He was just some coked-out,
crazed King w/crooked teeth
& a teardrop forever falling,
fading from his left eye, peddling
crack to passengers or crackheads
passing as passengers on a train
chugging from Chicago to Cicero,
from the Loop through K-Town:
Kedzie, Kostner, Kildare.
I was just a brown boy in a brown shirt,
head shaven w/fuzz on my chin,
staring at treetops & rooftops
seated in a pair of beige shorts:
a badge of possibility — a Bunny
In Miami, this May afternoon, I look up,
the sky hot, so hot, always, and heating up hotter —
how long I have loved this scene.
The clouds are white optimistic churches;
I cannot number them.
Herons, pelicans, and gulls glide like dreams
through cloud-portals, cloud-porticos, and cloud-porte-cochères
Giotto could have done with his passion for blues and dimensions.
Hard not to love a place always called by possibility.
Nearby, Cuba is singing and somewhere here
Richard Blanco is writing his poems.
As I enter the city,
In their doorways women sit sewing
By the good light of afternoon
And nothing is beyond knowing
Though the sun shall go down soon
A shepherdess near a bramble ditch
And the Princess in the Alcazar
Keep the same precise stitch
And they both can see far
And when the knell tolls
All are wondering who —
If it is a lady, many bells
For a beggar, one will do
Four-fifty. The palings of Trinity Church
Burying Ground, a few inches above the earth,
are sunk in green light. The low stones
like pale books knocked sideways. The bus so close to the curb
that brush-drops of ebony paint stand out wetly, the sunlight
seethes with vibrations, the sidewalks
on Whitehall shudder with subterranean tremors. Overhead, faint flickers
Correct answers: c, d, d, b, b, a, b, a, a, c, b, b, b, c, b, d, b, d, c.
— If you scored 14-19, you’ re a well adjusted person, a home-owner, with and income of at least $50,000 a year.
— If you scored 8-13, you either rent or live with your parents, never exercise, and consume at least a 6-pack a day.
— if you scored 7 or less, you’ re in trouble with the FBI and/or the IRS, cut your own hair, and use public transit as your primary mode of transportation.
Last night I found my face below
the water in my cupped hands.
The mask made of copper and bone
criss-crossing to make a smirk,
a false glamour, a plated glaze.
I unwound myself from the heavy
machinery of my body's burden.
The lute, the light, chime.
I'll get up and partner myself
with music, the purple moon
peeling itself like a plum.
Men stand in a circle and
they will ask and ask again.
I want to pick the thick bud,
to lose myself in the body's posture
bending in or away, to let
Mouths full of laughter,
the turistas come to the tall hotel
with suitcases full of dollars.
Every morning my brother makes
the cool beach new for them.
With a wooden board he smooths
away all footprints.
I sit with my railroad face and ask God to forgive me
for being a straight line toward the dead
who were buried with their poor clothes
in the Arizona desert of iron borders.
This way of waving to the embers of the past,
not apologzing for carrying torn rosaries inside
my pockets where beads of worry became fossilized
insects whose dry husks I kept since a child.
There is no noisier place than the suburbs,
someone once said to me
as we were walking along a fairway,
and every day is delighted to offer fresh evidence:
the chainsaw, the leaf-blower blowing
one leaf around an enormous house with columns,
on Mondays and Thursdays the garbage truck
equipped with air brakes, reverse beeper, and merciless grinder.
There’ s dogs, hammers, backhoes
or serious earthmovers if today is not your day.
How can the birds get a peep
or a chirp in edgewise, I would like to know?
And into the heavens, as on a bright day after rain,
there came the shapes of four creatures,
and they each had the likeness of a man,
and each man had four wings outstretched
and each wing had four eyes emblazoned, wide open,
given to weeping at the worlds they contained:
