Part Three
1. lines under a monday sun
2. Idylls of the King [Memorial Day ’05]
3. still lifes and landscapes
4. last legs

lines under a monday sun

Some days, all things are impossible—
when even the cool morning air deserts me
& these moments are fortified by damnation
& the birds sing on as though nothing’s wrong. This is a world I can’t trust.
All things being unequal in the sight of heaven
& Grace is reserved for those who do not question
only obey—the nature of the Faithful is penitent & blind
& there’s so little mercy to go round
on these long, impossible days.

These days—
when the coffee is bitter
& the air suffocated me like swallowing wool
& these words are merely a gag reflex

& my daughter’s eyes no longer shine infinite Grace upon this receding brow
only this unbearable melting from the Monday morning sun
on this bloated face,
hiding from one more day’s gravitational futility.

I want desperately to believe—
childhood biblical stories return to me
echoed on my daughter’s lips
rewinding that same ol’ epic tale
of a youth gone wrong
mis-spent years / days damaged & gone
in the process of production
this feature film about the resonance of failure in a new century:

for all our hopes & angst
nothing has really changed
but the window dressing
& the size of the mountain we’re s’posed to climb
in the name of all things we decide are holier
than thou, great faceless committee of Heaven.

Idylls of the King [Memorial Day ’05]

1.

The city’s strangling me in my sleep— slowly
so the coroner won’t complain about the summer murder body backlog.
His hands leave no marks. Smog leaves no fingerprints. 2 nights ago
plastic factory waste kicked me in the right side ‘til blood & water spilled
though the Cat-Scan insists I’m fine.

Maybe a man only lives up to his usefulness.
Maybe if it wasn’t smog from the soap factory,
it’d be a sleepy bus driver or random cockroach dander mistaken for sea salt.

Old folks make a pilgrimage to the desert for clean air:
fewer irritants to make wrinkles & gray hair.
After 40 years of making rubber gaskets & pink house insulation
& giant rolls of non-asbestos death
polyurethane
petrol-based made chemicals
made to make our lives better, warmer & wealthier

a little clean air
so little to ask.

2.

The man in the bed next to me is dying, slowly.
Waiting it out. The only people who visit him
are doctors & nurses who look at the chart to remember his name. One nurse calls him by mine. He answers just the same.

Sometimes he whispers when no one is there;
to a wife, a son, old friends. No one.

One of the nurses said (I heard her whisper)
he’s a veteran.

Always so polite, says his
“Yes Ma’am”
& “Thank you Ma’am.”
& “Whatever you think, Ma’am.”

To hear him makes me sad.
Something sloppy
something broken in his voice
like life finally beat him down. & for all the sacrifices
he’s left here dying alone
in a Cincinnati hospital
where even the Priest stays away from the colostomy smell.
We’re all doomed to be old dogs;
blind & mangy
tick ridden smelly reflections
of some puppy in a photo
stuck to the fridge with a Purina magnet.
Too old to hunt
to rickety to play
all there is
is napping & dinner
& the occasional trip outside
to fertilize mom’s retirement garden.

3.

I woke early to the sounds of medical conversation
& the absence of you.

Alone considering karma. I know it’s the city killing me. The doctors claim pneumonia
but I know what happens in my sleep.

The weight of your absence
turns in my dreams to mountains
to the rock that forged your fingers. I dream of you
of a winter home between your thighs
of eternal spring sunshine in your eyes
of autumn in arms, like colored piles of leaves
of your heartbeat the beacon sending me home.

Hospitals have learned to kill us
one blood sample at a time.

The man next to me is named Stanley. All they will say of him is all they know
“Ain’t that a shame…”

4.

One day a year to remember
though we don’t know it is we’re remembering.
It’s just another holiday
& some poor somebody’s gotta work
‘cause I’m here on the 14th floor.

On TV, the President laying down one more wreath
on one more anonymous grave in Arlington National Cemetery.
Some young man’s American Dream of dying
larger than he lived. The warrior’s immortality dream
we’ve heard since Gilgamesh.

Cultures that survive
understand the importance of everyday life—
still breathing means something. Taking one more breath
counts an eternity.

