he sees one on the branch of his oak,
the other on his picket fence

eight decades he's heard names
of these creatures

one that makes sad songs (though not
a song bird...)

the other known by its color
(not red robin...)

he opens the door and walks
toward them

as if removing distance will erase years
which purloined their names

they fly off, so many eons ahead of his species
which now lives long enough to forget its past

a breed of ape which worships words, and
dreads the loss of them

the mourning dove and cardinal need no
symbols to know to flee this beast

the mere sight of him evokes the
wisdom of the ages in them

wings flap, currents abide, they glide to
another spot to roost

while the old man curses himself for
unknowing their names--cursing and cursed
it seems, are not part of what is forgotten

the gray grasses sang sweet songs,
without even a breeze to move them
the coyote howls were marrow yellow,
crimson, as their sour colors sifted
into the night

lightning streaked my charcoal
sky, and I could taste it, a salted butter
that tickled the throat on the way down,
the sonic booms it hatched smelled of baked bread,
and I hungered for more  

then a white owl spoke to me,
but I did not hear it call my name
no, not mine--though its hoots formed ice,
chunks which pummeled me, froze me
to the bone

his ancestor a coolie
laid the rails many long years  
but returned to Peking
to fight white devils  

this, the tale
passed through the generations
with the jade necklace which
never left his mother's neck

first born son
spawn of two doctors, expectations
were high he would practice
honorable healing arts

early in his years
he fueled their fears, and ire
coming through their sterile door
with bloodied knuckles
black eyes, fat lips

they tried various exorcisms:
confinement in the temple, lashings
and hushed cabals with head healers,
but none could shrink his will

much to their dismay
Stanford rejected him; he landed
at a community college, where he spent
an indolent year, before vanishing

a thousand tears and fears later
the PI revealed what a hundred
billable hours had reaped

the son was so far west
he was east, in a village on the Yangtze
stooped over paddies, his feet firm
in the mire the generations
had yearned to escape

Clicking heels announced her presence
in the deepening gloom
where they hid
crouched like cats awaiting their prey.
She stared through the charcoal air
where
they lay
as she clipped closer
to their hungry eyes and teeth.
But when within reach
she spied their glowing glances
and thwarted their advances
with a simple singular phrase
one they would recall for all their days,
“You are already ******”.
Though this would be armor for few
what the predators strangely knew
was that Wendy Howling
gave no thought to their groping greed
for she lived by a higher creed.
And in the end,
when they mounted her motionless flesh
and grunted grotesquely in the doomed dark
Wendy Howling felt no pain
and she knew struggling would be in vain
for her words were true—
their sorrowful souls dug their way through her
to a hell from which they could not be saved
and her tears were not for her wounded womb
but for their eternal doom

brushstrokes, some broad,  
some as narrow as one fine hair,  
are often red  

scarlet and scattered
across the canvas, splattered
against a crumbling wall, where,
for no rhyme or reason, the artist
may place a wilted wreath of flowers,
pallid, yellow
      
horses and people, babes
and the ancient not spared  
their share of the crimson cream  
the painter heaped munificently
on their mangled remains

Paris, Beirut, Yola yet to be painted
but there is still time: in its abundance
someone else will need only lift a hand  
to spill the ubiquitous blood      

our palettes do own other hues
black for charred crosses, white,
the lightning streaked screaming sky
but  none so plentiful as the red  
none so plentiful as the red

“lets split this diner and have a beer”  
four coffees in an hour made the world
too awake for him  
we walked to the Pink Mule,
the first bar we saw  
he knew all of the bars--all bars knew him  
the bartender was Abraham
but looked like a Bob    
he had a bourbon poured before
Charles made it to the stool
and looked at me like I was a fool  
“a light beer”  
Bukowski didn’t bother to laugh
though I am sure the word “***”
was rolling around in his head  
looking for a place to get out  
he kept on about Selma,
sweet succulent Selma  
how anybody that hot
could rule the world  
dragging men around by their dongs  
without lifting a finger  
that is why the gods made wine, he said  
not for some sacrament for the holy humbled
but for men hunched over like balless beggars,
he said, when Abraham Bob  
filled his jigger a second, or fourth time  
men made that way by all the Selmas  
whose middle name had to be vexation  
a whiff of her could get you to take  
a **** job, where you spent the day
hunched over, hoping, she would be there
when you got home  
even if she was, you wouldn’t remember  
in the morning, when you would go back  
to the grinless grind, hunched over, hoping  
Selma would be your wine

