the clanking
of the radiator
the only sound

except her breaths
which she counts, as if
she knows the finite number
until her last

her coffee cold;
in it she sees the night
from which she came:
the blind, deaf walkers,
the fuming taxis she left
in the square streets

her eyes well
with the last drops
of the last light
of the last star
in her galaxy
of loss

only one tear falls
into her cradled cup
where it vanishes into
the indifferent sea

she sups it slowly
back inside, where night belongs
but never stays

he moves the pace of the river,
his home a houseboat

he eschews dry land, for that is where
they are all buried:

a wife, his only son, the anonymous victims
of his rifle's rabid rattle

whatever ghostly litany lives in the lapping of waves
against his hull remains mystery to him

on the water he'll stay, drifting downstream
until he reaches the sea

where he hopes he'll have no memory
of hard earth and tormenting souls

I could say I understand
and I do say "I understand,"
with my Oscar winning voice
with my imploring eyes that ask you
for more, while subtly looking, at your crusted scars
I imagine some catatonic feline, curled
in your gut, waiting stoically to make the next cut
the next surgically precise silent scream
joined by other equally ferocious growls
that only you can hear, if you are lucky enough for them
to drown out the howls of your heaving heart
I can say "I know what you feel,"
you with your sacred steel
I can wipe the blood from your thighs
I can smell the stale silence of your cries
all the while looking through your soaking soul
mercilessly forgetting, your slicing red chants,
were meant to awaken a deaf mute world

in your dark eyes
disguised
as stardust
is spirit rust

he chose to return home  
to the familiar sights, sounds, smells  
to leave the silent antiseptic Medicare paid
vacation suite behind, for some other sinking soul  

he chose to deny the “in home palliative care”  
for he said it would be like a door to door peddler
you allowed in , one who would never leave
hocking her wares as if he got to keep them  
when she would give the same calming commodities  
to a stranger, the very day he was gone  

they all said, he would be in pitiful pain,
peeling his skin off pain without the magic potions
of modernity, the ones that brought on Morpheus' sleep,
and lapped up miles he had left

he knew though,  he had no miles left  
only a few steps, to the bathroom, perhaps,
if his old soldier’s legs held out, perhaps
he could make it to the yard again one time,
to see the ivy he planted in lesser numbered years,
the cool soft vines he watered and ignored,
until the sun turned them a yawning yellow,
then a brusque brown, perchance he could make it
to their home one more time, before the last speck of green
vanished in the dying light

my old street,  
a perfect bicycle drag strip,
needed no gutters--all rains drained
into the bay  

but today,
the lane where
I learned to drive, is a place gulls dance
and killdeer prance

this river
is a dozen inches deep
at street’s end, but a yard and growing at the bay
where the hot dog stand once steamed  

the melting monsters
were a million miles from us, you know;
a threat to a Titanic, though  surely inconsequential
to the Atlantic, or so it seemed

all the hype about heat, carbon emissions,
ozone’s demise, and other gassy notions, we thought
belonged in tomorrow’s world of worry  

but tomorrow became today,
and now it’s commonplace to say,
"the shoreline receded--that neighborhood’s gone."    

a continent constricted,
a lowly inch a year, by greed or divine design?
retribution from an earth that never forgets?
or a fickle force we cannot fathom?  

I am ancient now, though I recall those admonitions,
ambiguities that fueled futile debate, until it was too late
and here I be, watching waters at low tide, lapping
against my feet on a once dry and driven street

the carpet was her friend  
its woven pile stitched by a Java descendent
just for this sparkling occasion, or a thousand others  
when she slithered across it  
to find the crystal goblet,
or porcelain bowl      

the night began with promise
a phone call from him, or the other him
saying he would be there after dinner
when it was night enough to enter
under cover of darkness  

last time he had entered on the sofa,
though she didn’t remember anything
but rolling onto the floor, and waking the next morn
rug burns on her back, dry tracks of him on her thighs  
and the carpet to the door    

she had asked for more,
more of him, more of the wine, more of the night
that came and went like he, without so much
as a by your leave  

doubtless there would be
other nights, when they would turn off the lights
and sink as one, in a silken simmering sea
together to find treasures
on the ancient floor…  

