Once More on the Verge of War
once more on the verge of war
the last one barely over
ugly wounds the bodies bore
still flared like startled cobras
all the men who did not die
are nightmares staked with eyeballs
why why why why why why why
war’s spiderweb traps spiders
madeup men on TV screens
snakecharm the present danger
somewhere there’s a rogue regime
that must taste our just anger
now we see in infrared
our corneas are crosshairs
history is what we said
markets starve on plowshares
generals swell medaled chests
presidents wax solemn
if you’re not bloodthirsty yet
then you’re part of the problem
once more on the verge of war
place names from a grade school quiz
fill-in-blank must be destroyed
we’ll show them what vengeance is
soup and bread for homeless vets
hotlines so they don’t self-shoot
orphans, widows, prosthetics—
real men don’t need parachutes
cowards question, leaders lead
we go forward, hell be damned
later there’ll be time to bleed
now war drums and so we dance
Forgiveness
Loving is the harder thing.
Letting vengeance splatter flat
costs more than does misering
which tit cancels out which tat.
Harder, still, than hardened hearts
thicketed with old excuse
is that burning of the charts
that map our way through lesser truths.
Grudgers play their game to win.
They argue sound as alphabets.
Losing, though, lets you back in.
As tender as my outstretched neck
is March soil against the hoe.
Broken ground is ground we sow.
Frozen earth holds fast, but spring
is, by far, the harder thing.
Darrell
The room where he was murdered made the news.
Black guitar case, mattress on the floor.
Corners piled with detritus—unused
purchases from Walmart. Tangled cords,
some of which connected stray machines:
fans, keyboards, computers, TV screens.
Hampers full of laundry. Garbage cans
advertising his cigarette brand.
He was shot three times, point blank, died quick.
Hard drugs were involved. His murderer
was, the neighbors said, no lunatic,
“A sweet girl, this is all so unlike her.”
I met Darrell as a high school freshman.
He skipped class to smoke. His grin was sly.
He was always chasing older women.
He fought after school, flunked out, was shy.
There was not a bone in him aggressive.
He took fighting as a kind of law.
Weary, he would rise, remove his glasses,
headlock his tormentor, break his jaw.
For a month or two we were coworkers.
Summer job. He told me things during breaks.
Parents dead. Pursued by jilted lovers,
he found it best to move from place to place.
I don’t know what he did after quitting.
His obituary said, “construction.”
He had several kids by different women.
Seemed he spent a couple years in prison.
On the news they showed a recent photo.
His soul seemed as listless as his room
in a borrowed house. A life in toto.
Darrell’s world was already his tomb.
Eulogy for Kenny
(Camden, New Jersey, March, 2012)
Here was a man unfluent in my world.
Unable to read or write our common language,
he spoke in halting baritones, lips curled
in ways they never do at Yale or Cambridge.
He mostly lived in shelters, or in tents
pitched amid the trees on riverbanks.
He was as skeptical of governments
as he was quick to bow his head in thanks.
When the cold got bad he found a spot
on the floor of Grace Lutheran Church.
His good days were when he had a cot.
But each morning brought the same old hurts
that had exiled him from his own life
long ago—so long he had lost track.
He made vague plans with his common-law wife
but could not pry his future from his past.
One wonders how his years played back to him,
how the scenes of good and bad were set.
Who narrated Kenny’s inner film?
Was his voice as gravelly and wet
in his heart of hearts as on his tongue?
Did he speak communion in his soul,
where the string of all his days was strung,
only with like men, or mankind whole?
(I try thinking thoughts in Kenny’s voice—
my life sounds so different in his key.
But what if I did not have this choice—
what if Kenny’s speaking voice was me?)
I met Kenny once or twice. He sat
rigid and respectful, called me “Sir,”
but was mostly silent. It is that
that speaks most now of him whom we inter.
The Stream
(after Emperor Yōzei (869-949)
Freshets embrook,
streams entangle,
our river
falls from the clifftop at far Tsukubane.
Likewise the love of us,
woman and man,
moves to deep pools:
who knows where it began?
Featured: Sunday, by Edward Hopper (1926).
