Echolalia

TO MY FIRST NIECE OR NEPHEW

There is a palpable hate in lost opportunities.
There is an anxiety building upward from the
spark of non-being which goes beyond any
capacity for understanding. In action, in
being there is always, however briefly, the
hope of something more in the reality of
that which is less. And yet you are dead
and will never hear these words.

My, how much I despise this world! How
I taste that rotten scent of burdens piling
upward to my throat. It is the piling burdens
of knowing my life is uncoiling outward like
a thread into oblivion, and I, helplessly must
follow it out onto its end. But you, how sad
to face that end but days after you began.

My brother is an ass and a fool. I speak seldom
of him because he and I differ in every way, and
he is the more handsome, the stronger, the
more worldly of us two. Yes, he is the one
I had hoped, hoped mind you of being the heir
to some child who would protect our family
from the ravages of time. And now you are dead
and he is still alive. So is your mother. Bitch.

When I was a child the whole world was white
and black, uncluttered by grey, uncluttered by
any colour whatsoever, because all the world is
but a struggle without purpose or direction, yet
still we struggle on, because the alternative is no
alternative at all.

We pass through a world that cares not for life
or death, that remains as bones remain, or less.
And there is no God to greet us after death and
no devil plies our evils with evils of his own,
because such things are nothing more than the
demented hopes of lost souls unable to effect
any change in this world beyond the shifting
of soil over their bodies when they are dead.

Every cell, every bacterium in my body is a world
unto itself, link upon link of some unnameable
thing that defies the expectations of a trillion
lifeless worlds, because such mere fragments
move, live and act, and in their actions I exist,
and in my actions others exist, forward and back
through a billion years in both directions, creating
link upon link with a trillion other worlds.

And now you can’t share in that connection,
now that single frail, pathetic, tragic and beautiful
reality is denied you, because my brother, my
brother, my brother couldn’t bear the responsibility
of your existence. What a fucking moron, to deny
the benefits of life over non-life, to argue
because she was married, because he abandoned
his first girlfriend, because he lost home and
profession he deserves some breathing room,
and you then had to be sacrificed for his sake.

My brother failed in the most profound and
complete way imaginable: he denied himself
an heir to the future. And if you had been sick,
or dying in the womb, if some tragedy would
have befallen you then so be it, but to die like
this, to be broken like this is repellent to my
soul. Even the smallest insect knows the wisdom
of life above non-life, even the smallest cockroach
protects her young. I wish we could have met.

Now I must find someone, now I feel the need
to find someone, find in some way, however
unlikely a means of bringing you back. Years
will pass and I will love her, I hope. And she
and I may conceive, and perhaps in some other
way you will return to the world of living, or
if not you than your cousin.

In any case, I have said my peace. But the
anger is unpalpable, and lost opportunities
are so many, like sand ripped to dust and less
than dust, before being scattered on the tombs
and graves you’ll never see, on the monuments
of others you’ll never share. How can I miss
someone I never met before and never will again?
How can a ghost haunt me whose face and form
were not even set at the moment of their death?

To my lost nephew or niece, rest well.
I’ll remember you as best I can and join
you in whatever under-country exists
on the other side of death. June 23/09.

KAPUTIA II.
(Alternate poem.)

Kaputia, name of an Indian
queen, she who killed her
lovers on the great Ganges.

Kaputia, sought the love
of a British man, Kaputia,
tricked into a power game.

Lost her lovers and her
lands to an English king. June 17/09.

THE SILENCES OF DEATH

I am struck by the silences of death,
I am caught on the briars of silences.
Nothing is still enough for him,
nothing is enough for all-loving death.
Life has a trillion mouths and actions
burn the very air with screams.
I am struck by the silence of my
epitaph. Even death forgets me and my
worship of the workings of his hands. July 1/09.

YOU TAKE THE GOOD
(The first and second stanzas are
my father’s, the third my mother’s.)

You take the good and
learn to know them well.

You take the bad
and ignore them,

who you are and
who you’re with. July 4/09.

HOLOCAUST WESTERN

I’m trying to deliberately write a bad poem.
I’m trying to write about cowboys in World
War II., gunslingers at Nuremberg, why even
the Jews could be mistaken for Indians
with the way so few hide their prejudice.

