the boy leaned his head back
and proclaimed the clouds looked like
a dog in a pond

when in his three years had he seen
a dog in a pond? who taught him you could see
anything in the heavens?  

trees spouting marshmallow blossoms  
white angels in a kangaroo choir, dragons
breathing scarlet fire   

who would tell him he saw but vapor
and light? who could make his hound drown
by ******* dry such a beautiful blue?

treasure…
a
half
can
of hash
without
mold,
or
roaches

you
were following the leader
trusting him,
hardy figure of man
in a colorless world
with trees dead to the eye
thanatos thickets thick with quiet
that thrashed and slashed you
along the way
but you followed, sometimes
in sacramental silence,
other times crying out in penitent pain
did he not hear you
as he juggernauted through
those gnarled dead wooded webs
like he was steel?
and man of steel
is what you called him
when you grew to know him
was he too not flesh and bones
could he not hear your cries?
even deaf, could he not see
your man-child skin being bloodied
in this land of thorns?
how long could he keep marching
expecting you to keep up
like some soldier on an unholy quest
rather than his lost child
who could find no path
through this wretched plain of pain?
you could see only his back
as you ran to keep up
you could not have known,
though you are his legacy,
he has no face to bear scars
and when will you,
the innocent, discover
steel has no soul?

I began with verse about Wyeth's Christina
but I couldn't see her face, and I've never been to Maine
though her twisted body pains me

then I flew to the opposite coast
summoned by the memory of a ghost:
my best friend at Bodega Bay, one fine day
forty Augusts gone

he threw a Frisbee to his Airedale
and we ate sprout sandwiches, avoiding the foul
karma from the slaughter of beeves,
hogs, he said

I would like to relive that day,
with its blue dusk, but the clock can't be rewound
and he is not to be found on the great Pacific

kin who barely knew his face
chose his final space--a hot hole on Oklahoma
prairies, not far from his drunken father
and others who never saw him watch
the sun sink gold into the sea

in my head I'll exhume him,
maybe return him to the waves
that reclaim all things

or introduce him to Christina
a continent away--he could help me know her
though her eyes face another world

blind from birth, she
could tell the difference
between the odor of chrysanthemums and tulips,
and remember her first whiff of both

she could identify
the scent of her brother
in a groping group
of sweaty brutes

she knew
her nose was her biographer
collecting memories, visions
her eyes could not

she studied biology
only to discover her compendium
of smells originated in a space infinitely
smaller than a fly's eye

a few molecules
devoted to identifying ham,
the rich smokey meat
of her first Easter

another clump to help her hold
the faint smell of perfume which lingered
in the room hours after
her mother passed

and who knew what atoms,
what cells, what curse of chemistry
forced her to recall, most of all, the sweet scent
of her newborn's hair,

the few seconds she held him,
after his heart stopped, and they took him
and placed him in a smooth, cold box, where sight,
sound and smell were locked forever

I saw him zip by
in a dark alley
in a charcoal dream
not running from
but to...?

I walked, however one walks
in an alley in a morning dream
and he began chasing me
“Mama” coming from his lips

I ran
and he followed
closing in on me
with a silent dog by his side

What did I have to fear
from this scurrying simian?
save being a mother
a dream denied by my…
genitalia

Freud wrote reams
on the interpretation of dreams
and perhaps now
I am ready to read
what the master dreamed

For one has no cause
to run from small monkeys
unless…
they are moaning for a mother
one could never be

And does my own son ever feel so alone?
was it he that we left in some dark place?
running with mute dogs
and crying out for the cord
meant to tether him
to this spinning world

I will bring you concord grapes,  
for you like the color of them, and I the way
your cheeks move when your mouth
is full of them  

I will cut the meat for you,
in thin slices, as razor narrow as the knife
will allow

the nurses tell me
to let you feed yourself
to gain your strength
back

but we, just you and I,
know your arms will become more flaccid
with each passing night, and no amount
of measured movement, will make
that right

I will make the soft cloth wet, warm  
and caress the dirt away, for they scrub you
like palette or canvas, painted all wrong

I will brush your hair,
a hundred strokes each eve,  
as you did, before your amber waves
turned wistful white, and your limbs
went limp

I will read you stories
of children at play, lads and lasses
who never grow gray

I will bring apples
for your wooden bowl  
but we don't dare slice them
for they are there for us to watch
to help us remember red, round things,
beginnings, in a world before this room
of endless ending

