From The Source:

Northern Valentine

2012-02-11T22:38:00.001-05:00

The world is frozen
On a northern Valentine’s Day.
The clouds have broken:
Moonlight on lovers gone astray.
They carry tokens,
Yet passion’s warmth has blown away.

The world can lend no aid.
Small creatures dream
In the burrows they have made;
Tree branches gleam
In the wind and give no shade;
And the sun’s pale beams
Offer warmth that quickly fades.

In the cold noontime at the park,
The young man awaits his lover,
Guarding dreams against the dark,
With frozen chocolates and flowers.

He will wait another hour.
Such is its power -
That love will almost never die
Underneath a winter sky.

Love American Style

2012-02-05T18:55:00.001-05:00

First we have to negotiate the sexism.
Then we have to negotiate the racism,
Then the homophobia.

We negotiate God
And the places of worship,
Selecting a God for the children.
And then we buy the matching outfits.

We forget about politics.
Maybe we remember
After the drinks, theater, dinner,
airline tickets, and the rest.

We forget about death, too.
But there's no time to remember
After the condoms, abuse, lawsuit,
Abortion, and the rest.

I remember you standing,
Before all the negotiations,
At the bookstore smiling,
And felt those queer sensations
When we said we'd write a new chapter
In the travel book you were holding.

Impression at Dusk

2012-01-13T00:02:00.002-05:00

The sun had set without notice.
The winter dusk wrapped the street corner in purple dust.
At the bus stop, four people stood, swayed, waited,
Different shapes and colors, all wrapped in long coats,
In the noise of passing blue sedans and brown taxis
Rushing past the green light.
At the red light, the thrum of tense engines,
Waiting 60 seconds, then rushing,
Transporting drivers away,
To torments and delights,
Real and imagined.
.
.
What can I know?
What ought I to do?
For what may I hope?
.
.
The patter of expensive leather shoes
On the leaf-strewn, dusty pavement
Is scarcely heard
Before the rumble, screech, and gasp of the city bus,
Full of torpid, wool-covered strangers.
The bus blasts off, like an ugly starship
Into the gathering darkness.
Destination: the muzzled, muffled
Thoughts of aliens.

When the dust cloud settles,
A thin plume of exhaust curls around the empty bus stop,
A brief moment of silence - the sweetest sound - unnoticed,
Like the sunset,
And the sinking moral ground,
And the sense that we are bound
To see meaning in sound and color,
And in human horror,
After the bus has gone around
The bend.

Toothbrush

2012-01-11T22:55:00.002-05:00

In the dead of winter,
Time to change my toothbrush.
In the garish supermarket light,
The colors of the brushes chatter,

And the clatter of voices, pressed tight,
In the detergent isle burst in bright
Laughter, passing, white.

Pick a brush, any one.
You're not getting any younger.
The clock has nearly gone.
And the line is getting longer.

In the bathroom mirror, my skin too white;
The toothbrush, pale blue in its package,
I stow from sight - a guest might stay one night
And need a toothbrush.

Laughter again, this time mine.
Deep in the mirror lies the wreckage,
A graveyard of brushes scattered like mines.

No one will brave that terrain.
Before I see a new house guest
I'll change my toothbrush again.

Privacy

2011-12-15T22:40:00.001-05:00

The American notion of privacy
Is a bizarre, surprising thing -
A kind of lunacy -
In other places in the world,

Like a joke made of sobs.

No thought of privacy where,
On the floor mattress by you,
Your father on top of your mother
Wrapped in blankets,
Trace a cocoon of mystery.

You think that is her head,
Turned back, staring up
At the black wall in the darkness.

And there are soft grunts
Every few minutes, and rustling
Of wool blankets, and your mother
Sucks her breath through her teeth.

Months later you lay the wreath
Of brittle leaves upon her mound,
Without thought, without sound.
She had gone to the wood one day
And not come home

While you walked alone
By the shores of the stream,
Listening to your mind flow,
Like the sound of dream.
There in the moving water
Your shadow face is seen
Wondering if you matter -

A strange notion,
New, pristine.

Lost

2011-12-05T00:42:00.000-05:00

We go on, we go on,
From darkness until to dawn,
For an hour or two of bliss.
And is there more than this?

At last our eyes we close
And into dreams we doze:
The arms of the lover
That nobody knows.

We go on, we go on,
Until again we wake,
When to the road we take,
Past the refuse and debris,
Of the love we failed to see.

Window Seat

2011-11-25T22:31:00.002-05:00

The clouds, little and round,
Mostly white with tints of rose,
Like seagulls without sound,
Moving in regular rows,
Go gliding past the window.

Their peace a kind of joy,
Like the grinning dolphin leaping
In the orb of sea and sky,
Is the peace all men are seeking,
Beyond grasp of you and I.

I sense the troubling doubts,
From this side of the pane,
That the serenity of clouds
We men could ever gain.

Far below my window seat,
In lands the clouds do darken,
Drums of war the tribes still beat,
To which most men still harken.

Yet behind my window seat
A child's weak wail I hear,
A clamor for his mother's teat,
A sound she must hold dear.

Clouds their quiet realms will keep
As the suckling babe reminds me.
Men know only peace in sleep;
Their cries the call of destiny.

Nightfall

2011-10-08T10:10:00.002-04:00

Walking home alone,
The people all around chatter
Like the birds in the trees at nightfall.
Faces I don't see
Cast shifting neon shadows.
Neon storefronts say the same things
At night as in the day, only louder.
And the mannequins’ outfits still don’t fit me.
I notice my tie, as if for the first time,
Black with white squares, too long,
Though it has hung round my neck all day long.
The moving escalator,
All night long, hums and clacks.
My shoes feel the hum - it is like the hum
Of passersby rushing down the moving steps.
I notice my shoes.
I need new shoes.
And then the escalator screeches,
The loudest noise in the world,
That empties out into the long, wide corridor.
Walking alone at first but soon
The big posters on the walls, they greet me;
They whisper movies, museums, perfumes,
Airlines, and police hot lines.
To respond is pointless, for they only hear
Money and fear.
When the train doors close, the sound comforts -
The humming and clacking of going home.
The faces I notice, as if for the first time,
Some quiet like mannequins,
Some chatter like birds.
Walking home alone,
Something pains my stomach.
But then I stare at the pavement in streetlight;
The cracks in the stone bring me home,
Safe, quiet.

Chardonnay

2011-09-11T21:21:00.002-04:00

Western civilization might be a good idea.

The restaurants
Have marvelous menus:
Beef bourguignon,
Chicken cordon bleu,
Spaghetti Bolognese and
Fisherman’s stew.

And to accompany one might
Select the house white,
A brilliant chardonnay,
Or if you prefer, the house red
Will do instead.

Rivers of red flowed from the houses,
The sighs of the dead never heard, never felt,
For the air had filled
With the engine screams of bombs
Falling on all alike:
The terrorist,
The freedom fighter,
The schoolboy,
And the wife,
Falling like a red rain on life.

And how is your chardonnay, sir?
It is fine, you say,
Fine like a light rain in late winter
That waters the ground
With the promise of spring;
Fine enough to wash down
The guilt in every morsel on your plate,
Every morsel savored, chewed, and swallowed
While far away the bodies lay
Scattered on ground unhallowed.

Every morsel you savor, chew, and swallow
Until there is nothing on your plate,
Except the question:
Do I dare, oh, do I dare?
Do I dare to brave the kitchen?
For you expect the corpses there.

But why sully the air?
Raising the glass, you stare
At the clear chardonnay
And your troubles, by the glass,
Travel miles and miles away.

Storm Brewing

2011-08-29T21:46:00.002-04:00

The train station lay empty
At that hour
Before the storm's arrival -
Outside a passing shower.

In all the fuss over survival
No one remained to serve me tea.

The people of the world had reached their home,
The train stations of the world great, empty spaces.
Those without destination thread their way alone,
Seeking the solace of tea in solitary faces.

The Beast

2011-08-28T12:42:00.003-04:00

A peasant
From the age of superstition,
Days of pestilence and hunger
And nights of endless dark,
Would see a horror far more stark -
And dangers far more strange -
In our present modern age.

From every mouth pours forth a rage,
From which the ancient devils cower,
In mad desire we gorge our flesh,
Slaves to a modern, bestial power.

It thrives upon our constant needs,
And upon our sickly fear it feeds;
Taking cloudy shape from seeds
Within our ever-grasping greed.

We see the monster in the mirror,
Faces that fancy beating death,
Yet still our last day draws nearer -

Even as our voices launch
Forever and far
Into the stars -

We are gone with out last breath.

Shepherd's Task

2011-08-19T00:05:00.004-04:00

The words could drop and land
In intricate patterns,
Like the first rain drops
On a hot pavement,
Tracing intricate patterns
With obscure historical allusions,
Novel grammatical intrusions,
Terraced on a page -
All angles of confusion.

But why bother?

Time was when a man
Would seek to understand
A message as it ran
Across a page,
Finding in the words
Nothing strange,
Their straightforward motions
Tracing a man's notions
Of truth and beauty
Of god and time,
In simple rhyme.

A poet should know enough
To come in from the rain.
An unlikely leader of men,
He is called to lead again,
To lift our modern apprehension
And bring mysteries
Of the world and mind
Within man's comprehension.

Compassion

2011-08-12T23:08:00.002-04:00

Every day somewhere in the world
Someone dies who understood
Compassion – a song in the wood
Sung by a bird
Few had heard
Or understood.

If one day the birds were all to die,
The wood would scarce be silent.
Creatures beneath the canopy sky,
Their hunger lifting fitful cries,
Not fit for song,
Or baleful rhyme –

Their alien sounds, in passing time,
Nest in the empty clearing
Of our silent hearts.

The Fly

2011-05-26T22:21:00.001-04:00

Moral absolutism
Is dashed on the rocks
Of cultural relativism
By winds of ethnocentrism.

In the air-conditioned
Clinical room,
The scientist positioned,
A housefly
Under a lens that envisioned,
Its eyes like diamond blooms.

How like a god
He sets to make incisions,
To go behind the eyes,
Into the mystery beyond the visions
Of the tribal prophets
Beneath their desert starry skies.

But the fly has far more eyes,
And will see in more directions,
Than any man who walks the earth,
Its thousand-eyed reflections
Pierced in tribal songs
Of the world before man’s birth.

Kentucky Derby

2011-04-27T00:16:00.002-04:00

Let us be thankful to the gods
For the bacchanalia,
For the fruits and for the wine.
So went the refrain in ancient times.

But the Lord was present in those days,
In the faces of fledgling Christians
Thrown naked into the arenas
Holding starving lions.

From those anguished faces
Wringing shackled hands
The Lord’s message rang out:
Repent! For the end is near!

But who would want to hear?
The thought of ending the party!
Really! Bring on the thrills!

The transmogrification of the Lord continued:
As a bull in a Spanish arena,
Pricked by a starving bullfighter;
As a horse in the Kentucky Derby,
Goaded by a starving jockey;
As a football player in the Super Bowl,
Cheered by a starving public.

In the lands of endless bounty,
From Rome to present day,
The rich starve in every country,
While the poor are toys for play.
All are racing to the finish,
For what prize no one can say.
In the crowd’s roar after victory,
The horse’s groans are swept away.

Location

2011-04-13T21:29:00.000-04:00

Silly black man!
Did you think
That you could smoke that blunt,
Bluntly blowing your pain away,
On a corner of that stricken,
Despair-ridden ghetto?