I’m writing about blind monsters in a world
of sin, a world not their own, a crucified world
for them. I’m trying to write about a blind man
living in a world of monsters who all hold up
masks of human faces, so that when he touches

what they claim to be their faces he feels the
smooth skin of those hapless victims though
somehow even still he knows he is being lied
to, somehow. I remember a dream about being
a time traveler, and in the body of a child I went

forward and back through history, teaching a
man how to make three dimensional photographs,
which he was destined to make anyway, throwing
statues against the walls of future museums,
knowing they couldn’t be destroyed, and so they

bounced harmlessly away. I even introduced him
to his wife and her three children, and became a
kind of son to him, and brother to those children,
though I don’t know why. And then it is always
back to Nuremberg, back to gunslingers and blind

monsters, or some evil queen sending her loyal
brave knight against impossible odds, because he
loves her, and she loves him not at all. I was just
trying to write a bad poem after all. How did all
of this come out of my own ruined experiment? July 2/09.

AT THE SCHOOL OF THE MANTICORE

Ekathai, why she’s just a cute alien girl
from somewhere just beyond the boundaries
of Pluto. Don’t mind her tails, all three of
them, and when she sticks out that purple
tongue of hers don’t worry, it means she
likes you, a lot.

You’ll find working here gets easier after
the culture shock. Half of our students are
from someplace else, either another world or
even other dimension. Why Hatet Sterculion,
the former professor of extinct languages is a
bona fide Old One,
though you wouldn’t know it.

Oh, yes? Well that’s why half of his body is
bandaged up, and why it looks like he’s missing
his left arm, leg and eye. Sometime way back
he got into a fight with something, well big,
and had to rest and recover, so he took human
form, kind of.

He really is quite brilliant, but don’t ask him
for any help, or he might eat you. No, no I’m
kidding, but seriously, don’t ask him for help.
Oh, last but not least Bah-Be Yuyutsu is in
your class. He’s a child of two very different
parents, one being

Balor and his baleful eye, and the other Yuyutsu,
from the Maharbharata. Somehow they got
stuck together and created him. Yes, yes, well
anyway he’s an A-plus student so you shouldn’t
have any problems with him. Just don’t mention
the Irish mythology

and you should be fine. Anyhow, I’ve got to get
back to my classroom, there’s a demon doing
show and tell. Apparently she went to the forest
of the suicides and brought a big hound from
there, or as she calls it, “doggy.” Oh, and don’t
worry, soon enough they’ll

all be in grade two, and someone else’s problem.
Oh, that’s the bell. Have fun on your first day as
a teacher, remember my advice, and when Mr.
Sterculion calls for recess make sure you go out
with him. He may be an Old One but he’s not very
mobile with only one leg.
He’ll need your help,
whether he likes it or not. Well, anyway, have a nice day. July 2/09.

MENAGERIE (Or origami at the hospital.)

I cast to sea upon the world’s wide rivers
of causality a countless menagerie of animals,
laying them eventually in many people’s hands.

Paper begets the flesh of animals and paper
the flesh of the words I write, as I lay them in
your hands. How soon til my memories

are paper, a menagerie of lost regrets, left to
some few others exiled from other worlds and
lands to the country of my imagination,

to the toothless grave that can’t even kill a
piece of paper with all the fury that it has. July 3/09.

FAME SLIPS

Fame slips away: be grateful.
Those who have the footprints of a god
on them, those seemingly touched by the
divine burn swiftly, scar

themselves on such godhoods til
they are not men, are not women anymore.
Stranger things have taken them and grossly
all their actions become but

the merest shadow of a farce,
til every flaw however small is considered
their worst sin, and every act of kindness
some messiah’s echo in their

actions and their deeds. What
fools to struggle so long for so little.
Dust is clean besides the likes of them. July 3/09.

THE MORE INFORMATION

The more information a society has,
the greater the knowledge a civilization
accumulates the easier it is for such vast
resources of the mind to slip away.

But it is the mind which devises
what best ways to ruin and destroy,
it is the mind which transforms the

smallest part, the merest virus of a
thought into the all consuming force
which annihilates all else. What we
create destroys even what

we create. In the end this truth
dominates all else. But still we
create. We can’t help but try. It
is our finest fate, and it is a lie. July 3/09.

