Argument Byzantium: As children are abused by
adults, terror grows. As horror expands, intellect diminishes and lives
are wasted in the pursuit of apparent gods, forgotten nightmares and
natural greed. Our wounds recall my face when I was beaten
and ignored as a child. In the mirror now, I am more blank than before terror
tasted as air failed and sulfuric smoke rose over Houston Street three days after the terror that lit ground zero. -- September 14, 2001
The Book of Byzantium (September 11, 2001)
“Byzantium”
by William Butler Yeats
“...The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.”
From the Book of Byzantium
LAPIS LAZULI
Consider Byzantine cross, bare sky,
icon, Juden Star, lapis lazuli.
Worship oak branch, bronze
statues guard the banks
of Hudson; bathe in gray ash
of its shallows; list in
fallout of repeated terror.
In witness skim World Trade debris
for nacreous shell; load barges
with magic flutes while weapons
bang out terrified signs and
mad butchers, meat grinders
poised, screwed, locked and loaded,
delivered hamburger with applause.
From the Book of Byzantium
Directions to Yankee Stadium
How I met Marilyn Monroe
Late Spring 1953 - Age ten.
You are on the edge of Byzantium and I pull you
inside or you pull outside. I have been speaking
recursion for a week. There was a time in my past
when my father slashed death with a butcher's knife.
He did not cut, but I bled. What's the measure
of criminal intent? My mother stood in his path
and saved her son but later that night molested
the boy while her husband slept off drink.
I should know what happened.
I did not. Many years blind.
Life went blank out of wet dream.
Dad had promised Yankee Stadium
but cancelled. "I'm drunk," he said.
I left on my own.
followed the bus to 168th,
D train, I would not miss my life.
My Angels warned:
"Go to the Yankee stadium," --
Marilyn Monroe will spray
sex in your eyes."
From the Book of Byzantium
MAROONED
Tuesday, September 11, 2001: 8:48 AM
The Next Movie of Marilyn Monroe
Marooned at the World Trade Center
Visions begin. We fall down
with steel crashing onto
the old Westside Highway.
One memory: I study simple crows
languishing on the steps unmoving
and calm they peck at dust.
No, that is my dream.
I am a movie star in flight
as well as this man. I am
also the boy at Yankee stadium
nursing at my breast.
He called himself Edward.
Yes, I am the child of
diseased father and mother--.
Without safety I shift
from one harm to another
to return again. Somehow
I have lived these years
from 1953 to 2001
and will revive longer.
2.
"I am the woman who fell from grace"
I ask how was it possible --
I am long pregnant?
If I pause will some die
in my place under
broken steel pillars?
Yes, I remember
as words trickle
down my thighs after
sex shifted yellow
window light to an
awkward peach and pink --
raw steak on hot coals.
3.
I met the Director for coffee at 7:15 AM.
I knew what he wanted when I answered my phone.
He often dresses as a crow and I meet him
as Blue Jay and we fuck on demand.
I made him more human than bird.
He does not have to ask, and as walls and floor
shake on the 87th we were thrown outward;
his wings malfunction. His cock stuck
inside thighs. I do not give up easily.
He was not an illusion.
We are instant amputees
when we ride concrete dust
into the bowl and maneuver
former arms and legs
to roll fingers; my sky
glows as my trail passed.
We fall. I hold the top rung of air.
Why do I survive?
I live at the rough turn of steel
asphyxiated in wire, concrete
and plugs of semen left behind
for composite civilization
defined with out past or future
as silly condoms left empty
on the rest room floor.
Held down and strangled by gravity
I scream fate and sulfur smoke drifts
for weeks over the lower New York
and then out to the river Tigris,
and into eyes of 3000 who died.
Why am I alive?
Are they casualties with numbers?
I live. become "les autres",
and my lover another crow.
I tap on my own shoulder
in his bird's daze.
Did you listen when Ted Hughes’
whimpers while Sylvia
untied legs redemption leaped
to repeat books silenced twice.
First: death did it. Second:
Ted bled Sylvia's letters white
I crawl to turbid air
and edge by edge break open
the lines of Neolithic caves.
We have always been there
at the foot of the art
that makes symbol into
the flutter of arms
and limbs as descent
growls into discovery
of some truth written
down to be screamed.
I become heroic in this drop--
In one moment I wake in Alexandria
in the years 612: I pass many
stops and starts. Time falters
as Sappho strophes. What year is it?
Is it 745 AD in Damascus?
I loved Paris in May and June 1968
and Tel Aviv in 1965 was pure.
"Human kind will emerge to Renaissance,"
I shriek as I fall.
I love my milky breasts
They compare to the Pieta,
not that you can see her under
that gown he sculptured
long before the World Trade Center.
Hold us Crow!
Strings of lead drop
from North tower,
I recall everything
I am now Edward
child of Teresa.
Marilyn passes my
lips as I kiss what
was before it exists.
After my mother's
natural death,
I murdered memory--
prurient fables.
I crawl easily out window
made the long last step
and I tumble out of history
and into another plateau
where sky is violent cherry
with the taste of glue
recalled in notebooks
dog eared and dirty --
I create that blank
dimension where mutation
was gained and we waited
in line for another
ending to ride out
of the building
and exit by elevator;
sex in the vestibule
becomes more than life
renewed or Christmas
party in a brokerage
house during a bull
market when prices roar.
4.
Nothing plots. New plans confirmed.
Answers are wrong. Notes destroyed --
Here is Marilyn's maze as she traveled.
Inside the absolute island of Crete
she collect broken icons to hold
the lost origin so we escape
as a pattern of disconsolate
number theory equations proven wrong--
I played with God in a musical.
wrote the book when I was ten.
The music never played.
I loved my parents.
Later, in silent death
I assumed a fabricated life.
Crow, I agree to your deal.
How can I survive as I jump
off the edge of the window?
Crow, push me out of purgatory.
Crow, are you listening?
I do not know the answers.
You said you knew everything --
promised redemption --
but I smash to the ground
with my crushed skull
bound inside femur.
Crow?
Crow?
"The horizon is black, blank
and the landmark has vanished."
From the Book of Byzantium
Broken Heart
There's more to death than standing
at a firing squad and suffering extinction.
It's not that simple.
Lights are put out and terror bleeds
by heroic steps caught in the outer mind's rise
within humble miracle of American Airline Jets
when fear ripped from rage and guilt into depression.
While the assorted "leaders"
of the world slam war into peace
and break the windows of a brokerage house
on quiet day in September, does it matter
that the street's Vesey in New York City
or some grand boulevard in Vienna
before and after WW1 or Hiroshima.