Hell, no!
Calamitous location
Is your situation.

Look here, black man.
Take your smoking on down
To the university town.
Will that professor's frown
Force the smokers
(Young and white) to lay low?

Hell, no!
Your situation
Is a pox on your location.

Listen here, black man.
That smoking is just fine
In places where the sun does shine.
Deep inside the gated homes
(Old and white) smoke roams
From room to room;
And no police anytime soon.

Our location is Us.
Your location is Them.
Look for those white gates
And watch the rates
Of arrest disappear -
But never the fear
Of them;
No, never the fear
Of them.

Winter Hill

2011-02-01T23:58:00.002-05:00

The winter, with its white,
Blinds our sight:
Everything is sleeping, not dead.

What is not sleeping lies quite still,
Or barely moves:
Our heavy coats keep out the chill
But we move more slowly,
As our boots trudge up
The snow covered hill.

There on that silent summit –
If you are brave, if you are patient –
You can see with winter eyes
And you can hear with winter ears.

The red holly berry,
Amid brown bushes and gray earth,
Leaps brightly like a star in dark night.
A clump of snow, softly, quietly,
Slides from a branch to the ground, all white.

A crow, high above, cries out in the stillness,
But it does not speak to you,
The crow, like the deer and the mice,
Has its own business.

And all around the strangely silent hill,
The city stretches, just as strangely still.
It is the power of winter to hear the sound of nothing
That muffles the shopping, the driving,
The fussing and the striving.

The towering trees, with their bare branches,
Reveal a sky that lays hidden in summer.
The trees do not speak to you, but they let you listen,
As their hands, covered in ice that glistens,
Beseech the great sky above.

Stars that hang like a thousand points of ice
Receive that silent winter prayer of love.
The prayer includes you but is not to you.
Having witnessed, you will return home
Where you will join the world in sleeping.

Cold Hands

2011-01-21T23:46:00.006-05:00

On this long winter’s night,
The cold instills fright
On all small creatures hid from sight;

The barren earth,
And the cobblestones on the earth,
As hard and cold as granite.

The trunks of trees pale gray, wearing masks of death,
Hold up naked branches, supplicant fingers, outstretched,
Against a sky that says nothing, beyond grasp, beyond breath.

And the cold descends upon everything,
Reaching up, gripping legs like fingers of the dead,
The unremembered, beyond comfort, beyond breath.

As I hurry on, icy breath lost to the sky,
My gloved fingers clutch the chest, press my coat tight.
The other huddled passersby, silent, scurry on,
Minds shut against the indifference of the night.

All are intent on the hearths and fires
In solid homes where the circles of light
Caress their faces, their tired smiles.
But they don’t think; no one thinks,
Their minds shrink from sight.

Outside the icy sky, expectant, stares down upon me, pressing,
Cold probing, trying to find that place in the mind,
Where thoughts lay breathing,
Brave though quiet, dreaming:

All the small creatures lie in their holes, dark and warm.
But what of the women and men without home or fire?
Where do they go? Where do they hide in a world so dire?
My God, what if it’s me with no home in the world?
What if it’s me that the world forgets?
Who will I see with an outstretched hand?

Alone I stand and stare at the night.
The cruelty of winter makes no noise, hid from sight.
And though the warm fire of my home still awaits me,
Long will I feel the cold, hard touch of a world
That one day may forsake me.

Solitary Pine

2011-01-11T20:19:00.004-05:00

With no one to befriend me,
With no one to know who I am,
A stranger I shall remain
On the day of my last stand.

So near me they pass –
Lovers who laugh, lovers who quarrel –
Yet my mirth I can only share
With the indifferent little squirrel.

Upon me the people confide
Their fragile human sorrows;
Today regale me with plans and pride,
But abandon me tomorrow.

No one has asked me the questions
One friend would ask another:
To what end do you grow?
How does it feel to be covered in snow?
Whatever became of your brothers?
When this forest is cleared like the others,
Which way will you go?

If my voice the wind through the miles could carry
To the people who live with their picnics and parties,
To them I’d declare all the wisdom of my days
Of a life spent on a cliff, above a windy, rocky bay.

Standing still, time slows its pace,
So I live longer, though we share the same small space.
Reflecting alone, my thoughts and world I own,
So I stand stronger, while others scatter, by the winds blown.
Dreaming alone, though I share not these dreams,
Makes life more joyful than my lonely days would seem.

And yet, like the air above the cliff always beyond grasp,
Lives the tender touch of friends, as they pass around a glass.
You, through your friends, will be remembered beyond your years,
While I, when I am gone, will have the winter rain for tears.

Candelabra

2011-01-04T22:33:00.002-05:00

Candelabra burning bright,
Chase the shadows into night.
Shine upon the crowd that gathers
To forget important matters.

Candelabra, if you could see
How the revelers dance with glee,
And consume their little cakes
With exotic kinds of teas.

Candelabra, if you could hear
How the music fills their ears,
As they laugh and cluck and crow;
Their party forms a jolly show.

Candelabra, if you could turn
To the crystal window sights,
You would be suprised to learn
How the others spend their nights.

Candelabra, stoop to see
Dirty children running free
A promised meal they run to follow
Promised by a crooked shadow.

Candelabra, bend to hear
How the mothers sob in fear
Their children gone from feeble sight
To form the armies of the night.

Candelabra, guard your flame,
For throngs are whispering your name.
They gather at the gates of hell,
Your festival in mind to quell.

Candelabra, pray aloud
That God may calm this angry crowd.
Be not surprised if you should see
This night repeat like history.

Down the ages, through the years,
Said the sages amid jeers:
A prince his hoard will fail to keep
When the poor fight hunger in their sleep.

Moonwater

2011-01-03T15:33:00.003-05:00

On the paths that you may take,
With no choices left to make,
You can always get water from the moon.
So said a father to his son
On a sunny afternoon
In the childhood day of life.

The years brought strife,
And paths to take,
And choices to make.
But still the skies refrained from rain
On the nights the moon hung bright.

Then the son turned man, one evening as he ran,
Turned a corner in the night
And the path became an alley,
A darkened, rustling end.

The rustling in the darkness
Made a sound, a weighing sadness:
You are alone,
Though still surrounded.
Your life is mean,
By lies all bounded.
You are the prey
By demons hounded.

And though the women come and go in the room,
Sipping softly, talking low,
Beneath the candelabra moon,
You cannot move, you are not seen,
Your life a demon’s passing dream.

There is water on the moon, said the son turned man.
This he repeated, like a prayer, like a talisman in sand.
Down fell the water from the moon
Like the rain of glassy night
That washed the sadness from the land.

Not far from the dead end alley,
Where the lamps had pierced the dark,
Lay a quiet, leafy park.
There a fountain played its music
While the birds slept on the branches,
With the water from the moon
Falling lightly on the benches.

And the son turned man that night
Beheld an extraordinary sight:
Figures on the benches sprang
From the bright moonwater rain.
To him they beckoned,
Sit and talk a while with us,
While in the night the fountain sang.

These are the people of the world:
Reading their papers,
Watching the birds,
Some appear dapper,
And others absurd.

In them all moonwaters run,
So the son turned man had learned.
In them all his father’s love,
Like the shining moon,
Had burned.

New Year's Eve

2010-12-31T22:59:00.001-05:00

December is the cruelest month
When the old folks, impatient
For their children's plane to land,
Wrap themselves in cloaks of memories
And sink into the dead land;

When I examine my intentions
By the weakened winter light -
What was a January hope
In the embers fades from sight.

What I could have done
But I never did,
As the year has come to end,
I carry to the new year still
Like a sack with my back bent.

But it is true, that we two
Did walk that summer night.
Hand in hand, we took our stand
Against time's relentless might.

For you and I gazed at the sky,
At the twinkling light of dead stars,
We our hallowed moment vowed to keep
Bright like our beating young hearts.

Though you have gone
At year's cold end,
The memories I take with me.
Into the future new hopes I send
That you may yet await me.

Last Letter

2010-10-28T23:37:00.000-04:00

I shall not write again.
For you turned out in the end
To be far from any friend
Whose hand he’d fairly lend,
My hurts and slights to mend.

But, instead, like all cruel men,
Who into open hearts they wend
By smiles and words that blend
Messages and acts that send
A naïve soul round the bend

Into the garden of love run foul with briars –
You stood revealed, a hissing liar.

Your kissing desires, surpassing sweet,
In a moment expire, and abandon
My soul to the wind in the street.

No more wasteful ink to spill,
No more grieving heart to bleed;
For any word you seek from me
You shall have the stars to read.

Quantum Dream

2010-09-25T21:45:00.001-04:00

Bonds
Are mutually
Reinforcing.

But the opposite holds true.

Distance
And neglect build
An ever yawning chasm.

The games
That children play
Draw them closer.

But the opposite holds true.

Wars force
Nations apart
As the children's bodies pile.

Kiss the mirror
And grow nearer
To the other world
Where things still whirl,
Just the opposite way.

If I had my way,
I would spend my days
In a field at play
With the children,

Playing Molecule Ball
When each child can call
Where the ball will fly
And what it becomes
When it lands with a sigh:

A friend bearing ice cream,
A blue and white kite,
Balloons on a long string,
A dog that won't bite -

The waking world follows
A magical logic that leads to the gallows.
What the world needs
Is the science of dreams
Where the children lead and every man follows.

Labor Day

2010-09-19T21:28:00.003-04:00

And what should we say remains
Of the workers in the days of trains?
And what should we say
Of your grandfathers
And your grandmothers
And the world they sought to claim?

Only the murals remain for us to see
Of men in soiled shirts straining to free
A generation from American serfdom
Through telegraph poles, railways,
And onward to freedom.

Down in a lost town, a lonely post office sits,
Its mural of men as giants on tractors and combines;
While the giant women fed the workers in long lines.

Now, those sculpted workers that stared into the future,
Their eyes grave, their jaws set, their brows furrowed,
Look on a present day no one had thought would follow.

For the government halls are empty of the spirit of the common good,
And the death song has long been sung of the union’s brotherhood,
And the silence that was heard before the strike at last was called
Is buried by the laugh of the rich men and their lawmakers in thrall.

What shall we say of Labor Day
That will carry any meaning
To your sons and daughters
Who, one fine day,
Will want to work with faces beaming?

Forgotten workers are lives in vain
Unless we, too, united strain
To ease the modern worker’s sorry plight –
Democracy dies without a fight.

The Stranger

2010-09-19T04:18:00.000-04:00

Blind, brutal sex with the stranger –
It pleases the body
But not the soul.

Quietly,
In the darkness of the midnight bed,
The soul cries itself to sleep;
It is the sleep of the little death
That comes with the dream of remembering.

Yet soon enough,
Oh, soon enough,
Comes the hour of forgetting
With the rising of the sun.

Soon enough
It is another clear, mirror day
When nobody sees and nobody stares
At the hole in the soul
Carelessly placed there
By the sighs of the stranger.

Dessert

2010-09-01T21:52:00.002-04:00

I was born into a trap,
Not of my making,
From which there is no escape –

Centuries of ancestors
Threw their wiles into the fires,
Their passion, their power,
Their mad ambitions,
And their terrible beauty,

To forge this cunning cage.

There is no point to rage
Against these bars I cannot bend,
This lock I cannot open:
No escape until the end.

How you – and the world – stare
At this prisoner on a stage,
At these sinews under tight, smooth skin,
At these dark eyes that draw you into sin,
At these full lips that

Hide the tongues of fire
Within the steel trap of a smile.

