The Etiology of Mr. X
as if it was blown into the halo of park lightsbetween strike three and batter up - Darla Whitehead, Pack of Lies
Yesterday about noon, this fellow
finds us out in the sun and says
he wants his test done now.
We of ambigious natures, nurses
working towards Armageddons
big and small, tow each other
like bricks into rooms
full of camphor and prevention.
It all starts there in the clinics,
under chairs where little girls
run to scream and hide. Big boys
grow pale and old men come to us
before they die to talk
about their daughters, to talk
about their sons. It has been
a long time of such things,
keeping the secrets of nature alive
in our pockets and cupboards,
writing down our sincerities
in diaries on demand. Up front
there are drawers full of history,
treacherous rumours named Murphy and Cline.
His hat suits him well I think
as he chatters on about his deeds.
What does this to us all?
What cause is there to explain?
I've lived and loved and laughed
this much and cried about the same.
I Land in the Lilacs
My irises aren't really
mine afterall but all the same
they are touched carefully,
split and soaked, ever-lasting
dutiful to the ages
and then some.
Rhizomes gently laid into
their earthy sockets
produce secret after secret
from who knows where,
who knows where.
A Long Way To Pocatello Tonight
Have you ever seen
such a clean crowd of people
sitting in their folding chairs
listening
chortling
have you ever seen
such a thing?
I have.
They're just everywhere,
they want stripper poets
killer poets and poets
who kill themselves
for a living
as ornery as that
must sound
to the untrained ear
that doesn't know
too much about
poetry but alot
about sitting in an audience.
It's a long way to Pocatello tonight
isn't it? I know it's a long way
but do tell me, how far?
Once, we met Rothenberg
and he knew about that distance
to Pocatello. Just discovered it.
I might just tell him tonight
how far Pocatello is
when there is no audience
and life is just a watch and a wait.
Hope at Crowhaven Farm
If only at eight
I hadn't seen
Crowhaven Farm,
deliberated on it
during the long nights
when the rats
scurried around
in the ceilings,
if only at eight
I hadn't seen
the way they put
bricks upon Meg's chest,
called her a witch
and they were
all dressed up
for Thanksgiving,
if only I hadn't seen
Crowhaven Farm
in 1970,
my life would have been
not as it is
but as it was.
Everything's Connected
Trust when he says he was
in a coma for five months,
no one lies after a coma.
If they sleep, they sleep
only a little and insomnia
doesn't seem to bother them.
We all walked outside
together like that,
into the back alley
a perfect back alley
in a slow motion town
on the border
where I sat and considered
Framingham, Massachussetts.
A whole town measured out
grace in urine cups
and xrays. One by one
they told the truth about it
and Chagas is what you call
an emerging disease.
It gets up into your heart
after years of living on the edge.
I've seen those things on leaves
yet still, I never kill
a single one of them
or scorpions but I do
run away like a kid
fighting wasps. Once
I showed a furry
little beast to a poverty
stricken woman
and she crushed it.
It was a tarantula,
we're all just flesh and bone.
She was the first
to notice the invasion,
and ran up the hill
crying fee fi fo fum.
That was before the war
and power surges
took everything
we thought we owned.
It's one of the best things
that ever happened
but now, I don't take
any chances and put
nets over my bean stalks
and count them every day.
The Colonialist With A Thousand Faces- Allah bears witness that there is no god but He, 3:18
Up on highway eighty
you can see what fire does
and what it does not.
I have to wonder about the two
British ladies in Tombstone
who wanted to go to the
Chicawow-wows, to Apache lands.
One of them
just now wearing
her new wide-brimmed hat,
one of them hoping
for the Organ Pipe National Forest.
She tells me Britain
has history and you've got Geology.
Like I don't know
what we call in these parts:
diddly squat.
Oh! such mighty deportations!
La ila'ha il'la Huwa,
mammoths in caliche,
this is my beloved slag.
See that here? The color of the map
in Yuma is gray. There is a reason
for that. Go up the San Simon way,
take the Gleeson road
but first stop by and see
what the fire does not do
over time
to the miners and the mining.
Trust me, skip Las Vegas.
We're all just tourists,
those are all my fathers
and as I shimmy into town
through the Mule Pass
it is all very new to me.
Once again, the long way.
The Game Over Plan
Which sky does the wind
whip through now,
which city is torn apart
and blended; which one
isn't? Fighters defend
one after another
with flags and buckshot,
where to hit
the wind? Where can
so much water go
if the wind makes peace
and leaves the load
without a treaty, sans
policy in a stalemate
of disillusionment?
These blossoms cannot lie:
when the bee quits,
she quits. When the river
stops, she stops.
When death comes, we agree.
(from The Book Called I Remember)
I remember laying down
with you above me
the first time we made love.
I remember the shirt you wore
and told you they look like epaulettes
i.e. those strips of fabric
sewn onto the shoulders
of your shirt
as you held yourself
over me and for the tenth
or eleventh time, died
your martyr's death into me.
How I wish I could have
been the innocent you were.
As I looked up at you
propped on your two arms
I knew I loved something
so I said it was you.
I hardly knew you
we hardly knew each other
but you agreed.
How far away from home
we were and unlettered
and no matter where
our country is now,
we are always there.
For the Babysitter
Jerry Falwell dead.
It seems to be important
and every day a curious signal
goes out, it meanders over
the graves to find a way in there -
to bother the good dead Christians
and bother the unwanted children.
It tenders a response from
the recluse and the maimed.
What matters is when a good woman
like Lupe goes down. She knew
all about the graves and told me so
even though the church never
said a thing about it.
May her time there be silent
and Allah willing, short.
The Crush
On the back pages of the moon
men's voices come and go
before wars and after
card games until dawn
combines the silences.
The power is on again,
off again. Here
there is trust and there
is no place to hide
the occasional laughter
of the nervous but under
the quiet shelves
in a hundred pieces,
another hundred wires;
those bricks and windows
where there are homes of wonder
and assault - the places
that give up shade
to cover the brave
and coward alike
in ruins and prayers now
crowned with the ragged
families, the what's-left-over
who whisper: repair and brace.
The Honey Moon
Beirut:
Tell me this
is the last adventure
and I'll go home, stop
bothering God for information
about you. I'll stop spying
through your candles and dirty
mists. I married not a man
but the whole country, wedded
rivers while marching
across stones, my innocence
lost on a flight from which
I stepped into a sea
of armies and posters.
My teeth got ground into paste,
a dowry wasted on one hiding
place after another looking
for the auction of the future
where the last bidder is death.
I gave birth to mementos and distress
near bodies of chalk
sucked naked by gravity.
Our children dragged
baggage and dread
through the streets
as the news catered
our bitterest meals.
We never leave and never arrive,
airport to airport with a cold bravado
saying the strangest things.
