WOLF AT CHERNOBYL

WOLF AT CHERNOBYL

Winter and
no roadside picnic
no Tarkovsky disturbance at
the heart of the dreamscape

I am
pack-driven  running wild with
the wolves at Chernobyl,
wild with
my gold
and black genes
streaming through the turnstiles

I am
myself a wolf
become
one by default
mutation, transformation,
transubstantiation

what was latent in my blood
found alchemy, became real
surrendered itself
to this project
of reclamation

running hard, running true
as softly
            yet faster
than you would have ever
thought it
everything
gets effaced

and in truth, to your eyes,
as we
    luxuriate in the silence
move so
muffle-footed, we must
sound like nothing, look
like ghosts

appear as the icons of
every irony of your presumption

threading our way through
the wreckage of your hubris

shock
   of the horror, which
in your misunderstanding of
your power
                 you unleashed
upon yourselves

I am
wolf at Chernobyl
outlined against
       the stark
whites of winter

        I am creature of
these forests whose message could not
be more clear.

WOLF

WOLF

a wolf stopped me
on the way
to Red Riding Hood

redirected me
  confiscated my
wolfsbane

showed me a flag
red as menstrual blood

told me
    he hoped I would not
be seeing anything. socialist
or revolutionary in it

bemoaned the fact
that everything today
gets cloaked,
      gets camouflaged

hides
in sheep’s clothing

gave me
    a quick Turing Test
seemed
      to be satisfied
since
provided me with a link
to his You Tube video
in which
he laments
      the theft of
his mythology

both as regard little pigs
and nubiles in
big teeth
    non-
Grandmother
      vermillion underwear

and set up, a trap
if ever
    he saw one

real Roald Dahl, pure
                  imagination

slipping on a cave boat ride
into avant-gard horror
(no tunnel of love
episode this

        too Dali to
delight us

and so he complained
and so he raged

fancying me as meal
          and me fancying
a chic wolf skin

proving my parents wrong
when drumming in
talk with strangers means
Moors murders

and for writers hesitating on
their first rung

              no hope
for turning
        type into
                      character

and tale to tell
                  that talks old tropes

the trick being
      one of mesmerizing