Abraham, listening to his blood thirsty God,
gathered wood together; and, took with him
fire and a knife, and his only son Isaac, who
said, "Father? The fire and wood are here,
but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"
Then, Abraham, within the sacred school walls,
built an alter and arranged the wood on it.
He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the alter
on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand
and took the knife to slay his son.
But, the angel of the Lord called out to him from
heaven, "Abraham! Abraham! Do not lay a hand
on the boy, neither do anything to him." Abraham
beheld a ram caught in a thicket by its horns, which was
to be offered instead of his only son Isaac: the Ram of Pride.
But Abraham would not obey, and slew his son,
and fourteen other children one by one
on that bloody day when the bullets shrieked;
and, where afterwards a condensed silence filled the school-
suffused with the rainbow aurora of the dead.
STRIVING TO ENDURE
that is reiterate
the daily rituals,
which consume each day.
Variations.
This burning desire
to know, the intense interest
in everything. Each deterministic
caste of the die.
Unfathomable.
Never finishing the geometrician's task,
measuring the expanding universe that is your mind.
And what you observe is but the iceberg's tip
all else, for you, must not be thought-
to exist.
Where is the joy?
Marching in place, through time,
we partly guess the blind impress
all our behaviors bear back to. Guess who?
But I digress.
On that emerald evening when our candle
first begins to sputter, will it be satisfying
to look back at repressed regrets,or to be
oppressed, since we only come through here once.
And, each moment you are dying.
DEVOURING MILES
Devouring miles with every minute,
while the dessert sky darkened
birds nervously began their song,
and then the first thunderbolt
unleashed nature's blind fury.
An ungainly ball of tumble weed
about the size and apparent mass
of a child was rolling with the wind
rapidly repeating its circles
across the freeway as my car
smashed into it and crushed it
to the road. Unlike people
it bounced up and again began
rolling with the wind repeating
its circles just like it had before.
FRAGILE BLOSSOMS
Fragile blossoms,
delicate white beauty:
a mantle on the river,
where militarized police
drive by.
Down concrete canyons
winds come
sprinkling the banks
with broken petals,
a tree's deformed shadow
creeps across the muddy path.
Everywhere the Earth is littered
with broken pieces:
all these things
shattered and lost
trouble my heart.
As the first fiery tomes
stretch over the sky,
aching the Earth stirs awake.
Softly it groans,
like the small plaintive cry
of a bird startled
from its sleep.
The Master's precious dreams
of stocks and lace,
of fancy vacations,
and of sleek shining cars;
the servants' meagre dreams
of warm meals, of kids shoes,
and of threadbare retirement.
The goose is gone
devoured
by the dark subterranean stream,
its liver consumed as pate.
This morning,
while being herded,
the decaying hubris
troubles my heart.
Blackened hills
writh away
towards a vague distance,
where the lips
of the sky and Earth meet.
A passing barge,
low in the water,
churns up dingy waves;
who expire with a sigh
on the fecund black bank,
and whose dirty, iridescent foam
speckles the newly mounded graves.
The waste,
and sorrow,
and suffering
troubles my heart.
VIEW FROM A BRIDGE
They travel a great way
where words perhaps immure
their syllables from pebble beds
at the bottom of translucent streams,
or the shrill cry of blackbirds,
or screams like a lawn mower
which render all distance-
They travel a great way
who moves like a puppet,
or perhaps profiled
against a backdrop of grey water
or of sky itself,
a object silhouetted
in a grave black clothing dance,
in black pump shoes, a solemn dance-
the stately pirouette of a pendulum-
which suddenly began,
when the rope stretched taught
and the neck snapped
whose vertical dying
starts this dance without music
or partner. Resigned,
those responsible adjust their clothes
then their bank accounts
and devote their old age
to playing Cain
and developing a story
to explain
the stain on their souls
that will not go away.
IN THE PINK
In the pink blushing apple's
constantly shifting shade,
a cloud drifts up from a pipe
and an arrow blossoms
red on my chest,
then melts away.
It felt like a leaf
from a long wasted poplar
palsied in a passing breeze-
or perhaps a silent whisper
from some parched pair of lips
impatiently waiting for a slow moist kiss.
Suddenly someone laughs
beyond the yew hedge,
it grazes me
with its glissandos.
In this garden chessboard
of sunshine and shadows,
your laughter holds
hands with my smile.
Sitting on the fresh mowed grass
feeling its cool green tones-
I reach forward
and dress your hair with flowers.
JOE DIMAGGIO
The warm nights still resound
with the crack of a bat striking the ball,
and grass still grows green
in baseball diamonds.
The smell of beer and hot dogs
and peanuts permeates the air,
which swells with the shirt sleeve crowd's roar.
Under the banks of lights
transforming night into day,
players still put on the big show;
while above a legend bigger than Yankee stadium
hovers like a long high fly ball,
but one uniform lies empty
as does an undersized glove
both transformed by
the conspicuously absent presence....
and no longer do we see
brought to on T.V.
the distinguished looking man selling coffee.
He has undergone the greatest transformation of all.
ANOTHER CONTRIVED KILLING
Once the Spring torrent dries up
a few headlines will point to it.
Only shadows remain.
Not even Moses
with his sticks and stones,
not even the mysterious rituals
of little old ladies
with their green Spring sprays
stooping over the Earthly remains,
a corpse gutted with a Bowie knife
from navel to breast bone-
they have borne him
to the morgue
where all fair females are absent-
and though he sang
once loud and clear
the Spring torrent
is dried up and undone.
What words can do
to keep alive
the memory of that
exuberant flood we will do;
then, little old ladies
being what they are
will bury it,
quietly where all flesh becomes one.
It has been suggested that the radical right wing
assassin, trying to infiltrate a white supremacy group
somewhere in Colorado, will secretly be made a
millionaire to serve out a sentence that is less than
one youth who robbed a quick market for a stupid
prank. And, how can a person supposedly in fright,
when they had deliberately bated the crowd, strike out "blindly"
and gut someone: that requires sustained effort not a glancing blow!