I imagine Adolph Hitler separate from time.
He grew in a fraudulent frame. If he had been
murdered in 1930 would his war have stopped?
Today, I worship souls who died
jumping from the 90th floor.
Can you imagine the look of the clouds
surprised with Houdini trickery?
When your spine liquefies, bones and muscles
quiver and in final response your heart
softens, flat and without emotion.
If you are lucky you have no memory –
not that there can be your life again.
Are you the hero of the death?
"What choice did I have,"
you scream at the ice cream man
whittling his confectionary fingertips.
Where is the glory? You die without
ceremony and medals. Are you empty?
The river below is not called "Victory"
It is not a river but an esturary
a drowned sea, an place where salt
and fresh water mingle as lovers will.
The Top Sgt. said, "No dead man can be a coward" --
If you calculate tides from old fashioned spectra --
that's a redundant promise with a false bottom
made by your father who ordered you to fellatio
while he beat your nine year old skin
as steak bone grilled for Sunday dinner.
You never forgive mother as one witness of abuse
She in her isolation called as the Siren,
lifting you to her bed for immortal comfort
as Aphrodite did or Athena might the Lord Daedalus.
The present is more than the
summary of 2001 or more than
the destruction of a monument.
From the Book of Byzantium
Dirty Little Girl
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather
scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean –
neither more nor less.”
“The Question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words
mean so many different things.”
“The Question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be
master – that’s all.” -- Through the Looking Glass by Lewis
Caroll
The nature of Abuse in a Nation
is a Marker, as in biostratigraphy
... biostratigraphy, biostratigraphic project management, paleontology, service, stratigraphy, sequence stratigraphy, depositional system, paleontology, forum, pollen...
"My mother molested my life for ten years."
(written twenty years after the abuse)
By Dolores Baker-- victim of 9/11/01
That's me. I'm the dirty little girl. I walk around with no underpants and I stink of pee. I'm always touching or Mom's touching where I sit. You know those little touches, brief, where my flat chest no nipples dance. Mom don’t realize that when she touch my tits I get so jumpy I want to pinch harder and harder and finally I explode. It is terrible internal distraction. She knows she does this. She pecks at the flat circles and gets them going. She know she does. She laughs at my shrug away I am not interested and then climbs into my bed and finds me fingering where I shouldn't or she says I should.
Mom always had this sheer laugh. She gave me to men who became her and carried their dreams as rivers found their own gravel basement.
When I had my first period, I must have been eleven, Mom stained her nose with my blood. Stretched in the mirror I reached under my nightgown and painted my nipples and my cheeks with more blood. I looked at the mirror and made a horrible face to mimic what I thought might be some native violence as retribution. Later that night I fucked myself with a thick candle and when I had pierced my limbs I bled until morning and taken to the hospital, no one knew I had lost my virginity when I was seven. Lies take on so many facets.
From the Book of Byzantium
GOING UPSTATE
It seemed as if we were riding in the car for days. We were not in the car, but had fallen asleep on the floor of one of the bedrooms in the country house near Warwick, New York.
It was bone chilled January cold and my breasts when I woke ached. I could not move and felt as if I were trapped in these thin wool blankets. The fires must have had gone out.
My skin tight in PJ’s that I picked to wear was sensitive sexual baby skin. I could not move. I wanted to seduce him as he does when he taps me on his knee or as he did when I was his woman, or now as the speck of stars, he cannot see. I knew the man driving the car about three weeks. He was mother’s new favorite, and he seemed kind, and certainly no different or angrier than my father did.
Joe reached down. I reached up by my fingers. He pulled me out of my own throat or so, it seemed, and then we swam in skin.
He was sweat. He was hard. I could feel his cock against my ass as he cuddled, and admonished me for not telling him the heat doesn’t work in this room, and that I should sleep in the bed with him, which is what I wanted in the first place, but I didn’t want to feel the trapped animal if he pushed me away as he does when he felt guilt. Mother could not get him to do what she always expected.
I was scared when he put his fingers in my brains. I did not want it. He put them in hard, and at first, they hurt. I could not catch my breath. I pushed into him letting the twin cheeks of my ass drive into his pad of fat belly and when his cock pushed at one clever angle, I felt him slip inside where he could not really penetrate.
I was so small. Last week these old boys at school gave me head, rubbing my ass and carefully I fabricated an actual orgasm for them. I was hot, and they drew it out of me that longing. I told Harold about it, and he said Sure, that is lovely Lass, and pushed into my shallow cunt harder. I had no hair, I said. I said it that way, ungrammatical, to make it stick out more, and then he pulled the hair that had grown around my lips, and as it was soft and a feather wisp I groaned as he ran his nails along my lips scratching the soft pink wondering how pain felt in that dark twilight when he was the monster on top as the usual master of a dance he pushed into my bowels and emptied cock like a deep sea beast. The boys last week wee teens left so much soup in my cunny I was lost with the slosh. The three boys fucked without any precision. It was jerk jerk and poof. Today, once the cold left, he fucked gracefully and taught me moves, how does this feel he said, do this until you feel this, or do you feel it, and if you don’t let me know. He was a gentleman. I may have been his child like teenager, but I was kept with the cold, and my hands warming on his balls slipped their knot into my mouth and he was a great dancer forever more. My tits streaked with semen were slippery and sick colder and I did not like it, but tolerated the image, as it was what most expected. The yucky semen rubbed against my tail bone as it dripped was a welcome sensation to the first barn door of pregnant woman I am told now several weeks later that I have taken into my sexual schemes and so I wonder if sex is that weapon we need to avoid war, true war and then if not war, perhaps the petty silly break down of civility that human beings require for the luster of gods as adorned hats and decorations we apply when we are falsely proud of being prudes when in truth what we want is the perfection of orgasm. Shall we shout now for the truth, or can we hide from the boundary of false bottoms, as you lean into me with your cunny and my two fingers drive as you climb my hip and have that pure orgasm you deserve and we desire. Does it matter that you are my mother and I am your father in this clandestine pageant.
All I ever want is to murder the circus clown, "to kill Bill," Joe, Peter or to end the torment as cycles of cold make the skin chaffed inside my legs swollen with an undistinguished history that. Every tongue lick to dick, pussy, and nipple becomes the next folio of horrific infamy in the Library of Congress. Every victim has a corner reserved for books about how they became serial murderer #3, 4 or simply part II.
