Glimpse

The cities' autumn ivy:
everything has changed

Candle for the Silent

There's only desperation
'cross the rolling hills of Greenwich
as it fills again with fools.
Let the ghettos have the geniuses,
O blessings on poor Greenwich,
O white light for Darien,
for they who live without hope.
O the minds there, how they're wasted,
doctors paid not to think but to prescribe,
lawyers compensated to evade the true,
businessmen incented to act stupid,
all trained to make the moves that close as traps,
taught in the finest schools how to disregard the real,
to never think of who and where and why and whether they are
or who and what and when and how they serve.
Their empty souls fill time with trifling puzzles
that never will be solved: the statutes, the charts.
O the blue jay cries across the suburbs
as a man wakes up at three in the morning
to think of nothing: the value of his house.

There's only desperation
'cross the rolling hills of Greenwich
as it fills again with heathens.
Let the fallow farms be overvalued
and the barns that turn gold into straw crumble.
Awash in superstition, they wear stones
from the Earth's insides for protection.
Their lives are turned to paper and then burned.
O have mercy for they have no other idols
but the comfortable, they who've learned to look
away from the blackened windows
of those who know an honest pain,
who rely on the invisible
to see them through.
For them there is no other world
beyond the trees,
where live no dwarves, elves or trolls.

There's only desperation
'cross the rolling hills of Greenwich
as it fills with more ennui.
Let love stay within the prisons,
for fear that those inside
will do the things they do to children here
to make them be like they are:
that sword of disappointment
o'er families and marriages.
O leaves that fall and die
and the realization
as the last breath nears
that they never pushed the kids enough
or said enough times "no" to their spouse,
for in the end they didn't spend
enough time at the office
to get done what needed to get done,
to keep the demons out.

A Passing Sense that There areOther People in the World

I say I'm inside the rain
but the day drops bright sun upon the leaves
much clearer than I ever will reveal.

I hide from the sun's perfection
in the perfection of the poem,
hoping that the morning moon
won't slide into the blue,
knowing what I find with eyes
to use is compromise;
beyond its backdrop all my terrors lie
unreachable in kind
—the painting and the words about
the painting must suffice.

The curse of observation:
the sky darkens
as I find the words for sun.

Late October Entrance

That old orange fog
of magical black now visible
of screaming squirrels and skulls
leaves luminescent red
—the dead are always here with us
like towering tree grandfathers
but now they wear the colors
of sunrise and fire
like earth's own spectral jewelry
worn for a special party
where the living and the other side
tell tales through vaporous veils

In the Background While a Comforting Song Plays

The man next to me
is saving the world
(no, don't look to see what he's doing!)
His fingers are typing
in furious waltz time
salvation equations
composing, tight-browed,
the fruit of his singular
place in the crowd.

Soon he will laugh like a jester
and erase what he wrote,
the words that could end
so much pain.
Complete in his answer,
there's no need to weigh down the scale
or get inside other men's heads.

For some unknown reason,
the world has no use
for perfection.
Abysses of pain and wars that won't end
are the smallest conceivable means
to get our attention,
to give us what we call
life lessons,
to show us how to love,
how it begins and ends
in our minds.

... And in Poetry News

I guess poetry still matters in China. A mother beat her child to death because she couldn't memorize a poem:

A woman who beat her five-year-old daughter to death while trying to get her to memorize a poem has been spared jail by a Chinese court, state press said on Wednesday.

Tan Hongying was sentenced to three years in prison by a court in eastern Zhejiang province on Tuesday but the sentence was suspended and she was instead given five years probation, the Beijing Morning News reported.

The report did not say why the court in the city of Jiashan handed down such a light sentence.

The girl died in March after Tan pushed her to memorize a Tang Dynasty (618-907) poem, a common school exercise for Chinese children.

The report did not say what particular Tan Dynasty poem led to the child's death. My money is on the following gem by Li Bai, "Green Mountain" (translation by Witter Byner):

You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down stream
And is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.

Poem for United Nations Day

For my Uncle Bill, who didn't live to see it reach retirement age.

It's paradise for translators;
the powerless discuss,
the almighty bows.

The bird of peace alights upon the laurel
and the dogs of war invisible (as they always are)
are in soundproof rooms - we all are
allowed to howl - in blue chairs,
into microphones, to be transcribed
in every language on the earth.

Holy Waterbury

His eminence in white reads the eucharist
like an auctioneer - it may as well be Latin
in the cavernous cathedral lined with gold.
Giant granite columns exalt the dome of gold-leaf Jesus
while the red glow of candles haunts the marble floor.
A handful with beads are on their knees, to echo
illegible prayers, as late sun slants
through stained glass windows like brass...

Outside the gates, beneath the gargoyles
a thousand gainfully unemployed wander the streets
in a zombie procession between handouts
—the sweatpants and the ponytails,
the white beards and missing teeth,
colorless poverty from Waterville to Hillside,
dingy laundromats, rincon carnicerias,
purple carpets out on the sidewalk for sale,
snack food and lotto kept behind bars along with
"the lowest prices for cigarettes in the state."
The red brick Georgian mansion is a soup kitchen.
The slate-roofed Mansard with lace eaves and huge bay window
is a haven for physical and sexual abuse.
Beyond that, it's a horror movie set:
the purple Victorian crack mansion,
the turrets boarded up, the wrap-around stairs turned to chutes,
the wood frills hanging down like broken fangs.
Even the Halloween tarantulas are swallowed up in this,
as if the rich folk suddenly disappeared one day,
not the slow decline of duplexes and vinyl,
these mansions on the hill were gutted clean...

By the Mad River, the smelters lie in ruins,
the tar of parking lots still mingles with the weeds,
the brass mills have their black hole eyes forever open,
a broken precious beauty that we all will one day tour
as we do the castles of Europe, but for now
there's nary a brewery or local crafts for tourist trade
there's only boys in hoodies tossing spirals
through the rusty sumac fields...

The ghost of Rosalind Russell
throws brass tacks and firing pins
like dice into the wind -
"it takes a licking and keeps on ticking" -
but Waterbury surrendered after the war.
It lives on, but not here,
in the polished surfaces of deco offices,
for "what lasts better than brass?" (the city's motto)
on a statue with a laurel wreath in bronze,
not far from the final HoJo's in the country,
its orange roof like a sunset that never ends.