I want to explain the origin of the universe to you;
I want to shout the intelligence of generations –
How is this and that and why not now or then
But perhaps one day somewhere.

And all this to save you from your own traps, and
The millions of traps that walk the cities of this world
With stealthy strides and hide in plain sight and
In the corners of the night.

But these full lips you simply bite
In the last dark hour, as I pour out my power,
Robbing you of sight and hearing;
From me no explanation – just a moan, searing –
Our cold sweat sealing
The doom of the prophets who died in the deserts.

Toward the Sea

2010-08-22T10:57:00.002-04:00

The eggs in the sand, lining the shore,
Luminescent orbs, alien in the soft moonlight,
Signal the beginning of life with purpose.

Blindly the newborn beaks press against the shells;
Life emerges in unison, choreographed by the stars,
And faces the sound of the unseen ocean of destiny.

Alone in the universe, each blind turtle struggles;
Escaping the eggshell prison, silently padding ahead,
The silver ocean beckoning, like beacon and siren of souls.

And so all souls heed their essence
And turn towards their unseen seas.

But I am turned around this night, the moonlight shining
On a grove of trees, leaves shimmering in an unseen wind;
And, blindly, I make my way though the branches creak and tease.

The road beyond that greets me is darker than my silver sea;
And though in my blood runs the need of the stars for union with you,
I plunge down the black road, my solace the dance of moonlit shadows.

Citizens United

2010-08-21T20:46:00.010-04:00

On that bright summer day,
When you yelled at the Grand Canyon,
Your voice came gliding back
Across the chasm of a million years

Like when

On that balmy Sunday afternoon
Your voice came jumping back
At the children's zoo
When Marley the Parrot said,
Hello, stupid!
Pleased to meet you.
I like butter on my bread!

The ghosts of our childhood past
Cannot be heard over the constant din
Of the cash registers in the Modern World,
Nor seen over the constant grin
Of the shopkeepers
As they laugh and whirl.

The money you spend on the things you buy
Comes back to you -
Not by gliding, not by jumping -
But, softly, by turns slow and sly.

Pans and pots,
Cars and stocks,
Eggs and fish,
And a serving dish,
Belts and phones,
And rugs for homes,
Wine and blouses,
Leather purses,
Magazines
And gasoline,
TV sets and radios,
Chicken and tomatoes,
Toilet paper,
Office paper,
Soap and salt,
And modern art,
Shiny shoes,
And your club dues,
Dolls, shampoo,
And toothpaste, too -
All come slowly back to you

Like when

Your brothers lose their modest jobs;
The plant shutters, headed overseas;

Your friends lose their modest houses
And the banks decline their quiet pleas;

Your son can't see the doctor
Until the premium is received;

And your father sadly counts
More cars on roads than there are trees.

The voice that cried across the hills
And made fun of little parrots
For a simple childhood thrill
Is now fallen mute and still.

Money is the modern voice.
So decree your childhood ghosts:
Those without it make no noise,
And those that have it laugh the most.

The Banality of Letters

2010-08-05T23:27:00.002-04:00

Tap, tap, tap . . .

Hey man
Hows it goin :-)

Tap, tap, tap . . .

Fine, man.
How’s it going with you?

Tap, tap, tap . . .

OK man
Just chillin ;-)

Tap, tap, tap . . .

Just chillin’? Cool.
And how’s that? The chillin’.

Tap, tap, tap . . .

Jus kickn back
Here with some buds :-p

Tap, tap, tap . . .

OK, cool. Man.

Tap, tap, tap . . .

So whats up with you ;-)

Tap, tap, tap . . .

Oh, you know. Not much.
And you?

Tap, tap, tap . . .

Not much too. Laid back
Looking for good times :-p
You man

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap . . .

I’m cool, man, real cool –
But not dead.
A few seething thoughts, though,
In my head
Make me hot.

What have we got?
With all our keyboards, screens,
Endless machines,

Living on eighty dollars a day

While billions of other faceless souls
Live on less than a dollar a day –

It looks like you forgot,
Though I remember,
A sentence ends with a dot.

But your words resemble
A TV jingle, not a sentence,
Letters strung along in space
Whose only hollow pretense
Is to pass for human warmth.

Hot is the sun whose indifferent warmth
Bakes the backs of the faceless who toil
In a faraway country for a dollar a day
Burying computers and screens in their soil –
The grave where machines and meaning decay.

Sponge

2010-07-31T23:01:00.003-04:00

Self-absorption
Is a quality of children.

Adults mostly lose it
As they grow older
And learn to see
The world around them on fire.

Burning, burning everywhere –
The earth, the trees, the buildings,
The edifices that hold up our society.

Burning high –
The heavens and faith and good works.

The child thinks only of her doll
While around her the curtains burn
And the wax on the doll face melts
As the father in shirtsleeves, huffing,
Snatches his little girl
And charges through the window.

Absorption
Is also a quality of sponges.

There are only napkins at the table,
And I use one, a red napkin, to wipe
Your spilled coffee
As you rummage in your briefcase,
For your phone, your calendar,
And God Knows What Else,

While my words melt in the howl of flames.

The waiter returned with a sponge,
As I looked out the window – people, cars, buses combusting –
The sponge – pink – absorbed the coffee, vanished in the howl of customers.
I wanted to take that sponge and hold it to my face, to wipe the wax.
But that would have been childish.

The Lovers

2010-07-31T08:30:00.004-04:00

On a hillside,
In a certain place in the world,
Lay two large stones,
Whose love for each other
Through the ages unfurled.

In the first days,
The stones felt each others' presence.
Saying nothing,
They heard the wind blow round
Their contours and their essence.

The rains of spring,
The tears of laughter for their tales,
Followed snow storms
And long nights in snow drifts
When understanding failed.

The summer sun
Made the hillside flowers pretty.
But heated rays
Beating their skin had made
Fast friends in adversity.

To the old stones
A traveler never came by.
But through the years
The birds flew by with news
Of a land with perfect skies:

Beyond the hillside lay
Country where the break of day
Brought warm showers,
Deathless flowers,
A sun that did not sting,
No wind to erode skin.

Then one stone said to the other
On a cloudy autumn day:

I wish to go away
And see those other places,
The lines on other faces,
And hear what strange birds say.

Said the second stone to the other
In the quiet tone of the lover:

Beyond this hillside lies another.
And beyond that other hills lie still.
The slopes resemble one another
And there winds, too, blow ill.

If you must go then you must know
That I'll cry tears of rain.
Only the grass and wind will know
My sadness and my pain.

But know as well that after time
Your seat the grass will cover.
And I will look within myself
To find my longtime lover.

For you are stone and I am stone
Our spirits are both clay.
I'll mold your image in my soul
Though you roam to the last day.

Independence Day

2010-07-26T01:39:00.007-04:00

When the end came
It was a fiery ball of rock
Screaming from the heavens -
Total and sudden annihilation.

It was the Fourth of July,
Two hundred and fifty million years ago,
When the dinosaurs were laid to rest
As the bedrock of our nation.

The beasts in the field would never ask why.
Indeed, the dinosaurs that looked at the sky,
Unaware that they were beasts,
Unaware that they would die,
Could scarcely pull themselves away
From their lives of mastication.

The mighty brontosaurus,
Thirty-five tons of hunger,
Flatulence and defecation,
With empty, misty eyes,
Was hurled, dismembered,
Miles into the skies.

Though no one would remember,
The brontosaurus - bones, entrails, and cranium -
Would become for generations
A source of quick petroleum.

Oil powered the grill
That cooked the senseless pigs,
And every parade powered
By the oil from countless rigs.

The factories that made the flags
That waved in scores of stadiums
Were powered by oil, blood-like leached,
From brontosaurus cranium.

At last the cars, their gas tanks full,
Filled the parking lots of churches
In the baking July sun.
Parishioners, their stomachs full,
Ate the body and drank the blood
Of the Holy Son and sang a song:

God Bless America
This Independence Day.
Our Land is rich;
Our Land is bright.
The power of our Nation
Is of God’s clear, endless might.

Radio Days

2010-07-17T08:58:00.004-04:00

My father’s
Widow’s father
Died in the night,
His last days spent
Listening without sight
To his radio, head bent

Towards the announcer, who
In the little radio
Sounded the friend to his ears,
The old neighbor of the years,
Since blindness forced
The long, slow goodbye
To the man in the picture box.

We grow old, we grow old;
We shall wear the bottom of our trousers rolled.

And what did the radio say?
Baseball -
It was always baseball:
War, famine,
The weather,
Friends, birthdays,
And the departed wife -
Life long ago lost its time slots
To baseball and the long shots
Hit over the fence -

Fence the neighbor leaned over
On long ago tropical mornings
And asked for the news
In perfect regional Spanish:

Do you know who vanished?
And what of the Revolution?
Will you flee to America?

We grow old, we grow old;
We shall wear the bottom of our trousers rolled.

Now, in his little chair,
In the little room with the curtains drawn,
Came the news of American baseball,
Fresh as the air at dawn,
And fifty-year-old Cuban baseball.
The years came from nowhere
Through the radio:

Those were radio days,
When the sun shone warmly,
Pleasantly, on supple skin,
Wearing shirt clean enough to work in,
And trousers fashionably rolled.

When the nights grew long and cold,
In between heartache and strife,
At the kitchen said his wife:
You grow old, you grow old,
You shall wear the bottom of your trousers rolled.
Therefore, mend them; let me mend them.

Still, the radio brought no news
Of the fences left to mend,
Of the wars the years would send,
Of the years that time would spend
To bring a body round the bend
Into the last inning.

One night,
With the heavens above spinning,
Came the announcer’s voice, grinning:
Good night to all, and to all a good night.
But before then, though without sight,
Let us hear the beginning,
Of that time in the inning
When the ball was sent spinning
Out past fences that never need mending,
Where we can write our own ending
And our games are played in the light.

Hair

2010-06-27T21:36:00.004-04:00

Because hair grows,
An entire population of villagers
Comes and goes though nobody knows;
They work in the city salons,
Washing our hair on and on.

Because hair turns white,
An entire population of chemicals
Mixes and flows in colorful shows
After large funds are expended
Though God never intended.

Because hair falls out,
An entire population of rabbits
Shrinks and grows and suffers the blows
Of experiments in stages
In a thousand metal cages.

What befell the rabbits taken from their fields;
What befell the chemicals in their toxic yields;
What befell the villagers in the salons they built
No one could predict, though we all got the bill.

For as sure as hair grows,
We are prisoners of our nature
In a world where our stature
Turns on hair styles and clothes.

I Don't Know

2010-06-27T21:32:00.002-04:00

Is the science of the world
Compatible with
Our human experience?
I don't know.

Is the mind
Different from
The brain?
I don't know.

Is there
A thing called
Objective truth?
I don't know.

Is there an ultimate
Reality, and can we
Know it?
I don't know.

How many angels
Can dance
On a dying red rose?
I don't know.

Can you count
Your lovers
On you fingers and toes?
I don't know.

Can you tell me
A secret
That nobody knows?
I don't know.

Do you know
What becomes
Of a child as he grows?
I don't know.

Do your answers
Depend on where
The wind blows?
I don't know.

Who knows?

Summer

2010-06-21T00:14:00.006-04:00

The dragonfly
Grasps the meaning -
To sample the meadow,
Flitting here and there,
Among the tall grass

While the sun shines brightly
And the clouds roll by
Across a summer sky
That forever will be -
But not for you and not for me.

