the auto parts store  
the one who limped a bit as he walked,
the one who rarely talked but always
smiled through his yellow teeth
when he placed the goods carefully
on the counter