Piles of Sunday Papers

Knowledge slips its knots
a foolish thing

and I am left
a golden leaf

set free and floating
over lost and broken notes

the tones kicked out of tunes
forever holding firm to patterns

a la carte

Uncompromising, the way
I pursue this lover, this world -
She must be pure, and love me only
She must be real, and always get me;
No storefronts and no barndoors in between
—For a love that settles never is enough,
That looks to others as it is oneself,
That waits to be told that what is inside
Is not tangible enough, and what is outside
Is never possible without
Compromise. Ah, the word that burns,
That makes one feel so incomplete,
As if I need to trade in flesh
To finally be at peace - no balance, only chaos,
For the war has many faces, be they theft,
Negotiation, neglect or remonstration
And all to put that person in a book
Of memories, a hero of a moment,
The joke that broke the bitter block of ice.

I want more than the scent of perfumed curls,
The quizzical lift of a throat,
The floating eyes, the unrevealing flattery,
I want to leap into the world and make it scream,
To see her with her own eyes,
To speak a common voice,
To hear and yet be heard
At the same time.

Ah, but there is not a voice at all
For one to hear.
The boundaries are sprayed
By hidden lions
And those may not be zebras
In the distance
But hallucinations.
They play with each other
But never change each other's nature -
The excitment of the game
Resolves to death on contact.
So it is with all the human jousts,
No thought of any other,
Just an endless extension of cheese and snares
Inevitable, the ecstasy and grief come through
Out of one's own mind.

There are only the hints
Of glinting laurel, the black shine
In the pool, suggesting one can
Go on and touch the surface.
But the ripples that arise
Are just an echo
Of something hollow
Deep inside
—For vibration here
Is somehow everywhere,
A swirl of dust nebula
As far as the mind can go,
Finding colors that our thoughts can never know:
The ribbons in a would-be lover's hair
That disappears to dark as if
That's all that ever was there,
That single thought
Of something moving
—Attachments to the shapes that static takes
Loosening.

Wyatt at the Tower

Poets write from all sorts of experiences. But imagine the experience of seeing your true love beheaded for adultery from a tower prison cell, along with four innocent people accused of being her lover, while you, the only one who actually slept with her, will soon be set free?

That’s the occasion of the following poem, Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Innocentia Veritas Viat Fides Circumdederunt me inimici mei (Innocence Truth Faith Wyatt my enemies surround my soul). His lover was of course the executed queen Anne Boleyn, the Helen of British Protestantism, who Wyatt managed to bed while staying in King Henry VIII’s favor AND be a poet AND avoid being beheaded at the same time, a truly remarkable feat (Those Tudors were nasty to poets, as Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex can attest).

One would think that such a profound experience would disabuse someone of the vanities of ambition, and one would be right. This is a pitiless dissection of all the ways people sell out their integrity to gain power over others. What makes it particularly poignant is the process by which virtue is finally lost, by expending the good within in a futile attempt to get power to answer to it.

Wyatt’s customary style—prosodic virtuosity that isn’t afraid to enunciate itself—turns muted here, making the Latin refrain at the end of every stanza (“circa Regna tonat,” who reigns thunder) sound shocking. This is not about sharpening the modern finger of blame and asking Henry VIII what was he thinking. It is a question that escapes an answer if one is honest, if one, as Wyatt seems to, takes responsibility for consequences. It was assumed back then that all were one, so all shared the common shame together. My how times have changed.

“Who list his wealth and ease retain,
Himself let him unknown contain.
Press not too fast in at that gate
Where the return stands by disdain,
For sure, circa Regna tonat.

The high mountains are blasted oft
When the low valley is mild and soft.
Fortune with Health stands at debate.
The fall is grievous from aloft.
And sure, circa Regna tonat.

These bloody days have broken my heart.
My lust, my youth did them depart,
And blind desire of estate.
Who hastes to climb seeks to revert.
Of truth, circa Regna tonat.

The bell tower showed me such sight
That in my head sticks day and night.
There did I learn out of a grate,
For all favour, glory, or might,
That yet circa Regna tonat.

By proof, I say, there did I learn:
Wit helpeth not defence too yerne,
Of innocency to plead or prate.
Bear low, therefore, give God the stern,
For sure, circa Regna tonat.“

Happpppp-ee B'earth-dee ee.cummings

seeker of truth

follow no path
all paths lead where

truth is here

Not one but two long-ago girlfriends insisted that E.E. Cummings was poetry. I scoffed, being young and inculcated with the bigotries of the village, which regarded him as a sentimental humorist with lexographical dyslexia located in the poorer part of poetrytown, on the block with Ogden Nash and Rod McKuen. One of the bracing things about growing older is having to acknowledge that they were right, I was wrong, for Cummings, born 116 years ago today, remains one of the most underappreciated poets of the 20th century.

While the most celebrated poets of the American century—Frost, Stevens, Eliot, Pound, Williams—were emotional cripples perplexed by the way life was lived by actual people, Cummings met us where we are, with real fondness for the way we emotionally connect with the mysteries of existence:

“We’ve
Such freedom such intense digestion so much
greenness only dying makes
us grow.”

And while those “serious” writers couldn’t joke their way out of a wet paper bag, Cummings approached the grandest of subjects with light and generous wit, not the private, hyper-hip variety of a Frank O’Hara (lionized in part because he was so LMAO funny), but something approaching universality:

“pity this busy monster, manunkind,
Not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim(death and life safely beyond)
plays with the bigness of his littleness”

How easy-going he makes the strange, how readily the eccentric becomes, in today’s parlance, the new normal. And this word “manunkind,” was there anyone better at coining words through combination: “ultraomnipotence,” “talentgang,” “mud-luscious” “togethercoloured” “breakfastfood”? For all the whimsical, seemingly random arrangement of words here, is there really a better or more perfect way to say this thought? Doesn’t it draw a vivid picture, despite the abstraction, of how we are really children trapped in an inexplicable machine?

One of my pet theories about Cummings is that his poetic rebellion, not waged against rhyme, meter, story, theme, coherence or any of the other bugaboos of modern poets but against the rules of grammar itself, was actually aimed at the typewriter machine, that infernal co-creater (a point highlighted when I try to reproduce his poems through a modern PC – it’s like putting illuminated writing into typeface - I won’t even try). Brad Leithauser traces his innovations to Gertrude Stein, and in Cummings’ hands her screams of ennui are transformed into perfect, almost mathematical puzzles that are—wonders never cease—solvable, because he wanted us so very much to solve them:

“whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)
and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me, remember me.”