The city’s overcast today. Even the sun doesn’t burn through industrial blowback
the sludge pumping though the heart of the city
keeps us alive to drain our souls drip dry. The best views
are of 3rd generation impressionist painters
all soft light & pastels
sitting garden motifs unpeopled
& unblemished.

5.

I felt my age today. To be an adult is to be fragile;
to see the first glimpse of mortality.

The weight
weight of years
weight of obligation

obligation to be myself
myself poet
myself husband
myself father
myself man
myself alive.

Obligation to live
to the great experiment of a life lived honestly.

/symbiosis/

6.

a.

So I’m not dead—
not yet & I never even got a chance to thank you for the ride.
My childheart skipped a beat lying on that stretcher
waiting for the news. Faceless doctors
& severe-tongued nurses
slithering around
saying nothing. Whispering hiss-like at crude jokes only they understand
offered up by an internist with a penchant for buggering boys in the supply closet.
With some patients, he doesn’t even wash his hands after
& ‘accidentally’ gives emergency prostate exams. Evil bastard, that one.
His name is the name of a nightmare demon I dreamed 20 years ago
before you were here to protect me.

Visitors always come somber
& before there’s time for a shower. 3 days unshaven & greasy haired
makes the experience more dramatic.

IV’s & oxygen tubes
designed to scare the patients into health
as their families fall near to death.
The eyes all guarded
conversations light & pointless
cocktail chit chat without the booze to make it worthwhile.

Love & caution—
quiet steps
subtle realization
you’re not 16 anymore. Obligation at the heart of manhood
fused like igneous rock centuries underground
forged by lava and flood water. Obligation to live for the love of others
stronger than the desire to burn out.

b.

These tales come down to us through the ages
& replay on the evening news:
stories of heroes dying
remembrance full in hand
immortality in a 2 ½ second shot of some soldier’s picture.

The way we’d rather remember them…
since they took the cameras out
so we’d never know how things really go.

These tales come down to us
stories of brave fathers standing tall… a better way to remember them
rather than the frailty of the last breath. Dying childlike,
early in the evening.

7.

Weight of love & obligation
tundra hearts
this inner geography upended by the tremors in your tears
vast wasteland
endless worries sprout like weeds
like endless carnivorous vines
snaking ‘round my ankles
up my inseam & inside. They devour my intestines whole
unnoticed in the night floor nurse
or the early morning X-Ray.
(though my blood is so thick, they use a sump pump to take a lab sample.)
This is nothing new. Doctors whisper,
make clicking sounds in their cult language
sounds like laughing. Natural instinct tells them
when to squeeze the weak, feed the convalescent fears of wives, mothers, & daughters.
The lunch cart brings in a shriveled hotdog on a bed of wilted lettuce. The milk carton,
3 weeks past expiration, has the face of some missing son—
gone since ’82 from some satanic ritual abuse. Somewhere, the parents keep
those elementary school pictures, imagining the lives of other parents
who kept their kids safe
from rock music and role playing games
& what it might be like to see a college graduation.

8.

The vines have taken over my backbone.
Now in my sleep I slither up the halls like a boa constrictor.
Every morning, I wake with the taste of fresh blood in my mouth.
My arms & legs are heavier each day. In my dreams, I see grassland
bleary eye intoxicated by the smell of chloroform
& ecstatic photosynthesis. During the day the world loses more color
goes black & white.

Residue, like newspaper ink, is everywhere—
my hands, my eyes, covering the television
screen, your face, your eyes.

Every landmark is covered
like a fire’s burning somewhere we can’t see
so all the city’s covered in ash
& mourning.

still lifes and landscapes

1.
Our Promised Land is dull under this late morning haze
distant outlines barely seen
through miles of toxic smog from the soap & plastic factories
on the north side of the city.

Work-a-day slave ethic
the click-clack of stilettos on office floors
while outside, 40 stories below
another tragedy’s unleashed in the name of Imminent Domain
& the sound of shiney shoes scraping blood caked cement.

No one knows we’ve lost this campaign
to beat the valley down
like a cruel master breaks an old dog
then leaves it limping in the creek bed to die.

