Fast Day 60 July 25 2008 {When We Bombed Baghdad}

When we bombed Baghdad
I watched transfixed on the pixel'd
cross, and wept and laughed
for joy at smart bombs.
When we sanctioned the shit
out of them, I shook my head,
amazed at their obstinacy!
When we invaded again,
I watched and goose stepped
in my heart out of sheer loving
admiration for all such missions
yet unaccomplished in this world!
And like innocence children,
we smile and sing:

niemoller, niemoller,
let Hitler come over!
niemals, und niemals,
let's hear from Goebbels!
niemand, je niemand,
hab'ich kein verstand!

Fast Day 59 July 18 2008 {Never Again Shall I Return...}

never again shall I return to this haunted place
of spectral desires and grave lusts,
painted bloodlike upon the gypsum walls.
rather a halcyon to dive within the sea,
off the hook and top dog,
and I run through the blasphemed church
and break every memorious idol of
laughing destruction and exult in their
holy desuetude and impotence!

Fast Day 58 July 10 2008 {Golfing on One's Birthday}

A Desert Oasis

GOLFING ON ONE'S BIRTHDAY


Plans were made for morning golf.
Came next day, and we enrolled
into that strange order of protocol
where each of us obliterates
our intimacy of ball and tee,
creating a vector distance
with smooth and fluid stroke.

Gradually gathering momentum,
we recognize our oasis:
the hedge of trees,
the necklace of aquamarine,
the expanse of sand;
flying hymenoptera
with holographic wings
in and out among the thistles
where we golf.

We come here like our ancestors
who walked from Asia across
the Bering Strait revealed,
stopping on the way to golf
the neo-ice age course;
this migration we gladly trek
from sun-baked streets
to this implacable
and palpable green.
Silence and friendship, sun and water;
and golf is the ephemera bloom.

Fast Day 57 July 4 2008 {Coyote Sat By The Coleman Flame...}

Coyote sat by the Coleman flame,
thinking small bird, small animal;
AH, hunger is...snap at mosquito!...
so horrible, so beautiful!

Coyote saw footprints hours ago;
footprints of saint coyote;
footprints leading off the world
"like all the sweetmeats of my hope..."

Three Tuesdays for the holy coyote,
yet this famished one could not sing
a christmas carol nor talk til dawn
with sandy words in his mouth.

Three the nations and three the kings,
three days dead and hungry;
"tres milagros de ma vida", coyote thinks
hoping to break his fast.

Coyote sat by an open window,
and silently wished for fat,
knowing the prey as he knows himself...
Dawn! hits the optic nerve...

Fast Day 56 June 27 2008 {Cosimi de Medici's Chaplain Sleeps}

Cosimo de Medici's Chaplain Sleeps


At the Council of Basel
I dreamt of your face, thought
I found the smell of your breasts
in a bishop's incense.

Parliament of empty words,
Emperor's anger waxing;
not one cardinal so richly dressed
as you are naked.

Fast Day 55 June 20, 2008 {Rainbow, Belle Iris...}

rainbow, belle iris of the west...
beautiful tho it is,
is a first course to the feast
where you empepper
the pale tongue of dawn.