Petals

I transfer this tale of what I have done

Like a pit tells the story of the plum

That is shaken by winds and falls early.

Light reflects from a heron's wings and then

It dies. It knew only the ash-white sun.

The great lords shake hands with graven statues.

Babylon is no whore, it is a dream

Often dreamed by bearded and savage kings

Who own harems but rule from lonely thrones.

Without being given this history,

You may have seen a pit beneath some branch

And thought it was a stone- leave it alone.

Leave it alone. Now, what was being said?

Ah, yes. We are either trees or food for the birds.

The storm will decide if no one else is hungry.

Odysseus

Oh, that they should dare ride to my very doorstep

wearing unsheathed bronze to make bare their purpose:

to summon me again to the raw dance of war,

to surround myself with slain corpses with their open eyes,

or that I should find myself affixed with thirty inches of bronze-

neatly pinned to dry air for a long moment.

And why? When I have sent a hundred fathers and sons

to pay the boatman, that miser with eyes that see with fire,

who waits mirthlessly for my inevitable copper coins?

How can they ask more of me? More murder far from these shores?

More years spent without my wife?

Can walls enough be built for the faithlessness

of women? For the bloodthirst of men?

All those with honor sleep without armor

and give their lovers long daggers,

knowing that pain and death are less than shame.

I received word of the horsemen's advance and prepared.

It is far better to feign insanity than to answer such a call.

In my field I drive my horse before a plow.

I walk as naked as Clotho made me.

The dust affords some slight modesty as it mixes with sweat.

My feet are clay, my breast is clay, my mouth tastes the riverbed.

Without a constant tune, I sing a scrap of doggerel:

-A raven named Night, he comes up to me,

Claiming to have keys to all mysteries,

Saying "tear up the roots to make tall trees."-

        over              and             over

Mixed with my song, I toss chunks of salt from the satchel

that hangs by my thigh and drive this doom into the soil.

My loyal farmhorse does not complain at his monstrous task

because he receives grain at sunrise and is not lashed.

Palamedes rides ahead of the other warriors and says to me,

"Crafty one, resourceful and cunning as no man has ever been,

honorable king and kind sovereign of these lands,

the wife of your sworn brother has been stolen

and you are called to defend your solemn oath.

I beg you to abandon this pretense.

Your sword is needed, and the swords of your men.

I have lived long and never seen such a convenient madness!"

I sing my song.

"A raven named Night, she comes up to me,

She claims to have keys to all mysteries,

Says to tear up the roots to make tall trees."

There is a look of disgust on Palamedes's face.

It seems as though it comes from before time and memory.

He spurs his horse away with a sense of purpose

and the plume of dust drifts in the direction of my home

and I fight to keep this horrible knowledge from my appearance.

I know his plan! He will come, my brown-tressed love in tow,

throw her in the path of this forged plow,

and I will have no choice.

Once I tossed a girl child quickly and carelessly

from the high walls of a conquered city

as if I were skipping a stone on the sea.

She will look at me with eyes round as the moon;

I will throw the plow aside and admit my crass deception.

What is this? That curly hair across his saddle is my son's!

He smoothly dismounts and holds Telemachus roughly

by his tunic and his hair and his cruel tongue intones:

"I will not bear your falsehoods. Be true to your oath.

Fight for this country of ours, this band of many kingdoms,

Or I will force the judges to find new punishment for you:

I will have you cut this child to ribbons!"

Once I tossed a girl child quickly and carelessly

from the high walls of a conquered city

as if I were skipping a stone on the sea.

She looked at me with eyes round as the moon.

Palamedes shakes his head at me

and throws our boy in front of the plow.

My dear Penelope, forgive me.

Robert

The emptiness that appears in blue glass,

The games we played in my grandmother's yard,

My grandfather who died a thousand times

Before his descendents could know the truth:

Throat cut, gruesome as imagination,

No hero at all... just another man

That the war forgot to send back safely.

My new neighbors knocked on my door today,

They asked to borrow aluminum foil.

I refused while they shifted in their shoes

And I thought, is this what he killed himself for?

A Peasant

I remember, once, a blonde girl called you

Arrogant, and I did not understand.