He reminds me in many respects of a cheerful double of another New Englander, the dour EA Robinson, in the way failings are celebrated and an assortment of oddballs are given a platform to bravely trumpet their lost ambitions. Cummings is far more gentle, of course, with poems like “anyone lived in a pretty how town” he truncates the Spoon River-like townsfolk into appealing archetypes accessible to us common folk:

"someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream"

Cummings peeks his head into numerous modes. As a love poet:

“the upward singular deepest flower which she carries in the gesture of her hips”

As spiritual seeker:

“my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving”

As aphorist:

“the most wasted of days is one without laughter”

As chronicler of the seasons (he was born in October, but quite clearly a poet of early spring, “when the world is puddle-wonderful.” His poems abound with new love, childhood discoveries, messy complications that are breezily resolved):

“From hopscotch and jump-rope and /it’s/spring/and/ the// goat-footed//balloon-Man whistles/far/and/wee.”

As philosopher:

“knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination”

As humorist:

“I’m living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.”

Even as poet about poetry:

“I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.”

He was even, at times, political:

“At least Pilgrim Fathers used to shoot Indians: the Pilgrim Children merely punch time clocks.”

Son of a Unitarian Minister/Harvard Professor, Cummings retained that gentle paternalistic Brahmin affection for that strange place called America, but his lineage was mugwump free-thinker, and he could not help being an apologist for freedom. His insistence on mangling typography to suit his expression speaks of the strictures to which we all willingly submit to leave an impression. He was the preacher who prophesied go out there now, all ye children of Plymouth, and violate some of them grammar rules for thyself!

But it appears that grammar won out in the end (not that it was ever really a battle). We see precursors (in the Borgesean sense) of Cummings in everyday speech – the stammers and shifts of syntax, the artful repetitions (just right now, in fact, I heard someone say: “I’m the guy behind the guy behind the guy behind the guy”) – but Cummings has few followers of his formal yet experimental, jarring yet musical style beyond outliers like Ferlinghetti:

“The pennycandystore beyond the El/is where I first/ fell in love/with unreality//Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom/of that september afternoon//A cat upon the counter moved/among the licorice sticks/and tootsie rolls/and Oh Boy Gum”

But Cummings was never content to stay with shiny surfaces. He was always going for the moment when one can “imagine that yes is the only living thing”:

“love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds.”

October Blue

The fall has a special sadness,
Lives wasted, shadows large,
The clarity of many colors,
The blankets filled with charge.

Achievements always aren't enough;
We hear the baby's cry.
The gold is scattered at our feet,
The choking vines untied.

We're left with consequences
In the sweetest picture frames,
The finite and the endless,
The dropping off of names.

With the first smoke comes the blue notes
And those just turn to breathing.
The forest clearings now appear.
We consecrate our wreathings.

What birds are left, in our blue sky,
What flowers can we savor
As darkness dresses fertile soil
And thoughts grow big and braver?

The St. Columbus Day Massacre

One of these days I'll get around to sourcing all these claims…

Zarco the blue-eyed from Cuba, half noble, half Jew
Set sail in 1492 on the day that Spain expelled its Jews
In the service of the Portuguese king, who looked South
To beat the Byzantine middle-man for pepper and clove
Via Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. They called him Colom
And sent him to Madrid, the home of freshly united Spain,
The throne of Isabella and Ferdinand, who at the moment were too busy
Slaughtering the last Moorish to know a New World had been found.
So he pitched a smaller globe, offered China and its gold
For soon-to-be-unemployed conquistadoros – for new crusades
To retake the holy lands and grains of Egypt.
It was all a clever ruse, a way to buy time for De Gama
And the crews who'd seen Brazilian shores before.

Ah, but before we can get to the petunias and cashews,
The pineapples and bananas, the hammocks and canoes,
The squash and cassava melons, the hurricanes and barbecues,
There was the matter of selling the lie:
That due West was the way to the East—what moron would believe this?
What Queen, even, would see the sad aborigine pelts as the equal of
Chinese silks?
But that was the game he was playing, Zarco the spy, plying the waters
Of the Northern climes, trying to line the demarcation 'tween the rich
Southlands for Portugal, with their open waterways, and the land-locked
Trap of the North, where the savages were souls to save or be enslaved,
At the pleasure of the Queen, who kept sending the slaves he brought
To her back, for she knew it was better to die than be a hostage,
They only differed in their concept of heaven – the Taino wanted no part
Of a Paradise full of Spaniards, and resisted the Christian conscription,
As those who across the ocean resisted the salvation of Ferdinand's
Inquisition; but the natives obtained their revenge: syphilis killed
More Europeans than torture and smallpox killed them.

But first there was the matter of keeping the stratagem hidden
—How to spin, on that first voyage, a garden of Adam and Eves?
Zarco sailed back through the Azores, to land in Lisbon
And strategize with his King once more.
The Queen would be properly skeptical, but she hadn't yet foreseen
The power of the printing press, for a pamphlet had gone up
Through the capitals of Europe: new worlds discovered and priceless
Treasures unearthed by a Genoese woolthreader named Columbus
(Proving that even press releases haven't gotten much more accurate
In the intervening 500 years). And so she was coerced
Against her will to be the empress of the mind of California,
And she sent him off again, this time with idle armies, as mercenaries
For gold, to strip the larder land for the greater good of Portugal
(How could they have known, of the Mayan pyramids, the Aztec
Wheels of gold – the legends that spoke of the white men returning
Who built these palaces and tombs out of their minds?)

But in the meantime there were pretenses to create:
Tobacco and cocoa instead of opium and hashish,
Potatoes and tomatoes to replace frankincense and myrrh,
Paprika and chili peppers as substitutes for India's spices,
That's the power of the lie, as well as mass extermination
So the traders on the horn could import good old slaves from Africa
To work the mines and the plantations (and get for themselves a little
Cut of King John's grace on the side). He fucked it up
On purpose, traveled back to Spain in manacles,
Endured like Christ the insurrections, imprisonments, rip-offs,
For he was in that world, but not of it.

So the Treaty of Tordesillas was papal-bull decreed, dividing up the world
North and South between Iberian spheres. King Henry (Seventh of
England), not one to shirk from power plays, sent a chap from Genoa,
Rechristened as John Cabot, to lay claim on a great continent,
For the land his son made Protestant, for the pleasure of the King,
Not a farthing more for that evil Pope who would take those souls away
—But a land of plenty—fit for poetry and foxes in his Majesty's preserves.
With all those princely trappings, who could ever have believed
That God would change his address, just pack it up and leave
The wars of creed for a little spit of peace?
The Spanish have a word for it: duende.