EVERY DAY AND EVERY NIGHT

Every day I smash headlong into the reality
of knowing nothing changes. I grow older
and sooner or later death will great me and
find me unpalpable, but still she’ll have her
feast. I am an exile of myself, I am not

the man I should have been. There is another
soul buried neath my own and whatever fate
was meant for him I received, though I have
grown twisted and my heart is blacker than
it should have been. And this is what I know

as I lay in bed at night and this is what I feel
but my hands cannot stop and my mind will
not stop, and so I am compelled, always
compelled to keep going, even in the face of
utter defeat, because I am not being defeated

but rather it is the other one, the lost soul down
somewhere inside, while the mask of who I
am resides and continues like a husk unwilling
to be shed, til I crumble and he crumbles with
me, into death. And that is what I feel way in the
middle of the night. July 9/09.

PART OF ME

Part of me wants the world to end
and all humanity to die. I’m tired
of them all and I wish an end of

things, a closing down of reality,
til even the universe itself could just

wind down prematurely, like a
broken watch. And part of me
desires all things their proper

chance to endure and thrive, and life,
all stars, all worlds the opportunity

to become the seeds of greater
things. Between the two is where the
poet begins. From the two great art

of any kind is born, whether it survives
a day or a billion years of passing time. July 4/09.

TOM HANNEHAN’S MOTHER
(Her son was murdered by King Fisher.
This is a true story.)

At night, years after that final event, she
used to mount his grave and almost wept,
but not for him.
She’d build a bonfire, heap
it high up and dance about the flames,
a circular pattern of steps
and movements she could never reclaim.

Afterward, well afterward she’d go down,
back to the town and the city she was from.
Her son’s memory she put to rest
another night by dancing on his
murderer’s grave. That was Tom Hannehan’s
mother. I’d have hated to meet her son
on a bad day. July 22/09.

IN LOST GOODBYES

In lost goodbyes,
in something.
In lost goodbyes?

We never say goodbye
to those we really hate.
Oh, we speak the words
but never the intent.

We want to keep
them close and
keep them safe.

We want someone
to hate as surely as
the air. It’s all

because there’s
nothing left out
there, but lost

goodbyes or something.
Don’t ask me where. July 9/09.

THE ORIGINAL MIMIC

So what if the beetles all have men’s
faces, or the cockroaches sound like
the voices of lovers?
So what if the
flies gather and plot, shout revolution
from garbage humps? Ours is
the time
and ours is the way.
We hold dominion over all things.
Just don’t ask me to take off my face.
Even I don’t know
what is beneath. July 14/09.

AMI 625

I felt the skin of her breasts,
the soft touch of breath held
taut as wires,
and then as
always the slow release,
gaining momentum into

a single, final act of pure
surrender, into the nothingness
of moments between moments.

Soon Ami 625 will have
to return to the shop, be placed
on a shelf
when my lease is
up, so like a mannequin with eyes
of shale, gazing hungrily

after the world she can’t taste,
and I’ll go on my way down
streets that have no names,
because
I am supposedly freer than her chains. June 21-July 14/09.

THE SCIENTIST IN SEARCH OF LOVE

So there was a scientist in search of love.
He could have followed all the old cliches,
but he did not. Instead he followed a rabbit

and watched what rabbits do, then came upon
a frog, a sparrow, a speck of wheat, a grain of
corn, and finally the corpse-broken worm,

and asked them all what love would be. And
when he got no reply he turned to his wife
and asked the same, and she replied “I do not

know, don’t ask me now. My lover is passing
by, and I don’t want to miss him dear. Perhaps
I’ll answer your question some other time.” July 14/09.

