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