Flirt Part 2

Cat and squirrel are at it again,
cat's got it in his head to stalk her.
He stomachs his way, hind quarters like stilts,
slow as October maple leaves.
Squirrel bounds across the grass oblivious
foraging nuts in the frantic seasonal rush
while cat is frozen in mid-crouch,
proud to not be found out.
Squirrel turns her sideways eyes to him
as if to say "you playing with me?"
She leaps up a tree, waves her flag
of surrender
and disappears.

The Other Half of the Argument

Response to a poem by Marina Tsvetaeva, in memory of Katherine Hollands

I blot the sun in your sky,
I dispense the stars one by one,
I stay strong as a birch when your tempests pry;
You're not permitted to come in

And beg to me, with eyes like a deer
To walk in my shadow reflective,
For your words will dissolve into tears
Like a child I will have to forgive.

Nin-me-sar-ra (Adoration of Inanna) - IV

The final part of the series. For more on Enheduanna, see Cass Dalgish's poetic response to this poem and legend, Humming the Blues.

Since the heart was full, too full, great Queen, I birthed it for you.
The deep midnight songs I recited to you
The cult singer will echo at noon:
"Because of your captive spouse, your humble protégé,
Your anger has only grown larger, your heart unassuaged."
The powerful lady, respected by kings, accepts her offerings.
She finally accepts her prayer and sacrifice.
Inanna's great heart has been slaked.

Like the light of the rising moon, she was clothed in enchantment.
Nanna came forward to gaze at her in awe
And her mother Ningal blessed her,
And the temple doorsill opened and said "be hailed!"
What all inside spoke to the mistress was exalted.
Draped in allure, your heart is restored, with power to rule with the Word,

O Inanna, all glory!

The Sadness of the Evening

It's the time of perpetual darkness
when artificial lamps daub the dying with life
and the birds hide silent in camouflage stripes
and you can't see the words in shaking leaves
nor the way the world moves boldly through the clouds
—even the rocks are swallowed, for you are not welcome here
except in the warm light of community rooms,
where people will gather 'round tables,
share in a fresh pot of coffee,
unwrap packages, shift in chairs.

Wall Street Sales Pitch

The following should not be construed as investment advice.

It's tranch warfare, my friend, we're riding the yield curve
inverse and non-correlated to all but Kuala Lumpur futures,
we're cherry picking dumbells and fallen angels
pushing on a string with roller coaster swaps
seignorage on a short squeeze with fat tail risk
and tender premiums and option overlays,
no mezzanine strips or synthetic jumbo collars here,
no toxic pump and dump syndicated notes
just good old alpha replication glidepaths,
liquid derivatives with levered overhang
arbitraged for margin creep and alligator spreads
fixed and floating covenant-lite credit facilities
with active durations, junk seasoned paper
an unsecured pure play reverse refi pool of zombie banks
with workout and white knight stalking horse bid implied if distressed
and an airtight rio hedge - a counterparty category killer,
as good as the greenspan put, what the hell,
it's the quadruple witching hour, leverage is king
and quants hug the index to not back-test data mines
and chartists scale out big uglies on their bollinger bands
and value fundies kick the tires on air pocket torpedo stocks
and vulture funds sweat the burn rate on the death valley curve
and traders launder so it won't come out in the wash sale rule,
when the stop-loss circuit-breakers flash crash the chinese wall
and they all turn to barefoot pilgrims on a dead cat bounce,
foaming the runway before the suicide pill,
they take a bath, take a flier, take a report,
they spend their TARP bonuses on a macaroni defense,
become liability-driven, benchmark-agnostic, caught in liquidity traps,
like a currency basket bid whacked to break the buck,
what a barrier to entry, a stub quote sucker's rally,
it's not accounting noise, this time,
where else they gonna look to write their term sheet
than the sure-fire hair cut of basis points
for their information ratio, their tracking error,
their stochastic countercyclical spread metrics
hell, they'll exercise a covered call before
they'll off-load that native beta, where else they gonna go
for rolling excess returns than subordinated debentures,
the simple stuff, the proverbial green shoots of a soft landing?
It's pretty basic, buy high, hedge risk, there is no money
at the end of the day, there's only trust, brother, you and me.

Signage

The magic of the real:
an early-morning swan
on chaff-strewn swollen waters,
the easy float of white on mirrored black.

This incandescent moment
too true for any words

while skill with words goes screaming all around,
the selling of the "me."
What fake to be believed?
Which misleadings to be followed?
What lies do we decide to turn to stories
for our dreams?

The Wishing Well

Go back! Go back! Back to your strings and your pulley.
Lift up! Pour down! There’s never an end to the flow.
Dredge on! Dredge on! The bucket will never be empty.

The leaves skip along now deserted streets aimlessly.
The lamps of your once true and beautiful turn low.
Go back! Go back! Back to your strings and your pulley.

The bright colors fade, the flowers all flee.
What you once replied “yes” to now says “you don’t know.”
Dredge on! Dredge on! The bucket will never be empty.

The water is sinking, it keeps disappearing too quickly.
You lift it with all of your strength, watch it seep again slow.
Go back! Go back! Back to your strings and your pulley.

A vortex of feathers whirl down to some merciless sea.
With a squeal of your ropes you can hold back the sorrow.
Dredge on! Dredge on! The bucket will never be empty.

Don’t stay in the blankets beside that warm body.
Don’t travel the world in the glow on a pillow.
Go back! Go back! Back to your strings and your pulley.
Dredge on! Dredge on! The bucket will never be empty.

Flirt

I watch the cat watch the squirrel.
The squirrel swirls his tail like it's a cat's.
The cat looks back at me with worried eyes.

A Thought Already Out of Date

I spend my words on those who fail to hear;
For those who do, I cannot say a word.

They both have need of nothingness
—The echo of dimensions—
For conversations never get the joke.

Nin-me-sar-ra (Adoration of Inanna) - III

This is the third of a four-part translation of the oldest surviving lyric poem in human history. In this segment, the poet calls forth multiple gods to help her escape her banishment from the holy temple, where she was supplanted as priestess by an unidentifiable male entity.

