Admonition to an Occupier
(from The Book Called I Remember)

The roses to the porch which they entwine:
Yea, all that now enchants thee, from the day
On which it should be touched would melt away! - W.Wordsworth

If it wasn't the car, it was something else like the washer or the motor in the swamp cooler. We weren't so much mechanical as we were broken. All the time. I'm still a bit paranoid about being robbed because she used to write on every single possession, right down to our towels and Bibles, Stolen From The Porters. I had no idea that it was our family monogram and every bit as Jewish. Lending something to a neighbor was a real act of bravery. There was so much on the line, the whole future practically and if a pair of pliers disappeared, a complex system of piety mixed with resentment would begin to build but never seem to go anywhere else. It just soaked into the walls with the gas fumes or settled onto shelves beside the dust and history of things.

John Gary started stealing pretty early on and I think it was the fifth grade teacher who found five cartons of cigarettes in his desk. He'd remove the moving parts from bicycles, hang the frames in the garage and spray paint them Cherry Red, leaving several outlines criss crossing the cement walls. Later he just got lazy and didn't hang them up anymore and the grass withered in red stripes all summer long. We'd ignore the fact that the property was stolen.

I see him now and again. He says he wants to get out of town but he needs six hundred bucks to do it, to get his license back and return to driving. He has to leave but he never seems to go. There is some code in all of that, a magic purpose or the cure. I hand him ten this time. The cop sees through all of this and walks on by. Not this time he thinks to himself, not this time. There's just too much going on and even the homeless have hometowns.

John Gary's eyes are like glass and he sleeps beneath the stars up on the Jeep Trail. I tend someone else's roses. The deed has my name on it but the place is just a place. A city that builds a wall never really lasts. We are all traveling save a few who have really moved in. Their porches are tight havens and their dogs say go away. I see the way things are now. I know more than all the popes.




Libretto for a Female Lead
(from The Book of Warnings)

In the opening scene
the actors address
the Syrian Armed Forces
in a Beyreuth hush.
During Act III
one of them is tortured
on the third floor of the abandoned building
the Syrians use for recreation.

Before the climax
several audience members
are asked to leave.
During the intermission
the main character ambles
through the occupied building,
talking to herself.

In the farthest room
are wine bottles and a flak jacket,
twisted pieces of old rope
and pictures of half dressed women
from magazines, their nipples
drawn as circles with red ink.

Other rooms have similar items,
pieces of stale bread,
discarded clothing
and cigarette butts.

In the closing scene of Act II
the main character finds faith
in the creator and sustainer
of the entire universe.
The curtains are drawn closed.
The audience cannot see her
but they do hear the muezzin.

During Acts I and IV
the audience is reminded to applaud
at preordained times,
the moments of liberation:
an old theater trick
for audiences who forget their lines..

In the final scene
while the main character
rises into the air
suspended by thin bungee cords,
American soldiers advance
dressed as dancers in full regalia
to lift her spirit
out of the refuse of occupation.
Ticker tape falls from the heavens.