Category Archives: 1, poem, poetry,

STONE

Rams
   Niners

Niners
  Cardinals

I will not
shirk
my duty

I did write
   am here to
write

in voluminous
depth or detail
the theology
   of a stone

do not
    stone me

let me
not get stoned

so much stone and rock
and diamond bright
star
   in the Heavens

enough apocalypse out
there just
     waiting to happen
like Van Gogh
genius crazed
       madness addled
swirling vortex
sky above
some cafe

and now to be accused and
accursed here
        of switching cups
and moving
goalposts.

inscribing a theology
that (all
it boils down to)

is just
play of signifier
dropping
      of names

MURAKAMI
“you must have big rats
if you need Japanese steel”
Kill Bill, Volume 1

I read some Murakami
that we might
be on
the same page

if not
dance together
at least be able to
whistle
the same
tune

which I hear now
floating over old Edo

before
it got firebombed to death
turned to ash

rose again as fresh colossus
spreading its fingers
into how
we picture our world

SUSQUEHANNA

there are ghosts
in your country
I saw them dancing
in the mist all
along the Susquehanna
one cold January morning
just after 9/11
a couple of miles upstream
from Three Mile Island

and we were talking Civil War mlilitary,
myself and this kindly
African American
Professor of Sociology from
Harrisburg Penn State

him detailing how the Federals and Confederates
were criss-
crossing this territory
playing this cat and
mouse game
only to crash headlong into
each other at a
place called Gettysburg

of course neither of us
back in 2002 could have imagined
twenty so years on this
land would
find itself of the brink of
such a division
where the spectre of such
horror looming again

and those precious
twenty or so days
my sole experience
of America

of breathing the air of
its liberty, if
such is your belief

something the ghosts
trying to tell me, their
cold touch
alerting me

a new world and
forever graveyard

tension
in the spirit world
it seems far-fetched to bridge

the river
with its
Native American name

flowing with the forever
waters of such secrets

leaving
the old lies, the old lies
to spread, make
good trade,
do good business

what ripples outward here I fear
ultimately chain
in its reaction

REVISED

saw Adonis and Aphrodite
at the Heavy Metal ballet

watching barriers collapse
boundaries stretch

saw sheet metal fluted
rolled exquisitely sheer

the weight of those chords tempered with
grace, fluency
of style

and Adonis and Aphrodite
if not riveted in love
at least
holding hands

the truth of their narrative
so handsomely revised

the
years so softly silvering them,
their conquest of time

COLLIDER

they claimed you were
the Einstein
of literary studies

but then
you went
and dissed
my poem

so I dragged
you down
to our local Collider

had you
smashed into
sub-atomic particles

the quantum impact
of which on the world
as we know it
being
    at best purely
    academic

OUT THERE

we sat around
the campfire

talking about
the evil out there

and anomalous
interstellar comets
that may well
be mother ships

such moments
the ontogenesis of
so much philosophy

the words out of which
much of our celestial framework
were once born
.
but the infant
in each of us sat there
growing ever
more terrified

the evil in our tales
quietly encroaching
creeping closer

drawing us
for comfort
closer
   to the fire

until, ultimately
amongst the embers themselves

if we
are meant to burn
be
   reduced to ask

prevailing logic
determines
         best do it ourselves

we sat by the camp fire
long nights to talk through