Frost spoke,
of ice, and fire
in apocalyptic prose
proffering different opinions
of the earth’s demise
if it be fire,
he surmised it was because of the ire
of raging hearts and unfulfilled desire
not of splitting atoms and infinite fire
if it be ice
he said that too would suffice
for frozen hearts do not feel the pain
of millions starving on the blighted plain
funny, ice has shrunk since Frost’s time
but few would argue we are more sublime
for denial and avarice are alive and well
and whether fire or ice, it can still be hell

in the dead
of night
I write
for 'tis then when my thoughts are draped
like soggy towels on a sagging clothesline
but in the light
of pestering day
they
bounce around like busy buzzing bees
in a place I call my head
so in the dead
of night
I write
and squeeze what I can
from those soul soaked rags
hoping what flows won't be like tears
or some sanguine soup to **** my fears
for in the dead of night
I write
not to purge my heavy heart
of pain and grief
but to come closer to true belief

the old cruiser sat in his drive
tires as tired as time, the whole car speckled
with bird droppings from his oak

back seat still the same:
scarlet blood dried black from
the boy's brief ride

justified use of force
the grandest jury decreed; still they made him
put up his sword and shield

the sullied car part of his severance,
his Crown Vic replaced by a fat SUV, and he
replaced by his own deputy

he knew it less was a blessing
than a curse, the cruiser turned hearse
gifted to him

the men had tried it scrub it clean
but the boy he felled was eighteen; his blood
copious, stubborn, and a condign reminder

of the sheriff’s last night as the law,
of his frenzied futile attempt to save
the boy, the “deceased”  

whose last testament was scrawled
in the bowels of the car that now sat still as stone,
alone with its red written tale

oy vey
everyday, oy vey
Granny couldn't get through
an hour without a dour
oy vey

the woeful phrase I recall,
though most of all, I still see her
scrubbed raw, red paws, always
clutching a tissue, to keep
the ghastly germs at bay

the ones she believed
yet survived the camps
no matter how much time
and scalding baptismal
water had flowed

though far from the filth
even farther from the ovens, safe
she still said oy vey and held the tissue tight
perhaps to keep out the night
I never had to see
oy vey, oy vey

a roadkill feast, this doe that met truck bumper the black night before

now in the Texas sun, talons and beaks make easy work of eyeballs and entrails

the asphalt a convenient griddle, slow cooking dead deer, while the ravenous birds dine

somewhere in the brush, a childless mother, with no incantation to bring her baby back

this creature without words only senses a void--******* no longer gnawed and ******

what mourning for this loss, now attended to by buzzards fast filling their guts

until I come upon them, my own bumper approaching at warp speed

my metal beast to avenge this desecration
with a twist of my wrist, a turn of tires

fast from the red road a flapping of blue-black wings--all but one escapes my wrath

he took too long to take flight, unaware my grill could **** with such impunity

a simple twist of the wrist, a bump, a thump, and one less vulture feeds on the dead

above him, his brethren wait, riding cool currents -- my execution but a brief deterrent to their wake

wedded that day, on their way
to El Paso, for two nights in a grand motel
with TV, and AC

they would splurge,
for profligacy was not a sin at such times
and a fat steer was sacrificed for it

the radio filled the cab
of the pickup with Tammy "Why-not"
singing D-I-V-O-R-C-E

they sang along, changing the letters
to M-A-R-R-I-E-D, creating one cheerful
cacophony in their shared space

when the next tune started, he hit:
a greasy buzzard, wingspan wide as a fence post was tall
black as an oil slick

the old windshield was no match
for the vulture, and it was a vengeful one
that crashed through Ronny's side

glass, bone, feather and flesh
tore into his sweet face like a chainsaw
his blood blinding him

Ronny turned so ******* that wheel
the truck rolled, twice, landing them on
the passenger side in an arroyo

where he lay on top of her,
gasping, his blood dripping generously on her
"Ronny, Ronny..."

her legs were numb, and she felt a warm
liquid crawling down her back, one she knew
was from her own head

which smacked the roof
so hard she was surprised her skull
hadn't popped

or maybe it had, for she saw double:
two steering wheels; two setting suns; two mangled birds
and two crimson faced Ronny's  

who then had stopped gasping, and only
slow breaths came from him, like a warm whisper
on her cheeks--but only until the song ended

and she knew, he was gone--and old verse
came to her, from Psalms, from Matthew, and she knew,
she was sure, someone would find them

and make her whole, and resurrect Ronny
for the good Lord would not do this to them, on this
hopeful highway, before they consummated

she harbored such a notion until
her own eyes closed, and other dark birds came
to find them, still, under her God's closed eye