Do you remember when as kings
Of our backyards we traced
Our trajectory?
You’d be an astronaut,
Or a pirate.
I’d be a lawyer,
Or the President.

No one can know the trajectory
Of the dragonfly in the meadow,
Where once we sat
With our beer and wine.

Now, it is true that sorrow
Fades in the wind of time.
But that summer meadow
Is never as bright
Since the only eyes to see
Are mine.

Missing

2010-06-21T00:06:00.001-04:00

On that warm morning
No one noticed much.
But by the hot noontime,
Someone noticed:

The library was not there.
It had been moved.

By mid afternoon
It was discovered
That the park was gone.

The museum was missing,
And the meeting hall,
And the stadium.

Only the school remained.
But it was closed for renovation;
Its roof collapsed.

By sunset the townspeople
Had shuttered themselves
In their living rooms;
The week-long premier
Of reality shows was here.

By evening the blindness
Spread through the town.
Eyes would not meet each other
As heads hung, absently, down.

At night: the howls of dogs,
Louder than the squeals
Of children.

Overhead, the stars wheeled -
The only places left
For thieves to steal.

The Fortune Teller

2010-06-15T22:33:00.004-04:00

I'm sorry.
I don't believe
That what you do is true.

That is what
I told the Fortune Teller
On a warm city night
As she stood upon the corner
In the shadow of the lights.

But it is true - a truth
As strange as it is old;
You will believe
If you are told.

Listen. She said:

You are the Unbeliever,
Destroyer of Worlds.
With your Mind of Doubt,
Dragons you will slay,
Old ghosts rout out.

With doubt clear as day,
Charlatans you'll banish.
Priests here will not stay
And mysteries will vanish.

But beware the magic of negation.
In the fusty superstition
Lies the bedrock of our nation.

Though you lead the modern man,
An army of numbers and scales,
You will find that all your plans
Lack the passion of mythic tales.

So do not presume to find me
Alone in the street forlorn,
For my heart mirrors the stars -
The harbor of love
Before Mind was born.

Mother’s Day

2010-05-11T21:05:00.001-04:00

No man
Who understands
His precarious existence
Can fail to be
A feminist.

All roads lead from the womb.

Women who wage war:
What have they to prove?
They, like men,
End their days in a tomb.

Rare is the mother
Who raises her little boy
To kill another,
To be the Great King and Destroyer.

The battles of the playground
Are quelled by the mothers
Who teach their children
To kiss one another.

There is enough sand
For two plastic buckets,
And two plastic shovels.

Praise the mothers, then,
Who keep the sand
From being the graves of the soldiers.

Order

2010-04-19T23:40:00.003-04:00

Our sidewalk had been spared
By the fickle gods of city maintenance.
Across the street were ditches, and blasted earth,
Where unknown men sweat the cool morning,
For whom dollars were new, mysterious things,
Like childbirth or the endless patience of their women.

Today there were four or five,
Tomorrow perhaps two or three –
With no one present to see
The unmarked vehicles take them away,
Every day, for lack of permits to live;
No one who toils may stay.

From the depths of those ditches no one can hear
The lamentations of the women, their cries so clear;
Still they, too, disappear,
Their children steered
Into lives that veered in all random directions,
Like the frantic ants that flee the pounce of the spider
In some well-tended garden blessed by the fickle gods
Of city ordinances.

At my window a tiny spider has woven its delicate web,
Wet with the morning, the cool air tugging gently
At the random strands that radiate in all directions.
The spider, coiled, awaits:
Ants, children, men, lifetimes, gardens, cities, gods.

Even as I walk along my spared sidewalk,
I hear echoing the sound of shovels
Across every mansion, garden, hovel.
The ditches are dug across our strand of days:
Like brown men and spiders, none of us, though we toil,
May stay.

On Speaking

2010-03-28T11:13:00.001-04:00

A tiger
Can talk to a tiger.
A bear
Can talk to a bear.
But a bear can't talk to a tiger.
Tigers won't sit still for bears.

Descartes Dreams

2010-03-11T18:12:00.002-05:00

I have learned
In my 400 years
The truth of what many do fear –
That we all breathe alone.

Reality is undeniably
Individual.

For no one can dream your dreams.
No one can feel your fear,
Or your wounded heart,
Or see through your eyes
The light in the skies
On your last fine day.

And yet I have seen
In my 400 years
A truth proud men won’t hear –
That we cannot live alone.

Human life is, quite reliably,
Tribal.

For a child needs his parents in stages.
Industry fails without wages.
And empires come and go
Only through armies of men
That kings may need though never know.

Now, I look on in sadness
At a history spawned by a madness
That ever I dared to conceive:
I think therefore I am,
Failing in truth to perceive
That the mind needs the help
Of the hand
Of the tender mother.

She showed me the simplest truth:
That we all, every day, need each other.

Nature’s Bounty

2010-02-22T22:58:00.002-05:00

Snow
Reminds me of death.
It blankets everything –
Removes all color
With its pallor –
Dampens all sound
With indifferent silence.

Whether we war
For gold or oil,
Like ants over tin foil –
Whether we rest or toil –
Still snow descends
On all ants and men.

In the same vein,
The silent mountain stands,
Even if we blast its slope
To cut a vein for coal to flow.
Its indifference seems to show
We could be ants instead of Man.

The ocean in storm –
Its cacophony of sound
Drowns all cries
Before they’re born.

The rushing brush fire –
It incinerates the hillside,
Nests, mansions to ashes
That fall and scatter wide.

This is Nature’s bounty –
That from its implacable way
Men from every country
Might see their will to sway
The world from turning
At last fall away.

For the World alone shall stand
At Night’s end:
To that power we too, like ants,
Shall bend.

The Death of Philosophy

2010-01-31T00:43:00.000-05:00

If I say that my beliefs
Are a product
Of my country,
Of my epoch,

Then am I
Caught in that sly
Trap of History
With no words to deny –

For the Cage that falls
Is the Cage of Language.

My belief in relativity
Is relative to itself.
Devoid, perhaps, of authenticity,
It begins to gnaw upon itself.

The Invisible Man
Imagines the color of his eyes.
But the mirror shows nothing;
Nothing until he dies.

Who am I when I sleep?
Who am I when I dream?
Beliefs are fish that leap
In a transparent mental stream.

Happily I fish,
In my country, in my time.
For the world, by turns, shall fade
Through my ignorance sublime.

Children

2010-01-23T00:54:00.002-05:00

The birds,
so colorful,
so unselfconscious,
in their gilded cage
with the leaves,
and the seeds,
and the water,
and their little swings.

But then you approach
and it's as if Teacher
has returned to the classroom:
no more twittering, or rummaging;
all stand at attention,
eyeing you this way and that.

What do they see in you?
A vast and towering force,
with a voice like a song of thunder -
Destroyer of Worlds;
you who with your love level the hills
with your gilded cities of ingenuity.

It is the Hand of God
that replenishes their water dish
and their seed dish.

And when you leave,
the little birds resume
their antics, lilting, pecking,
and so they do not see
that the gods, too, fuss and play
in their gilded cage.

‘Tis the Season

2009-12-22T23:57:00.003-05:00

You have not been raped,
Or beaten, or maimed,
Or treated like an animal
With no right to think.

Blink. And you’ll see.
You have jewels, and cash,
Food to toss like trash,
And someone in the world
Who remembers your name.

Shame! That joy comes round
Once a year
To the injured faceless loathe to hear,
“We give; we give, in Jesus’
Name.”

Still, the faceless have no name
That you will remember,
Save, perhaps, in December,
That season of the year
When the poor do hope
Their name to hear.

Mourning in America

2009-12-13T16:50:00.001-05:00

Legal rights
Are easily won
At the point of a gun.

But it takes patience
And determination
To win rights
Through agitation.

In some tenuous space
In the public square,
Face to face,
The human in you
Meets the human in me.

When faced with the thugs,
Atlas shrugged
And ran.
So here we stand:
The human in you and the human in me,
Holding up the world for all to see –
We can talk through, not around,
Our existence, with persistence.

Like roses, rights abound.
Pick them, share them.
Listen to the sound
Of the discourse in the public square.

But, oh, how you stare!
No, indeed, that is not our public square,
Where words like bullets wound all who care
To share the shoulder burden of citizenship,

Of the human in you
And the human in me.

Thanksgiving 1994

2009-11-29T22:05:00.000-05:00

Clattering of spoons,
While silver children’s voices
Round the table run.

Discorporation

2009-11-25T23:24:00.001-05:00

There are times
I want to discorporate
Into my component parts –
Not lungs, kidneys, and heart,
But atoms, neutrons, and quarks.

The squawks of people passing
Beneath my window, well dressed,
Laughing stupid, yelling mad,
Melodramatically sad –

That young mother, distressed,
Blowing chewing gum bubbles,
Steps into the public bus whirlwind,
Dragging her little lad – where is his dad?

Televisions and billboards squawk around the world –
The sound and fury of the whirlwind – and all the girls
And boys on the bus plugged into their little sound systems:
Little bubbles of sound destroying ear drums.

If a society presses its fingers into its human bubbles
They pop, one after the other.

Many years ago I walked on the beach,
And I watched the seagulls, squawking;
Fighting, stupid and mad, over scraps of food.
Across the ocean beat the drums of war;
Their import I understood.

To fly like a seagull, soar like the whirlwind,
Burst like a bubble –
We cannot stop the hope that in the morning
Binds everything together,
Nor the despair that in the night
Tears everything apart.

Veterans Day

2009-11-11T20:50:00.007-05:00

I. Our Brother Orwell

Defenceless villages
Are bombed from the air,
Inhabitants driven
To the countryside;
Cattle machine-gunned,
Huts set on fire:
This is called pacification.

For freedom, for justice,
For the American Way.

II. On Sale

Somewhere in the Homeland,
At the Wal-Mart café,
She chews on a hamburger
That drips mayonnaise.
Her jeans are too tight;
Her diabetes not slight.
Her children have run out of sight.

We have all come from far away
To catch the sale on Veterans Day.

III. Until Tomorrow

He stands, listing, in the doorway,
Knowing nothing of Orwell.
He had enlisted, recalling the day,
The travel had been a good sell.
Though the journey ended in hell,
He was told that he fought very well.
Now he makes peace with his sorrow
Because, he’s been told, that
His check will come in tomorrow.

Long live our soldiers, who, every day,
Fight to maintain the American Way.

Dawn

2009-11-03T21:22:00.000-05:00

In the pre-dawn light
I approach the window
And behold the sight
Of the empty sidewalks.

In that quiet hour
I imagine your returning,
Filled with a silent power,
Up the sidewalks.

You are always returning,
When the world is asleep –
Cracked, worn, and persevering,
Like the sidewalks.

But dead men don’t walk
Except in dreams.
And still it seems
The sidewalks expect you,
Cracked, worn, and persevering –
Returning from the long journey
With stories, strength, and learning.

The sidewalks do not reach you.
The dawn deceives.
For a while yet I shall expect you
Before your memory leaves.

Halloween

2009-10-28T06:28:00.003-04:00

When I got the call
That grandfather died,
I wore a clown suit,
Big and white with
Blue and red dots,
And a tall clown hat.

Rat-tat-tat-tat.
Tat-tat-tat.

My face was plastered,
Clown enamel white,
Painted red lips,
And a red round nose,
Staring at the mirrors
In the back of the store.

Rip and tore, war and gore.