THE VOYAGER OF THE WHITE RAVEN

There are ships of Jupiter that glide ‘tween
clouds violent as gods, vaster than worlds.
There are storms out of season that devour
the night and rains blacker than oil that

poison the world. There is a crow whiter
than snow and on her back it is written but
destruction and ruin to any who gaze ‘pon
her, as I have now gazed. She stood on the

prow of a ship, whiter and clearer than glass.
Her eyes had the seeming of darkness and
shadows I’ll never forget, though I’ll never
describe. The sea shouted back from the

scream of the water that cursed all the skies
and the white raven on her ship almost shed
her pale white wings, and I thought I saw a
woman with hair pale as a hanged man’s

thought before he’s finally died. Then the
ship released her sails like wings that have
no thought but fury and the raven passed
into a raven that once and final time. And

afterward, yes afterward I found my footsteps
carried me home, but my soul is with her on
that ship somewhere ‘tween the clouds of
worlds no man has seen in days gone by,

or if they’ve seen that have not told, because
there are not words enough to tell of what the
gods do not understand, as they flit like shadows
screaming at the storms, as the white raven passes by. July 14/09.

TO DOORS THAT HAVE NO KEY

To doors that have no key
and have no lock to signal
they are dead and the world

has stopped, never to start til
the sun recoils like the springs
of an ancient and rusty clock. July 28/09.

A MARTIAN CHRONICLE
(From an old idea I had after
reading Bradbury as a child.)

Sometimes it isn’t the dream, it’s the
misunderstanding that creates anew.
I read a book about Mars and on the
last page humanity looked down into
the canal and saw Martians there.

Of course what the author meant
was that humanity had become the
Martians, but in my mind’s eye I saw
golden skinned beings transformed to

octopi, swimming along the roads of
water, leaving the vast empty deserts
of their world for a few scatterings of
humanity to conquer. I imagined

great golden eyes accustomed to the
alien water gazing up into the faces of
those stranded in the vast deserts, and
for a moment there was a connection
til the Martian swam away. I never

forgot that first impression of an alien
thing cast on a new world of its own,
living in the roads of water while the
sun blistered everything else to fire and

shadows of fire. Of course the Martians
were humanity by then, but I had no idea
and truth to tell I’ve never thought humanity
was anything but another alien race, to my own. July 14/09.

THE DRAGON

Great outspread the dragon’s
wings, against a blue sky her
storm of breath a flaming tide

caught and stilled in the artist’s
eye, until the flames catch fast
and burn even the artist’s eye. July 28/09.

SARAH 123

Everything that’s been created
comes to an end, except for her
when I place
my tender fingers
round her throat, when I stop
her breathing as she’s lying
in that hospital bed, another
ruined daughter half finished in my
arrogance.

Afterward, yes afterward
she will fade away and I will
fade, til I put the pieces of
her together again, til
Sarah 123 becomes Sarah 124,
but after she is mine
again I’ll lose her
and fall apart myself, til I
try to save her from my sins. June 21-July 14/09.

ALONG THE ROADS OF WATER
ARE MANY MISUNDERSTANDINGS

Winter green in the winter wild
seasons confuse those first ones who
haven’t seen the stars burn through
the atmosphere, or watch the rains
tumble upward when the sky is

tired of being lonely. And
along the roads of water are many
misunderstandings, like when corpses
forget that they are dead or lovers
forget to sigh, or when gravity

takes a turn for going the wrong
way because its forgotten again how
these things go. Anyhow people adjust
if you let ‘em long enough. This new
season will change after a time when
the sky isn’t lonely or roads of water

are less wild as they skim between
the lines of what we think we know and
what reality allows from times to time. July 14/09.

ON SPINDRIFT

There were cities, cities of steel and spires
caught neath glass domes that hung upward
inverted in the sky.
There were caravans
of strange beasts out on purple desert sands
and nomads with their robes of scarlet

or dung black brown. And whether out
upon the wasteland or the cities with their
dragonfly machines,
humming through the
air like insects out of some primordial dream
logic, whatever place you stood upon it

wasn’t home. Earth was half a universe
away, and between all the marvels and the
terrors, between the
scent and flavour
of alien things indescribable by human
speech there was finally and utterly

the loneliness of never going home. That
was what Spindrift was like in the older
days my child, and
even now sometimes
when the wind whips up and machines
scream their staccato screams,

when the merchants gaze with their silver
eyes, when great beasts resemble cockroaches
and bears and marching
soldiers all at once
and mutely wait for their riders to come,
sometimes even still I long for home,

though less now than it was before. And
besides my daughter you are here by my
side and that is something
when a thousand
worlds or more have passed you by, and
in some strange accident an exile
you become in countries not
of your choosing, or your desire. July 14/09.