(1968, north of Marfa, Texas)

white tulips
in moonlight, though silver
this night

they are near,
near, yet I cannot
touch them

nor catch their coy scent
but I smell nothing, hear
nothing

and, and this vision
of a forgiving bulb,
is fading

behind it,
in its shivering shadow
I see him

what is left of his face
what grace there must be
in this place

where the man I killed
the moment he killed me
and I, are now together

separated only by
silent soil, and a merciful
white blossom

I
left
you    
at the café while
you were in the water closet
I got on the bus,
handed the driver my last twenty
before I even asked where he was going
I saw you, through the café window
as the bus pulled away,
puffing diesel fumes
in its hissing wake
I saw you, side by side with
the gray reflection of a weathered Apache squaw
who
hunkered outside in the fading veil of smoke    
like a mocking twin who shared the glass and light
with the young you,
white princess with ruby lips
a purse full of treasured trash
and words I did not want to hear
waiting to spill from your mouth
I had been gone two years in the flying fortresses
deafened by the din of their moaning motors,
our machine gun fire
and the nightmare fighters
sent to the blind skies to escort us to hell
I counted the desperate days
and the missions I had yet to fly
until my feet could finally touch ground
and my eyes could see the light of you
then your letters said less and less
and I no longer kept them
folded in my leather coat
two miles from earth,
like the parchment talisman
I once dreamed them to be  
you had left me before
I left you, and I knew, but
‘twas easier to chew a quiet lie
than to swallow a screaming truth
I did wonder if you walked into the street,
if you asked the Mescalero lady
if she saw me leave  
though I did not look back
once the bus passed Lordburg’s lone light
nor did I long for you any longer
in the dreadful night

well not really… though I told
every grinning green Catholic soul
at my school I did that and more

I did smell the wine on her breath
and watch her trip into the trailer  
her gown hitting the floor  
before she closed the door  
her body as white as the fake snow  
spitting onto the set, and
as cold perhaps

I was sixteen and she was fifty one  
this was my one and only, her last,  
flick, not fling, though I would have
cut off an arm for it to have been so  
not the arm she touched  
in our one immortal scene together…  
her electric hand,  
all the blond hairs on my forearm standing at attention  
me wondering if the camera caught
their helpless vertical veer  

it mattered not, most of the scene
landed not on the screen, but
the cutting room floor, my two lines slashed to one  
my 48 seconds with her shaved to 22

I did not cry when I heard she died,
twenty months later, but my lie seemed soiled  
once she was in the ground
I confessed to Father Ryan  
he was silent when
I asked what to tell  
the fools who believed  
the dying star lay with me  
simply because she said,  
“Call me Vivien, not Ms Leigh”

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

smudges on the glass  
were wiped away each night
by a mute custodian

who found a biography
in each set of prints he made disappear
with clean cloth and vinegar

he could tell which ones
were made by children, dragged there
with promise of ice cream, later

oh, the young lovers' prints  
were unmistakable--eager tracks being led to more
and more promising carats

and the thin marks left by the frail
made him wonder, if this would be their last
precious purchase: a reckoning; a remorse

the cases held diamonds, rubies,
by the score, but the silent sentinel  
saw only the surface

that was his world,
one of transparency, and fickle
reflections

he reluctantly erased these fingered tales
the marks life left anon and anon, for he knew
it was his duty to wipe the slate clean

to allow resurrection,
renewed vision of a bejeweled
world, just below his sight

there was once “a simple desultory philippic”
witty words put to music by men of another age
but now only lanky lyrics on a soundless page

that which hath power to soothe the savage breast
has long ago been mournfully put to rest
by a cursed plague visited upon my ear
that purloined much I rightfully revere

so for those who can still hear sweet melody
do not forget to bow down thankfully
for the syncopated sounds that still delight
and other treasures beyond our sight

dance, blaspheming butterfly
against the black and ignorantly blessed sky

white winged water walker
filled my dreamy head
sliding, gliding on shimmering glass
far from my land locked bed

once a child and filled with awe
my visions shamelessly bold
a water walker I would be
and straw could turn to gold

but spinning orbs wash one with age
and weight one's wings with years
flights of endless prowess
are grounded by groundless fears

yet when blind night blocks the light
and one's mind is free to explore
childhood's chirping vision
is again allowed to soar

