Are like prisoners of life
The minute born is time served

They crash imaginary borders
To enter the freedom of a cage

They are like the dust of Gaza
The diseased of the desert

The displaced of war
And untraced of genocide

The unloved and innocent
Are enemies of entitlement

The poor and the unloved
Share an address in a living hell

They are like the unborn
Bearing our burden

Yellow eyes of an eyelash viper
The sun in a coil
Seeds in the lotus
A venomous flowering of vision
Fruit with fangs
Our guide stops my hand
From reaching for the illusion

After my father cut my hair
I swept up the clippings
Something about doing that
The peace of it
The closeness
The sweeping motion
Of my mind
Made me think I’d existed
Many times before
And so did I and I

Crawls from the carnage of hearts
From desperation and pain
Lucky to have survived
Not to have chosen death
Not to have been seduced again
It sings from all we’ve destroyed
No matter how many lies
The voice of a song
Is the part you remember
The part you hear
When you’re not listening
Out of pity it sings to you
It serenades the beast inside
And it never stops bleeding

for Len

“What do you think of Orpheus’ lyre?”
“What does it mean to play so well
You draw the animals from the forest
Into the energy of your art?” Len asked
After a day of bourbon and holy smoke,
After hours of creating poetry in conversation,
Finding sanity in beauty, and refuge in rhetoric.
Finally I said, “maybe it was a weapon.”
Len paused, looked at me for a long time
And said, “yeah, man, it was a weapon.”