An empty house
chairs pushed neatly in
no holes where pictures hung.
a cold stove
Put away your tools
let the meat rot.
Don’t ask after the dust.
Category: Poetry
Independence Day
Independence Day Grandpa, Grandma, can we talk to you about our mom and dad? I don’t know quite what’s going on but things are getting bad. Dad’s been crying at the news and his voice is higher pitched. His jeans get tighter all the time and there’s a limpness in his wrist. Meanwhile, mom’s been swearing more and wearing suits to her new job. She hasn’t fixed her hair in months and on weekends she’s a slob. Dad’s afraid of everything – plastic straws and – what’s a Russian bot? Last week was Independence Day, and he said he “just forgot.” Mom hasn’t cooked a single meal since she went marching in D.C. And now our yard has all these signs that say “welcome refugees.” Dad almost asked if it was right but she wouldn’t let him speak so he’s been getting craft beer growler fills every day for two straight weeks. We don’t know what to do right now We’re prolly just too young. But maybe you’ve got some idea of what’s been going on. Granddaughter you’re a clever girl and grandson you’re no fool. So we’ll tell you something here and now that you’ll never learn in school. You’re noticing about your folks that something’s kinda wrong. It’s not just them – it’s everywhere. We’ve been watching all along. If it’s hard these days with mom and dad, to know just which is which You may not have the words for it, But your dad’s your mommy’s– You’re right, grandpa, school’s no help our teachers are all so strange. They say two-plus-two and Judy Blume both equal climate change. They took us out of class one day to line up on main street with signs that said the world would end from the President’s next tweet. I just want to build some things, and when sister tries to sew they swear that STEM’s the thing for her and I’m privi- toxi- I don’t know! Do you think that you could talk to them? To our parents and the school? Tell them that they’re scaring us and that they all seem real confused. We surely could go talk to them but they hate that we’re so old. We remind them of the ways they’ve failed and the truths they’re scared to know. There’s a wisdom in our wrinkled skin that they’re trying hard to kill. And if kids like you are catching on they’ll start trying harder still. For now it’s good you’re noticing and that your guts say it’s not right. Just keep each other close at hand – pick your spots, and fight your fights.
Tell Me There’s an Artist
Tell me there’s a painting left not aiming for the earth –
A brush not tilted dirtward, swapping mockery for mirth.
Tell me there’s a sculpture left that isn’t undercarved –
A chisel dulled by shallow cuts and subjects heavenstarved.
Tell me there’s a canvas left that’s backlit by some glory –
A fabric for the telling of ambitious human stories.
Tell me there’s a poem left that isn’t ripped apart –
A song that ends connected to the blessing of the start.
Tell me there’s an artist left not driven by deceit –
A human servant building from the places incomplete.
Tell me there’s an artist left who knows his human error –
And tell me there’s a layman left who’ll view it as a prayer.
Rabat
With a hopeful shoulder against
its thousand-year-old brother,
the new city already shows more rust
and abuse than the ancient medina,
which stands straighter than it should
after a millennium of fire and pirates
and the tearless tyrrany of
Mohammed’s intemperate sun.
Fifty years free of France,
the tall cosmopolis outside
the gates wears the fast
age of concrete and exhaust.
The new city wonders, still half
en Français and slouched
in café chairs that face out over
the bruise-blue taxis towards
the red medina walls, what is the
trick to timelessness, and what
do the buried civilizations
around the Bou Regreg have to say
about the way the Arabs
outlasted them all without
having to do much besides wait
and stay and sometimes fight.
Why is there so little left
of the Romans besides
the coins and shields of
martial ghosts that mingle with
Phoenician busts in museums that
the Berbers came before and
built and left and will see
the end of long before their own.
And those few exhumed slabs
of marble left at Chellah, bought
by the shipload for the price
of their own weight in sugar,
what are they worth now
in dirham or dollars or the
(يا الله)
useless euros mocked in the
clacking laughter that rattles like
a call to prayer from the storks atop
the walls of the hammams, and
whose nests crown the minarets.
