Bosnian Wings

Ashes gather,

Ashes as the feathers, the flurries,

Ashes as these falling furies settling

The dust of rubble’s softness,

Rubble’s grey chunks…

Here, out pokes an arm &

Over there, a leg, in anti-

Birth, the dismemberment connecting

What was flung & what living still

Sweeps in the span of some pigeon’s

Hop, some hawk resurrecting the memory

Of flight…

Oh, it is all a snowbound concentrate:

This throng of desolate vigilance,

Of sniper-hungry streets

In a winter of trees, bare & disparate,

Finding the sky a factory’s output,

The chuffing trains of camps…

Wings as cinders, wings as tarnish

Bring this in, polishing survival keen,

Polishing sustenance lean as the arc’s tip

Where shadows spread from breast &

The heart goes beating on…

So the breadth of days pass

Through narrow light to narrower

While faith squeaks its way in,

A chink which will blast maps back

In dreams, at some point, weary, but,

At last true to reunion from the dark

Voyage, the exile of rights

Migrating again

                                                                           Oh Homophobe

I've had to kill you again

like Sylvia Plath's Daddy

you kept reappearing-----

Hydra-headed, jellyfish stinger

without the luminous grace,

more a thug's truncheon:

Your voice, your planetary

terrorist's moves

of slander, then violence

minions do the dirty work of

while you lie on your back,

dictator-babe, rolling the globe

with the bald balls of your feet.

Bully for you,

heel, I say, stay, bad doggie,

to peel all the hate off you

requires lye and quick lime,

but you diet on the acid,

resurface bilious,

with intestinal sheen

theocratic-gaudy,

while lacking the guts

to pick off those jeweled maggots

and smell your real stench,

Mistress lethal live-slime death ray,

Monsieur village-pillager,

scumbag lord of the flies.

            Joe, Checking Out

Is it a lot like the last time, coming,

a balloon man, freshly pumped & re-blown

straight from the V.A.?

Back then, those days were saloon-slung,

the stools' greased wooden gyrations

all a boozy romance rerunning, inside

your head, images clipped out of

Wild Wild West.  You were

some card playing cowboy, the kind

who wore black, more a joker

than a villain, an outlaw

to be rooted for 'cause you had

chutzpa, humor & a gold mine soul.

Come on wildcatter, time to cash

your chips in, bolt the last shot &

snap your artificial leg back

above the knee cap.  How's

the phantom memory, the ache

for your real one lost

to war trails, diseased streets &

one drug-humped motorcycle

trying to outride all those old demons?

0,K.  Here's your crutch.  Here's your

trumpet, plus the tattooed dreams man,

which take jazz & jettison the insulting

world with an intimacy of tongue-traced

thighs, lip-kissed backs, all the genuine

sweet secret skin sessions.

Joe, this time as you go, valium shaving

the pain's edge, remember you took

the fooling around seriously, took

a desperado's razor & cut away, cut

away till there was nothing but

your tender self:

that man with the star,

that strong human laughter

& brave eyes on the horizon.

 

                                                       The Black Dress
                                                                     (For Mofina's Samara)

Those ashes came back
in these muslin sleeves
& that collar of lace.
Robed women attend to buttons,
murmuring now
from what was ululation before.
How sore the beaten breasts are still
as if each fist
attempts memory's' restoration
beyond the smoldering desert city.

Was my husband's face
those scattering plumes
& not the tortured horror
those soldiers brought on
with their battering ram cocks
after they tied him to a chair
& forced him to watch?

After awhile numbness was struggle
turned inside until their bullets shattered
his agonized skull & my scream
took his flesh, swallowing his bleeding.

Don't shoot my son!,
a toddler only, but the plea was too late
as their grenades took our home
& they escaped in the chaos
of different Outsider's bombs blazing.

Dragged to the street
neighbors hooded heads, one large,
one small, for my loved one's bodies
laid on scorched earth.

This dress knows such stained
dish towels which covered what was left
in that smoking grit, its broken asphalt,
& that raw grief hands cradled, lifting
to carry as much as possible.

Our Procession was a howling
right down to the Tigris, its shift
these pleats now
as if my dress walks on without me,
inhabiting my bones while clouds
are my eyes, a terrorist's vengeance

foreigner's made.

When Did It Start?

Later

I was seven I think

taking a pill

or eight.  I don't

or drink

remember except

trying not

Dad it was

to flashback

scary, your

for the bombardment

voice, touch

an illiterate's shame

it, that's

victim's wrath

nice lamb chop you

would question my

deserve this

innocence & there

the rope then & I

would always be

pretended my body

an interrogation

was another kid's

as if it

while trying

was Salem

like my Aunt said

and I was

not to dwell on

a witch

the word elephant

 Stephen Mead