No one knows
but the civil engineers / chained in subterranean cubicles
damned to designing monstrosities
for to save the city at the taxpayer’s expense.
Sweating over blueprints written in virgin blood
for a few minutes every night
closing their eyes to find a dream of that sinful / beautiful sun, bottle of wine
& the sweet smell of the blanket after an afternoon picnic sexcapade.

The city rests on 40 mile wide pillars
made of dead bones,
the remains of frozen mastodons,
& sinews of nameless saints whose faces wore off in the last cave-in
when the 7 heroic statues tumbled from the 7 hills
& the avalanche buried the first 10,000 settlers mid-coitus.

2.
All our possibilities luminate under a purple perma-neon glow
casting long shadows,
horizontal arms stretching skyward
fingers dwindling towards invisible stars we know of only from bedtime stories
& pictures in ancient texts.

We send these faithless prayers skyward
weak admonishments from parched lips
carefully using the correct words
in these last, few moments
before an exhausted & dreamless sleep.

3.
These sights were foretold long before our arrival.
At the gates of the Eastern Mountains
our forebears received visions of this looming apoplexy
but lacking our contemporary terms
they interpreted them figuratively
& cut their way westward to avoid a slow death in southern swamps.

4.
From this distance, everything works in some cosmic order—
all the movements of all the feet on jaded crosswalks
some grand waltz. Chaos comes when you’re close
when you’re rubbing your nose in the inevitable shit
resulting from all this—

dancing.

Never coordinated, I.
I, whose feet were born to amble
never ceasing, even in my sleep. I’ve stopped being surprised
where I wake up. It is enough to simply breathe another day. Life is a matter of delegation.
Leave the work for the parts best suited:
feet walk
hands hold
eyes ogle
head avoid truth / ‘til the last possible moment
& always trust the feet to do the dirty work.
The mud here soaks through my journeyman sandals
cakes my toes in thousand yr. old blood
that the muddy water never quite cleans.

Asbestos debris falls from the tops of our Babylonian Towers:
Impossible stairs to the sky
hoping to find the remains of Jacob’s ladder
in proof of all our industry. We made God over in our own image
& now there’s nothing more to do but watch the crumbling afterbirth on the evening news.

A fleet of barges in the river
carry away the refuse we don’t want to consider
to be dumped anonymously
somewhere deep in the Atlantic.

5.
All the evidence was here—
the distance calculated with New Math
all the supplies marked & recorded
we begin out quest with clear conscious.

From the East
we traveled West—
searching for the endless forests
the river running through it
the gates of the Eastern Mountains
&the 7 Majestic Hills

somewhere, A fertile valley
a Vacation Bible School Genesis
new beginnings
where we can walk naked
& be unshamed of our shortcomings
forgetting out ancient knowledge of good & evil
& be whole again
swaddled in our innocence.

Since God does not create anymore
we will build for him / in our image
‘cause we know from Old Testament Tradition
that blood is the only appropriate offering

‘til we hear that voice
telling us we are good & faithful servants

even as the morning haze burns off
broiling us alive.

last legs

1.

I’ve spent my 10 years finding the way back to you—
the soft geography of your body
rolling hills & valleys deep in the recesses of your soul
ages of the earth, centuries of love & learning in your bones
like rings of trees
like layers of rock

all that is you is eternal.

& in the lost valley of your eyes,
your arms, your thighs
I am revived by the cool comfort
a person only feels when they are home.

2.

This world is not yours—
this one I’ve built of cement & gravel & steel
these smoke stacks filling in the sun
are not yours. This cacophony & chaos
& hunger & hate

are not yours.

Though my bones are world weary
& some days my heart is beaten down
& all I see are long shadows of the coming winter

in your embrace I am innocent again.

Across this muddy lake covering whole cities
this submerged reality walking tip toe
between oil spill stained waves

back to you

feeling ‘tween my toes
the lives of cities submerged
the sound of bubbles
last breath of memory. Echo of civilization
lost to the next generations
history suffocated under progress

rubbing the callouses off my feet
leaving them fresh for my arrival home
to you.