more likely,
in her world of more,
he would walk away again  
her left draped in sweat,
and the familiar scent  
of disappointment

blink

from mother’s womb
(blink of the eye)
to silent tomb

George told me,
"ain't how long you live,
but how you live that counts"
strange he had clung to this
rock for double eights

and that he swore he'd jump
from a plane when he hit ninety, without
a parachute if he chose

those long linoleum journeys
when I wheeled him from his room to the dining hall
were the best part of my day

a minimum wage slave,
ending my graveyard shift
watching one after another leave
a thousand different ways

he called me "brown sugar"
I took no offense, for colored girls get deaf to such
jabs before we get bras

I knew, from him,
it was a term of endearment
since his red blood had earned
him ****** names like "Charlie Chief"
and "Drunk ***** Joe"
long ago

he told me grabbing melons
along the Pecos beat cotton picking
on the prison farm, and I never asked
how he came to know either

he said his squaw
was dead some forty years
his own trail of tears since
would never dry

no children had lived
to become great warriors
or proud princesses, though
he never said why

when I would leave George
at his table, the end of our daily stroll
he would bless his eggs with words
I didn't know

those who shared the table
sat mute and chewed their cud
as I walked away, I would never fail
to wonder, if I could find
a plane and pilot

999
were cyber plumed
I,
exhumed
from
exile,
pecked
1000

when the shining glass looks back at us
like a stalled rerun of our personal opera of soap
and the technicolor turns to charcoal gray
we know we are coming to the end of our day

and we look to smaller spaces,
those “windows to the soul”,
for a reflection of who we are,
or were
they cast an obligatory glance
or do an avoidance dance
when we give an imploring stare
to see if they know, we are still there

each day fewer shine bright or glitter with glee
and we wonder what happened to me
the me they saw and sought after
in the colored world of before

others disappear into their own dark night
long having endured the inevitable plight
of the cold mirror’s still, shattering view
and disappearing eyes of all but a few
who see us faintly
in the light that remains

gold, round
it has felt a thousand hands
in sixty years

tomorrow it will be
replaced, the dead door
along with it

the old brass globe
knows nothing of gentrification;
its desecration of memory:

the carpenter who bore its hole
the first child to turn the **** to play;
the last man to yank it in anger

when he felt the bowels of defeat,
the bane of bankruptcy--the effluent epiphany
of eviction

how many tales began with
the spinning of the circle, the opening
of the door, letting in the light

tomorrow, and tomorrow, the door,
the handle, will rest in the landfill, the
graveyard of myriad doorknobs

all with their own stories of auspicious
beginnings, mysterious twists and turns--
plots thickened by the hands of time

every night, the klaxon
wailed, like a hound lost in the fog

Mum and I would be sitting down
to dinner when the beast began bellowing

she would quip, them Gerrys want me
on thin rations, and to the cellar we scuttled

Mum would bring a votive candle, a pale of water;
I would grab Tag, our shivering terrier

in our tiny circle of timid light, we would wait and wonder,
how far were they? what would the next sun reveal?

on All Saints Eve, the house shuddered; the dust
from its two centuries drifted down on us like fine rain

then all was still, until we fell asleep--maybe she was
dreaming of Father, and what field now held him

I was not--sleep had taken me but a moment before
our tired beams moaned and gave way

Tag was then barking through his tremors, and she lay
still in the rubble, her eyes slit open

though only enough to see I was there to bury
her, in green pasture

far from this gloom, her quivering pet  
and orphaned manchild

For some reason,
I walk softly on this ground
Expecting perhaps to be chided
if I make an unwelcome sound

Among stone sentinels in scattered rows
beside a clear stream that perpetually flows
are markers with names both common and bold
for mourners and the curious all to behold

Some come to release dammed up tears
others to tease their deepest fears
Some like I tread so lightly they leave no tracks
but others come bearing burdens like heavy sacks

I read the dates and do the simple math
and create my own tales of each soul’s path
Some lived eighty, some lived less
and others carved numbers seemed to confess
that the trail they walked was likely brief
and with each breath they exhaled cold hard grief