LABYRINTH PLANET

I once saw a world of gold, a great
sphere and etched on it were the paths
of a labyrinth, a maze
of unending roads
bordered on both sides by walls
as golden as the sky, the ground, the road.

People wandered to and fro but where
they went I could not tell, because
they had
no mouths nor eyes,
and groping in the dark design
they could not see the brilliant sky that
hung above their world.

The stars were different when the night
fell fast and so I stood inside the labyrinth
and did not move
or think awhile, but instead
remembered my old life, somewhere
far from here.

I am not sure if I woke up, or if the dream
is happening still because I can never
know what
blind men know
when their eyes
awake, or deaf men know when
ears are opened. In such a way I do not know

if I have closed my senses up or if I see
the world anew, or if the world has simply
gone away and
another has replaced itself.
But of course in either
world no one talks
to me and they may as well be blind,
for I am invisible as blinding sunlight in a
universe that has no further need of night. July 14/09.

COLE VOLIS

He removed her eyes.
That was the first thing
I remembered.

Or was it his
eyes? I could never be
sure of the gender, only

that Cole Volis had
removed a person’s

eyes. He was a serial
killer and the police, for
obvious reasons,

wanted a word
with him. And so he
escaped into a dream

of mine, fled away
but I have him still.

Now they say I am Cole
Volis, and I killed them
all, but don’t

believe it. After
all, if I were a killer wouldn’t
I know it, somehow? Wouldn’t
anyone know the
dream from reality itself? July 14/08.

THE KNIGHTS OF REMLER

Silver armour and swords never
gleam so brightly as in the fairy
tales. The forests of Remler never
smell so sweet, so fresh outside the

stories of knights and dragons,
and the castle steps never seem so
white, so marble pure except when
the story of another valiant knight

is being told. The moon is always
full and the sun never hides behind
a cloud. Women, all women who
are good are also beautiful, and all

sorcerers are either wise beyond
the centuries or evil beyond the
darkest thoughts of men. And no
one ever, ever suffers long enough

for wounds to fester, for hate to
grow, for enmity to rival enmity,
unless it is an evil soul, and by the
stories end they always suffer their

appointed, perfect fate. And it
would be easy, oh too easy to
consider it all a farce, to make
mockery of heroes and princes

and knights, to ridicule the obvious,
and point out that princes are not
always good, and what is good is not
always beautiful, and the triumph

does not always go to the righteous,
but to the strong. But hasn’t all that
been said enough? In the trenches
of No Man’s Land, in the deserts

of North Africa when the tanks ground
under soldiers better than their sins,
when the bomb fell at Hiroshima and
rendered thousands to charred silhouettes

on walls like they were canvases, all
this stains memories, tarnishes hope
like rust on armour or sword-blade.
We catch the scent of forests best

only after the smell of bodies has left
our lungs, we remember the greatest
heroes in the midst of the greatest
tragedies. The heroes are not meant

for the real world. The heroes and their
ideal worlds are meant to keep us sane,
to keep some pure spark alive when all
else is shamed by the knowledge of the
bonfire, the bullet, and the firing squad. July 14/09.

ULEXITE BLUE

I. That girl is ulexite blue and she don’t know
what to do. Photographs scattered on the ground,
dead photographs caught in her eyes, in those
burning skies.

She’s all tied up inside, all ulexite clear but the
things she fears she just can’t hide, because she’s
ulexite blue, and I just don’t know what to do.

II. Youth’s mad laughter is wide but hurt is never
clean. She’s all tied up inside with those lovely
eyes of hers burning like a thousand skies we’ve
never seen, or ever will be seen.

III. Girls break like toys or spin like tops or cut
like knives that haven’t any lives between their
teeth. My girl will never reach her end

because her eyes are all ulexite clear and blindly
she fears she doesn’t know what to do. And God
help me I think I’m ulexite blue staring at her

dumbly, without a clue even to her name.
But I’d love her if I could, I’m afraid. July 22/09.

A KIND OF HELL, I GUESS
(A dream from long ago.)