mostly
I survived
like a spectator
at a Macy’s parade
my head, anonymous,
part of a blur of cold colors
and checkered sounds
that lined the
straight shores of the concrete stream
of the non floating floats

so it was for many a season
nothing to report,
no rhyme or reason,
until
the heat
of the delta
where I watched you
floating
--not amongst other floats
--not in crisp Manhattan winter
--not with manufactured mirth
  and seasonal symmetry
but with a mangled monkey body
shredded by the rounds
from the M-60
my friend used to blow you from the shaded shore
into the muddy Mekong
all ten years of you
who did nothing except
stand in his sights
wearing black pajamas,
being alive,
for him to ****

thou art
my McDonald’s
my Walmart
if Norman Rockwell were alive
he would paint you,
pay tribute to you
immortalize you in two dimensions
allow you to believe
you would stride forever
like golden arches
and prices that end in the magical, mystical 7
but alas, nothing that smells and tastes of today
or is “Made in China”
sold by blue apron clad armies
will be etched on mountain sides
you, like the Big Mac
will be recycled in short order
and surrender helplessly
to the mocking march of time

it's cold in this motel
all the paisley carpet in the world
won't make the halls warm  

a faux fire is burning in the lobby
the clerk is long numb to it, and to the rest of the world
it appears--no guest has disturbed him for hours

I don't want to go upstairs, to a room
where my only daughter waits, curled in the covers
like chrysalis in cocoon

eyes dried from crying all the tears
eyes can make--still she dry sobs--still she aches
for a mother she believes abandoned her, in a motel,
like this one, a lifetime ago

we will attend the service early today--too late
for a reconciliation between mother and daughter
the tether torn a decade past

I will hold my daughter close;
her eyes will dart around the room,
wondering who the mourners are, how they knew
the mother she did not

until then, I will sit a while longer
by this timid flicker of light, before I don the black suit,
before I knot my tie in the mirror and see the face of the man
who could not forgive a transgression, a human misstep

and robbed a girl of her mother, until today,
when words will spill from strangers' mouths,
the only biography my daughter will ever have of her
and I will wish for short epitaphs, a quick return to the earth
while those words and truths haunt my soul

judicious July, two inches,
auspicious August, three; September sunk to half
an inch, but leaped to record heat for the month

October first, he was at the bank,
hat in hand and pride somewhere deep inside,
after he swallowed it two droughts ago

the banker would know, this time
he would not bother to ask--the reaping now
would be from blood, not soil

the blood of his ancestors
who fed a nation, anonymous plodders who plowed
the sod where they were now buried

he was the last; he would have to move fast
to get dollars for his dirt, before the loans came due,
before the wife, the children knew

they would soon be town dwellers--that October
would be the month "Farm For Sale" signs would hang from
his fences like mocking scoreboards

and the month he would feel like
he had drowned in drought, leaving no doubt
he had failed his father, and his sons

chants from red states and blue
and of course the tea partied new
blend into wicked white noise
and with complete lack of poise
we have become a nation divided

not that we were ever truly united
but our rhetoric is now so blighted
that whenever we open our ears
we are inundated with feculent fears
that our country is no longer grand

perhaps we were never number one...
except in matters of money and the gun
but when measured by the yardstick of the soul
did we ever really achieve a transcendent goal
or were we listening to our own lyrical lies?

‘twas not enough to denigrate
-those of foreign birth
-those of color
and the welfare ingrate
now we all chew and spew equal portions of hate
and probably deserve our feckless fate

what happens to an effluvium held in?
does it seep through minuscule pores in the skin?
or does it skulk out like the phrase, "silent but deadly"?
does it stink like choking sulfur mined?
or does just hang close to one’s behind?
perhaps it leaves a telltale mark
and even causes your dog to bark
does it tell the smeller’s olfactory
something revealing about thee?
or are effluvia all about the same
whether ‘tis prince or pauper to blame?
alas, all we hominids produce several pounds
of the aromatic elixir each day
making it fairly safe to say
that holding it in would be a ****** crime
and cutting a big one hardly makes one less sublime

Morning

caffeine
traffic’s smell
radio’s spell
ends
at my
dead desk

Bobby's couch has a biography
of cigarette burns, food stains,
and cushion wear, all there, though
he doesn't know who wrote it

for $5 at the AmVets store
he bought a place to sit, and sleep
on nights when he was too wasted
to it make to the bedroom

where he has a mattress on
the floor; Bobby knows its life story, because
he filched it from a loading dock
at Sleep World

in five months,
it's had three women sleep
on it -- all hookers who gave
him a freebie

after they did copious lines
of coke on the glass topped coffee table
Bobby inherited from his brother, along
with a recliner he sold for ****