But my stories are surely not real
and my reveries can hardly conceal
what I conjure up among these standing stones
and the crumbling and hidden sacred bones
are tales that mask the shivering thought
that soon I will rest in a similar plot

For some reason,
I walk softy on this holy soil
and in some coming season
I will finish my toil
And lie near this same clear stream
and begin my own blank eternal dream

in black sky above us, the shreiks
of the shells cut the air, sharp, until
the dreaded booms which tell us
how close

how close the rounds landed
to our trench, where we hunker, drenched
in dreck, mud and blood, an unwilling
audience to this martial symphony

screams stream skyward
and comingle with the next volley,
a cacophonous courtship of vibrations,
invisible, but we know it's there

a miserable marriage of metal
and flesh--monkeys made into men
who ****** their own; who are determined
to sing these sour songs

when the lobbies stop, the only sounds
are the winds, the ones which will gently carry
the sounds of men moaning, crying,
praying for silence

what grand abstraction
lies behind your words,
word weaver extraordinaire?
I see only a concrete grid,
a stenciled number, and glass bulb tears
some evidence of your years--tire tread trails, a pothole here and there
a worn fence to keep intruders at bay
but no cars resting
is that why you weep?
does being alone
with your number take its toll?
if I stroll your pages,
will the answer be revealed?
or will I yet be wandering
on an empty asphalt plain
trying vainly to gain, access
to some invisible door?
could you not have named your tale
with more banal words?
could the hero not have been
a John Doe sweeping the weeping lot
or a Mary Doe painting a happy ending?
was not to be,
I see, for
when I begin to absorb the light
of your pages,
I forget the tome’s beguiling name
and what the crying lot once had to say

you found me
in a second hand store
on Lincoln Avenue

you bought me
for nine dollars and tax because
you thought I was a mandolin

you told Tryone, the clerk
who would sell me into slavery, your
wife always wanted one

you took me home to your
twelfth story apartment; I discovered
your wife was gone many years

but her photo on the living
room wall got to see me, and hear
your lament:

you wished you would have
found me seasons sooner--but my
strings were rusted even then

my last song played at a bar mitzvah
before your hair turned white, before
your wife's many colored regrets

you played me but once and didn't
like what I had to say--you tossed me
from your balcony to the street

I made the same flight your wife did,
landed in the same spot; yes, I suspect she was  
more a disappointed music lover than you

she wrote an entire novel
about a man who cut his hand
on a can of sardines

he found in a silent cupboard
of a prairie house abandoned since
the dust bowl, or perhaps since
the eighth day of creation

the can he opened with a rusty blade
he found in yet another home of ghosts
on a treeless lane in Topeka

where he spent
four naked nights
hiding from the cruelest January,
his memories, and the devil

who his mama said eschewed the cold
and he believed her, but built a fire all the same
until a fat ****** sheriff came
and sent him into the night

where a wailing wind waited
and blew him south through the dark
like just another tumbleweed

when he finally
landed, dry and thrashed
in his new sagging palace
the snows had melted,
the winds calmed

there he found fine fodder
in a tin with sailor standing proud
a feast of fish at his feet

was a shame to behead
the mariner with such a dull tool
only to find mush and ancient fetor
anointed by three drops of his red blood
the can demanded in exchange
for its long dead bounty

hey!
you lookin’ at me?
like you would if I wasn’t here
is it my stewed stench you fear?
you lookin’ at me?
you wonder at all where I been?
or if I committed the original sin?
you lookin at me?
like I’m some bug you gotta crush
or some load you forgot to flush?
you lookin at me?
how ‘bout I sit beside you in your holy hall?
would you then know you too could fall?
you lookin’ at me?
**** no
I ain’t even here

