in the clouds, he saw
the face of god--heavy brow, two eyes, nose, mouth,
and long gray beard; then only one eye, nose,
half a mouth, as sunlight

shafts illuminating the visage,
began melting it away, until only
an eye remained, one he yet claimed
was god, watching

over us, deciding  
whether lightning would strike, or skies would clear blue,
revealing heavens he believed awaited us all
for the fall meant nothing to him

I took the only seat left, beside a dude
with an afro ten inches tall, who bongo drummed
his knees, accompanying an invisible quartet

he claimed he wanted
to create, not re-late, so he slapped paint
on canvas, and blew on his horn

his woman wanted more, more
bread, more bed, more time to rap, more,
more, plural mores he said

but he wanted singular less
and told her it would be best
if she split--and she did

though on her way out the door of his crib
she kicked a wet canvas, leaving a stiletto print
on James Baldwin's nose

"cool cat must have had his nose broke
by some ***** before, " so he left her smudge
alone, and then he was alone

when he got off the bus
and told me to be cool, he handed me a smoke
I bummed a light from another hip cat

but he didn't have a story to tell
so I smoked my Winston solo, listening to the bus's hum
and distant muffled horns

Oakland, June 1969

some claimed the paddies smelled like
fetid fishes, *****; some said like the dung of oxen, peasants
or other beasts who squatted there  

others whispered the fields reeked of death  
while I found no odor to be grander evidence
of life’s languorous longing for itself  

we marched those mired moors, as hunters
of invisible prey--ourselves too being stalked, or worse,
mocked by other hairless apes,  

who like we, sought light, but
could divine darkness far better, for we
knew little of night, its sacred riddles  

some said those places reeked  
of rotted flesh, the festering relics of our deeds
I inhaled deeply, slowly  

only rich, fecund stories
were revealed to me, ones I fear yet
this silent night

the same, again, again

I am in the bunker
the wire is crawling with them
like so many black clad snakes
spewing venom at my brothers and at me
and I am out of ammo, my M16 magazines
empty, caked with mud

everyone is looking to me
for salvation, for a salvo of rounds
at the VC, and I find a twenty two
Ruger pistol, the same one I used
to **** a buzzard for sport, one
sinful desert day; and now I aim
at the enemy, firing over
and over, hitting them
dead center, but they
keep coming

I never run out of rounds
but the impotence of my fire
burns inside me--I reach for my empty M16,
but it's still empty--they keep coming

even when I wake, even when
the morning sun has blotted out
the black dream

they keep coming
I keep reaching, reaching
for the empty gun

his dream was always of a cart, carrying
limbs like those in so many slaughter houses
dragged along by two oxen, blind, backs whipped
by a golem whose red eyes illuminated
the path, the cart's carrion, and even
the black sky

when he would awake, he would feel
ravenous, not sated by his breakfast mush
or his noon repast--only when he sat for dinner
would he be full, after he drowned himself in wine, and gorged himself on a feast of flesh, charred yet
dripping with blood

the same sanguine soup, perchance,
he saw flowing from the wagon of his dreams,
the same as the crimson ooze from the humps of
the beaten beasts who transported
the ghoulish cargo to some crypt
in the greedy earth

to someplace he longed to see and
to be, in the dream, the one from which
he would awake with such perverse
hunger for life

crags, cold and gray--tedious time
has little worn their edges

grandfather moved a thousand his four score years
in these emerald moors

father too, before the war, when he left the rocks
for others to move, the sheep for others to sheer

grandmother never forgave him for leaving;
the queen had not asked for his body or soul

in the blood red fields of the Somme, he never missed the place

nor his mum, whose heart gave out when she heard
he died in a French trench, of the Spanish flu

after that, grandfather let others tend to his flock
and moved not another stone

now thirty and five, back from my own foul war
I walk these pastures with only misty memories of them:

father, son and steed, dragging boulders
across dew drenched grass, to walls that yet stand
but now guard only the dead

Crossgates, Wales, 1946

the man in the fine suit
gave me three hard quarters--those Washingtons were smiling at me, waiting to be swallowed by the machines at Horn and Hardart's Automat, where

there was but one old lady
standing, still as a statue, in front of a machine
her reflection on the glass staring back at her,
a haunting twin, from a different

mother. I could taste those ham sandwiches
waiting, but when that first quarter chinked its way into that dispenser, the old woman and her reflection turned to me, hungry

for something I couldn't taste;
so I gave her my other quarters, and hurried
into the night, chewing my food,
still hungry when done, but far
from her tired eyes, far