They could not decide what to take first,
So they took everything.
They took everything and promised to return,
So the others took the nothing
They had left and hid it away.
They had no trouble hiding it.
Weeks later they returned
Demanding the nothing they left behind.
The others refused, they refused,
Claiming nothing was all they had.
So they went away to plan.
They sent their scouts
To search for the nothing.
They searched all morning.
They peered into forests.
They overturned rocks.
They parted the water
But always found something.
Determined to find nothing
They said to surrender nothing
Or be slaughtered,
But the others refused
And prepared for battle.
So the battle lasted years.
They forgot about nothing
And kept killing over nothing.
Bodies burned into nothing.
Nothing was left behind.
Legend has it, nothing was never found.
To this day there is still nothing.
The Counterweight
If you weigh the stars in the balance
Glaciers are nurseries of the stars.
They are weighbridges to the borealis,
Ice roads into isolated communities.
They’re hydroelectric power plants,
Evolutionary clocks, mammoth museums,
Icebox mountains of organic matter.
Meltwaters surge from the summits
Enlivening salmon in summer streams,
Nourishing the valley with snowmelt.
Glaciers are a kind of counterweight
To their own absence tipping the scale.
Once gone, what could replace glaciers
That we’d not burn in water/drown in fire.
Rosa Ala Arrives at Ellis Island, 1903
Nothing but roses,
Nothing but kisses of red wine and roses
For a distant relative on a ship’s Manifest.
We’ll meet at the port when I depart.
A rose tattoo for your soul,
Bouquets of foaming waves.
Rose per Rosa, o comprato stasera…
Roses covering the deck of the Sicilian Prince
And roses in America.
Maria Juana
Maria Juana,
With you I strum a green guitar.
Maria Juana,
With you I know the sound of laughter.
Maria Juana,
With you I celebrate friendship.
Maria Juana,
With you I know the body is smoke.
Maria Juana,
With you I breathe another air.
Maria Juana,
With you I dance to naked music.
Maria Juana,
With you I live a waking dream.
Maria Juana,
With you there is no lying.
Maria Juana,
With you I raise children of peace.
Maria Juana,
With you I count the sands and stars.
Maria Juana,
With you I am everywhere at once.
Maria Juana,
With you I love beyond the grave.
Maria Juana,
With you I grasp all things.
Maria Juana,
With you I am born again.
Maria Juana,
With you I weave this ancient song.
Maria Juana,
With you I am entwined.
Crow Feather Totem III
My daughter sees a hawk feather on the road.
Just as I pick it up the wind picks up the face of the leaves.
Just as I raise it to the air the trees begin sharing ancestral words.
Just as I pass it to my daughter she’s falling from the upper world.
Just as she takes it from my hand I am falling.
Just as she offers it back to her father she is falling.
Such things are found on the road joining young and old.
Such things happen on the spirit road.
Shadow Line
At the shadow line the storm’s grip is loosed,
Between a sea of light and a sea of darkness
It is beautiful and hallowed on both sides.
Rain falls from the sun and clouds glow.
Winds blow in place and yet we are moving
As though at the equinox of eternity.
At the shadow line is the peace of mountains.
At the shadow line it is the birthday of forever,
It is the anniversary of fire and night,
Sparks fly from the anvil
But the hammer sounds in the distance.
Truth Enough
Last night I dreamt I was talking to Wittgenstein. It was a frightening dream, hyperreal; and later I thought, not only relevant but important to share. I was wearing a blood soaked apron, as apparently we were both doctors in a First World War field hospital somewhere near the front. I marveled at his remarkable sangfroid under fire. I was about to make the first incision into my patient when I saw that it was a young boar and then a fatted calf. “Truth is truth enough for a grain of sand to keep the earth from falling,” he said, while amputating the right arm of his own brother.
Composition in Gray
November, you are the urn of the seasons,
All other months are ash inside you–
Body without light, spirit-haunted.
Our waking hours
Resemble more a rainy dream,
Our dreaming, the mist of another life.
I hear an oboe in November,
An oboe drifting through the woods,
Accompanied by strings.
Are not those cellos and violins
Our desires dying even as they desire more life?
From the river a freighter’s foghorn
Throbs in the night.
The rumbling of a distant train
Beats drum rolls for the dead of November.
I dream them in gray.
Along the river’s mist I see the dead,
And then I see her
Who was once naked beside me.
How ashen her beautiful face,
How dead those eyes I knew.
She holds out a cold hand.
I step through to the other side.
Chapel of the Little Flower
You can’t see it from the street
But Chapel of the Little Flower saves Detroit.
When the street burns– it anoints with ashes.
When the street is hungry– it feeds the street.
The homeless sing outside its doors
And the song carries up the alley
Like the flight of birds.
Narco Corrido
Children want to be narco.
They see money and power.
Children play in the street,
Dirt stains their feet,
Body covered by a sheet.
A convoy of Escalades,
Narcos in masks with AK-47s.
Children play in the street,
The wrong dream soils their feet,
Body covered by a sheet.
A narcobloqueo playground
For Death and Chaparrines.
An old man washes the blood
Of children from the street.
He looks like Jesus Malverde
With a crown of smoke.
Pray to Santa Muerte,
Save them from the Devil.
Children play in the street,
Death stains their feet,
Body covered by a sheet.
Salvatore Ala 