The ones who laughed and the ones who cried.
Cynics & Skeptics
1
What I see with my jaded eyes
tells me nothing about my heart
just as what I feel tells me nothing
about what I profess to see
the hand is quicker than the eye
I do not know for sure what I think
I think I know my mind until
I see dew lit on morning stone
2
I feel what I see and try to think differently
about both nerves and eyes,
one hand in the hot tub, other in the snow.
I smell my past when I glimpse cut grass.
Or is that the other way around?
Fill in (using a 2b)…
I know there is a trade route
that leads from my life now
to my first death way back when.
Epicureans & Stoicism
1
Left to hang out and dry on a clothesline,
her separates dipped in a salt marsh, fingernails
pared down to the quick and beyond the quick,
2
for that half-moon glow, that beaded blood
look on fingertip as if metatarsal
struck matchstick self to sprout red, wet flames.
Romany
Asked for an earthquake
got a tsunami
asked for fire and brimstone
got water searching for a home
asked for sun and got rain,
for nothing begets nothing in return
asked for a toga, a toga is not enough
without underwear,
nothing more than a sheet folded
hospital corners around bony skin,
blood rage in homeless circling
satellite HIV body.
Plotinus
Three-layered wedding cake
crowned with a couple whose lowest layer
a miniature hand scrapes for a taste
before that couple steps off their pedestal
to slice that cake for houseguests
as that child pivots hands behind back
face covered in telltale crumbs of who me, not me.
Catholics & Jews
1
Drank the blood of mine enemy,
tasted a morsel of his flesh
and called him Saviour, Father to me.
What to do with his bones?
Hollow them for a flute, eke out a tune
for a living, made so it tugs
purse strings of souls gathered
under one roof with a steeple
aimed at outer space where
God (it’s a g-thang) hides His face.
2
It isn’t the hair
It isn’t the land
It is the hair
On a plait of land
It isn’t the part
On the scalp of the sea
It is the part
Played by the sea
Of obedient hair
On a willing head
Of an element
Lighter than air
It isn’t the hardship
Of a thousand years
It is those years
Rock-hard shipshape
St Benedict
This is how we roll: in flaxen robes, hooded,
room in the sleeves to fold our arms.
We chant what we keep
close to our chests: a hand dealt us
what we must play, never mind
our daze, bluster, grace.
Welcome, sit, eat what we eat,
sing if you find what we say moves you,
whatever, you will, like yesterday, find us
here tomorrow, and the day after that,
all’s the same with us or without
us, in our circle, or lost someplace
outside it, for it cannot be named,
help us look for a song you can sing,
have a bite, a little something to chase it
down, not to mention a bed for the night.
Gregory The Great
Axe in one hand splits heads
text in the other hand parses syntax,
sorts woods from trees,
meaning in a mushroom grove,
umbrellas
for a picnic,
inhale,
nibble;
sip, swallow,
take notes.
Mushrooms so big
Greg shelters under them
from a thin rain sweetened
some, by falling through
sieves of honeycombs.
Was there ever human so torn
between apparent opposites
who made a reversible garment
from the two for all seasons?
Dark Ages
Cupped
candle
flame
wind bundles
before armies
invade
bringing thunder
without
lightning
dead
flame followed
by its after
glow
empty upturned
rigormortis
hands curl
fingers
harvest
battlefield
bones
Islam
1
I used a scythe to cut a star
from a sky full of such fruit
found that the more I cut down
more fruit lit up on that sky tree
2
de man can talk de man can think
de man use up nuff black an blue ink
de man spin plates balanced on rods a dozen
plates on a dozen rods
they can’t stop talk we won’t block ears
just as plate-spin keeps us all eyes
Hannibal
Crossed the Alps.
Did he hypnotize
elephants to believe
they were mountain
goats on a mission?
They say elephants
remember everything.
They say from that day
all elephants nose
their way across,
from this world
to the next, from
this flesh to that nether
body, akin to phantom
limb memory.
The Alps should have
Known better than
To cross Hannibal.
St Thomas Aquinas
Is there a pig more beautiful
than the lucky swine complimented
by Aquinas as godly, equal in said eyes to every
living thing, great and small, upright or on all fours,
on land, in sea or air, whispered so that the pig
must have felt Aquinas’ breath on her
sow’s ear, warm, urgent, incontestable exhaled truth
independent of understanding, immediately after that
compliment, seeped in one ear and out the other,
shipped off to market, to market?
Franciscans
If I sing unevenly
If I draw friendly fire
Draw blood from a friend
Take my hand
Think of my tongue
As doing no more
Than the following
Daily pull bucket from well
For one watersong
For I will be one
With my split tongue
Bucket tied to well
Renaissance
Give me a pig-foot, a cockspur, a bell,
three cockleshells, and a bottle of your finest.
No bread, no water. Give me a drum,
a scrum, a song and dance, a rap, tap, rat-tat-tat.
No vaccines, no antibiotics. Give me life.
Me, no self, not I, just exploded lil’
ole me
and mistress, Mrs. Jones.
Galileo’s Snowflake
Burst from a pillow fight, high up out of sight, earshot.
