Cabrona

Thin woman wedded to this world
by charred steel wire,

they light fires, call you Flaquita.  They buy
your homemade .45 rounds

with disdain on their faces and good gold.
You are not to be told.

Your silence breaks down
the highest walls.  Whole towns fall

to that cool quiet -- what it sounds like
when you listen to them.

You hear every prayer they dare
utter at a shrine

some outlaw carved for you
in offerings of bone.

A pobrecita genuflects before your forbidden grin.
Behind her, a rangy dog stalks alone.

Gibbous

Nervousness in the darkness.
A comma ends your flat smile.
__________The park
has been closed since 10
we agree
__________under sudden
filigree of shadows -- branches
_____groan over our heads.

Night's razor nicks
__________moon's edge,
cuts the moon loose from a cloud.
Now we're surrounded:  a crowd
of old growth trunks
glow whitely, warm
with promises that storms
survived, overcome

are settings for slow quiet
as gold is for gems.
You take my arm, then
you walk me
downhill
past a vigilant wood
peopled by Love's ghosts
and ubiquitous Need.

Sorry

Drunk is such a pleasant state to be in
here, under the stars, with you.

The highway hardly makes a sound.
See those lights, drifting this way?

A tanker arrives from distant China.
I wonder if they hear the foghorn?

This night is warm, I agree --
but still, keep the scarf on, if only for me.

Nothing, I just couldn't help but exclaim.
Apologies for breaking the calm.

Cicadas

Dormancy -- what's the use?
Who's to know we even existed?  Truth.

Rising drone, shrill with rue.
Swarm drunk through trees in June.

Fat thunk:  carcass slaps bark.
Eyes aglow -- we never fly in the dark.

Nestle under moss, under shale, pry
twigs aside, try to hide

our summer song in oak, pale, brown and dry.
Thrumming loudly now in manzanita.  Broke

a branch on the way down
to answer for Northern, wind-borne sounds.

Nohemi

It hides behind whitewash, within
vestal stucco so as not to offend

las abuelitas who wear pretty dresses
and daub their foreheads with ash.

It's the self she's familiar with
the self she doesn't dare let on

she loves unconditionally -- a girl!
Imagine the wars such a revelation

would ignite.  I write of her true heart
unmitigated and unalloyed

by tradition, obedience, or that favorite
t-shirt of hers (it sports a portrait

of Chavela Vargas); Nohemi can often
be seen wearing it beneath a studious frown

and round, red-framed glasses she doesn't need.
In any quiet moment, it's obvious

her ear leads her mind.  The discerning,
not to mention the pure of heart, note this in her.

Un indio que sobrevivieron las hieleras
le preguntó por las direcciones aqui, en este El Dorado --

this citadel of gold and ghosts.
He could tell she was a true friend:

a secret queen of the strange and poor.
He saw through the stucco to the warm, hard adobe and straw

at the core.  Now he can admire
this new generation, their reverence

for law and blood.  Nohemi, after this
walked on in silence to work

pondering imponderables like,
"Are the envied enviable?"

She wonders briefly that every day
this winter the air has been perfumed with wood smoke.

Antediluvian

A rising tide lifts all boats.
A tsunami inundates the coast.

Who are we when tears flood in?
A damned nation wailing in sin?

Or are we aboriginals bound for higher ground?
Anticipation:  the lonesome, busy sound

of waves lapping against rocks.
A force of nature and man are ever locked.

She who works for waters to be calmed
pockets her tips and whispers a psalm.

Arabia

Naphtha wells up out of Oriental sand
That hard reek of flint, black bubbles --
Greek fire burns my hand
Persian ships in a conflagration
Meanwhile, on land, an handful of Argives
Perish to the last man
Victorious over Xerxes, whose span
Descends into shame, senile
Your ziggurat, old man, melts on tan
Shores under waves that continually break
Give yourself a hand
You learned what to take.