I drew an old man,
with beard

like mine--though his face had
more wrinkles

deep lines of age
are hard to draw  

my pencil bore down at the center
of those creases

like I was trying to leave a mark
that wouldn't fade

or trying to carve something
from nothing

piling lead upon lead,
on paper

that couldn’t protest my adding of years,
with a dull number two        

when my pencil was but a nub, there were
more years yet to add  

by then, my hands were weary
my eyes blurred

I had no blade to shave the wood    
from the shaft    

to make more eternal marks
on white space

I challenged him
burly ******* captain
stubbled beard as coarse as sandpaper
standing there in muggy dusk
arms akimbo,
mama san starched uniform stained with swagger and sweat

two silver captain's bars ******* any of my brilliance or bravado
all he had to do was speaketh the words
“need those maps, head out at 2230 hours”
and that was a death sentence
which was commuted to life
if four decades since has been life

there are not words for the black
of moonless jungle
except nothingness and paralytic fear
and through that lightless, lifeless, abyssness
I crawled, crouched and crept along
sometimes as slowly as the minute hand on my watch

the silence, the silence, the silence
became my splintered cross
to carry to my place of crucifixion
at my Calvary Hill behind barbed wire, blue lead barrels and
fearful eyes

silence, silence, silence, black wordlessness
black soundlessness
punctuated by shallow precious breaths
and imagined slant-eyed demons
waiting behind each berm
to turn the timeless night into timelessness
of more black

should I chamber a round?
and follow its solitary sound
into the silent holy night
and shatter my own fragile fright?
would that end this knowing without knowing?
and answer the question,
“is this fear worse than the answer?”
since questions have answers but answers have nothing
the nothing of which I was sure I would become a part
in the silence, the silence, the silence
of the black canopied jungle
in Tay Ninh Province
in 1967

where I was sentenced to death but allowed to live
in silent, black wordlessness
sentenced to live
to wonder, after all these years of shivering fright and flickering light
did the captain become a human?
And was I really allowed to live?

It was not really thee
bards of the ages
who inspired me
but of your wages
I shall purloin lithe lines
to add to the meager confines
of my tailored tale

nineteen
green
inside and out
not knowing when I would be ripe
cramming all the ammo clips I could find
into my fresh jungle fatigues
he
the sage of 2nd platoon
told me of the frightful night
when
in the midst of a hellish firefight
he reached for more clips
and found only the remnants of chips
tasty morsels when first consumed
but then a sign he was doomed
“NO MORE AMMO—****”
he sunk even lower into the carpet of night
but to his ironic delight
“the **** that was shooting at me ran out of ammo too”
after exchanging an infinite stare
both fled into the ebony air
the moral of his twice told fable
grab all the ammo clips you are able

and the sage from 1st platoon said,
one night when our brains were brimming with beer
that a full bladder was also something to fear
for being distracted by the urge to ****
could perhaps be the reason we would miss
“some **** slithering through the black grass,
and that, my friends, could mean your ***”

so their caveats did not fall on deaf ears
although
they were filtered by my too few reckless years
yet, I snatched all the clips I could carry
on my 140 pounds of nineteen
and took not one sip from my canteen

others words bounced around my crowded skull
some were from rapier wit and others were dull
but the ones to which I would listen
were the ones that gave me hope for
another day of light
after the perpetual blind night
in the land of the ******