Sin, tell Heaven of my heart-wrenching fate.
Declare it unto Heaven, and Heaven will deliver me.
Report it into Heaven, and we will be released.
"The Lady will seize the kingship,
Foreign lands and flooded sands lie at her feet.
Woman so exalted, who can make the cities tremble
Step forward, let her heart be soothed for me."
En-hedu-Ana am I, I say to you now in a prayer
My tears, like the sweetest beer
I shed them freely for you, Inanna,
"Your judgment" I submit myself to.

As for Asimbabbar, concern yourself not!
He changed the rites and altered everything.
He stripped great Heaven of its power.
He did not stand in awe of the greatest God.
He turned that temple of endless abundance,
Inexhaustible beauty, into a ruined house
Which he entered as if my companion, but really it was envy!
My wild holy cow, drive out the man! Capture the man!
In this place where life is made possible - where do I stand?
Heaven should force them to surrender the city!
Heaven should strike the despised rebels down!
Enlil should curse them!

The mother shall not soothe her crying child!
O Queen with your lamenting all over the land
May your ship of lamentation be left for the enemy behind!
Must I die for my holy songs?
I - My Nanna has not decided my case.
In renegade land, he destroyed me utterly.
He has not passed a final judgment on me!
Has he pronounced it or not? Does it mean anything?
He stood there in triumph, and drove me from the temple.
He made me fly like a swallow from the window - my life was devoured
—And so I must go to the thorns of the mountain.
He stripped me of my rightful tiara
And gave me a eunuch, saying "this is now your crown!"

One and only Queen, beloved of Heaven, may your heart beat
On my behalf! Beloved wife of Dumuzi
You are the Queen from Horizon to Zenith.
The great gods, the Anuna, submitted to you.
You were born a younger sister
But now you're so much greater!
The Anuna put their lips to the ground before you
But my trial is not yet over, a strange verdict hangs as if my verdict.
To the fruitful bed I did not reach out my hand
And the holy commands I did not reveal to man
Radiant High Priestess of Nanna that I am.
My Queen, beloved of Heaven, may your heart forgive me.

It must be known! It must be known! Nanna has not yet spoken a decree
—"It is yours" is what it said!
Be it known you are as high as the sky!
Be it known you are as wide as the world!
Be it known that you massacre the rebellious!
Be it known that you roar against trespassers!
Be it known how you crush skulls!
Be it known how you devour the dead like a dog!
Be it known your terrible gaze!
Be it known how you raise your terrible gaze!
Be it known of your flashing eyes!
Be it known you are uncompromising!
Be it known you stand triumphant at all times!

That Nanna has not spoken out, and said that "It is yours"
Only makes it sweeter, it makes your power more!
My Queen, beloved of Heaven, I'll reveal to all your wrath!
In the censor I have heaped the coals, the lustration is prepared,
The nuptial chamber waits for you. May your heart be gratified!

Landscape with Iconolatry

They called it Armageddon, the rain
like a bloodthirsty snare drum
in a brutal hail of acorns
cracking on the roofs like tiny skulls.
The birds are all in hiding,
the stones are turning black,
the red brick glows like battlefields
with twisted down spout limbs
and instant mushrooms in the bloody puddles
wide as yarmulkes.

The only thing that's still is a glistening bag
held sheer in a barbed wire tunnel
(no knowledge without suffering, Siddhartha said).

Everywhere, rivers are flowing
like the great chain of being
'cross cloistered checkerboards
in a monstrance mist
that extends across the world
on crosiers with rusted hooks.

Despite what Moses says
we know the storm, somehow, will pass,
as do the crows and rabbits -
no apocalyptic fantasies
for Cromwell and the Protestants
just work to tidy up God's way.

Clearing

A swirl of fog
as my brain unloads the pelf:
people exquisitely screaming
their superior pain
afraid of what they can't see,
their magnificent light.
It's like yarn, this stuff,
equipped to tie or warm,
a dark gauze that holds
the junk along the road
in a hobo's net
so it can gain a second, orange life:
the thing we talk about
in the place of the real,
the thing that burns
with the rage we can't leave with ourselves.

As it falls away, I see it's preferable
that people are only capable of telling lies
—it's cleaner that way, with nothing invested
except in fiduciary paper—no truth
to bind us to obey.

Eyes

Humanity is a rumor, a vapor play
moving through the lines before the vanishing point.
If occasional red grunts from a stubbed toe
it's nothing I can feel, it's just a memory of pain

yet my shape - my very soul - conforms to the fractured view
like the universe itself is too wounded to move,
or, rather, the blood stands still while everything else flows
in a dizzy spin of motion without form

where even light comes from things broken in the churn,
where every boundary's finally soothed with swirling gray,
a hurricane of thought that grows in folds and rolls away
to form one more electric galaxy of crackling noise.

Aggressors and receptors go off dancing in the flux,
the knife to feel the twinge, the wound to feel the fury
in imagination's clouds of possibility
dissolving into further storms, the clash of thunderbolts

in a vast non-linear sky, where the causes
of what we experience are hidden behind cloud,
where all that will be and was is blurred in raptures of the light
—so much hangs off the empty sheen inside the ink-black iris.

Cult as Symbol

We fall for a face,
the smile that lets us walk,
the frown that makes us stop.
It doesn't matter that the thing is meaningless.
It's either this face, or forever the dark.

Bohdi #2

There isn’t anything that can’t be thrown
into the bonfire of your self-loathing.

Bohdi #1

Be careful what you create
it may end up being real

Nin-me-sar-ra (Adoration of Inanna) - II

This is the second of a four-part translation of the oldest surviving lyric poem in human history. In this segment, the author, Enheduanna, for the first time in recorded history, names herself, as part of her taking on her high priestess role for Inanna, who is portrayed here as an all-powerful, but distinctly feminine God.

Lady, Supreme there, who'd dare take your Earth?
If you frown at the mountains, the green there will die,
The canyons will burst into flames, and blood will flow
Down rivers because of you, that people will not drink.
The soldiers must gather together, to surrender to you,
The elite troops must gather together, to disband for you,
The young men must gather together, to stand before you.
In the taverns of pleasure, a storm brews,
The best men are hunted as captives for you.

You speak for those who can't say "the land is yours,"
And will not declare "in the name of your loving Father."
He has spoken the Word and your footing's restored:
The sheep disappear from their stalls,
And women no longer speak of love with their spouses,
They no longer consort in the depths of the night,
No longer reveal the future inside them.
Wild and impetuous Cow, Great Daughter of Sin,
Queen greater than Heaven, who'd take your province away?

