poetry – Page 145 – poems 2 die for

DOWN

in the defence
of the truth
people can rise
be inspired
to moments
of courage
actions
of extreme
bravery

in defence of the lie
a person with
power

can destroy
every truth-teller,
bring the world
crashing down

POEM FOR THE PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

WHEN

BEST HE CAN DO

BACK

back you are
to tell all

you who
found yourself’
privy to the soul’s
panorama

found yourself
presented
with such
establishing shots

so beautiful
so terrible

tracking shot through
the gates of Heaven
gates
of Hell
divulging the ground zero
truth of the latter

whole horrific spectacle
way beyond language

leave us wondering
what we
could have done
to possibly
deserve this

forgetting
how the world works

how it is
what it is, no

end
to the suffering

MY CASE

sick in bed
2000lb building buster
fell on my head

out of nowhere
the papers passive voicing
the issue of agency

saying that
my skull thick
as concrete

no sign
of a brain

no doctor willing
to tend to me

there is not the
bedside manner
in the whole
of Christendom

willing and
able to

deal
with my case

SIGN

I want to take you
on a bed
of wine coloured
roses

my lips wanting your
brown skin
beneath them
for all of
human time

and though
I have not yet
found you

and still have
to persuade you
to commit
to this enterprise

an enterprise in which
we die and die and die
forever and ever
constantly rising
constantly reborn

for which the shade of deep burgundy of
these flowers
has become
of
this desire and
would be passion
its
eloquent sign.

THIS SPACE

found
or otherwise

you have no footage
of me writing, whole
creative process

you just have to
go with face value
take on trust

seems that no bot
wrote this
you think
as levels are
discovered;
let themselves
get uncovered

before, in
coming to
a reading,

you edit and
manipulate

impose
and frame
according to
best-
guess narrative

supreme
authority
over all
located in

this space

MOTORCYCLE DIARIES

me and Modiegi
watched you
swim that river

only to
die
in Bolivia

the CIA more deadly
than piranha fish

between which
there is a piece of
timeline

in which
you changed history

became the T-shirt
and thus immortalizdm

JOSEPHINE

Josephine
I do not ask for your
cheetah
or your
anaconda

just let me
unpeel one two
three all
these dancing bananas

all eyes on you
as you mesmerize
me watching an actress
enact
your story

the patrons, and yes
even the Gestapo
in the world
of the solidly real

but, alas!, not one
from that dream-factory
fairy-tale land
you managed
to scramble away from

the sky
is the limit

but you are what you are
if you be
black or
brown (forever down)

Oh to be part of
if not your rainbow tribe
at least
your menagerie

or have some role
some task
that might
continue your legacy

touchstone for the power
of our human drive
to surpass ourselves

irrefutable argument
that we are indeed all one