almost honest, tangoing with wives of despots
entranced by stolen light in his eyes & hair.
He never wanted to believe a pinch of salt
for a pinch of sugar is how scales are balanced.
UNLIKELY CLAIMS
This is my house. My sweat is in the mortar
& hewn wood. This garden of garlic blooms
is mine too, said last night’s pale ghost.
I know every crack where cold & light
try to sneak in, & where the past tongues
& grooves the future. I own every rusty nail.
This fence wasn’t here when hobnailed boots
marched us into the night. I remember all
the cat’s-eye marbles would roll to this corner
of the kitchen. This tree limb my uncle cut
to make a witching rod. Here’s the mark
an anniversary candle left on the counter,
said the ghost, slowly fingering
the deep burn like an old wound.
Now dirt-bike trails crisscross
the apple grove my father planted.
The goat tied beside the back gate
belongs to my progeny of beautiful
goats. You sold the mineral rights
under our feet, but the bird we hear
singing overhead in a Yiddish accent
owns the morning. These roses are mine
because I’ve walked through fire.
Go & tell your drinking buddies
& psychoanalyst your neighbor
has risen from the ashes. I wonder
if I should tell you about the love letters
hidden behind the doorjamb. This house
still stands among my lavender flowers.
Tell your inheritors to think of me
when they smile up at the sky.
WHEN EYES ARE ON ME
I am a scrappy old lion
who’s wandered into a Christian square
quavering with centuries of forged bells.
The cobblestones make my feet ache.
I walk big-shouldered, my head raised
proudly. I smell the blood of a king.
The citizens can see only a minotaur in a maze.
I know more than a lion should know.
My roar goes back to the Serengeti,
to when a savanna was craggy ice,
but now it frightens only pigeons from a city stoop.
They believe they know my brain’s contours & grammar.
Don’t ask me how I know the signs engraved
on a sundial, the secret icons behind a gaze.
I wish their crimes hadn’t followed me here.
I can hear their applause in the dusty citadel.
I know what it took to master the serpent
& wheel, the crossbow & spinal tap.
Once I was a leopard beside a stone gate.
I am a riddle to be unraveled. I am not
& I am. When their eyes are on me
I become whatever is judged badly.
I circle the park. Hunger shapes
my keen sense of smell, a lifetime ahead.
They will follow my pawprints
till they’re lost in snow at dusk.
If I walk in circles, I hide from my shadow.
They plot stars to know where to find me.
I am a prodigal bird perched on the peak
of a guardhouse. I have a message
for fate. The sunlight has shown me
the guns, & their beautiful sons are deadly.
BEGOTTEN
I’m the son of poor Mildred & illiterate J.W.
But I sit here with Ninsun’s song in my mouth,
knowing the fantastic blue Bull of Heaven
because I’ve cried at a woman’s midnight door
clouded by sea mist. Grief followed me, saying,
Burn your keepsakes, or give them to Goodwill
or the Salvation Army, & then live on the streets.
But I couldn’t forget a half-dead, ugly prickly pear
breaking into twenty-three yellow blooms.
Namtar’s bird of prey perched on my shoulder
as I wandered darkness searching for light,
knowing, finally, I was born to be hooked
quickly as a fish. To spend an hour in Uruk
tonight is to awake in the Green Zone
with another dictator’s lassoed statue
pulled to the ground. The gods count
the dead, running eyes over folly, guilt,
& restitution, saying, Now, dear one,
you are bread. They tally grain & stock
noted in cuneiform, & I hear a whisper:
Bread for Neti, the keeper of the gate,
bread for Ningizzida, the serpent god
& fat lord of the ever-living tree,
& bread for Enmul, bread for all of them.
to the next. But in the final analysis,
a good thought is the simplest food.
Ninhursag is the mother of creation,
& the ants her most trustful servants
because they are always on their way.
BLUE DEMENTIA
In the days when a man
would hold a swarm of words
inside his belly, nestled
against his spleen, singing.
In the days of night riders
when life tongued a reed
till blues & sorrow song
called out of the deep night:
Another man done gone.
Another man done gone.
In the days when one could lose oneself
all up inside love that way,
& then moan on the bone
till the gods cried out in someone’s sleep.
Today,
already I’ve seen three dark-skinned men
discussing the weather with demons
& angels, gazing up at the clouds
& squinting down into iron grates
along the fast streets of luminous encounters.