I had learned to walk without sound
all on my own
and find a place to crouch
where not even the dead
could see me, I would briefly imagine
but they were there
permeating the dank air
with silent dirges to their demise
and me waiting with cracked open eyes
for one to come alive
and yank my young *** into some dark hole

we have always seen things in the dark
while hiding from the devil our sisters said would come
under our blankets with one eye closed and the other agape
he was coming, she would say, to get you
for being….born
sometimes, the chosen, the blessed souls,
would forget he was there
and breath calm air
and walk into the life of nineteen
with a full canteen but
not worried about a full bladder
and missing Jacob’s ladder

but those of us who came to this wicked place
could not blithely put our demons to rest
and they continued their animated fest
in the darkness our eyes could not penetrate
and our spirits could not relegate
to the silent land of the past

there could have been a dozen, live ones,
snaking their way through the grass
close enough to smell my sweat
or perhaps only one
crouched in his own woeful world
miles away through the ****** jungle
but it did not matter
for in my wordless chatter
they were all around
maybe the same ones in my childhood room
coming to thicken the gloom
with another tormented soul
who at nineteen
was afraid to drink from his canteen

I would stop seeing them
at some point
but only for a shallow breath or two
then they would be there again
and I would hear nothing
except the other sages
from those ancient pages
where my eyes followed my fingers in curious delight
far from this lethal foaming night

"Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me
the carriage held just ourselves and immortality"
"Death be not proud, though some have called thee so"
“I looked in vain for another path for my feet
but they were all too small
except the one labeled ‘Death Street’”

and other less ominous verse would take the chance
to make its way into my riddled trance,
“Nature’s first green is gold,
her hardest hue to hold
her early leaf’s a flower,
but only so an hour
then leaf subsides to leaf
so Eden sank to grief
so dawn goes down to day
nothing gold can stay”

nothing gold, nor green I would recall
and when I would lose the light lull of the verse
I would again begin to traverse
into the blind black depths in front of my eyes
and the devils would tauntingly reappear
and I would again hear
the nothingness we all share
there
in the land of the ******
with a full canteen
and an M-16
at nineteen

we are angels
with cathedrals,
prophets, and poems
to prove it  

other species  
are not endowed
with such gifts:

the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel
the pyramids, loosing
the bounds of earth
to walk on a moon...
psychoanalysis
the atomic bomb
Anthrax, dioxin
and gunfire
gunfire  

we are maggots
on rotting fruit, sated now
looking for a place to hop off,
to escape before the fruit falls fast  
to the ground

before the oceans rise
and the skies fill with ash
surely we can fly away

but we are wingless
angels, killer angels  
killer angels

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)

whirling waves
dance until entwined
when they lose themselves
with another
in endless effort
to find and be found
multiplying to infinity minus 1
castaways from the Original Big Bang Sin
spending eternity trying to return
to a faceless,
race-less place
and space
without clanging clocks
when-where nothing
could collude or collide
because all
was-is one

gravity,
you amaze me with your
paradoxical pull
grasshoppers, greenshanks,
groveling serfs and grandiose kings
all feel your wicked weight
the bearable lightness of being
is at your cosmic command

some wear you like gossamer, others filigree
for the forlorn, you are ball and chain
for Sir Isaac, you were scripture,
chapter, and verse, Mathematica

you keep me and thee tethered
with invisible faithless cord
to this spinning stone
to attempt to defy you is folly
even with rockets at full ******
for ultimately we must
again bear your weight
but, grave though I have called your grip
you beatifically bestow
this bearable lightness of being
that cannot be seen or heard
only felt

we clock in, out
every one of us--that has ALWAYS
been the contract

the Tyrant has us all working
at minimum wage; some complain
others don't think about it

though at one time
or another, we are all grateful,
and terrified, we have a job

beggars, billionaires both
servants to the hours, His strange
circular command

but I will be dead ******
if I'll give Him a minute more than necessary
watching the hands spin on a timepiece,
eternally there to remind us, we are
temporal slaves, every minion
under His reign

Monet, Manet, Morisot, and the tortured Vincent
a long century or more ago,
filled their palates with color,
their canvases with impressions of life, love and loss.
And we, the great masters of civilization,
have treasured these like newborn babes.

