Privacy

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

We go on, we go on,
From darkness until 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 don't 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

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

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

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

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

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.