My boss had told me,
Go and get some rest.
So there I sat,
A thousand clowns
Staring from the mirrors;
Faces laughing, faces crying.

Sighing and crying
And lying and dying.

That night on the news
People were dying.
Machine guns fired,
Rat-tat-tat-tat.
Bullets tore, spreading gore.
Victims lying, sighing, crying.

My grandfather died
On Halloween.
Sadder news we all have seen.
That night, at the party,
Nadia laughed. She said,
Clowns don't go to parties
When their grandfathers pass.

October Morning

2009-10-27T08:04:00.001-04:00

Today -
The first cold day;
In the pale light,
The mixed sensation:
Gray sky, cold air,
And resignation.

Yet the leaves cling
Still to the trees;
Just a few turned brown,
Blown down.

Outside -
Breezes sting;
Newspaper kiosks
Through headlines
Speak to the sunrise
While a bird sings:

This week the President,
While waging war,
Won the Peace Prize.

The time is out of joint.
O cursed spite
That ever I was born
To set it right!

Music

2009-10-26T22:01:00.001-04:00

The blending
Of the body
And sound
And thought
And feeling
And memory

That took place
Before
Either of us knew
That we would not hear each other,
That we would not see each other,
Again.

Postmodern Mood

2009-10-03T13:23:00.000-04:00

The Modern derides
The Enlightment,
Which, in turn,
Derides the Medieval.

I'd rather affect
The Postmodern:
It thinks the derision
The evil.

Haiti

2009-09-25T22:53:00.001-04:00

Haiti is an accident;
I prefer not to look at it.
Mangled parts abound;
Nothing astounds.

You see, the sun is too bright;
The skin and bones too tight.

Though Wilson sent Marines
To instill a sense of order –
The milat, moun andeyo,
And all that negritude –
Too much, too much,
They bust the motor.

And all through the years
The parts have tumbled
Down deforested hills:
Estime, Vincent, Magloire,
Lescot, and Duvalier.

And who will care?

Where have you gone, Daniel Fignole?
The nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

Mesdames et messieurs,
Gens de couleur:
Start your engines.

But they have nowhere to go,
Surrounded by the wide, wide sea,
Where the sun sets too bright
And the skin, bones, too tight.

Around the Block

2009-09-09T23:47:00.004-04:00

When I was a boy
I used to walk around the block
So many times far
From the ticking clock.

Around the bend there was the house
Of our neighbors; the two older boys
Who washed their cars, and when wet
Their sex showed, hanging, as they’d bend
Those tall spindly legs moving awkward, and alien,
Like the Martian invaders in War of the Worlds.

Around the bend again, there was the house
Across the street, across the border,
Where lived the brown boy, that other.
He was not like us kids, white brown,
But from South America, brown brown.
And so we launched stones and taunts
Like missiles launched from our starship
That launched from the tree in our yard
Lurching at light speed to escape the dark
And the calls for dinner.

Around the bend again there was the house
Of all those children but we never saw the father
Except in stories of drinking and sleeping and jail.
But we let one of them play with us;
Not the others, though, they were babies, and a girl.

Around the bend again there was the house
Across the street, an ocean away,
Where the woman sat on her porch quiet.
They said she was an old Russian lady,
A little girl in the Russian Revolution,
Though none of us knew where that was.
So she was the silent witch from Oz.

When the radio played static,
When my mother’s shoe caught my brother’s head,
When my father bellowed in the living room
And my sister cried in her bed,
I walked around the block
To escape the ticking clock.

Marketing Call

2009-08-18T20:37:00.002-04:00

The person you seek is not here.
He was deployed
To Afghanistan
Last year.

So please don’t call me.
He is beyond telephones
And the twenty-first century.

Beyond computers, too,
He might be
If his body lies
In a field of poppies.

Afghan shepherds standing
By a dusty roadside wait
For our troops to come calling
With bread for their plates.

Then to your customer
The shepherds lead our troops.
They cannot describe his death,
Only saying it was youths, a group.

So, before I hang up, I ask
How does it feel to peddle
Trinkets and frauds to others
Who could not prove their mettle
By attempting to settle
The quarrels of savages
Who could scarcely buy bread?

You smile, I hear it, you say:
Gladly I’ll sell vacations to you instead.

Locked in Time

2009-08-15T15:04:00.000-04:00

To say I will not likely find
In the years ahead a being
That will appreciate my mind
Is to apply the prejudice of time.

In the present dwells a certain sadness,
The sense that joy will die in future darkness.

But if, from the far side of the earth,
Your life I fail to note,
Then, from a hundred years hence,
You remain just as remote.

Therein lies the trap of time,
Our minds prisoners of the present.
From day to day though I may fly,
Our meeting – miles, years away –
Stays locked beyond this moment.

Castle

2009-08-13T12:04:00.000-04:00

Impregnable
Wall of rock
Sheer and steep
Above a moat
Of waters still and deep;

Imposing,
The yawning keep,
That beckons from
The drawbridge
At my feet.

Narrow the way
Through the iron gate:
Beyond those walls
Their world awaits.

Nobles, ladies,
In finery played
Their flutes and dulcimers
Round the table well laid:

Goblets of wine
And meats with cheeses,
Candles that swayed
In the evening breezes.

Blown has the wind of centuries,
Gone now the tapestries, luxuries,
Silent the courtyards and hallways,
Where troubadours once sang their lays.

Dance a while yet, I say.
Safe within the mind’s walls,
Lords, ladies and thralls,
As phantoms you may stay.

To Adversity

2009-08-12T22:20:00.001-04:00

In the face of outrage,
Facing the brink,
It takes great courage
Not to drink.

Knock

2009-08-11T22:42:00.000-04:00

I don’t sleep well, torments at night –
The soft kind.

(small noises, moving, rustling)

What can might,
What could should.

Without sight,
grasping, touching in the dream closet:
dream silent children playing in dream coats –
or smothering?

(small noises, scratching, muffling)

In sleepdark,
always misplaced, the keys I cannot find.
The hooded man ate all the light switches,
electric smiling, switching back and forth:
now lamplight through my window pane,
now sleepdark.

(small noises, tapping, tapping)

In the hallway stands the hooded man
waiting for the knock on the door.
Am I coming home?

Sadness

2009-08-10T22:07:00.000-04:00

Sadness: it is
the force that
spurs learning;

The shadow of the moon;
yearning
for relief from light;

Nourishing vision and sight
with a tear or two.

Delirium

2009-08-08T20:04:00.000-04:00

Never waste a good delirium,
A time when Up is Down.

You
Move your
Mouth all Around
Open shut –
To say nothing;
A delirium nothing,
Surpassing sweet – unlike
The plodding words –

The stumbling weight of all those years . . .

There was a farmer had a dog,
And Bingo was his name-o.
I pledge allegiance to the flag.
The square root of sixteen is four.
Our Father who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be Thy Name.
Dad, I won the game!
Paris is the capital of France.
Can I have this dance?
Buy now: Operators are standing by!
That sissy boy; he couldn’t hurt a fly.
The square root of four is two.
Mark my words:
One day you’ll see. They’ll all see.
Darling, it’s so good to see you.
What is the square root of two?
I’m sorry, Ma’am,
There was nothing we could do.

And when the fever cools, as it will do,
And up is up and down is down again,
You see the chance is gone to start anew –
As reason, restored, confounds the brain.

Suicide

2009-08-05T22:59:00.001-04:00

Of all life on this planet,
Only Man
Can see his death –
And plan it . . .

Socially unacceptable,
Financially impossible –
Yet morally defensible.

Mother was saying on the phone
One Saturday afternoon –
“I’ve fixed your room.
We can have your favorite beans and rice.
Just wait until you see the garden;
The new plantings are so nice.”

All those years spent howling
In the black box, in the office.
But no one ever hears:
Just sign here, and here, and here.
And we need that revised report
To include the budget cuts next year.

The books show me all the things
I will never live to see:
The heroes yet to greet,
That princess kiss, so sweet,
The castles left to climb.

Silent the symphonies of the mind,
My days laid out to mine
A life for deeper meaning.
But the truth bubbles up, streaming:
I was really mostly dreaming.

Never played the piano,
Never sang in choir,
Always saying I was This or That;
Drawing breath like any liar.

Never married,
Hardly tarried
Over sunsets past a certain age –

Now I know that all the rage
Is to die screeching, laughing.
But pardon me, if in my passing,
I sit and tell the truth – for
I did so love the dancing.
I did so love your silly looks
And the passages from certain books
That we read, as if romancing.

Faucet

2009-08-04T17:51:00.001-04:00

Water dripping,
Drops plop, plop
Into that pot
In the kitchen sink.

And I can hear me think.
I want to sink
Into the couch.
He sits there, slouched.

This silence forlorn,
Stretches the length of the room,
Like a railroad platform.
We have arrived at the end of words.

Drip, plop,
Drip, plop.

I smile.
The tea is drained.
Our minds and our teeth
Are stained
With the knowledge
That, at least, we two strangers
Failed to cross the breach.

Palestinian Boy

2009-08-02T12:03:00.000-04:00

Today
yesterday
Lama was not in class
Because her house fell down on her.
That is what Reda said
Last week
yesterday before yesterday.
But Mother says
Tonight
now
That Lama moved far away,
Maybe to Bethlehem.
I don’t know,
Maybe to Israel.
That is where the Devil lives.
So says Reda
Sometimes.

Rainbows

2009-08-01T13:24:00.001-04:00

Don’t go chasing rainbows
In the middle of the night
Because you’ll not find them.
The rainbows were last seen
Flying over Belgium in 1917.

But other townsfolk say it was
An American jet patrol
Shot down a rainbow over the desert
Near Alamogordo.
Only they didn’t shoot; there was no fire,
And it wasn’t the desert.

Still others say the rainbows
Have little to eat and less to see,
Kept in a camp with barbed wire
Down the road a few miles out.
These reports you just can’t doubt.

As for our town these days,
We light the sky at night
With giant lightpoles far too bright:
The mutant children of gas lamps
Whose contribution to pollution
Blinds the turtles, the birds,
The bleary-eyed office worker
In his tower of glass.

Upward, higher, flies the light until
From their space orbit the rainbows see:
The signals, flares, fires, and flashes –
The searing heat that turns glass to ashes.

Silently the rainbows turn
And return to their home planet,
Flying through the dark of night,
Guided by the light of the stars.

Birthday

2009-07-22T23:56:00.001-04:00

Happy Birthday
To me,
Happy Birthday
To me,
Happy Birthday –
I’m one year closer to death
so I’d best turn from the wayward
path leading me through the wasteland
of entangling briars, so base my desires,
and find my way to the one true path
that ends in authenticity, my own felicity,
only I can’t because I’m lost, no map,
and my compass fell into the bay
where my future stretches away,
tossing among the waves, though
perhaps my ship will come –
To me!

Hemingway

2009-07-21T23:11:00.001-04:00

Today is
Hemingway’s birthday;
He would have been
110 years old.

Rain today, we are told.
Out the window,
The dry grass is gold
In the noontime heat.
Across the street,
A black man in shirt sleeves
Beneath a tree, standing,
Waiting.

A stray dog lopes along,
Sniffs, and moves along.
His coat is bright in the
Dappling light.

Out of sight, a cicada
Screeches and is silent.
Then another screech, slight.
Then the air is quiet.
It is hot and dry and
Waiting.
Everything waits.
But nothing comes.
No rain.

Sight and Sound

2009-07-19T12:27:00.001-04:00

How can I make you see me,
Not you, but me?
You have fixed me with your stare –
My words in mid air –
And have trapped me in amber.