Bro's doing hard time at Huntsville;
he wanted Bobby to have a nice place
Bro gave his '73 Ford to their half sister
since Bobby's licence was suspended

when Bobby gets that oil field gig,
he's going to buy another Lazy Boy,
and a refrigerator to stock with beer...
maybe later a color TV

Sherman, Texas, 1978

the white coat lords,  
the army of nurses, the aides, didn't think
he understood their language

nor did they know
he had been a warrior in his homeland
and bore scars, inside, out

they paid little attention,
as he buffed lackadaisical linoleum, scrubbed porcelain *******,
making them ethereally white

though the amputees,
the hobbled, the battle burned, would wake
to the sound of his labors:

his broom swaying to and fro,
a softer metronome for their ringing ears
a cadence of condolences
for their beating hearts

I witness
the marching armies,
some trudging through the sludge of slaughter,
some gliding as if on polished glass  
others flying on sympathetic currents  
few faithfully, but ALL fatefully, moving
onward, to the deep sleep      

like a mute director in life’s one act play
I watch many in their final moments
some in stillness so sweet
my camera gently weeps ( though not I)  
others I record being ripped apart
in metal madness, yet
I don’t blink an eye
even while wiping the
blood from my hands        

you, Robert, music maker at heart,
meat cutter by trade, scored my lens  
leaving it forever altered
I knew you, a year younger than I,
I saw you, beaten down  
by the grave gravity
we cherish yet dread,
you, trudging through
the slaughter, one  
of the harshly humbled,
you, found the right rope  
and your wife found you
on a Sunday morning,
hanging
in the garage,
your letter to the world the clang
of the alarm that woke her  
and hastened her slow march
to the church, where other directors
took over the filming, and  
closed the curtain, after
the final choking act  

I cannot miss you  
I,
(who only wistfully recall
the millions of marchers near and far)  
felt your Sunday sojourn  
**** the air from my lungs
I can only be grateful  
your living and dying  
made me feel
the palled pain
and undying dread

my fingers, the same fingers
that played the guitar  
I mean look at your fingers,
the same fingers you licked
after getting the sticky pale red juice
from a cherry popsicle on them  
my fingers were dug into the tall grass
my mouth, the same mouth I kissed Amelia with,
the same mouth I ate hamburgers with,  
was pressed against the ground so tight
mud was getting stuck in my teeth
and my ears, the same ears
that heard my first sounds
were filled with colored noise, with black noise
with screaming from people I thought I knew
and those mortar and AK 47 rounds that came as fast as hail stones
and then those same ears started ringing,
but ringing is not the right ******* word
because it doesn’t sound like school bells
or phones you are eager to answer
and I can’t describe what is sounds like
and anybody who does wasn’t really there
but it is easy to say 45 years later it was
like something you knew, but you didn’t know
whatever it is you knew, and contradictions
are imperatives and declaratives, not interrogatives  
like the people of “the world” think they are  
and people of the world are filled with interrogatives
and you are filled with answers
that won’t come to your tongue
because you are still spitting out the ****
from the rice paddies and the lies you needed  
to keep you from sticking the barrel
in your own mouth, but they, those who weren’t there  
wanted to believe even more than you  
so they could still look at you without thinking
the blood on your hands, the blood coming from your lost limbs
the blood oozing into the mire in some script
the dead donor did not know--all that blood
could not be spilled in vain, though you knew it meant little
when you rinsed it from you boots,
or even when splattered in your face  
the same face that smiled for the little gray square
in the year book eighteen months before      
or maybe a million years ago
in the land of affluent aphorisms
and fingers on bra straps
rather than the rock and roll auto switch of your M-16
the fingers, the same fingers
that squeezed the trigger  
and killed something inside you
while the rounds sliced the exploding stinking air  
you were happy to silently breathe

we are clockwork creatures  
with phantasmagoric features  
precisely ground and divinely wound,  
we measured movements, prosaic and sublime
our cogged kingdom, cherished chunks of time  
our ticking, a marching machination
our faces, a reflection of the lost
a prediction of the found
we now make simpering sounds
on our path to rust
made obsolete by the silicon effete,
the cyber elite,  that-which-who
never succumb to rust, or join us
in our reverent return
to dust