Ghost

When you died 
everyone became a ghost. 

I could see your face 
and now I can’t  

which means, I loved you.

Garden Maze

You may be enlightened or poisoned. 
Who can say what lies beneath the roses? 
Is it Cleopatra’s asp? The bird who fell from her nest? 
A troll who insults and violates you? 
A god who gives up all the patterns? 

It wasn’t long ago yesterday 
the world was preparing to burn 
and now it is burning:
Colored heroes of color excoriated. 
What's the difference I don't know. 
History, I guess, is full of colors
tribes dislike you seek to dismiss.
The succession of power is desperate
as a presidential tyro
excoriating heroes
before hanging his head like a dog--

crucifixion met with that peculiar human spice  
of sympathy ambivalence 
confusion blame best served 
on a soft body 
with coffee first morning. 
Good luck. 

Don’t mind the kinky twists. 
In one antechamber of nightshade 
you'll find a safe place to sleep 
with gumbo, lamb loin 
and lobsters at Christmas. 
Big fucking mansion-thing
best-possible cookware. 
A cocktail of remedies 
dreamt up by our finest pharmacists  
to keep you from desisting 
to a corner of abandoned allies 
and generational crime. 
Old fat and healthy, I grew. 

In this way (and a psychic canopy 
manifest in a lack of survival skills) 
I could never secede to Nunavut. 
My love for Lafcadio, Gaughin--the true freaks
is unquestioned.
But for me, the roses 
looked pretty at twilight.  
Admiring eyes were disappointed. 

Over here by the pond
I cried I'm boring as Burchfield! 
Vivaldi! I'm uglier than Poe!
-------------------------------------------- 

Who knows what you'll do 
in a labyrinth made of such memories 
again in gardens of your ultimatum 
considering the devils' lurid whispers 
invade every chamber 
and blame your mother XXX. 
In a cul-de-sac philosophers foresee themselves 
tragically spawning 
generations of slave owners  
villains victors victims  
spitting cobra-invective 
people like us believe-- 

Get on your knees for the military parade! 
Say good night to rock n’ roll! 

And they cry when they look at you wondering 
did you poison the air? 

You may be knifed in a parking lot  outside a Wendy’s. 
You may be quietly given polonium. 
You may just not know what the hell is going on 
and doin great, whatever man. 
My stock is doin great. 

Who knows. Who knows? 
Who knows what lies beneath the roses? 

This Book

It’s going to be beautiful. But
it’s going to be disgusting and crass.

And depending on whether you believe
those qualities mutually exclusive
it’ll be something disappointing 
but filthy, narcissism 
disguised as prophecy 
hypocritical, misguided, liable 
to quickly disappear...
even interesting but fatally flawed. 
How can it not be? Would you not doubt yourself the same? 

Now judge jury executioner
I encourage you to gauge
if I am speaking truth or propaganda.
I tried to do the former
but if we're honest it is hard
for even a determined man
to take this mix of smoke and filth
and awesome weight, America 
and still emerge believing in a god.

I do not know if I am full of lies
or purified, beyond the lie

so steeped in mystery
I can laugh when con men
write us fortune cookies.
Is truth flowing through me?
Or am I empty as a fortune
to itself?

Could a reader mindful of the challenges
to clearly think-- the bright-cancerous bird
void of executive function
screaming buy my stuff now
and the Word Salads of Big Victory Asshole
the promises of advertisers the threats of thugs--
will the reader sympathize
having lived through this?
Can the reader survive death by questioning it?
Will such a reader, unable to lie
use this book to help defend
the open meaning
of the possible importance
of a free and still-logical human
before a panel of unblinking angels? 

Now critic, help me see.
-----------------------------------------------------

If you stumble on this poem 
gun-in-hand thinking 
I’m gonna kill that stupidass poet for sure 
I beg you, fool. Read on! 

Together let's answer these questions.
Together, let’s destroy our illusions. 

The Beneficent Bengal

What is the best part of being with someone? 
She said This part. And she wasn’t wrong. 

I offer my prayers, such as they are 
to the vanishing point at the end of the highway. 
May you fall in love once. 

The robot came to ask for more wine. 
              
                       This is is laser rain.

Dreams About Passports

Does a thought, a comparison

a spasmodic equation

of a cloud and the dolphin I see 

with imperfect eyes in the sky 

engineered by an impetus 

to keep seeing keep noticing

does such an observation

have something to it we call truth

prosper if appreciated? (Does it matter to prosper?) 