I wandered through the polished halls
of antiquities to see them—
some hidden even from the harsh light of day
to protect their precious prinking from decay.
I strained my eyes to see their soulful strokes
and wondered why artists carried such painful yokes

McMurtry’s ranch has no paintings
but sculptures from a vanished sea.
A quarter billion years it’s been,
and yet they’re here for all to see

Rocks carved by patient scratching time
and stock tanks covered with putrid slime.
No lilies float on pools of blue
and no guard carefully watches you

Their sentries are the desert rattlers
and the sun scorched prairie lands,
but these ancient masterpieces
are safe from filching hands.

When I kneel on hard rock soil,
I forget my daily useless toil
and dig in clean eternal dirt
with no canvases to belie the hurt
of gentle men who felt the call
to let their heart be seen by all

Monet, Manet, and Morisot
are now laid to rest, with their burdens set aside,
but their colors are a reminder
that beauty and suffering abide

McMurtry’s rocks no longer feel,
but who could say they are less real
than colors fading from the light
and lonely artists’ painful plight.

4:10 AM, Thanksgiving Day
he lost his breath for good while I watched
In his thirties
lungs weak from polio and huffing Marlboros
Saturday I held one corner of his glossy box
his pricey glossy box
that was to be covered
with free soil

Some spring eve a quarter century later
the old writer
who told his tales well into his eighties
slipped into hospice sleep
and at his widow’s request
I got to hold up another corner
and place another flower
on another fancy shining tomb

Another thousand times
since then
I carried the ironic weight of lives
not all the way to their holy holes
but inch by inch towards the unknown
my shoulder sinking a bit more each time
while I searched for some epiphany in rhyme

we all bear the pall
of everyone’s fall
each has one shoulder sorely bent
regardless of who chose to repent
so as we walk with this worldly weight
someone else helps shape our fate
for try as we may to walk alone
our time is never solely our own

We are the pallbearers, pallbearers
for all

the sound of one hand clapping

to the silent symphony within

where cells sprout and die,

and red tides ebb and flow,
but no one seems to know

what keeps the conductor
waving his magic wand

in the gray,
milky silence
of the morning…
before we smell the hiss of bacon
before the smog licks
the creamed crimson sky
before we hear the scurrying simian stream
(of which we are a inexorable part)
before the pungent circles
of Michelin and Firestone
have their daily chat
with the asphalt
before we wake to all
this grotesque grandeur
to once again
kneel, supplicant
against the wheel
before we turn the key
to ignite the spark
to fetch the fire within,
we were with Morpheus,
perchance
dreaming of greater gods
of light,
before
the cluttered clatter
of this unholy day

she brings him tea,
a piece of cheese late morn  
for he has been toiling since dawn  
his plane shaving the wood reverently
the old oak speaking, though not complaining,
in a language the man does not understand  
a coughing code for loss, forbearance, acceptance,
redemption, he hopes, for the boys keep coming…
first from Ypres, the Verdun,
now the Marne    

before, he heaved hewn planks
for the hopeful homes, built their pantries
to be filled with the bread, the kind milk  
now the sawn boards are for those who once
watched his labors, but no longer hear the simple
sounds of sanding, sawing
or anything at all  

most of the lads do not come home,
their souls and bodies left to rot on the blood sullied grass  
or buried shallow, naked in the French soil, but all get a fine coffin  
thanks to the carpenter’s wife, whose babe was the first to fall,
who demands for them all, a holy horizontal home to be built  
and, empty or not, placed gently in Anglican ground

his mate fancied himself
Dr. Watson, or even Holmes,
in a past life, but with the name,
Jamsheed Razavizadeh, his friends,
who chopped the proud pronunciation
to J-Razz, laughed at such
a great notion

not Phillip, whose one brother
had drowned only last Hallows Eve,
which made Phillip a believer
in all things

from school, his mates walked the same lane
past the spot, where his mother still lay wreaths
every Monday morn, the vicar giving her
the tired ones each Sabbath

Monday Phillip took the long way home
not wanting to see the flowers, on their own
eve of wilting, a pitiable reminder
fresh things don't last