Life

a
death
sentence
commuted
briefly
while
I
dream
I’m
awake

I asked him
                    the old one
how to  t-r-a-c-k and trap
find
      fine  
             l    i    n    e    s
                                      in fresh dirt
                                                          s ­  i   f   t    through the carrion
                                                         ­ they did not devour
                                                          ­                                  s   m   e   l   l    the droppings
                                                                ­                            to know even more
                                                            ­                                of their sacred work

even with his eyes closed
                                          he knew
                                                         but did not say
                                                         that I am among
                                                         the lazy learned
                                                         ­ who did not see
                                                                ­                    the p-r-i-n-t-s
                                                                ­                    I leave,
                                                                ­                    and the ones I read
                                                            ­                        are also
                                                                ­                    t-r-a-c-k-s
                                 ­                                                              that may lead
                                                                ­                                               to traps

every night, before bed,
a simple ritual: he walks to the foyer
and drags the deacon's bench to the door
to keep intruders at bay

has been this way, since
the day he read "In Cold Blood"
and realized what uninvited guests
can do under a god's watchful eye

the belly of the bench holds every bible  
he has ever owned in his four score years
save the one by his bedside, where it sits as sentinel
against other imagined foes and woes  

though he is long deaf, those
who would defile him can yet hear, and
the righteous moan of the bench on the hardwood
would give them pause

or so the old man believes;
as if a simple sound could be so profound
to tip cosmic scales in his favor, save him
from the tyranny of evil men

this very night, before bed
he takes the same walk, shoves the same  
weighted wood against a locked door,
a simple ritual

in the green searing sea of afternoon
my gaze fixed on his black pajama clad frame
the croaking canopy of jungle shading his tanned face
( I never knew why they were called a yellow race)
my hands had followed some voiceless lethal command before
but only in faceless night
that could not only conceal my fright
but also keep me from seeing more than shifting shapes
that one could have convinced me were eyeless, thin apes
flipping the switch and popping the rounds had been no easy task
but darkness had always been a convenient mask
did he see my eyes digesting the scene if front of me?
this little man called my enemy, AKA VC or Victor Charlie?
did he have time to think of my malicious intent?
(that I would only after the fact invent)
or were his last visions not of my pimple pocked face
but of richer times in some faraway place
where he planted and played and heard simple songs
and couldn’t imagine the treacherous throngs
who would come to “save” his jungled land
but could never fully understand
why we couldn’t just leave them alone
I can’t say what his final racing thoughts could have been
but I do know that mine were deafened by the din
of my rapid rifle fire that caused his demise
and I only remember I could see his eyes

what did he miss most?
the whip of wind on his face
the unbridled buck of life between his legs
the scent of the saddle
the lathered beast?

the fast pass of the satchel
to the next eager rider, the covenant
he carried in the saddle bags; the one he made
with the Almighty to keep him safe
from the red devils?  

a new century dawned, two score
years since the hot rides were quick
made obsolete by the iron horse, the poles
and lines that brought Morse's magic,
ticking time electric

what did he miss most?
perhaps the deep, unperturbed sleep
after the ride--slumber filled with liquid dreams,  
gifts bestowed by a condign contentment
from his brutish labor

dear diary
when I write in you
in cursing cursive, indelible blue
I don't expect you keep my secrets
one day, strangers who professed to love me
will open your paisley cover

you will surprise
those interlopers, won't you,
with fierce fires, thick thunderbolts drawn
by a demented hand, in a razor red
never never land    

my confessions
will jump from the page,
eager creatures, long locked
in your pale parchment, their patience
forever tested, ready to tell
terrible tales

dear diary,
where were the benevolent schemes
and childlike dreams you expected?
in others deluded epistles to themselves,
necessary fiction, for it is much more important
to fool oneself than the indifferent world

I could not talk him down, or
listen him up,  though that is
what I was trained to do, tried to do  
he gazed only at the street,
his final resting place, where  
he would soon be
a crushed crimson spectacle
for greedy and empty eyes  
whose mouths would tell
of his demise, but none
even knew his name,
I learned it was Everett, and  
that he had three daughters
lost in suburbia, eons from this ledge
where he stood, and talked to a stranger  
who was stranger than he  
for I looked to the skies
above the humming city, as if
they would be my salvation  
an airy home to spread wings
with angels, and glide endlessly
through blue heavens, but Everett knew  
there were no winged saviors awaiting him  
to grab him before his lonely leap
only the unmovable slab of concrete below
the craned necks of other flatlanders  
who would watch his final descent
and not realize his brief eternal fall
through the invisible place between two worlds  
would be the closest any would ever be  
to freedom