In the heart of the city of steel there is
a woman. Her hair was red once but it
has now dulled to a pale copper, and her

arms and legs, indeed her whole body is
bloated and swollen beyond human repair.
Cables or wires run into the backs of her

knees and the fronts of her elbows at
the joints and she is suspended in a great
chamber round as her swollen body is

round. All the city is hers, every street
and lamplight, every room and chamber is
hers. No one else lives there. She is alone.
This is where the dream ends. July 22/09.

THE LOGIC OF ELFEGO BACA
(Another true story of the west.)

And so the message was sent.
“You and yours have caused offence
long enough. If you don’t turn
yourselves in by such and such a date
I’ll feel you’re trying to resist
arrest and I’ll lose no sleep in gunning
you down when I see you next.”
Most of the criminals turned themselves
in rather than wait for a bullet in
the back. But those were different days
when you could rely on a man to
mean what his words meant to say. July 22/09.

MY LOVER THE SERPENT
HAS PALED HERSELF TONIGHT

There on the sands where alien things
still walk, where serpents tread and
demons talk, where a girl with scales
shakes off her robes black as sable
I crane my neck upward to the naked
stars unclothed of any thought.

She starts the magic of her voice and
upward reaches hand and arm, clawed
fingers weave the air and the threads
of some strange web rise higher
than any thought has dared, and still
rejoicing in the sounds of a trillion

demons talking her web outspreads
to all those unclothed stars, to worlds
that have no seasons, to a thousand
countries of an unknown God. And
then at once the magic’s done,
the web unravels and fades away.

All that remains is a girl on the sands
and a lone lost traveler kissing her lips
rough as a splintered song, because
the magic is gone, and my prayers with
it have fled into some unknown day,
without repair. July 28/09.

DISPOSABLE SOCIETY

All things are a commodity of errors, all is but
the past of what we seek. Each thought, each
thing created by our hands and uncreated by

anything have but a meager time, a space of
relevance determined not by itself but by all
that lingers about it. No matter the greatness

of empire, no matter the sophistication of
language or idea, no matter the determination
of will or of desire we are caught as flies in the

amber of a single life and a single time, burdened
both by all that has come before and all possibilities
of what may follow after. Societies render themselves

disposable, but a commodity of errors for each
thing, both created by human hands and uncreated
by anything at all, slides along the labyrinth of time

never knowing when the end, the final end will
come. Even these words of mine but add bricks
to the unsure foundation of an ever more uncertain

world, yet I cannot stop my pen or cease to write.
Even the smallest mayfly here but for a moment exists
for a moment in time. Death, when all the stars are dead

will become as disposable and empty as life has been,
but then life is only empty if death is considered but
the only outcome of the choices we have led. July 28/09.

A LAW FOR ALL

A law for all is a law for one, but do not
be proud of that. The greater the number
of souls connected to one act, to a single
thought of morality, a single grasp of truth

the sooner it is overturned by the ignorance
of youth. Law is nothing more and nothing
less than the majority of all surrendering
themselves to the morality of a few they

don’t even understand. The criminal is but
the last resort of more ignorant fools than
these, trying to be evil, trying to destroy the
morality of a few with no morality at all.

A curse upon them both, a curse upon the
law and the lawbreaker equally, sentenced
to atone for this disease of morality. As
for myself I’ll obey the law for now, but only
because I’m waiting for that final end of things. July 28/09.

DOWN ROADS

Down roads that don’t lead anywhere
at all, somewhere in the thousand lands
of God, in houses without windows and
without doors great bristle-backed

creatures walk and talk as men, as
children and as women, though they
are none of these. Covered in scales
and riddled with spines, beak-like

mouths hooked in some design like a
mockery of an eagle’s they pass thru
walls, devouring the evil dreams of
children to make them stronger still.

I don’t even know their names or if they
know mine but I have seen creatures no
less perverse on the streets of cities
somewhere scattered in the mockeries

of crows, the stars all still
burning in their shadowed eyes. July 28/09.

GINGER (From a dream I had
on the morning of July 22/09.)

I saw a girl whose hair was dark
as sparrows’ wings at night, and
her eyes were no less dark but
her skin, her skin was golden,

tarnished gold, and I don’t know
why. I think that in another life
she was my dog, a pet of mine,
and because it was a dream and

the logic of a dream I knew and
didn’t know if she remembered
me. Did I love her, had I loved her
before, or only in this dream?