The Great Queen of Queens, born for the Word,
Born of a fate-laden body, you are greater
Than even your mother, a sage over all the lands
Who gives life to all of Earth's people,
I give birth to you with this song!
Goddess of Truth, fit for the Word,
You speak with magnificent force
And unfathomable heart—I'll intone the Word for you!

Enheduanna has entered the rectory for your sake,
To serve, my fate, as ornament.
When I carried the cup, and struck up the song of joy
They set down my meal as if I had never lived there.
I came toward the light, but the light was too bright.
I came to the shadow, it was veiled by the storm.
My sweet mouth became full of venom,
My power to heal turned to dust.

Incantation

The storm passed, now everything's different:
There's nothing outside of the one.
We still talk as if we are separate
But that's only to have us some fun!

The wind will not let you stand in its current,
The sun will not let your darkness take hold,
You must find a way now to know all is perfect,
You must let the spiral unfold.

Equinox

the green
freezes
at a pause
in the wind

nothing should want
more
than what is there

the light
slowly rises
off the soil

America: A Rant

Fuck you, America, for fishing permits and helmet laws, and for not
letting minors carry guns. (No amount of Twinkies or Family Guy
reruns could ever appease the rage I feel toward you for that).

Fuck you, America, that every town is not like Vegas, 'cos you know
that’s how we roll but still withhold it anyway like the pilgrim
fuck you are.

Fuck you, America, for any and all taxes, I do not care how many cave
people you vaporize for no other reason than it’s cool as fuck,
my mind’s made up.

Fuck you, America, that I never see celebrities at the DMV, and for not
giving me that Trophy Wife you promised me, and for not
making me famous even though I know you watch me
every second of every day.

Fuck you, America, for lying to my face that the rest of the world
wouldn’t kill to be like me, the coolest asshat on the planet
because I do not give a fuck at any time and I will do whatever
it takes to make myself happy by any means necessary.

Fuck you, America, for being such a fucking pussy that everybody wants
to crash your party, and for pretending that it wasn’t you who put out that first hit of crack for free.

America, I’m pissed, and I will never rest as long as dishes must be rinsed,
laundry must be folded, and groceries must be taken out of bags.

I cannot be at peace, America, til there’s a Walmart on every corner, and
every food store has Maine lobster at 3 o’clock in the morning,
and there’s a decent sport to watch in February on TV.

I won’t give up, America, until I can hear Tibetan acid jazz whenever I
please, can take care of the national debt on my wii, and watch
porn while I drive my SUV.

I won’t let up, America, until the President admits the moon landings
may be faked, and the Temple of Satan is allowed to home school,
and there’s at long last a Church of Tranny Christ.

I won’t be satisfied, America, until the loftiest mountain peak is accessible
in my jeep, and the most inhospitable desert serves roadside ice
cream treats.

I won’t forgive you, America, until Minnesota blueberry pies are freed
from prison and onto my plate.

I won’t stop hating you, America, until you show some fucking dignity,
and stop listening to everything I say.

I won’t back down until my body's in the ground, and I’m strolling
through the heavens telling God how much I miss those chili dogs
in that stainless steel blue diner that just appeared one day
without my even trying.

The Charity Auction

They laugh and bid a thousand for a certain Bordeaux vintage,
and five K for a single day of golf.
It's noted in the building, who's feeding the poor,
those soup kitchen people who look just like us.

Everybody's happy -- tax breaks for all,
why not get a little something on the side,
to help one live at last like a human being?

Who's to say these paddles
up and down like prairie dogs
don't deliver the secret codes,
the number combinations that unlock the cosmic vault,
what some call "empathy"?

Sunday without Prayers

The mind is fattened for slaughter
to spare it unthinkable predators.
The first fires glow in iron pits.
The grass is turning green once more.

I am as anxious as a deer.
The parameters of the dream
prevent me from seeing what's out there
to fear—vulnerable to sun beams.

The Procrastinators

They're yakking, again, instead of working,
their passions expended in plans to remake
constructions long finished and dead;
they vie to build them larger, greater, faster

while their own project wilts neglected
—to its fate they're indifferent, even though
it hasn't yet met its fatal design flaw,
it's curious lack of care in workmanship.

But they'll grudgingly put their time in,
do the bidding of idiots in charge,
whose ambition is only themselves,
whose world is never their own.

They'll let the arguments go,
let them be settled
by the future,
where all disputes are resolved.

...And the Survey Says

For its 100th Anniversary, the Poetry Society of America sent out a questionnaire to 300 contemporary American poets on what it means to be an American poet. All of these unknown to me poets said roughly the same thing: America is a ruthless machine of erasure through homogenization of the authenticities of gender, race and sexual preference, and its poets from Leslie Marmon Silko on have used the polyvocal utterances of the other to bravely challenge that hegemony, with poems that wear jeans, buy each other beer and often have sex.

Yours truly was not included in this survey, but because I believe in democracy and the American way I thought I’d post my responses here.

In what ways might you consider yourself an American poet?

In that I’m alarmingly ignorant of the rest of the world, specifically the range and history of world poetries, and in that I’ve never let that slow me down in any way.

Do you believe there is anything specifically American about American poetry past and present?

I can’t speak for the past - I wasn’t there – but present-day America is unique among countries in having let the Rothschild banking interests who control the foundations, universities, media, corporations and political system destroy poetry along with whatever residual force it once had in larger society by luring poets into academia as a condition of publication/recognition/money.

Is there American poetry in the sense that there is said to be American painting or American film?

American poetry is like American bobsledding, a convenient label for tribal frenzies of exclusion.

What role do historical and geographical factors play in American poetry and in your work specifically?

This is a fancy way of asking if the fact I am alive and not dead plays a role in my poetry. I don't honestly have an answer. All I know is that when I write about, say, 14th century China, it can only be for me about 21st century America.

What other aspects of your life (for instance: gender, sexual preference, class, ethnicity, religious beliefs) relate to your sense of being a poet in America?

Part of being a poet is not necessarily knowing what my gender, sexual preference, class, ethnicity, religious beliefs, etc. actually are, but I see I am in a minority of one on that score, which may be why I wasn’t included in this inclusive survey.

Is there something formally distinctive about American poetry?

American poetry has been, from Whitman on, stubbornly free verse, at least relative to the rest of the world. This has been a great strength, in my opinion, and helped spread the influence of American poetry throughout the world, even England. Apparently this is a great insight, for it appears most of the respondents on the survey thought the only form distinctively American was to drop “y’all’s” or “yins” into poems.