With me, you were always obsequious:

My opinions superseded your own,

You never thought you had a brighter mind.

Why then, would she allege this arrogance?

Perhaps in the past you offended her,

But I envision a simpler answer.

Perhaps you think yourself above the world,

This human that rises up from nothing,

And now I see why you cower from me.

Be lord of your lands and fields, if you wish.

I do not desire those things that you love,

I am pleased that you have your ambitions

But I'll put you in the ocean if you cross me.

Remember.

He Considers Possible Traitors

To explain the poison that frequently enslaves me,

it may be necessary to explore the way I feel

about vermin in the walls. For months I believed

that the sounds were from squirrels

eating acorns, making winter quarters

within the roof of this cheap brick building,

and I did not begrudge them their shelter.

Then suddenly I noticed an impossible sound.

What is this echoing through the drywall?

Raw ugly tails? Long tongues that would rob me?

I can never be sure if these beasts are indeed within my home,

waiting for a brief absence to take advantage,

oh, but I hear them and they are running so quickly

and I think of punching very quickly through the wall:

I will grab the rat by the torso, squeeze lightly,

and pitch it into the ground like a gauntlet

(if one has seen any animal killed by blunt trauma before,

the picture is easily painted).

I think that it might be unreasonable to destroy my home

merely because I suspect that these disease-ridden creatures exist,

but my love tells me that she sometimes hears the bastards, too.

I am not an unfair man, and I know that all animals make mistakes,

so if they remember their place on the outskirts I will not poison them.

I sit and hone my knives. A thief should always expect to lose a hand.

Considering Reflections

Madness is in water or mercury,

Though a distorted self is much more kind

Than forms that rise unbidden from mirrors:

The pale goddess that rules over the damned,

The long-fanged wolf that waits for broken chains-

I raise an axe to break this evil spell

Then notice the ever-hungry serpent

Staring through me with my eyes, with my face.

Jormungand whispers. He hisses at me,

"Father, know ye not the children of your body?"

The Origin of the Moon

She digs a hole on the beach, relieves herself, and fills it up with sand.

She retreats into the caves that time and salt licked out of rock,

far into those midnight-blue recesses that only another child could reach.

She listens to the breaking waves and hears her father's words,

"The ocean will cure anything."

She cups her hands over her ears and in a timid voice says

"Anything." The word amplifies somehow and she begins to shriek

"Anything! Anything!" She falls into the rhythm of the chant

and clocks do not remember the hours that pass.

Suddenly the alarm on a police car peals through the night

like a knife across an apple. She is very fast.

She sprints on four limbs until she reaches the open air,

then like eyelids shuttering she climbs dunes

and beats her bare feet on Californian sidewalks

for three quarters of a mile.

Even the driveway smells like old whiskey.

She slides into her bedroom through the window and waits in fear.

She is sure her father will soon charge through the doorway

slurring curse words and incoherencies,

but now the night is quiet, calm as crickets.

As always, the sirens had been called for someone else.

He Considers the Experience of an Acquaintance

Does she love him? His words are venom-filled.

His serpentine stare belies his temper;

No reptilian patience coils in his mind.

He insults her in a brutal manner,

Speaking of a night she was assaulted

As if she had played the red-lipped harlot,

Not been fed drinks until memory ceased.

She grabs a book and bashes his temple.

He holds his head, screams that she is a bitch,

And lurches to the kitchen for vodka.

He looks like several demons I know.

She is wearing socks and walks silently

Across hardwood floors and darkened hallways,

Reaches at a string, and climbs the stairwell.

She sits and cries amid dust and cobwebs.

She will leave the attic in a few hours,

When she can be sure that he is sleeping.

Bukowski no. 6

I have been walking to the same bar for several months

because it is less than a mile from my bedroom window.

On the side of the road where engineers built channels for rainfall

an armadillo's side is broken in several places.

It is close to the end. It seeps like oil into sand.

It looks at me with eyes pearled like a woman or shipwreck.

It is not quite like a bullet blade or boot-heel, waiting

with the pitiable animal that gasps through shattered armor,

tongue scrabbling at the dry leaves and lawn clippings.