Jar we’re in, air so still, for this flotilla in straight lines,
No curlicues, no twirls in front a mirror, just up down,
But so very slow, it might as well be a sideways thing,
To stack imperceptibly, hand-over-ears muffle
In a library of powder, onion layers, skin on skin,
Keeping the world tucked in, underground,
Buried without bearings, we listen hard
For the start of this brittle splinter of glass
Strands on a head of hair made entirely of glass
Sprinkling almost-notes, more than halfway there,
Plastic crinkle mixed in whispers, sand-coated wood,
Until these bubbles we cannot see form an orchestra
For bubbles born and bubbles dying, us humans extra.
Machiavelli
The enemy of my enemy is my friend,
the friend of my friend is no good to me if he is not the friend of my enemy
The deal is, you take this beating heart and make of it what you will;
in return, when you give it back to me
at the end of your long and prosperous
journey – what length, what prosperity – I do with it as I please. What’s not to like?
Erasmus
Now you see me, now you
choose not to and so don’t.
Why do you still search?
I have told you everything
I know you need to know,
about me, what I do not
know, you do not need, if you find
what you seek your life will turn
sour like milk left out too long,
you cannot see it turn bad,
unless you take my mood
for milk, as something you
should not stare at, but glimpse,
unless you are me.
More
Or less with less as more,
he is blessed who sees the score
etched on tablets in the sky,
light as cirrus tiptoeing by,
able to ride lightning
down to earth, full of thunder,
replete with dirt.
More is less without a home
More is ash in fire and brimstone.
Need I say, need less, is more.
Reformation
All things
polished
prismatic
creatures
caged
or free range
all things
cracked
turned dingy
history
ours
made them small
Burton’s Anatomy
The hipbone connected to the thighbone
The thigh connected to the knee
The kneecap connected to the shinbone
The shin connected to the foot
The sole peeled from the foot
The hipbone connected to the backbone
The back connected to shoulders
The shoulders connected to the arms
The arms connected to the hands
The lifelines peeled from the hands
The hip connected to the back
The back connected to the neck
The neck connected to the skull
The scalp peeled from the skull
With a blunted instrument
Slavery Intro
Cup candle against a shower of arrows
carry that flame by eating the wick
with a lick and a spit from parched lips
coddle a flame burgeoned by a candle
waxed by the smelt by the melt of the dead
tremble fine hairs on skin cupped by eyes,
singed from staring down fire too long
from standing too near flame salt lick
for smell for heat as my eyes burst
butterflies their flung bedspread
far double wide, no pink slip nor moon glide
oh me, oh my, exploded long gone,
no soul, but two nailed to my feet,
no spirit, fermented blood, wafer flesh.
Come again, on a train I hold together
welded carriage to carriage,
on two sleeperless tracks, unparalleled,
who cups a candle against, not for,
always against, some thing or other.
Tidal
1. After The Duchess of Malfi
Long before I meet my end in that Robert Browning poem
As that creepy Duke’s last wife, her laugh is mine, her gaze
Too, eager to take in all things. The artist who worked on me
Saved what the Duke threw away. I dodge him by going back
In time to earlier and earlier examples where people like me,
Who left this world without proper names find our lives
Footnoted in ruminations on their greatness by others
In church registers, court records, witness accounts back,
Back to Gilgamesh whose cuneiform mimic our bones.
Our bodies in that story, our breath a chorus of readers,
Touch of their touch, eyes laid on us, picked up by sight.
Us two joined, taken out of time, place, flung into space.
2. (Gravesend, Kent, 19 February 1603. Frances, the mulatto, was buried.)
Man, woman, or child,
The record says you died
That you lie in Gravesend,
Literally, your grave, your end.
I feel rude to do it but I must
Call on you, call you up
To help me in my need
To know more about you.
Man, woman or child,
You must stand now for all three:
Man and woman and child.
I need all of you to help me
Come to grips with a time
That had you cut out for labour,
Until you dropped dead
And your soul flew up
Above Gravesend,
Kent, Dover,
For Africa
Where your story
Begins.
Your cradle.
Our civilization.
Us burning the candle at both ends.
3. Dear Mary Shelley
I scramble your Frankenstein. Lift him from the
Of his science lab. He had a heart before he was born,
Switched off the moment he rolled me from that stone slab.
He tilts towards me and I catch him as he tips forward.
We dance like this, me grappling with his weight.
He holds on, looks tipsy he’s so awkward, and we move
Back earlier, two of us now, not just me, another version
Of what happens to someone like me, this time black man,
Black woman, black child in a court record, a church register
Someone’s will, if not Pepys’ Diary. Ever been to the doctor
And have someone answer all the doc’s questions for you,
Telling the doc where, what, and how you feel, tongue-tied?
4. Mayday, Liverpool.
A good day for a parade: sun and cloud
Taking turns to sweep the sky.
I march to drums, walk in dance steps
All the way from Toxteth Library
Down to the docks where I dipped
My feet in the Mersey to school them.
Limbo dancer limbo for me
Under the deck and over the sea
The drums shipped me back to Africa
The dance held me in its sway
I dipped my feet in the Pleiades,
Swam among the Atlantic drowned
Thrown overboard off seventeen thousand
Voyages in the Middle Passage.
L
imbo dancer limbo for me
Under the deck and over the sea
5. Dreamboat
My friend Julian built a boat in his living room.
Said he would sail it on the river.
Took months of coming home from work
To launch his project. Saw it take shape
As if moulded from water, mini Ark, budding belly.
At last he applied the finishing touches.
Found he could not navigate it through
That front room window. So he removed
Said window. Friends helped him