What significance does popular culture possess in your sense of American poetry?

Writing poetry is the way I cope with popular culture, in that it helps me to ignore it long enough for it to go away.

When you consider your own "tradition," do you think of American poets, non-American poets?

My own “tradition” is a country of poets, from all over, living and dead. This is in contrast to the country I actually live in, which is by and large poetry free.

Which historic poets do you consider most responsible for generating distinctly American poetics?

Distinctly American poetics? You just won’t quit with this vapor, will you? I suppose there’s a certain joie de vivre, a bilderstürmerei, a full of beans gormlessness in American poetry that comes from a combination of corn, Protestant triumphalism, wholesale extermination of the native populations, lack of moats (ie “rugged individualism”), amber waves of grain, African-American "blue" scales, tolerance born of shallow roots, cultural standards determined by the lowest common denominator, an unquenchable thirst for blood, a total inability to see that there is an unquenchable thirst for blood, and good old Yankee ingenuity. The embodiment of all of this, of course, is Poe. Aren’t you pleased with yourself, now?

What are your predictions for American poetry in the next century?

It will continue to not be read except by other poets, usually with that particular jaundiced perspective of the aggrieved.

Nin-me-sar-ra (Adoration of Inanna)

This is the first recorded lyric poem in human history, written about 2350 BC by the first recorded (named) author, Enheduanna, a Sumerian high priestess. Although this poem was copied as a popular sacred text for 500 years, throughout the Babylonian era, it was only discovered in 1927, with the painstaking task of translation from Sumerian clay tablets only beginning in the last 50 years. The current scholarly translations still contain numerous ambiguities, contradictions, obscure references, hidden nuance, and the inevitable loss of semantic purity as experts puzzle over complex grammars and well-hidden religious beliefs. Rather than wade into that debate, I've created from the existing sources (Hallo and van Dijk (1968), James Pritchard (1975), Annette Zgoll (1997), Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature) a more poetic translation, since I've found this poem to have more than historical interest.

Here's part one of four parts, to be posted each Friday over the next month. The first section is an affirmation of Goddess Inanna's power and purpose, as well as the poet's role as embodiment of the Goddess in words -- at times, almost a consort, in terms that are striking to modern sensibilities.

Lady of the Word, a raging light rising,
Spirit of earth, in iridescent robes, beloved of An and Uraš,
Mistress of heaven, protected with jewels,
Loved by the life-giving crown, that fits this high priestess
Who holds in her hand the seven holy powers.
My Queen! You are the guardian of the Word.
You have lifted the chalice, you have held it in your hand.
You have gathered the liquid divine, placed it next to your breast.

Like a dragon you spit venom on the land.

When you thundered like Iskur, no green life withstood you,
Who brought down the deluge on those who opposed you.
Sultana Ianna, uniter of Heaven and Earth,
Who rains divine fire on the land,
Who's been chosen by An to command the Word,
The Lady who rides on the snake
Who, endowed with the power of fate, speaks the Word.
The great rites are yours - who can fathom them?

Destroyer of unaligned soil, you unleashed the storm.
Beloved of Enlil, you weighed terror on the land.
You stand at the service of An's commands,
My Queen! At your battle cry, all foreign lands bow.
Humanity in awe is silent before you, the terrible glare and storm
As they bring you their anguished clamor
- For you, they must walk the path of lamentation.
For you, all arms are gone before the battle.

My Queen! With your strength, a tooth can break flint!
You possess us as you come a storm possessive,
And as a storm percusses so you howl.
With Iskur do you thunder,
Spread exhaustion with your roaring winds
While your own feet have yet to tire.
Humanity strikes a song of lament on the lyre.

My Queen! The great gods, Annana, before you
Fluttered like terrified bats to the tops of ruined mounds.
They cannot withstand your devastating gaze.
They dare not face the terror in your brow.
Who can cool your furious heart?
A heart that is too violent for soothing.
O Lady, are you viscerally sated?
Is your heart now really filled with joy?
Great Daughter of Sin, your rage does not cool!

Why Artists Don't Care if They're Wrong

As random as commercials they change,
the faces on the monitor
flashing on the building guard's black suit
—a litany of scofflaws, framed for wanting.
What are the crimes, I ask, inside their books?
They almost seem near-normal,
they seem, at times, to smile,
I wonder what deprivation
drove them to the brink this time?

A million tales in the naked city,
we all, not worshiped, push to some line—
and fall back as the will goes deaf and blind.

I watch visages turn,
until I see the one
that makes me stop in horror
- a terrifying face -
a suit, a tie, a killer smile,
a twinkle in the eye.
I recognize that tragic mask,
the one that I call mine.

Meeting without Coffee

The Louisiana sank -
laid low by icebergs
or German torpedoes -
the sea turtles flew
on chartreuse wing
past mountains upside down
like the narcissistic fiction
of a bar chart
in the laser light
on the smoke-talk CEO
hosanna'ed and seconded
by the C Suite yes men
while they wheel
the oysters Rockefeller in

The Gnosis of Entropy

Following the thread from Henry Vaughan to Philip K. Dick

There once was light that showed the face of God
We turned to bars of gold in holding cells;
Was once a throne for Lords of higher light
We turned into a toilet's useful shell.

We reproduced all forms in our own image
So we could worship icons of desire
'Til we ourselves became another object,
The living spirit plastered within wire.

The logos thus became a dying thing,
Ideas only formed to turn to stone,
We taught ourselves by grieving we'd atone,
We laid down for the treasures death would bring,

And so all things have come to have an owner
And God's now found in worthless things thrown out.

Canon Fodder

Times are hard for the immortals.
Young lovers no longer try to impress them.
Girls not only snap their gum, but cast cold eyes
on their nether regions.
Boys not only yawn, but don't even take pride anymore
in pretending they know what's going on.
They all come, young and old, equipped with gotchas,
the you shoulda done this'es,
you didn't do that's,
the how could you do this to humanity and me brickbats.
Of course the immortal is innocent as charged,
he might as well be Pegasus in the clouds,
it's just the indignity of having it forced on them--
he thinks he's all that, they snobbishly say,
or he thinks he's better than me, or
I bet, even though he's dead, he puts his pants on
one leg at a time - and by the way only a moron would claim
that his shit don't stink better than mine.