Normally I do not prolong misery but I stand here

as red and silver trucks drive by (too tall to see the heaving leather).

Sweat stings my eyes and I leave the leper to the sun.

It's 3:15 and I have a pitcher of beer and a cold glass.

Slowly the bar fills up with people. The body will rot.

This city does not bother to bury small mammals.

He States His Worth To His Beloved

I have failed you many times, it is true,

And I would not think you a bit remiss

If you did not trust any of my words;

Set it aside. Let us go, you and I,

Down gravel paths, deserted country roads,

To the place I lost teeth and broke my bones.

Six hundred paces further is the swamp.

Turn now to where the sun makes its descent-

That yellow house was where I learned to bleed

(Though the paint was gray when I was a boy).

Those hundred pine trees in a stately row

I planted with my brothers and sisters.

They are all the life I have ever made.

The land is not mine; I still own nothing

But here, you see my capabilities.

In this light it does not seem much of a promise.

Seven

Wonder! Here was the statue of the god,

Lord of lightning and ruler of his kin.

Cruel chisels chipped away his majesty.

Was He alive before that sacrilege?

Wonder! Here was the Huntress's temple,

Slim columns like the moon's silver arrows.

Heresy, to burn a sanctum for fame.

Now, worship Her only in wooded glens.

Wonder! Here was a man giant as dreams.

Colossal bronze shone like the second sun.

The land would not long bear a proud Titan.

More than Icarus suffer vanity.

Wonder! Here was a king's final repose,

So grand a tomb that others bear his name!

Crusaders ground marble into plaster

And Mausolus's honor is a church.

Wonder! Here were magnificent gardens,

Envy of all that breathed Babylon's air,

But the ravenous earth shook, swallowing

Beautiful flowers and wind-scoured stone.

Wonder! Here was the triumph of an age,

Long guarding ships through Poseidon's domain

'Til jealous quakes destroyed the usurper.

Only immortals can create a star.

Wonder! A pyramid marble covered,

Hellfire white, then time and invaders came.

It alone survives. This is mastery.

Every child wishes to live forever.

Conjuring

Madman! You have summoned a creature you cannot control!

This vain ambition will dig for us all an early grave!

Raindrops and worms will be our pallbearers!

Now only teeth remain, salting the soil.

Menelaos

The bull bellows, He roars. His blood is hot

And soon to be on stones thick as the flood;

But before knife and pain, a memory-

Days before my Helen abandoned me,

She and I were in bed. You can see it:

I brush her hair, five hundred strokes or more

Though I fear (and know) that she will soon flee.

Why? You may ask. I love her. I love her.

I do not dare to shame her, shear her hair,

Or drive a dagger into her false heart.

I wait for long hours as she sleeps and dreams

Of foreign lands where sand is not the soil.

My famous war cry? Nowhere to be found.

A sleeping woman makes me a coward.

Dawn rises over funeral pyres.

My queen, my heart, she sails to Ilium,

Laughs with her lover, drinks blueberry wine

As the salt spray cuts the hands of oarsmen.

Oh Paris, chubby faced princeling, doomed fool,

I shall not pursue. On my isle, I stay;

No treacherous blade will sever my thread

'Til the Old One calls. I will be ancient,

Sitting in a chair, beard below my waist

While my grandchildren cavort at my feet.

I will be fat and they will laugh at me

When I offer any sort of advice...

Enough of the future's harsh distraction.

I have no honor, but the gods hear prayers.

The bull bellows and his throat is cut twice.

His life is a river choked by boulders.

If this sacrifice does not satisfy,

I will cull the slighter and weaker bulls,

Then cows and calves of every color.

Does this not slake the thirst of Olympus?
I will slay ten thousand birds of the air.

I will wreck levees, even murder weeds.

If there is a need, I will kill all life,

Only grant my request, this final boon.

Loose your mighty powers. Bind them. Bind them

So that their souls can never be apart,

And gift them too with eternal days

(No tricks, no jar to trap an old seeress).

Hear your servant. Make my curse flesh and bone.

My cause is just. I have earned this vengeance.