In the long lingering shadows of last light
the trees do not complain or put up a fight
to keep their dark companions at bay
or cling clumsily to the waning day
the grass will neither wither nor whine
nor ask the hidden orb to continue to shine
but for creatures who wander through incandescent haze
and speak boldly of the passage of days
the long shadows are measured with fear
for a certain number of them make a “year”
and unlike the eternal sea from whence we came
or grass and myriad other things we could name
we hide among shadows when they grow
and beg their source to once again glow

the headline, Avian flu,  
was the first bird that arrived
to mark our beginning  

I was in O'Hare,  
on my first cell, when she agreed
to have dinner

but stuck in JFK, four cells later,
when she asked me to get my things
from her loft

CNN was on the flat screen
the new plague on instant replay,
becoming a stale tale de jour

wings of silver birds
were slicing the night sky
my ticket to ride one
on the bar

I hoped
I wouldn't catch the newest bug
while still in the air

he shoulders shame
carrying the weight of the dead,
slung over him

partnering with gravity,
these memory moguls slow him down
though he keeps trudging

when one drops, another
takes his place -- first his father, then
a brother, stillborn

not half the weight of a stone,
yet his carcass bends his back
like any full grown beast

for he did not weep
with his mother when its blue soul
was yanked from her womb

nor did he shed a tear
when his father's heart gave out
a billion beats too soon

when he forgets his sins as son  
he recalls another one--the boy he
slew on a brown river's bank;

floating still in the Mekong, riddled
with the rifle's rabid rounds, he often catches
a ride in memory's stream

leading a relay team of shame shifters
he carries with him every step, though
the world sees him walk alone

their walls pale peach, eggshell
tiny flowered paper in the dining room
wood panels in the den

but then, when the boy's voice changed
and hair began to stubble his face, he painted
his own space

eleven by a dozen feet,
all scarlet as Camara rose  
though the can said,
“Passion Red”  

when daylight shined
on these crimson plains, his mother swore
she saw flickering flames  

the boy told her there was no fire
but to extinguish her ire, he painted again,
a stark white, but in just the right light
she still saw a simpering glow    

off to college he went, a full day
she spent, pressing the roller firm against his walls,
extracting every red drop that remained, until
again in perfect light, she was certain  
she saw imps and fallen angels  
dancing in delight

grub worms, grave gravity,
failed romances, the fate of the Great Auk,
a death too young, a silent sacred dance
of butterflies

all flow behind my eyes
song lyrics whose melodies
never quite reach my ears, so
I plop verses on a page

an elder adolescent sage  
writing in riddle, sometimes rhyme, committing
the crime of filching grist born of life's abundant mill,
and bastardizing it, carelessly, at will

the surface, frozen
in the depths, they rest
suspended among ice
crystals

we can't see through
the crust, though we
know they are there,
for simple hook and bait
wake them

within the fine folds
of their brains, the
accumulated wisdom
of a half billion years
guides them to the catch
the promise of full gut

they don't see us through
the ice, we two legged novices
in the kingdom--jesters who lull
them from Cambrian dreams,
to the white light of today

they snap the lure
they flap about on the frozen pond,
we witness their death throes, unaware
what the gasping future holds
for the wretched species
to which we belong

raindrops dimple the pond
fishes near the surface snap at them
expecting red reward

those in the depths, bellies
barely above the silt, rest easy,
ignoring the folly above

when the heavens grow restless
and pound the pool with hail, the bottom
dwellers remain placid

unperturbed by the sky's fury
or the whipping tails of the once fanciful
who now descend to their depths

I am there
but time is standing still
though the river rushes past
to remind me of the grave grip of gravity,
the rolling of this tiny rock
and the necessary fiction of minutes

no wound clock woes me
no hunger torments me
no trail awaits my feet

I am there
with my line to the depths I know hold treasures
blocked from my deluded eyes
by reflections of blue-gray skies

a simple tug on my wrist
pulls me farther from the burdened banks
to which I must ultimately return
but not for an eternal while
while my line is taut
and the curse of time is not
menacingly marching
in this dreamy flow