Crime & Punishment

In the frozen square, the student asks me if I will
sell him the books from my backpack. He hides them
under his winter coat. Steam rises from the whole
wheat rolls we break open at the breakfast table.
We drink hot apple tea and pronounce the skyline
“charming.” In a jail a man counts the visible bones,
and recounts them in the blaze of morning. To turn
a self to light proves painful — each piece must
be dissected in turn; you pass through every feeling
imaginable, so many you might make a dictionary —

Frères humains qui après nous vivez,
Soon they’ ll have the speed freak twisting
On a scaffold, soon the birds
Will come to peck out his eyes, & when
He’ s too weak & exhausted to turn
His head away, they’ ll do it, too,
They’ ll peck his eyes right out.
You’ ll want to watch it happen, you’ ll want
To witness it. You’ ll want to see Paolo
And Francesca almost touch before
They’ re swept away again, him in one line
Waiting for rations, her in another one,
Both of  them naked, standing there,

with Dana Ward

it’ s rank it cranks you up
crash you’ re fracked you suck
shucks you’ re wack you be
all you cracked up to be

dead on arrival
overdosed on whatever
excess of hate and love
I sleep alone

if you were there
then please come in
tell me what’ s good
think up something

psychic sidekick
gimme a pigfoot
show me my lifeline
read me my rights

They dropped the charges of homicide, filed new charges of
terrorism, dropped the charges of terrorism, filed
new charges of public nudity, dropped the charges of
public nudity, filed new charges of lewd and
lascivious behavior. A spokesman for the FBI
said they found him on the hood of an SUV in a part
of town known as the “Fruit Loop”. His penis was in another
man’ s mouth and in the front seat were vials containing a rare
strand of bacteria known to cause blindness in rats. They
dropped the charges of public nudity and filed new

When they come
filling the yard with their overheard,

broke-glass catastrophes of voice,
overcrowded party line,

he lets the screen door clap
to see them plume

the settle back to the fence,
aftershocks of crowd and wail.

When they come
he says again he was home at breakfast

radio preacher doing love thy neighbor
and then the bomb,

just ask the wife.
The silence

in the TV's cathode glow
slowly fills with questions

as starlings shutter light
then weigh the lines, voices

When Love with unconfinèd wings
Hovers within my Gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the Grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered to her eye,
The Gods that wanton in the Air,
Know no such Liberty.

Once upon a today and yesterday and nevermore there were 7 men and women all locked / up in prison cells. Now these 7 men and women were innocent of any crimes; they were in prison because their skins were black. Day after day, the prisoners paced their cells, pining for their freedom. And the non-black jailers would laugh at the prisoners and beat them with sticks and throw their food on the floor. Finally, prisoner #1 said, “I will educate myself and emulate the non-colored people. That is the way to freedom — c’ mon, you guys, and follow me.” “Hell, no,” said prisoner #2.

Hard Rock / was / “known not to take no shit
From nobody,” and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick
Canopy of kinky hair.