I double-check my reflection in plate glass
& wonder, Am I passing another
Lucky Thompson or Marion Brown
cornered by a blue dementia,
another dark-skinned man
who woke up dreaming one morning
& then walked out of himself
dreaming? Did this one dare
to step on a crack in the sidewalk,
to turn a midnight corner & never come back
whole, or did he try to stare down a look
that shoved a blade into his heart?
I mean, I also know something
about night riders & catgut. Yeah,
honey, I know something about talking with ghosts.
GRUNGE
No, sweetheart, I said courtly love.
I was thinking of John Donne’s
“Yet this enjoys before it woo,”
but my big hands were dreaming
Pinetop’s boogie-woogie piano
taking the ubiquitous night apart.
Not Courtney. I know “Inflated Tear”
means worlds approaching pain
& colliding, or a heavenly body
calling to darkness, & that shame
has never been my truest garment,
because I was born afraid of needles.
But I’ve been shoved up against
frayed ropes too, & I had to learn
to bob & weave, to duck & hook,
till I could jab my way out of
a foregone conclusion, till blues
reddened a room. All I know is,
sometimes a man wants only a hug
when something two-steps him
toward a little makeshift stage.
Somehow, between hellhounds
& a guitar solo made of gutstring
& wood, I outlived a stormy night
with snow on my eyelids.
GREEN
I’ve known billy club, tear gas, & cattle prod,
but not Black Sheep killing White Sheep.
Or vice versa. I’ve known water hoses
& the subterranean cry of a Black Maria
rounding a city corner on two angry wheels,
but couldn’t smell cedar taking root in the air.
I’ve known of secret graves guarded
by the night owl in oak & poplar.
I’ve known police dogs on choke chains.
I’ve known how “We Shall Overcome”
feels on a half-broken tongue,
but not how deeply sunsets wounded the Peacock Throne.
Because of what I never dreamt
I know Hafez’s litany balanced on Tamerlane’s saber,
a gholam’s song limping up the Elburz Mountains—
no, let’s come back first to now,
to a surge of voices shouting,
Death to the government of potato!
Back to the iron horses of the Basijis
galloping through days whipped bloody
& beaten back into the brain’s cave
louder than a swarm of percussion
clobbered in Enghelab Square,
cries bullied into alleyways & cutoffs.
Though each struck bell goes on
mumbling in the executioner’s sleep,
there are always two hands holding
on to earth, & I believe their faith
in tomorrow’s million green flags waving
could hold back a mile of tanks & turn
the Revolutionary Guard into stone,
that wherever a clue dares to step
a seed is pressed into damp soil.
A shoot, a tendril, the tip of a wing.
One breath at a time, it holds till it is
uprooted, or torn from its own grip.
THE HEDONIST
I pull on my crow mask.
Butterflies & insects rise
in the ether of remembrance.
I suck all the sappy nectar
from honeysuckle blossoms
fallen in last night’s scuffle
between gods & human shadows.
I’d die for October’s last juicy plums
beside the shady marsh at the brink.
I’d stand on an anthill to learn
the blue heron’s treatise on agony.
Every joy & sorrow are mine.
I bow to kiss a whipping post
so I can taste salt & contrition.
I know all the monsters lurking
in Lord Byron’s verses. I follow
beauties up & down Broadway
till their masks own me.
I walk through the city,
saying, What did Kierkegaard know
about love & the God-worm?
After eating quail eggs & fish tongues,
I don a snarling dog mask
& pursue a would-be lover
into the hanging garden
till the Lethe is on her left
& the Styx is on her right,
& then I enter the labyrinth.
My alter ego is my servant.
Bring me fat gooseberries.
Translucent snails in sea salt.
Bring me a bit of Philopator’s heart.
I have a taste for the fugu fish
because there’s nothing
delicious as chance.
I’ve stood at a window
overlooking the Ideal City,
mouthing odes to a burnt silver spoon,
to a candle’s flame-glut,
to a woman in the distance,
to the insipid angel
on the tip of a needle.
My caul has bitten into me.
I know the eternal earthworm.
Behind my peacock mask,
facing the Adriatic Sea,
I wonder what it would feel like
to follow pearl divers down, to know
the holy pressure of falling water.
HOW IT IS
My muse is holding me prisoner.
She refuses to give back my shadow,
anything that clings to a stone or tree
to keep me here. I recite dead poets
to her, & their words heal the cold air.
I feed her fat, sweet, juicy grapes,
& melons holding a tropical sun
inside them. From here, I see only
the river. The blue heron dives,
& always rises with a bright fish
in its beak, dangling a grace note.