From the Book of Byzantium
Crow's fall from Grace
Jesus died for our sins. She jumped with
egg in hand over the precipice of the tower.
Her resurrection announced two hours
after sunrise as we face east and west
at the same time with similar defiant masks.
I applaud the suicide. It could not be prevented.
No one should wonder. Fire is a wall,
and in spends of burning has no resistance;
Jesus falls and he, reborn male that day,
impaled by the surge of the wooden cross,
but what no one knew -- no one's told
every child born is Jesus as pain in childbirth
or the storms of red smoke history becomes violent
light, temperatures at which candy boils; so hot
the heat of heaven at sunrise cannot be hidden
by Brava or any accolades uttered in contempt
for hidden monuments or great, urgent steps as
you do not think, but leap, not caring if while you
fall you kill a famous Fireman Priest. Jesus whispered
to his servant later to note where he could fall.
If he fails, can he safely conjure responsibility?
Is god served by incomplete unbending, fake sex?
Is she lost in labels of calories written in Aramaic?
to comply with rules but to not be understood
in Winston-Salem, North Carolina as anonymous woman
man lights up breathing last day of oxygen accepting she
will die like stepping to the edge of the cliff, building,
or ideal, and in that control mechanism, or loss of it,
nothing breeds worthwhile in life. Bishop Fulton J Sheen,
complete with central casting actor mask, high minded
speech rang my life in 1950's sitcom, reality show,
chalk board catechism event, "Life Was Worth Living,"
and of course, I altered the title to help it fit urn
as consequence of a fake philosophy that markets bankrupt
slogans that a holy war's justified by righteousness
and in redemption for being chosen by Allah,
at the end of our lies we will fornicate with angels
selected for their childlike squeaks as
little girls-boys chosen objects become
the utter paradigm for hostage sin.
Why do you think we slip them coins for tooth?
where we survived childhood certain of our witness?
I jump to the left of the gathering hordes. I did
not wish to trample anyone, but I don't consider
in my haste the direction of the wind of glory.”
Imagine marching into a fusillade of ball and
shot knowing that you would not survive?
What is the reaction and action?
when you learn that you will live
forever as another heroic Jesus,
as his virtual self, but never the one,
that precious original? What makes
the map first, origin and subliminal next step?
What do we mean to others as the tabloids publish story?
How do we justify lies and misprints when you jump from?
the holocaust at the WTC not knowing you are Christ or
stock trader, wholesome prostitute or barfly?
Silly girl, you cannot be murdered by god's self-set up
as a grid in ten thousand muskets as a hundred
exactly measured historical game gongs and distracted
graphics provided by Photo Shop-- graphics by Sony.
From the Book of Byzantium
Iconoclastic Controversy
Ancient Crystals
When collection became five simmering pieces,
she remembered how she watched the light
reflect fragility. Are we that whim?
One knife stroke torn as steak knife slipped hands
cut loose finger -- when blood held mouth
spattered pain as shivering bitten lip
one sexual speck of grand pain managed
as orgasm wraps the tease of shuffling thighs.
On September 11 these ancient vessels will smash
following the laws of glass? How can we possess
that terrifying rage? Who gathers our burial blood?
flashed to begin war’s Iraq sport
when sky coughed Hudson River in revenge.
What witness would we be, not breathing?
bear at the heart’s cross stale historical smells
of seventeenth century dragons and twentieth fame.
Today was the last day of world. Mary Crow’s
collection vanished as our city descended
as volcano buried, eye twisted pin the tail
on donkey turn around -- five struck floor
grinding pink, subtle hemoglobin stained.
Mary’s purse found two weeks post event
contained the New York drivers’ license of
photographer and architect. She lived
in at 114 W. 87th Street. Instant Photograph
of orphan cut finger and a trace of blood, a unique
memorial. Envelope watermarked “Byzantine
Crystal Project” clipped inside first edition of
1939 Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats.
Mary had noted billable hours for project
to office at One World Trade Center.
Set forth, she underlined Yeats
her inscription written that Monday before.
“Why do I know ’For Hades?'
bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path’” – Yeats
From the Book of Byzantium
Terrified
The monsoon began when the earth collapsed
long before that Tuesday. It was the nth storm,
the last repose of any ordinary man. Crow was dancing
tits and ass. He was singing from his oh lollipop oh
lollipop. Sucking was the merriment. It was a drool
of death but the merry-go-round held in space
while the world trade bargain basement death be
the witness, magic tortoise 120 degrees on stairs
coming down jostled and pit against
each and every human face, so she broke her ankle,
she said, and I carried her, and linking to
medical rage I remembered Nam and the Huey
split open, as she lingered I felt
unnecessary breast. It didn’t matter
how beautiful she became. I carried
her out of the portal, and when
left alone, set above the elements
we were stars again, heroes and she
lit into the clouds pronounced
god as gospel, and confessed
she loved how I carried her wings --
half man lusting for some other rage,
oh de be dum, dum, diddle wha wha
dance with Irish lines of celebrants
rasping over the sweet limbs
of Donegal at final set of sea.
At last the curb, no delusion
struck into green eyes,
pink mouth, tongue radiant,
sweat in the crease down
back into my sleeve. Crow
cleaned my face with tissue
discarded in her purse.
Her red lipstick was worn.
Every kiss sucked from dust.
From the Book of Byzantium
Lives of Theresa Grünwasser
“You mean after all these terrifying years
I will have to tell the truth. You won't let
me alone. Will You? Don't you think?
I have spent my life worrying about it?"
1928 – 2001
Papa Grünwasser ran down the World Trade Center stairs
carrying her bible. Mama would not want to live without it.
He whispered it didn’t matter. She was dead. He carried God
without rancor. He would save it for her delicate life hereafter.
Papa married the camp survivor in 1946. They escaped
German problem. She was blond, not even Jewish. Most
beautiful breasts he had ever seen. She had lights in
her skin that made you wants to kiss her before her
whispered yes or no. Born a Catholic, she had the good
fortune to have a Jewish father with the name Grünwasser.
She said, “they took her to the camps and in the truck,
they had not raped her. I was eleven,” she said. “I was
raised a good German Catholic for Papa. I fed the priest.
Soldiers are no different. I made act of contrition
and allowed that Bishop his liberties. Mother murdered
as I stood witness. She nursed Stephan. Gestapo shot infant
from her arms and smashed his head against walls.
They wore bright, black uniforms of the Gestapo mingled
with priests who will in my dreams bear chariots through
the Lincoln Tunnel and then over the Bridge someday.”
