Son
Paint peels
curl from railing. Scalloped
edges of neglect, fluted
petals
flaking white
fall to mildewed carpet,
stretched across the sagging boards of the
porch on the home
I fled to
from our lives, that tidy
Cape Cod
American factory
of family, sitting in the past like a reproach.
This home is the one I built of sticks
and desperation, and it's falling down. I let it. In the
life before it, I was young: skin
smelled of peaches
beneath
golden-haired arms.
I used to study the individual strands
on the stronger arms
of the mother
that I was; I'd watch them grip
the metal bannister, going up the concrete
steps away from the school you'd sit and learn in
spread behind me- I remember
feeling happy.
Children's voices
muted below
filled my heart with a
high-pitched playground braggadocio,
and within it, I'd hear yours: that stitched
in-yellow, bright-patched sound that carried uphill
into my ears- I thought I'd hear that sound
forever. What are you hearing now
in the desert
filled
with quakes of dark explosions? Is it a
terror? Is it the whine
of something flying overhead
to threaten your life? Do you still feel the love
that flowed down steps, across the parking lot
to the class room, love
like explosions of the heart? Here
in our starkness, in this moment, know these arms
if they could,
would lift the world for you.
Thief of Children
Nearly strangled
with the desire
to cry out, scream
the kind
of scream
you hear in the worst dream
ever, I am tangled up in feelings,
snaked like rope. And so you see
it's hard for me to listen to the ramblings
on of this one's
smart impression
of a leaf. I chew a grief
as thick as cow cud. My son
.
mine
is treading hell
....
Iraqi hell
with little children- holding
...
hands with those
whose eyes are the color of soot, whose parents
put on uniforms
that rarely fit-
are barely creased,
to die in. All policemen, all petty
bureaucrats
we laugh at here
are martyred. O, the orphans
whose toys are parts of exploded jeep, for whom
poetry is Mars, I see you standing round a crater
ringed with mad dogs. See you
standing there
with Matt,
his captain's bars
in dust, his back bent, sorting through the
rubble for a wire or fuse-
we're sending
children
to help the children
stolen
by war. My shame prohibits
scribbling this
...
there must be something
more
to do... and yet this leaf
is perfect
under a libelous sun, the days are
filled with bees beyond all reason. Where there's
death, alas, feel breath as well,
and summer; it is true
that all
the moments
break us.
It Waits
In the face of delight,
it is there. In the soft carpet
under feet, the high cloud perfect
and unreachable,
it reigns
in dark edges and thunder.
Inside
of an hour, a minute,
in every ebb and flow-
in utterance and exhalation,
wondering where to go to find safety
from the ballpeen pigslaughter second, the crack
and mallet of the Almighty stands poised,
hung on a spiderweb of randomness
ready to come down.
You may run,
but there is nowhere else
save into it, so pray the head
is ready for the the blow- there is no time
for human foolishness-
there's one shot only
this one
is the last to make it
reverenced.