She leans over & whispers, Someday,
I’ll find some way to make you cry.
What are her three beautiful faces
telling me? I peel her an orange.
Each slice bleeds open a sigh.
Honeydew perfumes an evening
of black lace & torch songs,
& I bow down inside myself
& walk on my hands & knees
to break our embrace, but can’t
escape. I think she knows
I could free myself of the thin gold chain
invisible around her waist,
but if she left the door open,
I’d still be standing here
in her ravenous light.
Her touch is alchemical.
When she questions my love,
I serve her robin’s eggs
on a blue plate. She looks me in the eye
& says, You still can’t go. Somehow,
I’d forgotten I’m her prisoner,
but I glance over at the big rock
wedged against the back door.
I think she knows, with her kisses
in my mouth, I could walk on water.
A VOICE ON AN ANSWERING MACHINE
I can’t erase her voice. If I opened the door to the cage & tossed the magpie into the air, a part of me would fly away, leaving only the memory of a plucked string trembling in the night. The voice unwinds breath, soldered wires, chance, loss, & digitalized impulse. She’s telling me how light pushed darkness till her father stood at the bedroom door dressed in a white tunic. Sometimes we all wish we could put words back into our mouths.
I have a plant of hers that has died many times, only to be revived with less water & more light, always reminding me of the voice caught inside the little black machine. She lives between the Vale of Kashmir & nirvana, beneath a bipolar sky. The voice speaks of an atlas & a mask, a map of Punjab, an ugly scar from college days on her abdomen, the unsaid credo, but I still can’t make the voice say, Look, I’m sorry. I’ve been dead for a long time.
TOGETHERNESS
Someone says Tristan
& Isolde, the shared cup
& broken vows binding them,
& someone else says Romeo
& Juliet, a lyre & Jew’s harp
sighing a forbidden oath,
but I say a midnight horn
& a voice with a moody angel
inside, the two married rib
to rib. Of course, I am
thinking of those Tuesdays
or Thursdays at Billy Berg’s
in L.A. when Lana Turner would say,
Please sing “Strange Fruit”
for me, & then her dancing
nightlong with Mel Tormé,
as if she knew what it took
to make brass & flesh say yes
beneath the clandestine stars
& a spinning that is so fast
we can’t feel the planet moving.
Is this why some of us fall
in & out of love? Did Lady Day
& Prez ever hold each other
& plead to those notorious gods?
I don’t know. But I do know
even if a horn & voice plumb
the unknown, what remains unsaid
coalesces around an old blues
& begs with a hawk’s yello
w eyes.
DEAR MISTER DECOY
If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be
smooth as morning light on cold stone.
I walk into a jewelry store ten paces behind you
& look them in the eye like a pawnbroker
when I wear this apple-red lipstick
& blush of Icelandic rouge.
I lean lightly on the showcase in a low-cut
flair of tailored innocence. You could be
the lost descendant of some South African
whose fingernails were checked at dusk
for a speck of gold. Your face
blurs their brainy maps, & I apologize
for using their image of you this way,
as if we agreed to rendezvous
among twelve misty stations of the cross.
I run my hands through blond hair
till I own the store, my slender fingers
toying with silver latches & the glint
of diamonds. I know you are a good man
who worked & squirreled away coins
for small dreams, unable to stop seeing her
wearing this necklace, a secret wad
of dollars pressed against your bad
heart. Their cameras never aim at me,
Mister Decoy. I play with a sapphire brooch
as if I’m one of Pindar’s Graces
or Charites, but I live for the fit & tug
of blue jeans as my hips sway to ooh-
la-la. I never clutch my foolish purse
when you pass. Texas pours out
my mouth, & I know how to reach so my skirt
rides up my thighs. The mink collar
of my cashmere sweater blinks its jade
eyes. Years ago Jennifer dared me, & now
it’s habit woven into flesh, Mister Decoy,
& sometimes I can’t stop myself
from clowning with the light this way.
ONTOLOGY & GUINNESS
Darling, my daddy’s razor strop
is in my hands, & there’s a soapy cloud
on my face. I’m a man of my word.
Didn’t I say, If Obama’s elected,
I’ll shave off this damn beard
that goes back to ’68, to Chicago?
I know, I also said I’d kiss the devil,
but first let me revise this contract.
I can taste tear gas. I hear a blur
of billy clubs when I hit the drums.
I haven’t witnessed this mug shot
in decades, but I’m facing the mirror.
I’m still the same man. Almost.
Led Zeppelin is still in my nogginbox.