Places of great horror have the same silence.
It gets fused into the air
Like transparencies of sound, like empty speeches,
Or the half-life of Ground Zero.
It is like a fire that pierces the eyes that see it.
It fills you to the bone. It fills every stone.
It doesn’t matter how long ago,
It’s still happening in Hiroshima.
Enola Gays are flying above the city,
Pilots sighting T-shaped bridges,
The first nuclear bomb dropping…
Compound firestorms incinerating the city,
Becoming ash and cloud and gale-force wind
Like giant angelic beings with blazing wings,
Setting the fires on fire as they pass.
People walking under black rain
Wear the rags of their own melting flesh.
Others have no skin
But seem anatomies spilling tears.
Others, blind, wander nightmare ruins–
And you are one of them,
Drinking in the radiation,
Soaked in their suffering,
Brother and sister to them all,
You are innocent, free to leave,
Though collapsing winds
Draw you back to a burning center.
That’s where we all are.
Uncategorized
The Waterwheel
For long spells the flour mill lay closed
And the waterwheel would be overrun
By morning glories,
Even anchored by the vines,
Like a wreath for the funeral of the sun.
Other times I thought the wheel
Turned imperceptibly
Like a seasonal clock
Entangled by its own reflection
In the sunken mirrors of the earth.
For all we know another wheel
Turns the wheel;
Another sun inside the sun
Outlasts the waterwheel
And the bread of dumb flesh,
Grinding the flour of morning glories
Beyond the millstone,
Beautiful as a second coming
That never arrives.
Head Rip
Hatred
Hacks heads
Holds hostages
Helps hypocrites
Hangs hope
Hawks headlines
Hurls hurt
Harbors the hell-born
Experience
Eats earth essence
Educates entirely
Estimates existence
Eradicates excuses
Enduring evenly
Eager for ease
Even ebbing erudition
Autocracy
Apes accordingly
Accepts affluence
Avoids apology
Attracts analphabets
Attacking all accusers
Amassing assets
Arming for Armageddon
Death
Delivers definitiveness
Destroys damnation
Deceives desire
Distancing dreams
Dissolving days
Deactivating disease
Discharging denial
Rapture
Reeks of revulsion
Requires roiling
Raising redeemers
Raving redundantly
Revisiting revelations
Racing to rendezvous
Rupturing reality
Ignorance
Idolizes itself
Ignites indignation
Interpreting incorrectly
Insulting institution
Impeding immunity
Insisting in innocence
Impregnating iredom
Power
Pollutes the public
Panders pathetically
Poses presumptuously
Paltering politically
Perfecting pretence
Pimping profits
Planning piracy
Ink Wash
fogdom isn’t the absence of clarity
it is a walking suspension of disbelief
blankness in every direction
snow melting into cloud
granular fog setting like hushed static
a few mental brushstrokes
and I brush in what’s erased
deer crossing highways
old apple trees from childhood
first love vanishing in the void
the incompleteness of everything
blending with the saturation
adds such sadness to this picture
Sunset
go see for yourself
approaching a cedar grove
snow on green branches
a blue sunset
transitory presence
and transparent gold
all that you are
Origins
Revised.
Trees walk out to sea,
Waters encircle them like floating barrels.
Tall mastheads with green sails cross the sun.
Thick lateral roots act as rudders.
The trees plunge in rogue waves
And trim sails, following a tree star.
Barely visible now, cargo birds break free,
Clouds of them on the horizon.
The last tree to cross,
Branches brushing the backs of elephants.
Origins
Trees walk out to sea,
Waters encircle them like floating barrels.
Tall mastheads with green sails cross the sun.
Thick lateral roots act as rudders.
The trees plunge in rogue waves
And trim sails, following a tree star.
Barely visible now, cargo birds break free,
Clouds of them on the horizon.
The last tree to cross,
Branches brushing the backs of elephants.
The Cruelest Pretender
Poetry happens.
Intelligence doesn’t create it.
Talent is no guarantee.
Hard work mistakes it
For something else.
In the saddest scenario
Poetry appears, indifferent;
As police search your car
Lines of it detain you;
Ecstatic coactions
Of love, banal poetry;
A barren place, a singing wind;
An unexpected guest
Or confirmation of results.
Stop pretending.
Poetry happens.
Earth Facts
Atrocities of the autopsy table,
Cutting a corpse from its roots,
First incision to undergrowth.
Could identity be separated
From earth’s long anonymity?
Let’s examine integration
Before extracting information
From an eco-system and deep self
Confounded with the same evil.
In the seasons of a forest
Time of death is natural duration
Accumulating burial in absence.
Doctors dissect a living death.
They pick over a wild garden
And dance round a green fire.
With the irrigation of the remains
All hands are stained with dead inquiry.
Economics of Snow Removal
Those who work in snow removal
feed their families with hours of night.
Where truck and plow won’t go
they shovel later than you know.
They break their backs and curse—
hoping the snow will end and never end.