J-Razz was the only one who walked
the long route with him, his own brother
in the loam near Tehran, drowned himself
by fire, not water

each week, the wreath lay
but a day, and the two from different mothers
would again take the shorter path, where
they would find slight solace in silence,
their journey home often
in merciful miasma
near river's edge

my wish:
fire, cabin
comfort food
old movie
NO
humans

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

I found you

lone brick, of a million, one part of a mortared whole

your brothers now buried by time, without benediction  

progeny of clay, shale, you were born in a kiln as hot as all creation

dragged to this plain by spoked wheel and mule--sweat of the honest illiterate

long before the dusters blew the crops to hell, and Tom Joad's kin to the promised land

the mason who laid you in a proud straight row is now in the ground too

not a mile from you, where the county put him the hot Friday a man set foot on the moon

the bricklayer’s days with the trowel long past, his memories of you, your place in all weathers interred with him  

I found you , and you are the man’s legacy, he yours

steamed broccoli calls me
its scent a melodious accompaniment
to the dance of
nitrogen and oxygen we call air
next I will torch
the dead silent flesh
of some sinless bovine beast
a sacramental conflagration
whose rich vapors will
add strings and woodwinds
to the wafting symphony
tickling my snout  
my salivary will weep  
in effortless anticipation  
of jubilant mastication  
of the flora and fauna  
of my own culinary killing fields  
that allow me
a few more waltzes  
in this soundless song of air

I dream of dogs
though I doubt they dream of me  
or rabbits running across
a monochrome field    

I presume
many things about the canine psyche:  
an ancient wolf howling in their head  
an inability to feel dread, and
the arrogance of cats,
their “pet” peeve    

feigned feline ferocity  
may bother them not one whit
nor do they likely give a ****, what stirs
in my primordial cerebral soup, when I scratch
their ears, and vainly imagine their fears  
of the dead dark, are the same
as ours

I met the devil many times
didn't drink his beer for free (like Kris Kristofferson#)
or beat him in a fiddling duel (like Charlie Daniels##)
but he wasn't trying too hard to hide
or convince me he didn't reside
in all our hearts at one time or another

Instead, he allowed me to see his (and my) wicked ways
and make me afraid that at the end of my days
if I failed to follow a prescribed and sacred tradition
I would land in the ****** world of perdition

this loathsome chap serves a purpose indeed
and those who have the interminable need
pray fervently each and every day
hoping to keep this imp at bay

but without him and his miscreant acts
we would be stuck with unimaginable facts
like bad things happen without a reason
and nobody is guaranteed a winning season

So if you meet him on some dark and lonely path
(as I have many a time)
fear not you will incur his wrath
for without him there would be none to blame
and we alone would have to feel the shame
for all the woe that is the world

(#Kris Kristofferson wrote a song in which he states he didn't beat the devil, but he drank his beer for free--##Charlie Daniels had a tune where he has a fiddle duel with the devil--I believe Charlie wins in the song)

a letter came from Ukraine
tailing the newspapers' grey accounts
faster than the cloud of fallout

there were three smudges
from a child's digits, between the stamp
and my address

prints of proof you were there,
eating the Hershey’s I sent, though
your mother scrawled my name
and safe, numbered place I live,
a planet away  

the letter yet sits
on my desk, quiet, perhaps
waiting to be opened

I planned to surprise you
in your sluggish summer, with a visit,
and American Girl dolls

but April lasted forever  
for you, who happened to be walking
close to the melting kiln, looking
for spring’s first buds
on a Saturday morn

when he was 84, he rarely recalled
the Great War, though he left a finger somewhere
in French soil, and on deep sleep nights,
few and far between, it would call him
a spectral image of  gas dead faces
drifting through like sallow clouds
in the charcoal sky

his nephew was the only one left
to fish these green waters, to court the steady
trout that he too saw in his dreams--all the others,
even his own sons, marching  in the concrete squares
of the cities, visiting now and then like peddlers
hawking wares he could not understand...
soccer games and mutual funds
gourmet feasts at eateries
with cryptic names