Of course I loved her before but
here I did not know and neither
did she. So much uncertainty,
like when one falls from a great

height but doesn’t feel afraid til
after the ground is struck, because
until that moment fear is replaced
by the last scraps and rags of hope

that gravity could not apply so
completely to one such as you. I
remember kissing her and perhaps
she was just a girl or a fragment

of a dream and not a memory at
all twisted to a human shape. But
I think not. At any rate I awoke
and ever since then I have caught

myself looking for a girl with
shadows for hair and shadows
for eyes and skin golden as a

wintry sun at dusk. And yes,
now I know why. Love takes many
forms in the labyrinth of the mind. July 28/09.

GOVERNESS OF ANOTHER FLOOD

Every adult in the jungle reverted to a child.
They stepped backward into childhood and
couldn’t walk out again. There were

flowers the colours of dead men, and vines
with teeth sharper than thorns. There was
an orchid that stank of a woman’s

lust and a rose that stank of the worm. And
there in the midst of it all was the Governess
in her funeral attire, surrounded by

children on every side, cold stern woman
bending down to make safe the jungle for
the children now. Perhaps she had

lived here all along, or only came with the
ones who came to this place beneath a foreign
sun. She’ll never tell and anyway the

children are still children there. They
haven’t the heart to question, or disobey. July 28/09.

THE CORCORAX

Five thousand miles of ground are
ashen littered, blasted earth charred
and bitter like the taste of dust on
burning lips in the coldest months
of winter. Still the Corcorax lingers
long, still the crow in human shape

wrestles with his immortal state,
and he the last witness to Man’s
last fate, when the coldest months
of winter blister on the vine of a
billion soldiers warring alongside

the hidden ugly masks of hate,
behind the glad prophets’ faces,
and behind their sapphire eyes. July 28/09.

THE HEAT

When the heat gets to me my breath grows
shallow, sleep grows taunt, and the knife
of myself dulls and rusts, sluggishly crippled

by the humid air. I forget so much and
so must force my thoughts to rhythmically
work as merely broken machines would

work, now and then. Give me a rain soaked
world melting to rotten cities stained with
grey fog and mist. Give me an ocean blacker

than blood and a thunderstorm that booms
with the voice of twenty gods. Give me this
frozen crystal tear burning the skies to ice

a shade so pale and blue it would seem the sky
has died and only her faintest shadow still
remained. In all this I am content, where heat

does not intrude or blacken memories with an all
pervasive pain, like the hopes of the condemned
at the gate of the prison and the execution

block, wondering however briefly
which path is still open now for me. July 3/09.

CACETUS

Slaves and spices, wine and grain, all
of these Cacetus brought from Egypt
to the plains of India, the dusty plains.

Caravans of horses and of camels
shook from heat, and the slaves in
their desperation seemed to melt

away to shadows, their souls fleeing to
the hills of darkness far away as their
flesh hardened neath the weight of whip

and flail, undeserved in any time
or age. And then, when the slaves
were left behind in the gardens of

other lords Cacetus turned his caravans
back along the route he took, and like a
shadow he melted all away, into darkness

unbecoming where no one knows
his name, there in that shadow country
where names are all that should remain. July 28-29/09.

MASTER

In the end all the tyrants are finally just called
“master.” No name exists beyond this, and no
calling upon some purer aspect of their being.

For these reasons faces all obscure and facts
are destroyed, leaving but one lone impression
of a single being blazing through the centuries.

As for all others, for all slaves and serfs and
ruined children of those lesser ones who never
ruled the world, they have one face as well.

But whether slave or master the face is always
the same. Sooner or later every master becomes
a slave and every slave a master. There is no

other fate, no other conception of hell equal to
this. Nothing we do changes the fact that we are
all equally cruel. But sadly, I like it that way. July 30/09.

FOR EVERY GOOD

For every good there is an evil,
for every evil there is a good.
Does that mean then that if I am
cruel enough than another man

must of course be kind, to truly
balance the scales of Creation
itself? Does it mean if one
nation is destroyed another

must of course be created in
its stead? If one believes in
a devil must there be a God?
Or does it mean that if I am

good here another aspect of me
must be evil in some other place,
that old and sad cliche of evil
twins in other worlds, mirror

opposites of our own? But is
that the best reality can do, to
make balance all things so that
never does good win or evil lose?

