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

(written 7 years ago on the 30th anniversary of the ****** of John Lennon)

of a million paddies fed by Mother Mekong, one he knew best

one where he waded knee deep at noon, naked except for a **** cloth

though double wrapped in pain, after the ****** left his family frozen in black

only a mad night before, in a war his dozen years could not comprehend

he still heard them calling his name from the razed ville, the muddy waters

where he sloshed in half circles, aping a reverse arc of the sun

as if moving from west to east, he could rewind time to yesterday

when they hunkered with him, and took shelter from the dry season sun,

unawares what else under a pure white sky could birth fierce fire

it was a formal affair, amaranth napkins
folded neatly in laps

everyone clapping in unison; an obligatory
percussion of pink palms

when we left I asked you
if you enjoyed yourself

your terse "I guess" was predictable,
even though you invited me

under halogen haze, I watched you
distance yourself with every step

until you turned to me to say,
"I meant to end this before today"

I knew you would say this as soon as we entered
this man made sea of light

and saw black waves undulate around you,
cast by your perfect gown of white

in the hall, I listen as she calls out
his name

not aware I am there,
nor would she care

if I open the door without making
a sound,

I purloin a few seconds to watch her
before she sees me

when her eyes catch mine,
she looks away

the morning sun makes a sympathetic effort
to light our room

"our" room which from which I have
been excommunicated

the drapes she sewed only last summer
are never open

that is her world, staring through
baby blue curtains

which mute the half light of morning,
though not enough

not enough to blind her to the spot
where her son's crib waited

until I committed the unpardonable
sin of taking it to the cold cellar

only a fortnight after our stillborn child
was placed in the ground

for me, the creek may as well have been the mighty Mississippi

too shallow for canoe; mostly carp and crawfish called it home

no great novels were penned about adventures there

though I had my own tales to tell:

sand squishing between my toes on a sultry August day

a water moc I decided to let live

the time my grandfather taught me how to clean the catch--fish guts given back to the sluggish current

most of all, the arm I found on a Sunday afternoon, one attached to a body

who turned out to be a man who had cheated my grandpa

and vanished only days later -- assumed to have absconded to avoid John Law

my uncle the sheriff fished him out and planted him again, without a doc's scrutinizing eye

never was the man mentioned again, even by his kin--whipped white trash

such was Texas in 1940, questions not answered because not asked

drought dried the creek to fetid puddles
the year my grandpa passed

the very spot I found the arm, one of the last places to dry

a stagnant pool with minnows and memories colliding in death throes

and my grandfather buried spitting distance from the man I had found

both now above the creek where it joined
the river Brazos, it too a victim of the sun's relentless sear

though not so willing to give up secrets, to
cast doubt on legends, or let ghosts rise from the mire

feed corn in field for weeks
to fatten them up for the ****

from stands of live oak, hackberry
they would come, fawn and doe

leaving tracks in morning dew
to and from the scattered grain

I slept through their feeding, then
followed their trail into the copse

where I found fawn gutted
by the mythic mountain lion

I did not believe existed,
until that morn

I pulled the carcass to the edge of the wood,
in view of the stand

where I waited with rifle and starlight scope
for the great cat

who came with the waning crescent moon
and did not know I shot him

through his red river heart
as he crouched to finish his meal

(Cross Timbers, Texas, 1991)

I wrote a poem
called feather light

in which a man
took flight like raptors

from a ledge where those creatures
were known to perch

for a minuscule morsel of time
the man felt feather light in his free fall,

but that didn't last--soon the grave grip
of gravity made its presence known

though before he landed
on the pine green canyon floor

the sluggish tug of memory
yanked on him rudely, and lumped his throat

dispelling the manic myth one's life
passes before one's eyes in that final moment

all he saw, save the tree tops
and the shimmering river

was a door closing, the one where she
was on the other side, suitcase in tow

and he was left with a tear drenched face
and aching heart--a lover jilted, again

yes, that was what the poem was about
(but my PC ate it and crapped it out into cyberspace)