“I told her to hurry. Papa always says hurry.”
They told us when the plane hit “to go to the roof.”
That is when the wall collapsed, crushed surprise.
Papa could not speak. Mama died in one stroke
of broken glass. Papa pushed down the stairs
led away from mother and son to another divide.
Papa said, speaking as the living to the dead. “I raced
alone and the smoke and the stinking people pushed
at my heels. No one was going to steal her bible I
whispered my mantra to myself. I was a Nazi. I had
met my wife in the camps. I confess. We fall in love.
I kept her alive, and she never cursed me. If I did not
save her bible all history would change. Somehow,
she had kept it. She told me she wanted it passed
on and not buried with her. I saved it just before
North Tower collapsed. Today, September 11 was
our son David's last birthday. We had come from
Hempstead for Breakfast to eat at the top of the world.
David wanted to show off. He kept her bible at his desk.
Mama had given it to him when he had graduated
from Princeton ten years ago. She promised him
long life if he read it. Every year the pages thinned
as the oceans and rivers failed. Finally, when it was
done, she was blind and the bridges and tunnels
had all failed or were about to start again.
My Mother is Marilyn Monroe
The boy I am in 1953 laughed simply
about the sun whereas all the trees
bare of sexy parts for a few days
where shunned by murder, while
he waded in the muck tired of the sun,
so help me God. So Help me dear titty God.
Yes, I love to lie about peace and death.
That summer I was ten
I met Marilyn and Joe at
that House that Ruth built.
We sucked candy, smiled,
and I crossed her breasts
wearing that simple white shirt
that pushed at buttons.
Two photographers were present,
and MM lit about under their stare,
but when they were done, she sat me down,
sucked Life Savers, played with my hands,
holding them, patty caking her mouth
show me perfect lips, teeth, and yes,
when she was colder, as it was April
she not so quickly pulled sweatshirt
on to reveal nipples that would not disappear.
She giggled watching my eyes
and took my hand to warm it
between her breasts pretending
we were just cold and
who cares for small boys?
That is too cold,
will not do, she
said, but she warmed my hands
it and played with my mouth.
"I did not do that on purpose,
my dirty boy, but I love your
smile and suck some dear
while Joe laughed with Yogi.
holding court, MM watched
from the corner of her eye
that other boy Mickey, He
stared at us both
wondering our connection
I spoke silently
“My mother is Marilyn Monroe.”
Dirty little girl 2
I do not like this. Mama told me I was first. Mama cleans her lovingly. Legs open. Orange cotton dress flares as over hips spread and vagina pumped open in a mushroom sky where underpants barely cover the center of the earth. No body dreams this way. Mama flicks at my faces.
I wake up next to Henry. I nudge him with my elbows and he does not
quite move, and then I remember he wants me to tell him about guys I
had almost sex. Yea, I tell him. OK well there's the one I gave a hand job
too, I still feel guilty as he leaked, because at the time he had a girlfriend,
and I liked him so much before then, but now I can’t stand him, but I
still think about him. Then there is a close friend of mine, which I used
to like, I asked him out a few times, but every time he said no, and when
he did, I felt, stupid and ugly. These stories made him open one eye and
he smiled. Henry told me how he wished he had been there. Henry is my
new old man. I day stroll Technicolor dreams and surprise (HD ice cream
favor) Mom, my sis, and Mom’s new boyfriend.
Mom said we are getting fat. We are. I wake Henry. Kill him. I say it into
his ear. He tells me no one is here. Your sister’s in jail. Your Mom lives in
Ridgefield. We live in Fort Lee. How can I stop this obsession? I am not.
You are not fat. Stop throwing up. WHO SAID THAT? At the mirror, my
breasts are simple. Yes, there is nothing to pinch. I danced all night
sucked five dicks made my nut. Henry does not care. Says he does not
want anything. I am pregnant. Baby due in June. I realize how rude all
this seems. I am twenty-five. Henry’s fifty. Mama told me that she travels
in time. When Mama met Henry, the bitch claimed she fucked him. She
took me aside and told me he had a beer bottle scar down the middle of
his back. How did Houdini do it? I am not fat. I run in rivers away from
this dirty street. I am not a dirty little girl, my genitals cut and ragged,
dirty with ground in sweat and semen. “genitals” really. Heard the Dr.
use the word and it made me barf but then I liked it, and started using it
all the time in school. Every other word was genitals this or that. I must
have been sixteen then and I was hooked up with this Crank crowd. I
really love you, the dude says, as he blasts in my mouth and I bite him
hard and square. His buddy clips my jaw and I run fast out of the room
and get lost in the crown after the football game. My yellow dress is dirty.
I ripped it on a broken picture frame that was still attached. I so hurt but
I needed to get away from the fucks who are blind to my rise and fall, or
how I can manhandled a cock, get it hard so it just turns to dust in at
least one dream. When history skips pages, do we lose the story and the
characters? I want to know that dancer’s whore stories. Taxi drivers
laugh at mine. Say they sound like driver stories, and then one driver
smacks another saying that drivers are never queer, and I tell him I am a
driver and a swinger.
I wear dirty yellow dresses and throw off my underpants and salvation is
a shaking orgasm. It isn’t. You come up with a better picture, shit for
brains.
Dirty little girl 3
The Murder of Jayne Mansfield 4/29/1967
I ache with every pitch and yaw of shoulder and breast. It stings when I rub the slit, opening the pure pink lips to let my howl enter in the bell of my cunt, as I push harder and harder I BREAK the seal.
Butterflies attract the black eyes that peer into the crisp edge of the
carpet of woods.
She hides in the margins and I lift her out of the back door, facing
it, eyes plastered against the door jam. Her hands are clean but worn
and fingernails painted with black nail polish. Life flings its own stuff
back at you.
You cannot escape the maudlin. She reaches between palm fronds
and hands you a long loaf of bread covered in olive oil and parsley. It is
fragrant and poisonous. You are eating the crumbs from her fingers and
traveling into the past where nothing lives. There is no path out or
inside. You are decapitated like Jayne Mansfield. Your tits held for
ransom. On April 29, 1967 when you hit the pine tree wall, the light
failed but heaven did not.
Your breasts are simply a boundary. Marilyn Monroe limps along
side your car dead five years. Her ghost is the first you imagine.
Finally, you accept being torn from the axioms or some less
informed rightful order of life.
Can we accept that every bough has another diverse history even if?
the ripe seeds have yellow are similar.
“Bough” is a wonderful word.