Special Privileges

The crime in question is transient and vast;

It has something to do with what may not last.

Something someone said or made --

Someone who took too much for granted

And always may.  Smell lavender:

Derision and fear.  Keep it near

As a sort of defiance.  Prick your ears,

Follow what you hear to hell:

If you lived here

You'd be home by now.

Sacred cow:  A pebble in your shoe, cursed at aloud.

Who is your enemy,

Pretty little girl?

Who piques you to kill

Under the gaze of the owl?

It swoops down from mistletoe,

It dives low through history

Known only to the bones of dirt,

Grist for only grandeur's mirth.

Fait Accompli

Beg, plead --
you do not move

terra antiqua
shakes you

off to mom's basement
or into the Peace Corps,

to a heretofore unknown
smugness old coworkers

aren't aware you feel.
They have lives, you see,

all too brief, as they saw.
Horrific truth,

a reminder they hate:
advice, alarmingly free.

"Go West," said your harried
aunt fondling her rosary.

A brother in the clergy,
a sister emerging

from the package store.
Who's that piece of shit she's with?

It's not your business anymore.
Cast your lot on the Pacific shore;

from there, the world
doesn't sparkle.  Now it's yours.

Mestizos Como Yo

Tar flats and sand,
taken for oases in mirage.

Horizon:  the edge of land,
sky's limit.  Scrub oaks skulk

up a golden savannah hill -- twist,
bend.  Is this the shit for which

conquistadors killed men, women, children?
Laugh with los Californios, ever known

for that singular way of theirs:
How little may a man do

and still appear the envy
of any caballero?  Shrewd,

lazy, dressed to the nines.
Lives lived richly outside lines

_____drawn by forbears, out of the frigid
Virgin's shadow.

O por los padres, que tienen corazones de arena fría.
Pobrecitos, los indios.

Walk

Lean in to slap
gnarled bark.

Palm scrapes
trees' solidity.

Bumblebees drift
cloud-slow.

How loud this town
has grown

with what's not worth saying.
Deafening shades of red,

blinding white chrome.
Hands fold in prayer

_____or are withdrawn --

malediction.  All
focus on a home

unaffordable
to those who were born before

cranes raised a roof
over her.

Domes and minarets
whip by.  I bow

my head at a window
past which folklore sped.

Dread dressed us in Nessus robes.
______Gifts none would ever ask for;

a voice could lift
bodies sore

bodies used
by thieves accused -- 

_____accused yet never tried.

Who are we to dye
bolts in vats and chat about the latest score?

Do not ask to be told
what's in store.

Harvest Dusk

Scarecrow, scarecrow, you stand alone.
Scarecrow, scarecrow, you have straw for toes.

Stuffing peeks through your chambray shirt.
Your beaten leather head hangs ever so low.

Are you low?  Low and lonely, old scarecrow?
What does the corn whisper when wind rustles from row

To row to row?  What does the corn say
when the wind rattles it slow?

Did it tell you a storm's on the way to make dirt dance?
Tell me, old scarecrow, what you know when you have a chance.

Inheritance

Bakelite box, nicotine yellow.
Lift the lid, the rings
are old; they were hers.

Not scattershot but neat,
nicely held in the folds
of brown velour.  Candlelight

shattered by diamonds, rainbow
at night.  She left them all to me.
She was not to be buried

with anything -- not a stitch
went with her.  Such is the revenge,
daughter, you shall have on the world:

You can't take anything with you.

Cinderella

Staircase wide, black.
It runs grandly up
to an amber sky
flecked with gold.

Once said among the old:
the prince was blind
in just such a way:
faces once met then would fade

upon leaving.  He could not fall in love.
Once the face beheld fell away
he could not, when again
he'd found it, match it

to memory.  So, too, names
were all the same, his mind for them
a helpless, frustrating
fog, light gray.  It was as though

he had to hold on to each
new soul by a marker
he'd laid:  a dark red frown,
a string of pearls, a glass shoe.

