The bell rings and you’re running down the hallsof the old school past frog-faced Mrs. Swarduntil you reach a desk, a wobbly onewith “Johnny loves Annette” engraved on it.You look out of the window at the litblast furnaces, the molten morning sunthat was your immigrant pop’s bread and butter.His heavy accent lingers in your mind,his…
four altar boys who’d donenothing to enter heavendecades before their time,but be the victims of rape.Red bullets, crimson tape,are bedfellows to the crime.A black patch on one eye,Fernando coughs to begin.Grief burns his cheeks and chin,and then he tells me why.I swear I can still hearhis voice amid my thoughts:‘For this we fired two shotsinto…
froth that was life’s first home.A bearded craftsman’s bladecarved it into the faceof man: the progenyof an amoeba, theimage of his race.It sits for all to see,like a bust on the shelf:in-cognizant of self,yet part of the same sea,its beauty and its scars,its yellow stain and reek,the wrinkle on its cheek:the stuff of dreams and…
What utter rapture at the end of stalking,my dear Lord, now that I fly frozen stiff.Each snowflake is a prism or a mirrorin a gallery of grimacing flame,and every squealing self to You no dearerthan the birds that You hunt down for game.You are, at last, a talon in the lightthat clings in flight to…
while heaven above, a milky upturned ashtray,lingers like a promise never fulfilled.Smoke rises past the limbs of walking treestoward blocks of flats that are a thousand greys.Coal miners cough laments down muddy streetsto greasy taverns, and in shop displaysChristmas trees thirst for drink in dented pots.Coal hills lie waiting for ice picks and shovelsas flocks…
Below it, the meaning of all my days:thistled lots, brambled voids where time lagsoblivious to the maimed and forgotten.My eyes sink in their vision: flocks of crows,torrents of black water, flapping shadowsover tawny fields in endless autumn…On the bridge, wasting bad time, I’d shed tears,but have no regrets, only old ironies,black insect prayers that cannot…
but his brain at this stagecan only concentrateon simple survival. Nowis more important thana blue-haired afterlife,than a spiritual strugglein which half-sentient menmust make a choice: betweena serpent and a god.His cave has no bear skulls,no finger-painted scene.There is no chipped flint spear-head on his wooden staff.He knows this: hunger, lust,rain, sunshine, snow and fear.Himself prey…
Ezra Pound now sits inside of it,his beard a burning bush of grief made new.Gazing at the moon, and looking retro,the better craftsman grins to bars, and sees anight of stars implode, his touched eyes litand posed for labour. If not he, then whowill scribble truth into a timeless croon?Twenty-five days will pass before the…
lie underneath her long and bony arms.There, naked, she awaits her time to come.But, singing in her way a mournful tuneof many years gone by, of death and grief,of olden incantations, herbs, and charms,she never moves on, only gestures someto frightened voles and sage and sleepless owls.You crouch and watch amid ferns, ill at easeat…
Beyond a hill of snow you see a star.Here you can look at stacks of Christmas trees,buy nuts and raisins, fruit from nearby groves,cards inscribed in gold: “joy, love and peace.”And you can eat kielbasa from a spitas fat drips sizzling in makeshift stovesand zlotys are exchanged and butts are lit.Here you can watch fat…