Bare wooden skin of the maple in January.
Touch me under the elastic, he said and I held him up.
He left. I twiddle the wooden stick looking at the places where leaf
stalks had fit. I watch his cock closing and opening his pee hole as it
hardens and softens. He is drunk. Da Da is inebriated. I want to laugh
but there my guts clench. Mary Rose, as she always insist she be called,
tumbled on the ice. Her femur penetrated the sexual slopes and halted
by shock she almost died. Once a month Mary Rose insisted that she be
allowed to sleep over with Patricia and myself. We taught each other sexy
stories and masturbated all night. The two girls would become one sad
moan as they balanced on the edge of sexual frustration. I would
examine the scar as we woke in the AM. I showed mine. He cut my back
twice, and then holding a mirror to my cunt I showed them where the
hymen tore when I was seven. Life flings it back and you are never
righteous and not even a lecherous Priest can absolve you. When I am
frustrated my body shivers. When I am guilty I stop, and the depressed
movements (and responses) cannot be observed.
My hands jerk now as the endocrine response cannot meet the
revised needs. Adjustments of love and death, sorry and that feeling you
know, no matter how you attempt to convince yourself, that what
happened when she chose cannot be reversed. Daddy did not stop.
Mother washed my privates, as she put it, “as one final apostrophe to fix
possession when she helped me sleep as I giggled, my cunt more open,
and a slight scratch on the clitoris open to the stir of pain and sorry.
Betrayal complicates our functional family façade. Mother, father,
sister and the strangers who happened in those two years to be
accomplices raced across the back yard dream and in a final curse God
gave me the skill to record what happened.
Someday God will fail, and she will allow reporters to cover one
ordinary death of some man with a large family and full life.
Every interview will establish how uneasy all families fail. My
hands are tied. The ball gag makes all other thoughts impossible. Mother
brushes my hair as I suck her sequined nipples. The old woman brags
how her grandfather was trained to be an obedient serf
I am the perpetual child, she continued, kept as porcelain statues
of an orgy she says, when she was drunk, that made her smile no matter
how terrible the lie, the morning would simply open the book to the
place where work needed to be completed. No one would escape this
commitment. One had to learn how to cheat to escape slavery and its multiple parts.
Garnished with Basil
Mother, the roses are wilting on the south side of your breast.
I cannot understand what you are saying. You are dead.
Your grandson told me the news. I was not present for forgiveness.
Mother, do you understand the conflict? The roses were fried, mixed
with eggs and basil. I am swallowing the space of falling skyscrapers;
the lines of mourners do not accept the connection between children
abuse and the use of commercial jets as military salutes.
Good morning mother. Your mouth stares open as your sleep.
Did you know your nipples drip thin lines of pale blue tears?
When you swipe at them, you smile, rubbing the ridges
of your nipples, searching for the precise arrangement of something.
Not content, you turn on your side; pull your pillow over your ears
and your fat breast feeds sparrows beneath dangerous trees.
Order was important in 1951. Fame was a uniform. Don’t worry.
I kept the sales tags but logic disheveled by deft fingering watched
for thieves with complicated programs bent on destruction.
You slept like nations nurse history. Imagine, you are one skyscraper
submitted to the descent of man or unexpected storm troopers
with porno angels drop from clouds in full uniform when Macy’s
Thanksgiving Day Parade ends two days before the postponed election.
We are murdered by that annoying war and the malodor of jet fuel
splattered on fried eggs garnished with sweet basil.
Hotel Baghdad
When I first worshipped the WT skeletons
and the brass beasts of its skull
the dead actually spoke as movies
tweaked as surrealism weeps?
steel cut lifted finally fell to pieces
in archaic puzzle. The accident as all
the fall of human memory became remains
as camera lift air/as-ethereal smoke
paused in the doorway of Hamlets weir?
He who controls rivers marks life too.
I remember how the steel and aluminum façade
crumbled into arms of the air dragging down quiet
laughter from yesterday gruel of screams
of rage in the ordinary justice of work, so
be it, and I am again laughing at the circus
created by the falling walls, and nothing
left behind when before it all seemed perfect
stable like world economy rebounding on
dark, insect infested trampoline. Oh, you
cannot see the bugs, the critter’s periscope
ascending like light rays from dead Mars.
Mars is irrelevant and beautiful in its desert froth
hiking the dunes, the darks spots, and rich
terrain to discover water more valuable
than gold in the treasure of wampum left
behind to trail Great River now called
Hudson into the carnal whore house
with leaping bar keeps and trembling
multi gender whores riding Islam
and the last spiked pole to Baghdad
found with the stain of Euphrates
as the spectra of outsiders shows.
Baghdad is uglier too and beautiful
in the range of passion to survive?
we live American soldier says openly
and should live back in Cresco, IA
sinking into highway 9 riding the north
tier of the state to Spirit Lake and
miracles at Estherville, where the soldier
born as dreams in the red light of his
mother’s hair saw the last click before
entering Valhalla. Death, slow, its timing
too soon for this lad, or that lass, as
the crown of the World Trade comes
tumbling down, only remnant
imagine the worst about humankind
and it actually is far more harsh and motives
course into tributaries, and in that least
heart, in its bottom the plug withdrawn
the spike of truth like swords kills in plays
Death comes to the Rosenberg’s. In 1953,
Electricity almost fails, but Ethel dies second,
as Sing the north tower held after south falls
with one great voice how can we know?
the truth of echoes and shadows without
remembering the birth of tragedy on 9/11.
Can truth ever be eaten if we doubt this horror?
Kill them all. No. So simple to make murder
and suicide the same chord. It is not the last
note, of course, we can put up our mirrors
and what do we see, a hundred trembling
horses and the historical vermin of fleas
held to the rudder by the teams of rats
dress right dressed in their parade as spoils
of some civilized masked ball where
the princess, long stained by desire
stolen by good intentions and fair waste
rises over the electronic weapons as lies
tragically become the next 4th of July authorized
battle field and celebration for righteous war.
So far, into this middle poem I say all war
is righteous and without defense. We are holy
eyesores that crumble into precise waves
of goodbyes and at lasts an incomplete love
of death and lonely walks in Battery Park.
Yankee Stadiums 1953
In 1953, Marilyn Monroe kissed my cheek
and I warmed her tits, and then I saw
my mother dancing like a burlesque
queen as she did every night begging
I to tell her she was beautiful
which was easy so easy – Is not
the sunrise always magic.