2016 (Asking After Your Brothers)
They say in the aftermath the evil’s come out but the evil out there lives in their mouths. So it’s something to look around face to face, hue to hue listen to someone being accused ...and know... ...and know... the opposite’s true. I think you dig me, Mr. Hughes And when you said you - a Kentuckian - were brothers with an African that was fine and I mean that the good way you would mean it back in your place and time, not sarcastic like we do in mine. But I wondered (this one's harder ...I know... ...I know...) could you have reached your other brotherhand to secure a little kinship with a white man? Talk about fine!
Chores
The insides of things is all I gets to see: the house the car the bakery the oven and the wash machine but insides people is too much mama too much for me.
The Street Sweeper
An angled Arab in a jellaba
as long as the Berber sun and with
tea-stained teeth the color of burnt sand,
stands unlooked at by foreign shoppers
because they all know that eye contact
is a contract that even a shy smile
cannot unbind. They see rugs, cheap jewelry.
The Arab tells a bowl of fish heads
here are more tourists. Another man
pulls a palm frond as bent as his back
over meat scraps, breadcrumbs, and poverty,
sweeping the King’s official decrees
and doubts of his Mohammedan descent
secretly beneath the dusty stones in the souk.
He stands and says bonjour to the kids
(the first guess is always for the French)
But the Americans say assalam
and the students and the Arab find
a few forgotten teeth to frame their
halfshared tongue. They eat the shopkeeper’s
small deceit in the heat of Moorish June.
The price of a dented teapot comes down quickly.
A cat mews and woos the noon-hot bowl
of fish heads but is sent running and spits
its hisses at a moped whose engine
ascends to match the unseen muezzin –
his patient call having made its pact with
the long-gowned crowd, reaching unlikely speeds
beneath thin streets and stubborn burqas.
Honey drips long, making bees too drunk to fly.
Under the new moon of Al-Andalus
white women weigh the lure of the beach
against what risk they know exists and try
not to be fooled by trust earned in the sun.
A dutiful and deep-eyed olive ibn
is scraping the caramel crust from abu’s table,
closing shop in time for one more prayer.
The Final Bone
You can read the cold
in the austerity of porchlights
and the white soul of maple bark
that makes a shy shiver
when it guesses which star
might love it back.
But I am all halogen high beams
in this poor morning.
The final bone of an unwelcome skeleton
that won’t leave its ghost alone.
And here in the city –
with none of the long-sung
undone thunder of somewhere
less given to the living –
I am stung by lone red lights
and the odd mid-block walker
made bold by the madness
of his addictions.
Still.
He moves on.
I do all the stopping.
Yes
God has taken from us the sun, which loving was too much like firefly July, watching our brother kiss the girl we were too little to love but loved! with cloying loyalty anyway. A name in a notebook and the little electric leavings of her path across our sky. But must we just go sunless sad, wearing moods like wet vestments at a mirthless service? No! We kick wet leaves on the cooling coals of long November and hoist such a hard, proud December that our summerlost girl - hand still in rival’s hand - turns in a wistful flourish to look back once upon us and wish that she were half so free as we.
Why the Gods Stopped Answering
In a year that started with three months of march
the gods of the globe met a girl on a Hill,
fit with ambition and requests for the rights
of all of the people to be equally filled.
Great Zeus consulted the God of Abraham
and Mohammed added a surah or two.
Buddha nodded his silent approval
and Brahma saw it the right thing to do.
The wish was granted, her prayers were answered
and equality had been wholly ordained.
But the protester gathered her high-lettered signs
and marched, in her hat, right back out again.
Zeus looked at God and said “What’s this about?”
while angry Mohammed drew out his blade.
Buddha sat down and Om’d ‘til he shook,
Brahma wondered what mistake they had made.
The young woman said you’ve all done so well
in answering my prayers and granting my wish.
but by making my purpose so neatly complete
you’ve presented my hunger a cold, empty dish.
They watched her smartly set out for the heart
of the love that only they could create.
With a burgeoning army she chanted and marched
‘til she raised a new devil from an angelic state.
So Zeus and the God of Abraham shrugged.
Mohammed’s scimitar furrowed the dirt.
Buddha looked to have tuned it all out,
and Brahma just picked at a stain on his shirt.