Times are hard for the immortals.
All their thunderbolts hit lightning rods.
No one notices anymore all the people they turned into gold.
At least their rebellious spawn knew, if not what they said
or the way that they said it, at least that there was a certain
weight to them that meant they must be destroyed.
Now the mere fact they are still alive - albeit dead -
is enough to warrant a drive by (and need I point out
today's machine guns are not near as nice as they used to be
when the pen was mightier than the cut and paste).

Times are hard for the immortals.
The demands on their time never end.
Between having to reach consensus
among diverse participants
to being a guest of honor at wakes,
there's very little time to be dead,
to let the sunlight filter through
the rarefied air they've left behind
as a reminder to those who don't look
that every person ever born has changed the world.

Writing

The birds chirp like typists in the trees—
my day condenses to this: a fatal word—
the one thing they are lacking—
a gift they cannot understand—
the clouds move by too quickly for a thought
to get caught—I am the first idea
set to pounce—I blur in every thing—
there's only now the ink—to fix the strange—
that hollow jug reverberating without meaning—
it takes me hostage just the same—
the cry of something moving—
bereft of all but feeling—
the breath inside this cry—
is all I've left of life

Moonset Plaint

The past, a mortal snip
of hibiscus as big as the universe
rolls back like coal from endless foam
-- nothingness makes a noise
of wet stones crackling.
We fall to the voiceless,
the unexploited land
that fills the space with secrets
never to be known
-- that's why they call them secrets.

A hanging hand
that soon becomes a cloud.

Absentia Animi

From the Swedish of Gunnar Ekelöf

In autumn
In autumn when we say farewell
In autumn when the gates are all open
to meaningless pastures
where unreal fungus rots
and water-filled ruts run on the path
to nothing, and a snail on the path
a torn moth on the path
to nothing, as is a rose past its bloom
the tiniest and ugliest. And a daddy long-legs
stupid fragile-
legged bastard, drunk in the lamplight of the evening
and the lamp itself like languishing light
whistling over the sea, the thinking polar sea
of long waves
silent rustling scum
in a series divided by the series
from nothing through nothing to nothing
Set opposite composite abrasax abraxas match
(like the sound of a sewing machine)
And spiders spin their nets through nights of silence
and crickets rasp
Senseless.
Unreal. Meaningless.
In autumn
the rustle of my poem
words at its service and there is
Dust fallen over them, dust or dew
til the wind swirls up and affixes them (down)
(and) elsewhere
The sharers shall seek the meaning of all things
understood long ago
that meaning rustles with rustling
which in itself is something quite unlike
wet rubber boots traipsing leaves
distracted footsteps through the park’s carpet
of leaves, endearingly adhering
to wet rubber boots, forgetful step
You wander off, forget yourself
Don’t hurry
Hold a while
Wait
In autumn
In autumn when all the gates
then it happens in the last late slanting sun
after a day’s rain
with long pauses hesitating
as if caught
a leftover crow sings at the peak of a tree
for nothing, for the sake of his throat. You see
his treetop stands against heaven’s bleached bank
next to a solitary cloud. And the cloud floats
like other clouds but also like leftovers, off season
with its Being flown elsewhere long ago
and of itself (its song) is already something
other than

Eternal peace
Senseless. Unreal.
Meaningless. I
sit singing here
in heaven in a cloud
I wish nothing more
I will myself a far, far way
I am far away (among the echoes of the evening)
I’m here
Sets opposites abrasax
You as well as I

O far far away
swimming in the bright sky
over a treetop a cloud
in blissful ignorance!
O deep inside me
Reflected in the black surface pearly eyes
of happy half awareness
an image of a cloud!
It isn’t what is there
It is that something other
It is within what is
but not it that it is
There is something else
O far far away
in what is distant
there is something close!
O deep inside me
in what is close
there is something distant
something distantly close
in what is this side of the distance
something neither nor
in what is either or
neither cloud nor image
neither image nor image
neither cloud nor cloud
neither neither nor nor
but anything else!
The only thing that is
is something imagined!
The only thing that is
in that which is
is something else!
The only thing that is
in that which is
is what in this
is something else!
(Oh soul’s lullaby
song of something else!)

O
non sens
non sentiens non
dissentiens
indesinenter
terque quaterque
pluries
vox
vel abracadabra

Abraxas abrasax
Sets opposites composites that becometh sets again
Senseless
Unreal. Meaningless.
And spiders spin their nets through nights of silence
and crickets rasp

In autumn

Ambition Makes One Gray

Ambition makes one gray.
Colors lose their hold
in driving rain
—the blur fixes
a soothing touch
where edges are cut off.

Eccentric

Ambition dies with summer's final heat
As oak boughs fall like laurel, lose their caps
On orange needle down by unkempt stones--
A graveyard from the war outside of town.

The dead merely survive. It is the living
Who cast their lives against the bird shriek skies.
They only want another one because
They let the one they had get taken back.

It's not for us who turn the brown to dust
To see the harmony of life, to know
Where nurtured perfect things go when released
Like prisoners of the sun must always be.

We're left each other, to grovel for might,
Join hands, forever wrong, against the sky.
But there's a truce of freedom so few use--
The truth is in the wobble not the true.

The Scent of Death in the Trees

The yellowed straw
hats of summer's end,
the faded parasols

as meaning flies
like cranes south-
ward once more

The windows of the tenements
are holes where
fans once were

the rooms are
empty, a kind of
breathing

there is another
clock beyond
our terror

The Lynch Wedding

They rented Fenway Pahk for the wedding pahty,
and the Isabelle Stewut Gahdner room, along with
private Duck boat too-uhs of the Commons and the Chahles,
three helicopters flew them back to Mahblehead Neck
and fyuhwuhks like Southie's nevah seen.
His daughter married a fucking count, they cheered
and cracked open a bottle of Lafitte-Rothschild champagne;
the last time they saw this vintage was in the old days
in Chahlestown, before tenements became brownstones,
when there were 12 kids or more to an apahtmunt.
They found it in a case pilched from the old Navy yahd,
where all the bahs were, one night after the loopers
flew the cahs along the trolley tracks
down the Bunker Hill Monument, middle finger to the world,
to the Friday night cah burning (the only money
in those days was the weekly bet they made
on who could steal the wickedest cah from Jamaica Plain.
They ahgued and drank and voted and spat, sending the rest
to a burning rubber hell they called "Montego Bay"
and crammed 20 of them micks into the winnah cah
to go hammah'd in a loop around the neighbahhood
-the cops had bigger fish to fry). They drank that bottle
when the liquor ran dry. It tasted great with Fresca.