MM and Mother fucked me true
on the TV screen where Ozzie and Harriet
played their childhood games with Ricky
and David in that Pleasantville World
Later, much later, after the feast,
as TS Eliot said, Nam grew like locust
from the mud of my eyes. I was bare,
naked and fucked and so loved by lips
My other mother, Daisy, lived part of the same road.
She spread her legs waited for cocks to sprout and cheese
to roam from lips of pussy willows; vines my father beat
in her eyes with military belt. Have you ever looked?
at pain and eyes? Have you noticed how they curl?
up glazed, and when dead we are clouds that nothing
passes until space and time as sharp knifes
and dangerous ridges of break heaven on bottom land
umber where blood soil father grew until dicks made
sweat more easily amid flowers cut out of rubbers
broken, fragmented like grenades split asunder,--
my mother of mercy screamed at skin pushed back
ache of cunt as father cock pushed and pulled, as dicks do
In 1953, present in pearl mirror of Pepsodent teeth,
I wore the black and white TV screen as I rode my
bike. I was reality on Little Big Payoff, an actual
part of the events of 1953 -- yes part of TV payola
schemes made for the boy did nice things for family,
no kidding. I won all this shit for my sister
while Randy Merriman played drunk, and
this girl, who looked like Carol Lynley,
an actress from the 60s, spread wide her
arabesque and rang and rang all night
like love beaten in my eyes. I was completely
transfixed by the endless plight of the dark earth
renewed, free of poison, made clean by
rubbing of ass against ground in the artistry
of sex on a merry go round with Mom and MM
a threesome only a greedy boy would conjure.
I remember watching the show when I was
13, thinking of that same blond actress
while I jerked off in my pants a dirty
man at last while my mother waited in bed
and I was the great scream of Broadway.
There was more always more, and equally
true, that can be said about beasts at the zoo.
LAST RITES FOR THE NEW YORK
WORLD TRADE CENTER 9-11-01
In the call of it, in the pace,
in the ranks of terror,
“Last Rites for the George Washington
Memorial Bridge”
unsettled long after Fall
of twin towers, Iraq where
the cities of the god MARDUK
quiver with the Tigris and Euphrates
dust led to dust and we descended
warily, falling haphazard in mouth
of lightning and blizzards, and
with one death defying leap
we were taken from the pitch of flat
roof North Tower to the base
of a fallen idol raised to heroes
and our ashes strewn for decades
in the salt and oil and bigotry
of that Islam, which makes all
non-believers into infidels,
and not even barely human.
How can we live in that squall?
-----------------
By the shining of that bridge
Night moved in a yellow frieze
caught the leaping street
Morning in an atmospheric haze
beyond a mulberry sky.
At sunrise the steel
delicate, chalk gray:
first to the love of the rock
anchored between
each silver arm
At noon the blossom folded
inward like a Morning Glory
quivering at its last closing—
harmonic catenary’s, a sign:
eclipsed as the root of the cliff
slid, astride a forgotten fault,
shattered as the last trucks
tumbled off an empty shelf.
2.
We crews gather to unzip film
of the first day of any Bridge.
Taxi, bus and truck drivers
follow alternate routes--
Commuters grind work; Distribute
unfair wealth assigns revenge.
News reports indicate we have fallen --
Trucks filled with live chickens and
drums of sewage break-- smashed
on the winding highway below Palisades.
Also fallen at this instant: Lincoln,
Holland and Battery Park tunnels
collapse inside their own vacuume.
Three dirty bombs set at noon.
3.
The bridges died today.
They were living things.
Collapsed on Jersey
shore of Great River
the highways to escape
were blocked by uneasy
panic and late reports
by News Doctors. The Fall
declines to a thousand fragment
bath of history blocked by plot
obsession, then empty spells
of Tinker toys, and no one could
find a child map that several
hundred families knew as
as fate prescribed for death.
4.
West tower of GWB shifted on plate
set off wave to vibrate roadway --
Masked vibrations increased sway
Finally, steel weakened to silence
alarm and the fall -- traffic stopped
above the screams of tide and river.
The catenaries quit, obsession stopped.
First gray blood froze on the windshield
Second, hearts stopped in fall. Third, children
on slight vacation became birds that splattered
on the surface of the water traveling
downward as if to hit the street at 50 miles per hour.
Bones broke. Eyes closed. Teeth shattered
Brains stopped. Nerves held shattered
while the corpse painted dirty waters pink.
It happened on the fourth instant
of the tenth hour. Planned for years
Four small trucks passed the west tower
stopped, blocked the road. Above a small
plane that recently had taken off from
Teterboro Airport skimmed the water
Aircraft scrambled followed their prey.
On the top level of the bridge five cars
filled with humanity emptied. The men
and women began to pray. Lanes
stopped on east and west towers
Geologist had predicted
that the west tower
was the better able
to withstand change.
The East falls but millions
crawl back with hands on hips
discover the lost night
and silent mirrors of war.
---------------------------------
Gadfly
My GADFLY is Sir Crow
Other times when he plays
Peter Jackson Campbell
AKA the Gadfly, I get too angry or
impatient with politics, people,
and their petty affairs:
I wear my gadfly masks,
Jesus said— as my crass disguise.
My makeup does not fully cover
the other. Nevertheless, I spit
to me, it has not supposed
to erase you—just Christ!
Masks slip out and in, divide
with my female and male (HIM)
and HYN (neuter) masks, and when
I am my Herself, or herself, and
not himself, to pull punches and genes
faked experiments that often forgotten
or incorporated into larger mitochondrion.
I am often that virus
captured by the organism,
as it will not destroy itself;
I exhibit the free will of captive.
I become the virtual/virtual mind
both as debt and as resource. Yes, I,
the Gadfly, dear Crow, Christ, is
intelligent and full of my HYN self;
but I am also cruel, with a difficult job:
keeping the world fucked up with improvement
that by the order of things must fail.
No real change keeps things level headed.
No one really cares what happens to his,
her or HYN neighbor. Yes, I love it. Yes,
keep the world in a state of fuck up
while I cured the ills and calm nerves.
I enjoy my work. I am the witness
to dissociation and psychosis. My mania,
medieval with an authentic Kabala breach
at least an octave higher, lower. Primal?
SO how do we measure Freud with others?
who spoke about madness as entertainment?
understand my attitude is really not accurate,
and I get tired of the rap that I undermine
the rule of law, make the crooked straight,
if you will. Smile, at that fucking allusion,
dear ones. Gadfly knows best. He is my good arm,
my perfect prick, my sweet lovely inverted cunt.
