The face once fresh was lean
where roundness used to be.

Heart-strained 'steel'
had swallowed up the boy
I leaned to kiss
before the hiss of , 'Can't, Mom. Don't.'

We toured the castellated stone,
we caught the scent of History:
of Lee, of loss,
of melancholy rock,
the never-ending gray
of sacrificial lines
and severed sons.

I wondered how this place
could draw the blood of ones so young
and then,
I saw the Commandant.

Striding like the God of War,
Titan-sized, he'd wielded death;
Medal of Honor madly won,
a ghost, but with a kind of breath.

The stiffest back I'd ever seen.
The saddest eyes,
the brightest gun.





Sins Of The Fathers

1920's Sullivan's Row,
a dog-legged lane
that scratched
straight up the rocky edge of Oakland
held houses that were hillside-hung,
clapboards gray,
their washlines flying flags
of boiled diapers
for the bottoms
of the hungry ones,
the chapped,
the chafed of Pittsburgh.

The Rickets-ridden royalty,
the loyal sons Iberian,
their kingdom
chained to lower rungs
of hell.

Irish men,
too proud
to take assistance
worked for pittance pay.
My grandpa
toiled six long days
for sixteen dollars flat. I'm told
he drank up most of that
and did not walk,
but rode the trolley home

The government paid eighteen
to the men who took the dole
for six
or seven progeny
they boasted but then
could not feed.

My father fed on lard and bread
and slept in coats- not blankets,
while grandpa's eyes, part blue,
part green, turned
mostly mean.

He worked for less
and nightly,
rode the trolley home.
That man who ate his children
pierced my father
like a twisted nail;
still lives inside
this fisted song,
rides memory like rail.
It will not carry him
to where he found religion and became
that saint on earth.





Playing Hangman's Poker

I knew a woman once who had
three lawful husbands.
Numbers
One and Three
slipped off their lives in suicide
and you were Number Two; sometimes,
life can beggar
art, statistically speaking. Tangentially,
both you and she danced secretly
between the staggered
matrimonies; neither of you
gave a
backward glance.

She was like
oil slipping in,
your second wife was baby's
breath
wrapped round serrated knife,
so soft of voice was she
-and oh, so very lethal
in herlove. I was your first wife-

and I saw it in your faces.

Saw the hangman on the hill, when I heard her
sibilance
come sliding up my bones, I knew that you were in the till

and she held aces.





Heart Sums

Seventy times seven
that's a lot more math
than this here heart
will ever do.

One plus one
is two,
that one
I
know.





The Shepherds Are Gone

December eludes us.
Besotted by bells,
diverted by din
with the annual trim
and the mirth and the mien
of the Season of Light,
we wonder as we wander so vacuously,
"The Shepherds are gone."

Above, the hills and clouds
are passed by wings of seraphs
beating fast
yet December is wizened,
senescent, a season
where love can be carried, beribboned
(though not in the heart.)

We latter-day shepherds
diverted from seeking a star
are distracted by flames
of the seasonal chestnut that's burning
for Lo! Its a tactile and graspable worship
when Christmas is cupped in the hand.

Yet the fiery old constant
is there just the same
unassuaged,
and rampaging the sky.
But propped at the stem
of a six-foot, adorable
storable pine
whose leaves are ever fireproof,
is a Bethlehem town
made of papier-mache
Lilliputian,
the lap of the Lamb.

O come all ye mourn
for the pyres of the Ages
are ash, nothing more
if the birthcry that bleated with love
goes unheard, and the Word
merely plaster
and 'Made in Japan',
if the shepherds have all gone away.

Tears and blood.
Blood and pain
I remember one December,
I remember rarity
when the shepherds came home.

My loins were stung and stretched
and streaked, and as I panted
pained and cried
my child was born at Christmastide.