Were you to recall to him
the place and date you played
whist with his maid,
with luck he might place you.

So here is where, so long ago
he, frantic, stopped cold,
and with voracious eyes
watched torchlight dance on a gleaming toe.

Sexual Archaeology

_____marmoreal shards
bone_____chips --
__________Leakey's
mother lode shipped
worm-eaten crates
__________New York City.

_____lucre to you
royally filthy necrophiliac
your laboratory redolent:
_____sawdust, solvent,
hatred and glue.

_____hallowed sable brush
breathe a fucking clue
as to who you wanted us to be --
_____gracile, ossified, gentle,
__________inadequate and true.

never again between me and you.

Soigne

"Baldassare wore that dry air of self-sufficiency which respects the inwardness of others..."  Sidney Alexander, MICHELANGELO THE FLORENTINE.

Streams, muttering silver, thin
and white under shadowed oak,

over granite arranged so
as to form a fortress in

black glitter; they water skin.
Linger, alabaster glow

until clouds we can't see flit
between moon and those arrows

sunk in Plutonic, rich filth
mere inches from her pale toes.

_____Exposed to the arching sky,
_____a goddess knows she won't die.

Sabra

- Inspired by Gene Wolfe's THE SOLDIER OF SIDON

Waxen woman
dead in transport
down the dread Nile.

Nubia:  you
and that black cat
come out at night.

Moonlight, white, glows --
illuminates
papyrus, glue.

Nails fastened me
to the coffin
lid you hew through.

Lamb-brained friend
ask the scribe why
she prefers you

over dark me.
Pretend Hathor
succors old men.

Haiku #2

はなびらが
たたみにおちる
にがいいき

Haiku #1

やいている
かしわのかれは
あきのあじ

Dharma

The brahmin
__________undisturbed
_____moves on.

Glow, moonlight,
__________on the warlike
_____and those

who delight
__________alike.  Warm us,
_____heart fires.

When the flint
__________strikes pyrite:
_____fool's gold --

__________extinguishment,
_____white spark.

Pillow Talk

Closer, closer
and listen.

Ammunition
is driven

to where it's fired
by a man

whose ire at red
lights could fan

conflagrations.
Listen, now,

carefully.  I've
packed your lunch

with gunpowder,
a flower --

carnation's your
favorite.

Smells overwhelm:
cordite, milk

spiced and sweet.  Eat
with my words

that pinch of salt
you would drop

on a bird's tail.
Feather soft,

reach between walls.
Take no calls.

Olduvai Estate

__________Agarttha
pillars of banyan.
__________Cerulean
ribbon plaiting plain.

(Hallowed be thy name.)
Tawny, brown, sere.

An arrow landed here:
__________mahogany
shaft -- white feathers.  Rafts
__________made of reeds
float among camphor's
__________shamefaced smell.

Bells ring:  dusk.

Edenic

River bend; jacaranda spread your arms over dark stones.  Cascade and black ripple -- outermost, white foam.  A mosquito roams, rises and drops.  Blood is the warmth the sun threads under our skin.  Permit the broken sky in -- he seeks the comfort of torment.  Lightning lent life; thunder is the cry it gave out of the gate.  Set the oak table for eight.  Use a placemat to hide the human stain.

Hospitality

Angels_____daughters_____sons
don't die as clean
__________as animals
at each other's hands.
_____Asafoetida
bitter stench
_____greasy smoke
writhes, a Salome dance
__________over
and around conquered lands,
_____under a sun
obdurate; its gold-white
light appears to recoil
from vulture-stripped bones
baked into hard clay soil.
__________Bread broken
under this roof
__________the host
offers with a mirthless,
_____half-toothed grin.

Happy

My friends permit me
to straggle._____I adjust

my red silk pocket square.
I take my place

_____behind the crowd
gathered._____I look

where they look.  I know
yet enjoy._____When

the lights die_____a hush
erupts._____The night sky

thronged with piercing stars
obvious now even from

downtown._____We wait
for the show to start.