A practical paperweight, amber,
It can be hurled against windows,
And, finally, the cries of anguish
Can escape into air
With the pleas to reason;
Perhaps – to you – all rubbish.

And though the caged bird sings,
Still its song is not heard elsewhere.
Silent is the vast landscape
Where a new soul grows in the wooded grove
And the words fly to the trees, feeding, at night.

Oh, what a sight! The multitude that is me,
Cresting that moonlit hill,
Without a sound, they cannot fight.
They stand, waiting,
For your surrender of me.

Passenger

2009-07-17T23:46:00.001-04:00

When I was a young man,
I was an old man,
Watching the world with wary eyes,
Though not yet capable of sighs.

Backstage I curled up in solace
With ancient tales of a golden chalice,
While the other dancers with silly stares
In laughing poses brandished their hair.

In summer sitting beneath a tree
My father explained divorce,
Returning home to my room to flee
Where I found my childhood corpse.

Years of tragedy sundering
Family, friends, like lightning a tree,
Over a cup of tea last week wondering:
What became of you? What became of me?

A ship on the horizon dwindling,
Headed God knows but I know not –
While I on the sand sit mingling
What I could have done with what I did not.

Wretched Summer

2009-07-14T20:59:00.001-04:00

Any moment
Could, perhaps,
Be a wretched moment,
Like walking home alone
In sultry heat,
The moonlight on the street -
Indifferent the cobblestone -
The same moon shines on you
Wherever you are.

Martin and Hope

2009-07-12T11:46:00.000-04:00

“Everything that is done in the world
is done by hope,” said Martin Luther
King, Jr.

Boy, I tell you,
This girl Hope, she is one busy gal.

Matter of fact,
Just the other day,
A fine morning,
I was walking to work.

And there was Hope!
All passed out, poor thing,
On that bench,
In a state of exquisite,
Senses-shattering,
World-saving,
Stinky exhaustion.

Come to find out,
That very night,
Sure as I breathed,
I was walking home.

And Hope was gone!
Sure enough moved on,
Her work is never done.
Poor thing, still pushing
That cart with everything,
And no time to settle down.

I wish she’d
Just one time slow down
To tell her about her friend Martin –
How he praised all around
Before he got shot.

Lincoln

2009-07-12T11:45:00.001-04:00

Now here was a guy
Who was all things to all people:
Cruel and merciful;
Peace-lover yet fighter;
Protecting slavery and freeing slaves.

I, too, wish to be
All things to all people:
Alive yet dead;
Scoundrel and well-bred;
Kind of heart yet stubborn of head.

I wish to bring you close to me,
So close I taste your thoughts;
And I wish to flee so far from you,
Go somewhere among stars –
That little planet Pluto.

But Pluto is now a rock:
A planet no more – a victim for sure
Of the cruel narratives of history,
Of all things and all people . . .
Like Lincoln,
Like you,
Like me.

Living Alone

2009-07-09T22:16:00.000-04:00

Alone in my home –
Stirring the soup and farting;
No need to chuckle.

(after an original Japanese senryu)

In Your Memory

2009-07-01T23:22:00.001-04:00

Who are you
To believe
That I will go on forever?

You make me
Into God
When you leave me in the ether.

Suspending my existence
You forget me –
A quantum space that no one watches.

There I reside,
Gods and demons alongside
The stillborn visions of our future.

And so I - nonexistent - wait
For that day when
You escape your selfabsorbing kingdom.

You will think of me and
From the Timeless I will spring,
The angels flying to their frescoes.

Briefly while I live,
Narrow the window of Time,
Yet will I live and die
Before you again forget me.

Internet Love Signal

2009-06-27T11:20:00.002-04:00

SGWM
ISO
SOS

hi AM looking
4 someone whose
NOT too serious about life
[Like a stone.]

Someone to spend time with
Home alone.
And chill
[Like a corpse on ice.]

My friends tell me
Im nice.
And fun
[Like Disney World.]

Please no guys who act
Like girls.
I wanna man whose
Prfect for me
[Like Jesus.]

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek,
For they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are you when they persecute you,
So I say to you, love your enemies,
For God makes His sun rise on the evil and good.
If you love those who love you, what reward have you?

For no one can serve two masters;
Either he will hate one and love the other.

As the lamp of the body is the eye,
Then if your eye is bad,
Your whole body will be full of darkness.
And if your right hand causes you to sin,
Cut it off and cast it from you.

So Judge not, that you be not judged.
Cast not your pearls before swine,
Lest they trample them,
And turn and tear you in pieces.

Therefore do not worry, saying,
“What shall we wear?”

Hypocrite! Remove the log from your own eye,
But seek first the kingdom of God,
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from Evil.

For where your treasure is,
There your heart will be also.

Valentine's Day

2009-06-24T22:27:00.001-04:00

I think of that time
You took me out to dinner.
But tonight,
The pavement, slick with rain,
Shines brighter than my shoes.

I don’t remember
How bright that night was.
But tonight,
The moon behind a cloud,
Just streetlights at my door.

I don’t hear you
Discuss your workday anymore.
But tonight,
Noises by my window,
Formless faces passing by:
Talking, laughing.

Faceless and numberless:
In all those years since dinner time –
The millions who have died of famine,
And war,
And earthquakes,
And too much rain . . .

Yes, there is pain, still,
A hunger streetlights cannot see.
But that matters less
With each war, with each monsoon.

With no moon at my window
You cannot see while I prepare
This microwave meal.

Indifference

2009-06-23T22:19:00.001-04:00

One time
Words, sincere and naked,
Reflecting life
Like a beautiful, painful mirror
Brought us together.
Tonight
Something,
An indifferent force,
Pulled us apart.

Amid the music and the lights
You glanced
At me through me
Like a half-empty glass;
The indifference of nightlife
Glinting in your once-thoughtful eyes.

On the walk home
In the cool air
Wrapped in myself I note
The moon’s stare;
Its light shining
On all stumbling souls alike:
The vomiting man,
The giggling woman,
The sleeping bum,
And me -
A light that you shall never see.

Wretched

2009-06-23T22:17:00.000-04:00

Every moment
Has the potential
To be a wretched moment
Like walking home
In bitter cold
And the moon shining, quiet -
Still
It shines on you tonight
Wherever you are.

Reading One Night

2009-06-21T00:48:00.001-04:00

I read an article,
astounding it was.
It had been a long day;
I was tired.
But the ideas propped
my eyes open –
Wide.
I turned
to tell someone.
But no mind was at my side.
Everyone had gone

shopping

driving, laughing, drinking,
pushing, shoving, stinking,
lusting, eyeing, praying,
fussing, flapping, slaying.

So the article said,
“Hush. You can keep our secret.
We will wait
for next year’s children.”

He Said

2009-06-21T00:43:00.001-04:00

I was never Fated
For the quiet, unexamined life.

God said to me
In my sleep before birth,
You will suffer - profoundly.
He said,
Though the trees shall be green each summer
And bare each winter,
Yet the birds shall sit always
Upon the branches and sing to you
The Beauty of the World.

Therefore find the branches
In your Heart
Where the birds sit
And feed them -
Or they shall die.
And you will suffer without song.

The Sad Little Love Affair

2009-06-20T17:27:00.000-04:00

When you say
“I love you,”
Like that,
Did you practice
By a mirror?

And in all the furor
Over authenticity,
Was that you
Or mere duplicity?

Endless reflections
Of I-love-yous,
All backwards-right-to-left,
And I feel bereft
Of direction
When I stare up to see
Endless Funhouse Clowns,
Their eyes crinkle with glee -
Because when I shout:
I love you,
They know - I know . . .
That can’t be me.

Endless

2009-06-20T17:25:00.001-04:00

You and I will both be dead
Before Endless;
The color on your lips
Both drained of red
Before Endless.

This American Empire
Will crumble to dust
Before Endless;
Like Ozymandias’ works
By winds into the sands thrust.

The worm on the pavement -
How many forms will it take
Before Endless?
From worm to earth to rain
To the firmament,
This cycle, too, will end pain
Before Endless.

The Moon

2009-06-10T18:57:00.008-04:00

The moon
Behind bare branches
Is a delight on any night.

And yet it bares my plight
When the light in the sky
Glints off your eyes,

Eyes that too soon,
Like the moon,
Will set upon another.

Memorial Day

2009-05-30T23:14:00.002-04:00

Our children were forced to go to war
So they could pay for college,
With bombs to kill hundreds or more,
But they only found a village.

Hapless villagers prayed to their gods
As they were run off a high ledge;
Our children, chasing, barking like dogs,
“See? This will pay for college!”

And so they marched on Graduation Day,
Their hapless parents cheering;
And village ghosts, like out of Judgment Day,
Around the bleachers peering.

“We’ve come to see the children grown,”
The godless ghosts cried clearly,
To snatch from them the fruit they’d sown,
Tuition in lives paid dearly.

Numb and dumb the graduates were struck in their places,
Wings covered their bodies, crows’ beaks on their faces.
Cawing, hawing, into the sky flapped the murder of crows,
Unmentioned, save in prayers – a silence no memory knows.

Faggot

2009-05-01T23:15:00.003-04:00

Your crackling energy
Brightened the room
And our faces – the first
Bottles flowing soon.

Boundless and lively,
So merry and gay,
You pranced about the room,
Lighting our faces –
A welcome boon.

Corks popped as we talked;
Great Days returning and their haunts.

Did you not like our conversation?
You seemed to demand always the attention.
Hissing like a cat and grasping at the air,
We could only laugh at your sullen stare.

Corks popped as we talked;
Great Days returning and their haunts.

But the party could not last forever.
Heads nodded; hours wore on.
And the shadows of your brilliance
Flitted from glass to glass,
Over our faces – through the plate glass
Window into the long night.

Oh, how you despised us then.
For you knew that, in our lazy silence,
You were smothered, spent.

And, oh, the contempt you felt then.
For your fiery beauty, sweet and youthful,
Had by night’s end fallen,
A face ashen mournful.

Yet, in your glowing embers of resentment,
Lies the memory of our Great Days.
We – without you – the silent faraway stars;
You – without us – the dark spaces of the night.

Snow

2009-04-05T11:19:00.009-04:00

The snow faded, lingering
Only
In the cracks on this sidewalk . . .
And on either bank
Of the snow white lines meandering –
Stains: the ghosts of ancient
Leaves and chewing gum.

The snow faded,
Swept away
By sharp, polished shoes
Of serpentine leather;
Swept by shoes that have weathered
A life, cracked with toil,
Stained with soil.

Walking along the white lines,
Wondering, I think
That your shoes walk in warmer climes.

Old Friend

2009-04-05T11:19:00.008-04:00

Morning,
The air through my
Kitchen window fresh:
No sign of ice.
Winter-fattened birds,
A handful, warbling,
Twittering, lilting,
All sitting, fussing,
On the rose bush -
Bare branches pointing up.
Vigorous the conference,
Salient the message,
I lean into the window,
And ask,
“Is that you, Spring?”

Daylight Savings Time

2009-04-05T11:17:00.009-04:00

But what could I have said to you
in the extra hour?
With you staring
at the café door,
at customers entering, leaving;
and I glancing
out the window, planning
reports, phone calls, meetings.

For the week is just as long
in your life as in mine;
the hours come and go the same.
And still we do not say
what we mean.

An extra hour will not
resolve the scene.

