Over the warming ground, swings toll like clock tower bells.
Squirrels spiral the trunk of a pine.
We fill a pail with sand.
The day is robin’ s eggshell fine.
My mother’ s shoulder had three shallow scars.
Shining archipelago.
The quiet theaters of our lives.
Immune is a sung word, skirting sorrow.
Kneeling at no registry of toddlers with amorphous voices.
Night sweats without monument.
The lake has the sea on its breath.
One man has an island.
His death in Benares
Won’ t save the assassin
From certain hell,
Any more than a dip
In the Ganges will send
Frogs — or you — to paradise.
My home, says Kabir,
Is where there’ s no day, no night,
And no holy book in sight
To squat on our lives.
How do you,
Asks the chief of police,
Patrol a city
Where the butcher shops
Are guarded by vultures;
Where bulls get pregnant,
Cows are barren,
And calves give milk
Three times a day;
Where mice are boatmen
And tomcats the boats
They row;
Where frogs keep snakes
As watchdogs,
And jackals
Go after lions?
Does anyone know
What I’ m talking about?
Says Kabir.
american indian
outside the guthrie
forever wounded
by tributes
high western
movie mockery
decorations
invented names
trade beads
federal contracts
limps past
the new theater
wounded indian
comes to attention
on a plastic leg
and delivers
a smart salute
with the wrong hand
precious children
muster nearby
theatrical poses
under purple
tapestries
castles
and barricades
on stage
with reservation plans
Perhaps her cook, come under the influence
Of a few discreet piastres, had spoken
Too indiscreetly. Or just perhaps,
On a hot day along the azure of the Mediterranean,
Rue Fouad bearing a stream of traffic
To Muhammed Ali Square in a riot
Of klaxons and shouts, and the whole city
Gleaming white as it must have from a distance,
The former President lost his temper. Why did you yell in my mom’ s house?
She sounded like she does when her hands shake.
Was her reading too intense?
-- Did I kill Bin Laden? No. But I tried.
A compendium of words was stored here
Just underneath the chimney
I’ d like to see it that way
Fortune won’ t stand still for that
And pressure of the air flattens paper
I’ d like to see it that way
One comes into the room groomed, a pleasure
There’ s a patch of glitter in the glamor
I’ d like to see it that way
Each moment opens up sudden as an umbrella
On a day storms gather like wool
A way I’ d really like to see it
So you can’ t assume a face again
Before the non-face puts in its appearance
At Robben Island the political prisoners studied.
They coined the motto Each one Teach one.
In Argentina the torturers demanded the prisoners
Address them always as “Profesor.”
Many of my friends are moved by guilt, but I
Am a creature of shame, I am ashamed to say.
Culture the lock, culture the key. Imagination
That calls boiled sheep heads “Smileys.”
It was a picture I had after the war.
A bombed English church. I was too young
to know the word English or war,
but I knew the picture.
The ruined city still seemed noble.
The cathedral with its roof blown off
was not less godly. The church was the same
plus rain and sky. Birds flew in and out
of the holes God’ s fist made in the walls.
Oddly enough, there is a
“Unicorn Pleasure Ring” in existence.
Research reveals that Hitler lifted
the infamous swastika from a unicorn
emerging from a colorful rainbow.
Nazi to unicorn: “You’ re not coming
out with me dressed in that ridiculous
outfit.” You can finally tell your daughter
that unicorns are real. One ripped the head off
a waxwork of Adolf Hitler, police said.