Or is it better latent? Does it count 

to anyone in particular

more than one note two notes, three 

of Dexter Gordon Don’t Explain 

wording the same questions wordlessly 

does it matter 

to be understood, or even heard 

once you have wondered 

Does it matter 

and, answering No 

it matters not

to understand matter—

must even such a dismal No 

matter, to a mind that opens once 

or twice upon a time  

matter, to be understood  

or heard or talked about, lived through 

even-if-removed, replaced, or moved beyond 

to still pursue the light 

like the spirit moving in generations

of cockroaches and birds of paradise 

matter that we leave the X we represent 

wide open raw and innocent 

as animals extinct unto power—

gifted ape or auks of survival 

killer species, victorious bacteria 

or real-live aristocrat 

with legal-engineering skills, connections 

and the money that pays you  

so shut up or I cut you 

a long long neck branching 

too far out from safety

consumed like a tree by endless vines  

does it matter 

for peasants of the dead-eyed frenzy 

to look thirsty and alive as the blade falls

and they morph among the histrionic days 

freighted down by oil bills 

and hot hot hot hot August rain 

as blues and beauty incrementally repair 

one slash of creation

and there

as the slave recognizing his master 

slavers over ziggurauts

and the triumph of servitude

dare we celebrate the beauty too—

the strong nose and perfect bone structure 

of one superserious Emily Rosenberg 

her beauty raging 

in my brain like the X 

she too represents, O 

dare I celebrate a feeling 

that wears old now? 

and no longer able

to plead my loveless vortex 

loudly as a howling pack of dogs 

til all that amounts to memory-dunes

admits the desert future 

and the Deluge we knew  

in the beginning 

lies the end of octomesters and cyclops

so happy to be Zero 

and exposed to the real 

cruel totality that radiates 

in which we radiate 

a sad compromise short of all ideals 

drunks drink to forget 

does it matter 

because sometime in the distance 

a woman like you 

and like me

emerging on a distant planet

think just like we do? 

Does it matter that this friendship— 

these correspondences 

of cloud and lover 

lover and beloved 

self and descendant 

Gordon and a listener— 

made through time and race 

and sex geography 

culture tautology

whateverology

exists of a mood gone in a flash 

and too casually for inquisitors alleviates 

the reckoning of coming silence—

and if the answer is yes 

or if it is no 

did we approach something? 

Does my desire 

break my sympathies in time 

and triangulate the man attained of feelings 

and a cloud he faces with a dolphin 

swimming in the stars 

and swim in the stars?

Is this what it feels like to be free?

Villanelle

A spirit moves behind the drapes 

of the terminal cascade. Shark fins

knife the cataract and pleasing shapes
pass the time devouring white grapes.

The hours hold a regiment of gins

made of August rain; the drapes
conceal a twisting shape
bunched up in curtain grins. Jesus Christ. Our damn fates.

The flames of automatic weapons leap

up. Imagination thins—
a war-whipped sea behind the drapes.
The geometry of conversation apes

illusions of the truth again.

Though scattered thoughts may constellate
the fear of navigating deadly capes
can spell disorder as the shadows drape
down like a burning buccaneer
with eyes to the abyss
forever gapes. Forever.

Closing Doors at Alexandria

Libraries are temporary

portals of light

bookending dark ages.

Enlightenment warms cold aisles

with love and the egos of genius

finely crafted formulas

the only approaches to governance

books of screws

numbers with no end

histories of the uncreated.

A cup of coffee will enhance

so many things have come before.

Marble columns

burst like a tooth

in an iron fist  

and the doors fall off  

leaving nasty kids  

to piss upon the pages.  

The elders die.  

The purists erase. 

The money goes away. 

For centuries of silence. 

Then some poor prophet gets a notion, gets  

illuminated by the half-burnt pages  

of truths so pious 

the decadents laughingly regard

the bones of beaten enemies 

to illuminated words  

a prophet passes wandering--truths  

enlivened by the act  

of piecing it together 

under the blank eyes of his owner 

and because that vision is beautiful 

or the suffering too unbearable 

or just because Earth must molt 

like some disgusting arthropod 

the library reappears.  

A new text is born from these actions

A spider hangs in the sun.

Perhaps here 

perhaps not there. Perhaps a back door  

is open to the cunning  

conquistador. 

Everyone except pornographer  

or pyrophile  

is welcome.

We call this portal Alexandria.

It is closing time now.  

Say good night quietly. Librarians  

really are no match for arsonists. 

And arsonists no match 

for diligent librarians.