What passionate peace I defame. Crow spoke fast,
doubling my tones interjecting comic lines,
running down road away from the blunt
projectiles hurled by gun shot balled at his ass,
tracers caught in underbrush, as the flowers
are soft as the soul's narrow shadow
admitting blue tones of ultra morning atmosphere
as garnish. He does love art and the brown
tones of Vermeer’s Delft and never forget
the yellowed grays of Picasso sucked with lavender.
Yes, you need to know that on 9-11-2001
by the grace of God Crow AKA the Gadfly
saved lives that needed to be saved,
and I did not worry about physics.
How could we? Knowing unknown,
unknown unbound is our least objective task.
On the Road to the WTC with Mighty Sex
that Street Poet also known as "Arctic Blue"
-----------------------------------------
Easter 2005
Byzantium Postlude
Aftershocks as stained glass
windows crack and crack refrain.
I live these melodies in musical concerto.
Hidden voices retain the sculpture of paint.
How wonderfully her breasts fit
the design of my mouth. I am humble
in the hunger I satisfy by her heaving
parts as it draw my mind into tour
of her desire multiplied by other essential
compositions of truth including false plots
left behind to make the story subtle,
more interesting than a simple
declaration of one composition
as design after draft failed until
we found in this new explored beauty
one last temptation of a horny Christ
wishing she could suck her own birth.
2.
Sailors call the solar wind ‘Essential Pi,’
one last terrified leap of calculus screams goodbye.
Questions derived from that wind drive
the universe outside calculated time.
3.
The Gadfly, Sir Rabbit and my rogue elephant
dressed in a fake name for my self
dropped into the pocket of words as decorated
force kissed into the periphery of childish games
the become sing song up the door, down the pipe
lick my anus and does it right macabre doggerel.
These garter snakes destabilize catenaries,
shuffle plate tectonics. They dance at late parties
without benefit of careful formularies, measured
broken spoons and the aspiration of dull passion
left outside too long where nothing but result
measured as silver streams pure rain to collect
bibliography from universal dictionary.
Suddenly, we shout truth, embarrassed liars
by mistake we return to an ignorant fold in wet ground.
We are planted, germinated seeds displaced
by a sudden and impossible need for disorder
measured as the light unfolds in an exact box
of debilitating space that cannot resolve construction.
4.
Greetings Americans.
I am the last voice in the stone
of granite dragged from the vault.
I will be the least President
arranged in aphorisms as small
words whittled on paper
remaindered by Kings for peons
to read and become believers.
Are you a believer?
I speak as the transformation of sun and oil,
tire diamonds weep. We fall asleep in the cemetery.
We grow too many mouths and too few arms
before we are restored without tests
or regulations to retain history and speech.
I am not meant to be morbid. I am calm. Taste the ordinary
lips and the disconsolate pain of knowing you are death and life
all at the same instant, in the similar myths.
5. What is a myth?
rags a the figure set up to model,
Instructor labels her face, the ass, and her tits
as myth -- He pins them to silver
paper and she screams without love
that there are no borders allowed in Hell –
At least Hell can be kept alive, so he thought.
We are lonely in our subtle
bestiary of forgotten zoological artifacts.
This is my thought, my ideal, my last
winnowing of texture along sea lines
but I am outside the force more often
than not, but I do know love darling.
We are the people on the coins;
the fabric is not strong. What do?
we know about the hereafter, as we
descend beyond the cross facing
that falls from the WTC as beings
discharged from Eden after failed
contracts and rhapsodies of why?
6.
I am not Crow, Gadfly or Rabbit.
What you touch is real, and what you kiss
has the taste of butter churned from?
the battery of stars assembled three
days before the fall of man near
the corner of West St and Vesey
earlier today when twin towers became
an ordinary victim and then void.
Death of Atta –
Byzantium ‘Ghazal” September 11, 2001
Blood is blank red and hands thirsty are dead skin;
I walk through air from Boston to die with dead skin
Bravery is never shared. Spirit creates new dictionary
looking at the shift of clay I burn the anger as dead skin
Words crumble at my feet sift one letter decks of cards
to discover Paradise wherefore I obey Allah, break rings
and melt pearls of dead skin. Crows peck my face and I shake.
Plane scrambles fire-rain. We bounce, wings tear sundial.
Then I strangle-- pass into dead skin. Where is Paradise?
Thought ends. Atta’s dead. Clear blue skies rain two arms,
head, and half a leg -- barbecued dead skin disemboweled.
LANGUAGE BANG BANGS –
The first night after the holocaust silence ruled the universe.
God said let there be light, and darkness flowed. Ribbons
played in the silence. There was no speech but the energy of
Mars was read in the Newspapers all week as rovers wandered
the rims of craters and found deceit in the fair arrangement
of dry souls gathered on the lips of disaster. Language
is silence the sand made the speech at the well of Congress.
Silence is magic. No one can lie if magic applied in the corner
of the canvas, where the brush strokes are freely spent.
The holocaust lasted for years and centuries. It rained death
but not only lives, but the fall out from other stars held up
formerly by the direction space flowed. Everything is contingent
God said. Nothing is independent and violence is a specter even
when portrayed beautifully in 70mm film as a quiet actor plays
at Christ for role play feast where the subjects sit around
and watch God die while they jerk off, rub their clits, and
the semen spray lasts for two thousand years. I want to like
Mel Gibson’s movie. I want to love Christ. I want to begin
to know that redemption has a thousand lives like a cat.
Yes, I know Christ was a Jew. I am a Jew. I do not fault
the movie for pointing out the politics of the time, but
that politics has been used here to fore to justify pogroms
and other parties of miserable critters. I heard the story of
a cat let loose on madness and he was lonely and felt as if the
world came to an end, but then he learned that he would be in
paradise with the Lord some day and of course all was right
in the world. What is the meaning of the song of the lyrics?
of the poem spread out over the delta of Venus as I crept
into her skin and watched the coming of her belly waves
ripple in the darkest storm when more comes and then bang.
There was a big bang. It was the beginning of time. It was
silent for millions of years. We hear it now but not at the
pitch of human wave lengths. We cannot hear the pitch
of the sun spinning billions of years away from the Cadillac
that crashed into the gas station near the pumps turning
the macadam into a fire ball but as miracles can reasonably
happen -- God walked out of the fire safe Jesus too walked
down the hill leaving his body behind. His spirit rode storms
and even Pilot couldn’t stop the flow of blood. Christ knew
the miracle and after all he liked pain or at least that’s what
was spoken to the Brothers who beat the poet up when he was
a small boy. Christ will save you from yourself Edward.