'Only' became 'Us',
'I' to 'We',
my child, my flesh
she looked at me
as I dreamed a young virgin
in draping dress, with glistened brow
take a babe to her breast;
a hush on her face-
an expression of awe.

The sweet smell of straw
in medicinal air
(and the lowing of cows
and the lantern's glare),
then with a fanning of angel wings
I caught a glimpse
of a newborn King
whose mother was proud,
and damp
and prone.
She swaddled her babe
as I swaddled my own
and we wondered aloud,
"Where the shepherds had gone?"

WE shepherds of Christmas,
affirming, aware;
the common and craven
and credulous throng
to give eyes to that wonder,
bear witness to love,
glad tiding of joy to be told
to be shared.

Though Christmas is hoar-haired,
the shepherds came home
to a promise transcendent
in flesh and in bone.





If

If you were a wine
red you'd be, full
bodied. I'd decant you slowly,
drink you down.

If you were a song
light you'd be way up
in branches. Birds would
bring you back to me,
I'd pull your notes inside,
you'd sing
my whole heart.

If you were a blanket
I'd tuck you tight
round every part
and spread my legs
a bit
and ride the roll of you.

Each night
my prayer for you: to not be gone,
be something
else.





I Know Who You Are

Jumping under your skin
there is a jinn,
-pre-moral, prowling
in the corners
where the sex is truly kept.

The world may not have guessed,
but see me grinning here?
I never bought benevolence
-I know the power crouching
in the tender word, 'works well'.
(I sometimes give it hell myself.)

These aren't wings you see;
they're webs spun out from both my arms,
to catch you and to wrap you
up for lunch.

It's a 'Gopher Game' we play,
the kind that kids,
in all their innocence
will come upon in summer
on the Midway.

Come hit me with your love.
Put hips into it
-sock it to me good.
I promise
in the middle of the night
when you are curled,
-when you are cupping both your balls,
and sucking at your thumb,
I'll pop back up.





Isaac, At Sixteen Months

Rags of DNA,
flying ribbons
double-helixed
danced
and darned themselves-
a skin, a smile,
a rope of memory
to tie this child
to me
as certainly as fingerprints
can whorl my name.

The mystery of molecules
continued from wherever
my first mother
made her first and muddied stretch
from crouch to upright stance;
she's staring out
at sons
and then the sons of sons
flung forward to my father,
then a daughter dreamed a son
and then, this one.

Syncopated pasts
carrying the cancers
and the murders
and the Mozart,
shivering through
A-bombs
and the moonwalk-
all addictions,
all lost faith.

The better linen,
finest wine
that's saved till last
is he.
I see wonder
when those newest
lamps of soul lock-on,
the bluest,
look stockstill
and into mine.
He is smiling.
He is Isaac,
'he who laughs'
and trips on stars.





Isaac Passing Through

Isaac has a secret world
of gentle
where he smoothes each edge.

He waves the sun goodby each evening,
chubby fingers pressed to lips,
so quietly,
the sun can fall asleep.

Isaac is delighted by the roundness of a ball.
He laughs its shape to spinning
as he pats it through the dust
like God, in making planets
must have laughed
to see them circut into space.

Isaac
has a face so bright,
I cannot look except with switched on
incandescent light myself.

Isaac is a magic boy
who remakes every moment into new
and I am never younger
than when Isaac passes through me
with his joy.





Killer Words

I sacrifice much
for chosen words
arranged and scored again
and again in the dead of night
by the light
shone through my head.
My fingers long gone stiff, backing up, do it again,
stroking the fur of words
to make them lay down smooth; I tell them
'sit' or 'stay'.
They're animals who would eat me
if I let them;
animals
that
rend the life around me, for when a poem
is so
crimson rich, it pools around my feet and I see
flowers white, floating in a ruby bath
my feet
full in it, warm,
it's only when I've slept,
hallucinated
less, I find the flowers
are my children

floating there in blood,
remembering how once, I raked their childhoods
deep
with words.





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