There Will Be A Chorus

Refugees crying songs off-key,

spent birds in unhinged swarms;

some can hear,

few can grasp,

one or two or three, maybe,
repeat;

amplified sound
a show of faith

that soon there will be a chorus

and a tune to which we might dance.

Bent, brooding and begging

In a shrouded long ago,

I asked a preacher, a Methodist,

if he really believed

in god. The question meant no outrage

and met none.

I did not say

fervently though you believe,

I do not understand your fervor.

Feverishly though you pray,

I do not understand your fever.

I do not understand this god of yours,

neither the shape of the thing,

nor its gender.

Neither do I understand its aspiration

for you or for us all.

I have no grip or grasp

on the universe in which it dwells,

nor why it lives there,

nor why it lives, at all.

I understand your faith has power

and stretches backward

a millennium, or more.

But I fear this is the weight

you drag behind and the cause that has you looking

to the day on which you finally will be weightless.

And he made no response to what

I did not say, but looked

the question do-you-know

of what or to whom you speak.

Ministers aside, consider,

the history of the rulers

and the ruled and why it matters now.

There are also the poems written

to draw nearer to you

and the ones rooted

in an inability to bridge

our mutual gap.

There is also the biography

of my solar-powered self

in every meaning of the term,

warm and heating up,

flaring and flaming,

sunning and indolent,

abiding the gloom,

outlasting the dark.

I am the rustle of the wind

and the sound of revolution,

the silence of defeat

and the rot at the heart of empire.

I am invention

and the means of installation.

I am the sun-dried husk,

the ruined dream,

the broken rampart,

the collapsing core,

the melancholy song,

the calloused, wracked and shackled,

the wicked wish,

the vengeful hand,

the dying.

I miss what I miss and whom.
Soon enough, I will be death

in every savage flake and pore.

Love to Babies

Nathan Night Rain,

you were an infant with

apple cheeks and patience.

Julie Anna,

you were a witch baby,

wise with foreknowledge.

And Brendan Isaac,

you were king baby

with windmill arms and bicycle legs,

wailing your loud strong music.

As Isaac brought joy

to Abraham and Sarah,

with a handful of weight,

with the heat of new beginning,

with the scent of everything to come,

so have you brought

gift after gift after gift

of Nate asleep on my heart,

warm weight waxing,

innocent of his fierce protector;

of Julie at midnight recalled,

fresh weight needing nothing

but that which was freely given;

of yourself,

urgent and new;

all of you, gift after gift after gift

to a father stirred and grateful

that the elements combined as you.

Walloped lifeside

In which the previously unimaginable 25-syllable (26?) Son-Ku is introduced:

Stupid with desire to be better,
desire to be higher.
Walloped lifeside.
This is good.


WARNING: Do not drive while using this rare poetic form. It may cause drowsiness.

By This Pencil

Homage to W.S. Merwin

Even if it’s junk,

the pencil and the paper

make more of it than writing.

The fingertip feel, inside and out,

the face emerging, sketched and contoured,

the smiles and the guarded thoughts,

all the shaded expression, 

all the passion coming soon,

the forest canopy sprouted,

sudden and slightly scented,

wet as rain, warm as summer’s wind,

dark as night and here, by this pencil.