The Temple

2009-04-05T11:15:00.007-04:00

The Body is the Temple
Wherein the Ritual that is Life
Is conducted in Honor of the God
That is Spirit, our True Identity.

But my Temple has been defiled.
The Moneylenders and the Merchants have had their long days
Amassing coffers of coins in their Bazaars. Now the refuse remains,
Empty stalls and silent signs advertising baubles.

Prostitutes still lurk in dark corners.
Everywhere the floor is spotted with the excrement
Of the animals that were sold. A pair of dirty Drunkards is fighting
Over the last bottle of Wine sold in the days of the Bazaar.

And the God of the Temple is angry
That the Body has been defiled.
Spirit has sent its only begotten son, the Mind,
To make the Temple clean.

Mind will sweep the Temple,
Chase away the Prostitutes and Drunkards.
And one day the Temple will be made holy
For Spirit again to dwell therein.

And is your own Temple clean?
Perhaps your Mind has cleared the waste.
Perhaps some offal yet remains,
Or a Thief dwelling in hiding.

But if indeed your Temple
Is made clean and holy
And the great Ritual is conducted
All the days and nights in the Hallowed Hall,
Where then has your God gone?

By the light of the stars
My God meets your God,
And together they walk,
Past the sleeping Thieves and Drunkards,
Beyond the Temples,
In the grove beneath the hills.

Coda

2008-08-24T12:07:00.012-04:00

Months had passed. The nightclub where the attack had taken place had been shut down. It turned out that the establishment lacked a special permit to offer entertainment. The process to procure the permit had taken too long; without entertainment the nightclub could not afford to pay wages and so closed forever.

Moonface had escaped. No one ever saw or heard from him again. Perhaps he had been placed in a forced flight to El Salvador after all.

Yesterday, while running my neighborhood errands in the hurried bustle of a summer morning, I stepped into the dry cleaner's. The Korean lady smiled and said that someone had told her that I was an excellent dancer. But she would not tell me who had made this report. Perhaps my invisible neighbors frequented the new nightclub that opened where I whiled away many a weekend evening, often recalling that this is where my father would prefer I be.

I sat at the coffee shop, the awning shading from the brilliant Sunday afternoon. I had scribbled a few lines in my journal of my trip to Paris, my birthday present to myself. It had been a summer of frequent journeys: several U.S. cities, and then my sojourn in Paris. The world had expanded beyond the confines of the little office and the little apartment. In the glare of the summer sun, all spaces stood revealed as larger than we imagined.

Perhaps the Frenchman would come today, I hoped. He was a member of a group of expatriates that met regularly at the coffee shop. We had grown friendly the way strangers who smile at each other for ages grow friendly, first with polite gestures and then polite remarks and then polite questions. Our last conversation had been amusing (though not to him) as he complained to me of his rich ex-wife and the burdensome child support payments that he still had to make despite the utter lack of need. It wouldn't work this way in France, he insisted. I had barely held up my end of the conversation. After ten days in Paris, though, I was prepared to lean on my freshly polished French. But the Frenchman did not appear that afternoon.

An old couple sat down at a nearby table underneath an umbrella, its awnings flapping in the wind. They sipped their iced coffees, the old man laying out a newspaper and the old woman producing a book from her purse. Presently, the old man, in his dun shirt and khaki shorts, looked up at the woman, his wife perhaps, and noting that she was reading returned to his newspaper. A moment later, the old woman, in her stripped summer dress, looked up from her book and seeing her husband at his newspaper, returned to her novel. Neither one of them spoke to the other. The summer wind blew around them, lifting the old woman's hair, and transporting their thoughts to each others' minds. At least that was how I decided that their lives had become: separate branches of the same ancient tree. Perhaps after having said all that there was to say only their physical company sufficed.

After all, what really was there left to say? I pulled out a worn letter pad from my bag and scratched out a title to the last chapter in the story I was writing. "Coda," I would call it.

Chapter 24

2008-01-26T23:02:00.009-05:00

The trap had been set for Mrs. Robinson, she who was among the faceless and the numberless. Had she lived in that faraway country, Mrs. Robinson would have been forced to flee with the refugees of her village before the invading barbaric hordes. As luck would have it, Mrs. Robinson lived in the United States of America, the Great Machine, where her grandson had been caught by the police with a handful of unregistered guns in her car. So the gears ground as the great engine of government targeted Mrs. Robinson by instituting proceedings to take legal possession of her impounded vehicle.

As I opened the case file that had been placed on my desk, the gleaming teeth of the trap spread before me: the assigned police investigator had concluded that Mrs. Robinson was not an innocent owner of the vehicle, which would have removed the car from the reach of the civil forfeiture proceedings. Mrs. Robinson wasn't innocent, the investigator would insist on the stand, because she was merely a straw purchaser - the vehicle had tinted windows that were too dark for Mrs. Robinson to use. Thus, the car was really the property of her reckless grandson. And with that, the arresting police officer would testify on the stand that he had caught the grandson and four other boys in the car with four unregistered - and loaded - handguns (after a lawful traffic stop, of course). The judge would virtually decide on the spot that I had won my case and that Mrs. Robinson would have to get herself a new car.

Only reality turned out differently. I telephoned Mrs. Robinson one evening. Age was in her voice, the age of spent autumn leaves blowing in a winter breeze. She had indeed purchased the vehicle but she let her grandson use it, who would run errands for her. Sometimes he would go to "other places." But she used her vehicle to get to her place of work, a day care center, and to her evening classes where she was continuing her studies in childcare. I asked her how she got to all these places now that her vehicle had been impounded for a few months. "It has been hard," she replied.

And with those words, Mrs. Robinson brought down The Age of Detachment, which crumbled all around me like the walls that Fortress America was constructing to reject the faceless and the numberless.

It did not take long for me to notice that the courtroom I entered was about the same size as the nightclub. My mind had done a splendid job of conversion. Sitting in the jury box, compressed as only Ideas can be, were the faceless and the numberless: the Mexicans with their scarred hands; the disenfranchised poor and elderly with no official identification; the black homeowners facing eviction; American children poisoned by toxic lead toys; the child soldiers of Liberia; innocent and dead Palestinians; and the discharged Marines gripped by PTSD.

I faced a panel of three judges, who I suspected were the masters of history, although one of their blurred faces reminded me of my father. Plainly I stated in my opening argument the theory of the case so no one would suspect my strategy. I called my first witness, the police officer, who performed as anticipated and described the grandson, his little friends, and the handful of weapons he found on them. Then I called the star witness, the investigator, and proceeded to destroy his credibility. He had to admit that, although the vehicle's windows were tinted, he did not in fact know how dark they were. He had not seen the actual vehicle but had relied on another police report - inadmissible hearsay. He hadn't verified if Mrs. Robinson was truthful about her employment and her schooling. Then I completed the sabotaging of my own case during closing argument by urging that the judges exempt Mrs. Robinson's vehicle from seizure by the city.

There was pandemonium in the courtroom. The authorities threatened arrest for treason. The masters of history restored order long enough for me to take the witness stand in my own defense. My duty, I argued, was to the truth. It was for me to target the insistent rot that had a hold of the Great Machine, slowly rusting its gears until we the members of our society began to forget our relationship to one another and the various duties that we owed to each other, and particularly to the faceless and the numberless. It was the Great Machine who had failed many like Mrs. Robinson's grandson and like Moonface. Since I witnessed the truth, I had to tell it. No witness to history can remain detached. All witnessing is an act of participation within the Great Machine. Therefore, as far as I could manage, I would strive to be an agent of cleansing.

Back at the office, I rejected the police investigator's recommendations and declined to prosecute Mrs. Robinson. We met in my office, Mrs. Robinson and her old husband, to sign the settlement agreement that would instruct the police department to return the vehicle. Though tired, Mrs. Robinson smiled and thanked me in that quiet way that can move mountains and restore life to those who had been walking too long in sadness.

When the Robinsons left, it occurred to me that I could not recall the last time I had seen the man in the mirror with his sad eyes of experience, nor heard the whispers of the sadness that liked to linger in the corners of my apartment.

Chapter 23

2008-01-20T13:30:00.020-05:00

And the headlines, with their foot soldiers the articles, marched on . . .

The Bush Administration requested - and Congress approved - $1.2 billion to construct a wall between the United States and Mexico, which is projected to cost over $60 billion over 25 years. The wall is a series of two or three 40-foot-high rows of reinforced fencing 150 miles wide and 700 miles long. The Department of Homeland Security has already suspended 19 laws, including the Clean Water Act, to build the wall. Reaction has been critical. As Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano said, "Show me a 50-foot wall and I'll show you a 51-foot ladder."

* * *
The case Crawford v. Marion County Election Board before the Supreme Court tests the constitutionality of an Indiana statute requiring a government-issued ID to vote. Republicans insisted voter impersonation is a serious problem. But every systematic study has concluded that the problem does not exist in the US. The law would adversely affect the poor, minorities, and the elderly - who mostly vote Democrat.

* * *
US policymakers have refused to face the question honestly: why do so many immigrants come? The answer lies in the destruction of the system that protected Mexico's poor at the hands of US banks and corporations who have cooperated with Mexican oligarchs to "modernize" the economy. One result, the North American Free Trade Agreement, has provided: (1) less than a third of the millions of Mexican jobs needed; (2) displacement of 2 million peasant farmers from their lands as their crop prices plummeted; and (3) a flood of Mexican business bankruptcies as US predatory chains have moved in - Walmart is Mexico's main employer of formal jobs.

* * *
"The subprime mortgage crisis is sinking America's economic ship like the Titanic," declared Rev. Jesse Jackson. Predatory lenders have been steering black homeowners towards subprime loans for years. Home equity accounts for more than 90 percent of black homeowners' networth. As the housing market collapses, much of the new wealth that has accumulated in black communities in recent decades will evaporate.

* * *
Anti-immigrant officials play on the economic fragility of the American middle-class. However, even if there were no undocumented workers in the US, the middle-class would still be endangered. Undocumented workers are not responsible for: (1) downsized and offshored middle class jobs; (2) changing bankruptcy laws so corporations can cancel union contracts; (3) no enforcement of wage and hour laws; and (4) illegally classifying millions of employees as "independent contractors" to avoid paying benefits.

* * *
Last year millions of toys sold in the United States containing toxic lead. While attention focused on China, where factory owners, under pressure from importers, used dangerous materials to cut costs, little attention has focused on the Consumer Product Safety Commission. This government agency has been weakened for many years. The Commission is headed by Bush-appointed Harold Stratton, who has a long pro-business history. The CPSC has just one full-time toy safety inspector facing tens of thousands of consumer complaints each year.

* * *
Having increased from 6,000 before Hurricane Katrina to 12,000 today, the homeless men, women, and children of New Orleans struggle to survive. The main problem is the lack of affordable rental housing; the flood destroyed 52,000 units. Congress funneled 85% of recovery funds to homeowners, leaving 15% to rehab rental housing. Local ordinances banning multi-family apartments in effect keep out poor renters from the newly gentrifying city. The total number of homeless shelter beds has fallen from 2,045 to 505.

* * *
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia's - and Africa's - first woman president, is struggling to collect on promises of international aid. She faces a national budget of $199 million with which to tackle an 85% unemployment rate and 42% illiteracy rate. A national literacy program to disarm child soldiers of the recent civil war could only handle 38,000 - but 103,000 had applied. For many child soldiers, living on the streets has become the only option.