I remark
to the programmer_____(she stands

at my left) that better than
quadruple redundancy in the case

of spacecraft systems
is quintuple -- better still

is arriving from a different
angle altogether.

Don't shush me;
the show's been on

for eons.

Butcher's Bill

Sex and death in the same breath
Profundity?  What was that for?
I've got ghillie-suited snipers
Knocking at my door.

You say you smelled smoke?
You spoke too soon.  I've doused
The flames.  Curtains of shame
Drape plastic window panes.

Acrid as a Larkin street whore
I've been.  Sorry, I'll truck with men.
Sound alarms for poor Mr. Yorke:
He needs surprises, but when?

Gorgons and Sirens

Networking, schmoozing.  Flutes of rosé.  Feeling sophisticated for playing this game to score some dick.  Remember Nick, who knew I was easier than you?  Console yourself, I still practice wearing heels at home.  I didn't learn how until I was 22.  So what?  I can only guess what you're wearing and it's not Jimmy Choo.  Graduation dethroned the likes of you, the little hard candy ex-cheerleader tyrants who couldn't get a clue:  brains to earn money for shoes, and men whenever you want.  Oops, how're you getting on?  No one's calling me loser now that I pay my own rent, and don't have to share a toilet with vapid drunks in their boyfriends' trunks.  Bitch, you called me a failure just for wanting to fuck.  At least you didn't call me a slut.  But giving me shit for not talking ball when all I wanted was sex?  Stupid cunt.  No wonder I'm in Menlo Park and you're trapped somewhere you hate, surrounded by thousands of older versions of yourself, with whom you compete and with whose husbands you wish you could play adulteress and procreate.  Spit on your fingers and flick.  Guess what?  I got to a 30-24-32 -- muscles and truth.  They're eating out of the palm of my hand -- not so many jocks as couch potatoes I'll admit.  Tonight, an IT guy, don't know his name, tomorrow a tagger and a hacker (two in the bush is worth more than one of your little fuck fruits.)  Susan Smith your way out of that little cul-de-sac, you cunt.  I just wanted to send this off with a care package to the former queen of Alpha Delta Pi:  box tops I cut out for the schools shouldering your evil little shits, and three pair of white cotton granny panties -- one for each girl in the house you said didn't fit.  We didn't.  Ready to stick a fork in it sis?  Love, Dana.

Sacred, Meet Profane

"The kids are all right,"
she writes, in the demotic
from golden hinterlands.

"We feared the future,
as it ends the now.  Schlepping
around Hong Kong

"In that shit-smelling dhow,
or whatever they're called,
did you not see daughters

"walking the jetty with tired
fathers in the lead?  Please
spare me your unsparing

"Teutonic misanthropy.  Even here,
in Baghdad by the Bay,
a coding drudge, son

"of exurbs, fences,
and the-goddamned-NRA-make-
good-neighbors -- even he

"could lift by hand out of the gutter
some skeevy junky.  Mothers
of whim, not necessity, upended her there.

"Her abjectness, her sores, weren't
catching.  'Holocaust,' you sneer,
'the cleansing fire aches

"'to break free over our
dollhouses and mounds of cocaine.'
I tell you I've spoken to the sane:

"to such silent children whose eyes
were unforgiving as razor blades.
Should your vaunted flames

"perservere, they leave behind
ashes and fat, water and lye.
Indeed, ridicule may alone thereby die."

Travertine

Tivoli tomorrow,
work today.

Posters are a luxury
on her pay.

In bold deco reds and gray:
forests, lakes, Bauhaus

letters proclaim
the cruelest Italian thing.

She flours her biscuit cup's rim.
One more dime she flings
on the rusted baking tray.

