Fast Day 25 November 22. 2007 {If This Be Life}

If this be life, oh, twist the DNA from its helix,
burst the flaccid walls of lipid cells,
set it free to wander to some other planet
where are men and women; love and worship
fight and die; young and beautiful.

If this be my cross, oh, vomit it like treacle
from an over-heated Sunday's room!
Let us go to the heart of darkness
and dispell the gloom by joyous pilgrimage
to the temple of our Love.

If this be our reward, oh, spurn me from heaven
like great Milton's ethereal antagonist!
Let me warm my body at the middens
of the heart where we lay in bed,
thrust under a quilt enthusiastic!

Fast Day 24 November 15, 2007 {Dante Anansazi}

Dante Anansazi
note: Danta Anansazi is my pet winter spider


Dante Anansazi pries open multiple eyes
and takes 8 cups of joe;
I see him and jump, spilling mine,
so he laughs.
He lights up a cigarette
and exhales.
You ever see a spider smoke
a cigarette before?
Neither I, but there he is,
bad sign I think,
this Dante Anansazi, winter spider,
mostly white
mostly drained of blood and waiting
for the spring.
Halfway down to the filter he stops,
and sez
Is it rainin' out?
No, sez I
Been stuck here, fool, since you don' let me out...
he stretched 8 arms.
I want to see the whirled series I heard so much about.
how about it, sport?
how about the whirled series? I am
speechless, sure.
If I am a good boy, ok?
If I don't destroy the whirled, you let me go
see the series?
OK, I said. You don't destroy the world,
you good boy,
then you and I shall go.
But me, I shall not go into a subway wit'
that Dante Anansazi,
No. We walk or take bus. Not below the ground
wit' Dante Anansazi.
Two go down an' one come back!
Two go down an' one come back;
I ain't wishin' to be no Virgil soon,
wit' dat Anansazi"s Dante!

Fast Day 23 November 8, 2007 {My Southern Rose}

A day early.

My Southern Rose


The willows stand as stiff daguerrotypes:
Generals of the War
between the States; their beards so full
and majestic in their stance.
They maintain their verdant burden and
bow low in gallant boughs!

chorus
My rose of Maryland! Bloom forever!
The South’s own herbal honey!
The Balm of Appalachia;
sweet liquor of Antietam!



The wild flowers strewn up to the sky;
Soldiers of the war;
eyes bright with youth and filled with hope:
adolescent gods to be;
Within their temples they stand in silent witness,
like reeds in ponds unnumbered.

chorus
My rose of Maryland! Bloom forever!
The South’s own herbal honey!
The Balm of Appalachia;
sweet liquor of Potomac!



We’re coming east from Morgantown,
from the Cumberland.
We stop to eat at Hancock where you can stand
and throw a stone apiece
into Pennsylvania’s green fields
and into West Virginia’s land.

chorus
My rose of Maryland! Bloom forever!
The South’s own herbal honey!
The Balm of Appalachia;
sweet liquor of Patapsco!

Fast Day 22 November 3, 2007 {I Dream Port Au Prince}

I Dream Port Au Prince

A chopping block of slaves beneath malign verdure;
I wish the god would give me a break,
a minute or two lifetimes.
The Bawoun Samedi, he says that he has given me 100 years…
and he gets little for his invest! Ha!

Miss Danto spoke to me once about pauvrete
but I saw only the dais and the pulpit;
stadia and agorai where slaves were sold.
There stood priest and general and the president
grinning like Duke Death and his dog.

A panorama of capital and benefit unrolled
before our eyes; limitless weal.
a sleight of hand…
and we fall back into the abyssal einstein lens
of our patrimony: you see me…you don’t!

How many the private mansions of our souls were lost!
our tongues inhabit tenements.
The West cannot encompass me with palisades of science;
dry tinder box technology, buried under monoliths
of the Reasons on Salisbury Plain.