* * *
While President Bush toured Israel, the US announced a sale of $123 million in arms to Saudi Arabia. This arms package could reach $20 billion. The US also committed to $30 billion in military aid to Israel over 10 years. While visiting Abu Dhabi, President Bush stated, "America is using its influence to foster peace[.]" A few days later, battles between Israeli forces and Hamas members killed 18 Palestinians and a kibbutz worker.

* * *
The Center for Public Integrity has assembled a database of 935 false statements made by the Bush Administration in the two years following September 11.

* * *
A Marine Corps review in 2007 of 1,019 other-than-honorable discharges issued during the first four years of the Iraq War found that a third of the discharged marines had evidence of mental illness. Funding for mental health treatment of veterans has been the worst in 20 years. Mental health-related discharges require a lifetime of veteran benefit payments. Suicide rates for marines are increasing.

* * *
White House press secretary Dana Perino admitted to not knowing about the Cuban Missile Crisis but she did state, "It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I'm pretty sure."

Chapter 22

2008-01-19T23:04:00.003-05:00

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the windowpanes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet . . .

- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

December is the cruelest month. My father died in December. It is the month of the Winter Solstice, of the darkest night. It is also the month of Christmas, that forced, cash-registered cheer. One night I found the sidewalk leading me to the church. The actual Episcopal church had burned down about thirty years ago; the land was now a park. Services were held on the second floor of a functional building adjoining the park. The worship hall was suitably enormous, the long spaces lost in the shadows of this Wednesday evening service, one in a series of small affairs leading to Christmas Day. I entered late and took a seat; only a handful of worshippers were scattered about. I stared at the altar space with my new face but no one noticed. My ears were ringing. People appeared on the lectern, saying something about the scriptures.

I wasn't listening. Why was I here? Oh, yes - to remember my father. I looked around and, in the low ringing in my mind, was the thought: this building, too, is an Idea. I wondered what this building would be if the untold numberless and nameless had not toiled their lives away, building and slaughtering, for the glory of the Idea of Christendom. The place was too large to be a dry cleaner's but perhaps a nightclub would fit.

The scattered worshippers, like living ghosts, moved forward to surround the altar. Joining them, my eyes were drawn to the main source of light in the vast room: a few scores of candles clustered at the base of the altar. I counted them but when I counted them again, I got a different number. With each count the candles changed in number. Then someone said something about Christ and the Lord's Prayer issued from the scattered mouths. Hemingway's version came to my mind, though I did not mouth it:

Our nada who art in nada,
nada be thy name thy kingdom nada
thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada.
Give us this nada our daily nada and
nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and
nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada;
pues nada.
Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.

When the scattered souls moved towards the exit, I realized the service was over. A couple of young men with sweet smiles and long pale hands approached me, greeting me. I mouthed a few nadas and excused myself, not wanting to see the darkness swallow the smiles and hands when the candles were blown out. Why had I come here? Was it for some kind of social gesticulation? Thank-yous to cash register operators - and little other speech - could get tedious. I should have known better than to commemorate my father's memory at church; he had parted company with organized religion long before his death. I knew all too well that he would far better that I remember him among the music and revelry of a nightclub.

That was when, following the sidewalk home, the ringing in my ears became the distinct sound of fire engines. The blaring sound was tedious as a fire truck roared past. Then there was silence, the cold air of the winter night absorbing all sound. I passed an intersection and saw the streets blocked; there were six, no perhaps seven, fire engines scattered about. Most of the trucks clustered in the middle of the block, off to the left, in front of a building. Firemen moved silently, like astronauts across the surface of the moon. I never knew what happened; I looked for smoke but could see none. Perhaps a candle had tipped over in an apartment. The sidewalk took me past the the red flashing lights.

The lights of the fire engines bled into the walls of a building; when I looked up I saw a wide bay window where a Christmas tree sat quietly festooned in bright, blinking blue and white lights. Colored balls, made by nameless hands, suspended amid the greenery, reflected my questions, and - refracting them - scattered them into the silent night.

* * *
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate . . .

Chapter 21

2008-01-06T01:10:00.001-05:00

Someone said something funny and, laughing, the splint fell off my nose. I was startled to find that I had gone into a nightclub, surrounded by strangers, with a large, gray splint on my nose. Then, slowly, I realized that this was no ordinary nightclub. I was in a dream; with that dream certainty I knew the nightclub was my mind. I looked for an exit but could see none; the crowd was too thick to escape.

The atmosphere was a mimic of the cacophony of noise in my mind to which I have become accustomed: careless, raucous laughter, yelling, voices raised in anger, someone was wailing, someone sang, and in the background under the club's dim light was the endless thumping music, now dance music, now a classical symphony, now a flute in the dark, which none of the people in the surging crowd seemed to notice.

They did not notice the music because they were not people. These were the dream representations of my ideas. I stood in that crowd, jostled lightly by the passing ideas, and watched them all. Their interplay was the harmony of laughter or the dissonance of argument. Some were large with booming voices, obese beings that needed to have the fat trimmed from them. Some were quiet and inscrutable, dressed in black. Some were male; some were female; some neither. Some were confident, well-dressed, and knew how to dance to the music that only they could hear. A few thrashed about in anger, drunk and obnoxious, and needed to be escorted from the club.

Then, with a start, I noticed people from the real world in the throng. I saw my father talking to a group of ladies, charming them I was sure, in heaven as he did on earth. There was a dream pause then, long enough for me to realize that ideas are influenced by experience, which is memory, so it was natural that the Idea Beings should talk to the Memory People who came to mingle amid the crashing noise and swaying symphonies.

Dr. Who was there, talking to a group of fears, dressed in long coats. They were smiling and nodding. He caught my eye and waved. I had seen him a week ago, nose splint in hand, and we noted the vast improvement in the nose. But still more surgery would be required to continue the improvement so he referred me to another plastic surgeon. I waved back to him with my right arm now healed, free of the wrist splint and able to write. A gaggle of my words rushed by as little children, giggling and weaving through the crowd, under coats and skirts.

I saw William Blake talking to a couple of extravagant ideas in the shifting shadows. At the far end of the room, ascending a staircase, was the television reporter. I wanted to reach out to him, to tell him that he was going to be severely injured if he did not leave that wild country, but I could not make my way through the swirling crowd. The music was too loud for me to shout. He vanished into a hallway. Moments later, I noticed a black, thin warlord in brown trailing robes disappear down the same hallway, escorted by two warriors with spears. Moonface was there, too, my assailant. I saw him in a break in the crowd. He did not notice me; he was headed for the exit when the crowd closed again and blocked him from view. I knew that I would never see him again. The certainty of that knowledge approached me then, dressed gaily, and shook my hand with a smile. A soft beautiful music was playing.

The dream was ending. Naturally, I found myself approaching the exit, shoved along gently by the countless bodies that floated past. That was when I turned around and saw him, distant in the crowd as he was distant with the years. He was accompanied by his wife and children. His wife looked up and saw me. She was at a great distance, as she was years ago when she noticed me talking to him and one of his children outside the ice-skating rink. I could not make out her face in the dim light. Then swiftly they were swallowed by the crowd surging towards the bar at last call. From their area a hand was raised above the crowd, lifting a rose into the air. But I could not tell if it was his hand as the distance and the years grew with every passing moment.

At the coat check, I was met by the Korean Lady, with my shiny, clean coat in hand. When she held the coat out to me, I felt as though she was giving me a suit of armor. "An yung ha se yo," we greeted each other. She said I needed to tell them what I saw though I did not know who "them" was. She said I needed to tell the story. Then she smiled and her eyes vanished in little slits of glee.

Chapter 20

2007-12-16T23:09:00.001-05:00

I finally had to shut my mind to ward off the chattering of the young college students. I was riding the university shuttle bus to Georgetown with that segment of youth - the rich kids - who feigned weariness with the world yet breathlessly gushed about shoes and trust funds.

The university hall was a modest, well-lit room, with a couple of tables against the back wall with trays of cookies and refreshments. Rows of simple metal chairs faced two long tables that had been joined to form the panel. Most of the students were seated when I arrived.

This segment of youth had no trust funds, colored faces that had turned out to see the panel of nine lawyers of color, alumni of the university, speak about their experiences in law. Because we were lawyers - thoroughly disassembled and reassembled by the Great Machine of society - we took turns complementing each other and outdoing each other in smoother and more impressive maneuvers. Laughter punctuated the event.

While someone at the far left was speaking about how wonderful it was to work at the legal department of a gigantic media corporation, I finished my carrot stick. I was speaking suddenly out of a sense of urgency. Biting back the nausea of the evening, I disarmed the room by making a quick joke about the funny thing that happened to me on the way to the forum - I had nose surgery, and touched the splint. Then I launched into the message that I had to deliver as if on a mission.

There was a disease within the Great Machine, a sickness that only those who cared about the common good could sense. The engine of change and protection within the Great Machine was government. But that engine was being dismantled. Lawyers, as tools of the Great Machine, had the power and responsibility to ameliorate the sickness that everywhere the headlines screamed each day. But you, dear students, will find it hard to become tools of change. We with our many colors are all in the same group, and the ones who have written the rules are not in this room. So I caution you now: the rules were not written for you. You will have to work hard. But persevere. You will be able to do it. We sit before you here today as proof that it is possible.

The mission was accomplished: the nine of us had stepped out of the misty chamber of the past, time travelers with a message, but only I had apparently retained the memory of our temporal journey and of the charge that had been laid upon us by the masters of history. Being the single witness to history, the mission had been saved.

I sat back when it was over and watched the students fan out to speak to the panelists individually; a group was headed towards me, a black woman and two Asian men. As I answered their questions, I felt a sense of relief. The nausea was receding, leaving me with the certain knowledge that I was less detached, perhaps not detached at all. For what witness could tell his story in utter detachment?

Chapter 19

2007-12-15T22:19:00.001-05:00

For days my consciousness remained suspended, protected by the consolation of work. In the mornings, the dry leaves would congregate on the edges of the sidewalks; I had no discourse with them. Passing the newspapers in their dispensers, the headlines attempted to scream but their sounds were muffled, my consciousness protected by detachment. In any event, I was certain that the headlines were not screaming about the faceless and the numberless.

For days I had been holding down my regular caseload and at the same time attending what seemed like endless training at the United States Attorney's Office. Though I had been litigating cases for a couple of years now, no one was a true prosecutor until he had trained with the Feds. And so I plunged into the dizzying details of opening statements, the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments, probable cause, search warrants, Miranda warnings, direct examination, hearsay, the exceptions to hearsay, drug test results, gun certifications, objections, preparing witnesses, impeaching witnesses, cross examination, and closing arguments.

Attorneys - by the time they become attorneys - have been thoroughly disassembled and reassembled by The Great Machine, that colossal, invisible system that sometimes goes by the inadequate term of "society." As such, they are ready with automatic expressions of sympathy when I volunteer information about my nose surgery, thus relieving them of using energy to look at my face and its nose splint nonchalantly. That energy could then be shunted to other productive uses, like parking their cars in the morning.

For days, the telephone would ring at my office with people on the other end who had things to say. One day, the telephone rang and an investigator introduced himself, explaining that he was assigned to my assault case. It was his job to develop a case, if any, against the nightclub in question. The irony - the leaves gossiped about this as I passed them once - was that armed as I was with prosecutorial weapons, the assailant would likely never be seen again. But the irony could not penetrate detachment. Thus, the energy of my interview with the investigator traveled along the telephone lines, igniting the awesome engines of Government as its great wheels began to creak and turn in the direction of the unsuspecting nightclub owner and his employees.