Bang. Bang.
My shoulder imploded. Whap. My side was bruised with a long
stick. Nothing could be seen, and I endured it like Christ
did being rung up the cross with nails put to my wrist, and
providence waking as I peed in fear so much can happen in a
bad moment on the edge of despair. Even God cannot help you
survive the end of the universe. God will disappear too
including heaven and hell. Purgatory will wait for the new
building to open, so they said at lunch time. We exist as
they say in that climate of half way there and back, and it
is absolutely silent. Language doesn’t’ give it vitality.
Space does. Un fettered space driven into the known by the
unknown. Nothing we know can ever be revised, for at
that moment, when it is believed, that moment cannot be changed
and it will exist like the sand bars ever modulated and raised,
lowered and fallen as we hear nothing, we know the presence
of the holocaust today
September 11, 2101
I am told by the inhabitants of this place
that “Hounds” travel undetected from their cage
at the base of the craters to the froth of all rivers.
They are leaders by declaration of death. They
are the inviolate ancestors of the first holocaust?
No one can see them sniffling in the glare
blue face paints. They disperse at dawn to become
yellow arrows darting uncertain waves on the
return tide of river. I do not fear them, but
I hesitate to tell this story. It has many chapters
that began one hundred years ago. My raw face,
is the only human statue that can be felt?
but not seen by them. I murmur brief oaths
curse the historical triangle and hesitate before
I am bound to disappear again. “This is
a simple report of the travesty of our culture.”
I found those words painted in the street.
I cannot waver in my testament. I must put
my shoe on first as I fix the sole and paint
the bottoms with glue that holds me down
so I don’t wander from place to place with
or without a package of truthful lies.
2.
The bridge is gone. The tunnels have collapsed.
Mud resumes it ride over the West Side Highway
Every theater is filled with debris. All Rembrandts
have dissolved in the perilous mud of the orders
of the day speaking only that which is allowed?
It is beautiful here. Of them no one’s alive; they
repeat as a chorus “events were not predictable.”
Nothing happens during war. Nothing will
cleanse the face of our enemies. They repeat
the word enemy doesn’t exist. We are one
mind without format, partitions and bytes.
Silicon is the next word the Hounds
will erase from the dictionary of Holocaust.
Today was September 12, 2001.
The world ended early this morning. There would
never be words again to show the absolute distance
of violence petrified into an act so desperate
it is now being white washed as political talcum powder
for political ads and rebuttal. Please, hear my travelers.
No one can speak today. There are no words but the fire
and Crow falling down into the origin of matter. The Gadfly
welcomes us to the party as he wants us to laugh at our
misfortune. I do not laugh. I saw the thousands die.
I hold their hands. They are with me on the mountain where
I am crucified. They will ascend with me to heaven.
No one can speak for the victims. They are the patter of silence.
The Gadfly will try to make them into heroes. The Crow flies dancing
writing their histories as great oaths make fortune tellers
into prophets. I am not with them in this silence. I am here
at the bottom of the North Tower. It stands upright. Today was
September 12, 2001. Yesterday was lost in the muddle of holocaust.
Please don’t find it. Don’t warn anyone.
Future Tense Scenario
Entrance to the tunnel smashed
at bedlam when lights screeched and
ceremonial yells careened out of movie
loops so help the film editors sleeping
in their own excrement on the floor
making final cut at the entrance
of the bomb just before the ceiling
collapsed and washed away like
the inside of a gun the second
day of war began again
when the flames of September
morning Horse drugged glaze
by the driver of stolen truck
afraid of Allah and driven to
New Jersey from New York
in anguish of calm, he struck
knowing his face in the lanes
of a million dead sleeping by road
wandering with God mesmerized
by the notion that God is not good.
2.
Dear Holland tunnel, first born
out of the bedrock of schist and
the muck of terrified shad.
There is no unified conscience;
Nothing will happen as predicted.
It is an instant of play back
the tidal blaze rises on face
down the angular cheeks into
the creases of sex and worn eyes
until life doesn’t hear and cannot
at least recognize the spaces
between yesterday and tomorrow
There is no duration when we ride
to find the last truth and make it
our bond as testimony as belief.
There is no belief. How can there be?
We pass with the flood in seventeenth century
of tides without atomic delusion not does
the fertilizer became bombs -- nothing
stimulates another century but the future
rose as a great painting out of itself.
Violence is born of the child it craved.
Our truck drives American born
to be wild exits the funeral train.
He is not California bound. He
steps off the plane, and his Irish
face will pull the pin on the monster
He drives faster out Route #3 to Exit
turnpike at 14, then to Route 80, his
truck moving faster until the explosion
rocks the base rock of Hackensack, NJ.
Why do we halt at mid-passage?
Byzantium appears again as copy
spiked by significant change in
meadowlands, and away from it all
no one why thousands died near
Rt. # 80 and not a million downtown
where Battery Park Spring runs dry.
---------
September Coney Island
Byzantium is not an ordinary list of spectra, value, color suitable as a failed ideal but America, its bill of rights, may become the only weapon drawn out of the memory of fire as creator and destroyer to survive the temporary universe.
After you piss hard in the public stall, shake it well
before leaving the john to dream-stare out
over the Coney Island waters to patches
of sand where yellow sand buckets
and bloody shovels gather to recreate yesterday
held within the clatter of the arcades.
Every tin hole buzz wheel pick up sticks
appears small when compared to scars
created when falling buildings scatter
voices and wave with falsetto screams.
2.
When the Delta Jet hit the north tower
smoldering gas that would etch
the terror in my two-hour trip over
the Manhattan Bridge the first hour
Canal Street had opened to commuters
Squint at the emerald sun.
the rays beat orange.
Under its pause
we improvise logic
and tactical weapons.
Do not stare when you gather smoke,
you burn what nature cannot repair.
Weak men and women
when confronted by longing
fight wars in countries
with colored
glasses
that fall out of eyes
when complaints fail.
Truth lonely
in this array
steps up and out of
boxes
in the bottom of the ninth,
which
is why the Yankees
win this and that?
Out of balance, precisely accurate,
Muhammad Atta slid in course
to transmute color not with
intention but out of memory
of fire and how vision cannot
be
placed in straight jacket
Imagine him again and
this time he will not win;
Vision will turn blind
when
empty eyes are the least
obvious solution and wounds
drawn for the failed oasis in
the middle of a green desert
heal but do not sustain thirst.