And furthermore does not such
a glib statement imply that any
chance to make some part of the
world the better must of course

make some other part of the
world the worse? Now I am
not blind, but really must every
action be for the best or worst

of all about, cannot one action
be mute of any moral conceits at
all? Could not my words here
abandon all pretext of morality

and simply chose to be what they
are to be? Or will even these words
some fools conceive as justification
for atrocity, or the saving of the world? July 30/09.

KAMIKAZE

The skin of the dragonfly
crumpled into the ship’s side,
the great sound of an alien
drum rumbling like a thunder
that never dies.

He thought he would enlist
for empire’s sake, to defend
against some enemy sent
from across the seas. The
rumbling of the drums grew

louder as his dragonfly and
her silver skin burnished itself
brightly against the sun and he
watched almost absently
the women passing by.

He crumpled the way a beetle
crumples into sand, flung by
a storm that knows no words
we utter in the moments of
the dying.

He took how many of the
enemy with him? It never
seemed to matter as we sat
and drank, and waited for
our turns to fly and fall

and fail in the saving of an empire
we never loved enough, because
we only died for it.
As for our enemy . . . July 30/09.

FURNITURE MAN

I think he stitched himself into the chair.
Skin severed and mended into fabric and
his eyes were bleeding like doll’s eyes,
after a little girl has poured her mother’s
blood on them. As for his hands and feet

they were wired tight, and I even think his
feet were changed to add added stability
and strength to the chair’s design. As for
his tongue, well that he cut out and sewed
into a kind of small headrest for his head. I

suppose it was his last attempt to impress
me somehow. I guess he wanted to shock
me before I left. But like I told him before
we had nothing in our relationship that
connected us together. Except for that
chair of course. But I don’t want it anymore.
It reminds me too much of him. July 30/09.

WHEN HEAT OUTNUMBERS DAY

When heat outnumbers day
and storms outnumber nights,
when moons cloud skies to
flooding and tears drink seas

to bursting, when jungles
stink of cities and cities of
a woman’s touch, then
you’ve reached the center of
all that you long for, and such. July 30/09.

BUILDINGS LOOK BETTER AT NIGHT,
CAN’T TELL WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE
(The title is my father’s, July 29/09.)

Buildings look better at night
when you can’t see anything at all
except the grim shadows of some
gigantic space, or the echo of a
wall. Imagination fills in the gaps,
makes pretend we see what we think
we’ve seen. I suppose that’s the
way the world is built, a shadow on
the sidewalk becomes a garden green. July 30/09.

THE SOUND OF DRUMS

The sound of drums slakes his thirst again,
that sound of nighttime rhythms and the
rumble of a war that neither men nor armies
nor anyone could ever hope to conquer, or

be conquered by. The crickets move on as
the drums increase the beating of a rhythm
timed by no heart nor season, but instead by
some unknown pattern without purpose or

direction. He drinks it down, those ancient
tumbling words without sounds as we could
understand, and when the dawn breaks her
back of night he holds out his hand, and waits
for the drums to come again, on his dying day. July 30/09.

BUILT TWICE (The first
line is my father’s, July 29/09.)

Built twice on the end of the road
houses that I once called home.
Now the road continues on and
the houses have come and gone,
but I’m not with them anymore.
I have another house to build, on
some ancient garden hill. Call
it heaven if you will but home
is home by any wayward shore. July 30/09.

IN THE DARK OF THE LIVING WORLD

In the dark of the living world
death seems bright only when
all else is taken away.

In the darkness of death there
is nothing. Life is nothing. I
think it’s all a matter of

perspective. I think we only
want the things denied us for
so long, and afterward

we’re forced to endure the
things we want that we can’t
really ever change. July 30/09.

THREE HAIKU

The fox is not a fox
in the company of
dogs, but only meat. July 30/09.

Soldiers forget their
brothers’ deaths when
generals die at last. July 30/09.

Shoot at a forsaken man.
It is no different than
strangling a helpless child. July 30/09.