the lake was still the same
the  loons chatting, the waves lapping
but without his Helen, the fish he caught
were usually granted reprieve, saved from
his sharp gutting blade, her sizzling skillet,
and without her beside him under her ancient quilts,
the nights were not longer, for grief, he knew,
did not stretch time, but only
made its circle smaller

was a sun sated Saturday
when the nephew had honey do's as good excuses
and the old man was left alone, sitting by a black rotary phone,
waiting for one of his old nine digits to dial the new nine and two ones,
it is what they all would have expected, a cry for help, a long mute ambulance ride, them seeing him helpless with hoses and wires, delaying the funeral pyres, as was the custom in this post teen century

instead, though he felt the anvil on his chest,
and sweat drenched his JC Penney work shirt,
he moved not his feeble fingers to the phone, but his fated feet
to the lake, once only a long a hop from the porch, now a mammoth journey, ten, twelve Sisyphus steps downhill--when he reached the waters edge, the fowl called him casually, their slow song on the currents,
and he sat in the fresh grass, watching the painted blue sky
he saw the fins of those he had set free, hoping
that would count for something
when he curled in fetal repose,
and closed his eyes
by this lonely lake

the old tree
has new growth,
though I don’t know why  
it has been forty fortnight
since rain, and
years ago it gave
its last bounty

perchance
some stealthy stubborn root  
found its way to a black, cool pool  
left there from earth’s fickle vibrations
or ancient monsoons, before man
hopefully planted and plowed  

now
the people pray
for heavens to open, again  
with merciful tears, to wash
our soiled skins  

too late
for the pear
to bear sweet fruit  
but not for emerald leaves
to tease the eye
with yesterday’s
sweet song

to a theater near you
or your flat screen: live murders, usually
mass, sometimes children

sorry, no 3D,
for you see, that might be
too graphic, for some

no actors required
for the wild world's the stage
phone cams abound

stick around, for
a double feature, without
leaving your seat

for before the blood dries,
we'll mute the cries, and show you
the next slick slaughter

my actress, who
sweated blood on Broadway each night
off Broadway too

said, on a long stroll
through Central Park. she was successful
because she did not like herself

on the stage, she proclaimed,
she was never herself, and she fell in love
with every character she portrayed  

every script was a better bio
than her own, and the playwrights knew
her better than she knew herself

and when our walk
was curtailed by a downpour, she dragged me
into a crowded cafe

where she knew half the patrons
and the wait staff, and they all knew the different
personas she had owned, on the dry stage

rain now forced her to choose  
which selves to keep, and which to lose
while she sipped scalding tea

with me, on a grey wet afternoon,
only hours before she would again be under  
the spell of the hot lights,

and read verses from the pens of prophets,
poets--those who purloined her soul for the price
of admission, to a place without self loathing

he eschewed the label,
“Native American,” for he was *****,
and he wasn't ashamed he liked his spirits
dollar wine worked as well

cirrhosis was a family trait
though he didn't learn the word until an army doc
admonished him, saying he would earn the curse
by 45, if he kept it up

and he did, even more after that crazy
Asian war, where he killed a half dozen men
they called yellow, though to Walter, they looked
to be his emaciated brown cousins

he could stand tall, straight
with a pint of rot gut in him, burning
his belly, but not causing his head to spin
though it helped him block them out:

those he did not know; those he
slaughtered like lambs with the gun they issued him;
those who inhabited a space just behind his eyes
whenever they closed, night or day

someone found him, in his pickup bed
dead from exposure, from too many years
on the bottle, too many dreams he tried to drown
and too many ghosts to haunt his nights

Gallup, New Mexico, 1999

two of them
to my naked, simian eye
are identical twins

though one, a mere millennium
of light years away, performs its
magical fusion yet today

the other disappeared before
dinosaurs devolved; its phantom
photons now without a source

but both poke pinholes
in the blanket of night, gifting
what some call divine light

not I, for if gods were igniting
those gaseous masses, they would both
yet be furious and fiery white

and not tricking my meager sight,
deceiving me into believing, there is
eternity in an eternally dying sky