Blood on the cypress
and the wild dogs
have broken through the gate.
Winter 2015
Damascus
tambourines
The rest being simplification, a pruning
of the citronnier branches, crusts
from bread left for pigeons, thread
and needle unattached. Men in the street
smile to each other; coins, sad faces of,
making music in their pockets.
In a Quiet Home
in the USA, the prayer rugs
are kneeling, are
bleeding.
Inaudible Conversations
Bible verses whispering
amongst themselves.
Pasatiempos
Wandering out there among the bosons
and fermions, kicking back while others stretched out
before us, seeking to amuse us, to show us
the errors of our ways. Particulations
devoutly to be wished.
Poem Ending With a Line by James Richardson
Witness a hopeful face when the cancer
has been located. Surrounded, cancer appears
in a window of every other house.
The only victory is to deprive it of a body.
Think of ash trees in a front yard,
budding before their last leaves drop.
Likewise, there is no body, no thought
missing from a chain of thoughts.
A beginning ends what an end begins.
Dance
He holds the camera-phone at arm’s length to take the selfie.
A breeze kicks up, the leaves turn, and the air is crystal clear.
He holds the self at arm’s length and the distance grows.
A new breeze twirls a leaf around the self, a leaf around the air.
Apple
Adam is dreaming of a bomb atom become A-bomb so many atoms in this @
welcome to the blue
hour, welcome to the final
destination, the body’s home
address, there are rooms here
you will never want to know
but now you know: glass–
paned and built in shade of
shipyard, someone else at the
prow, oh god you say, oh god,
by which you mean your
mother’s name, dial it down
now, yes, you hear me, dial it
down; the wattage of the world
turned up, all knives in sharp
relief; time and the turning of
the page, how once you were
attached to her and now, now
this, the plating of the head;
red barn is being razed; hard
to find fresh flowers on a grave
—sweeping, so much sweeping—
east house is down.