Arachne

_____Spider-guest, bare your fangs!  A drop of venom from the curved thorn hangs.  Medicine, placebo or bane?
_____Six eyes, nilotic gloss, wide.  Do you or does the world they spy hide?
_____Thump, thump, skitter and rest.  The trap you lay is a future rat's nest.

Silence Doesn't Tarnish

Black robes abjure
pleasure_____guilt

Do not think the black silt
harbors gold_____incentivus nil

Spilled on the inside of her thigh
an ungainly glob, evaporated milk

Devoid of "I,"
_____passive voice

Pubic hairs curlicued
in Pashtun

_____Phantom levers
__________payroll pushers

_____locomote.

1944

Herring in a tin
tub._____Beached

span from hinge to sand bar
bangs, clang of steel.

"The Germans aren't fond
of American chocolate.

"Still, they smoke our cigarettes
thinking them

_____part bargain,
__________part deal."

Tools

Shadow-dappled
_____sidewalk.
Trees leave
_____lung-shaped
__________tracery.
__________Dark, light
_____sway of white
branches._____Fix
_____for a moment,
__________compass-like,
a limb against a light blue sky
_____starless.
Only at night
_____dare we navigate.

Sangre y Miel

Soporific hum:
honeybee catch
_____clover.  Immolating day

reddens to dusk.
Samhain, All Hallows.
_____Boys frighten

__________it appears
more easily than girls.
_____Curl like a fetus on the couch,

old man.  Giggles, shrieks, shouts:
_____do you hear them
__________down the block?

When will one of those voices be your child
returned?  Sack of sweets in one hand,
the other clutching the sitter's shirt...

Buena Vista, Midnight

Fog horn__________lows.
_____Cloud-shrouded bull

bellows__________at diffuse
_____lights -- white,

yellow.  Haloed sunlets levitate,
arranged in a graph pattern.

Cold glow.__________Laughter,
_____sharp, feminine:

riposte.  The horn stays quiet.
_____She's repellent,

an anti-siren, this carouser
_____in chill mist.

Sobriquet

Howling like a trammeled hare

"I'll give you something to cry about."

Stare
_____hard at the jackrabbit shout
__________brown dust

hovering over gray and white

fur.  Bunny stumped at the inferred

query.__________"You're
the one who runs

from his own shadow's gloat:
'Coney Island, and you're not

__________going.'"

212

Bed of nails
I sleep on my side.
She paces the room
Barefoot for five
Hours, then sits
Cross-legged on our
Carpet garnished with shards
Of shattered glass.

Warped mirror,
You hang on walls we loathe.
Twisted mirror,
On walls that hate us right back:
Why do you suppose it's so?
We banter with your sweet alarms
Incessant and low.  You speak in tones
Smooth, like gloss enamel.

Why do you suppose
Such a fusillade of bullets
Flies into our room
Day in, day out?
She gave such a shout,
My old lady
When one grazed my thigh;
It burned, and another
Pierced my side.

Always so many lives
Slip by -- lives I'd like
To keep as true
As the lies of those who live them.
Gold is the kindest of all hosts;
Once again it will be mine.
To be sure, gold stolen from
The generous man shall burn the thief alive.

Philip's War (The Thanksgiving Ballad of Steven Ho)

"Recriminations?  Spilled milk?
_____I'm not my moms, yo."
So states young Steven Ho,
_____half Mayflower, half San Francisco.
His father's got custody now.
_____The boy's enrolled
At Everett -- he wants to go
_____to Mission High,
to defiantly slap wheat paste
_____murals decrying true crime
where posting bills
_____(and soliciting for tupenny)
remain verboten -- In the Tenderloin.
_____He can be forgiven:  He's young.
His mom was that lucky Southie
_____broad -- smart, gutter-burned.
A Beantown sweet
_____Who'd no intention to pain the man
who loved her.  Loved her as Californians try to love --
_____without judgment, and with enough room
to let her breathe.  It made her lie.
_____I hope she knows he did so with an eye
to survival.
_____Young Steven Ho, born at General on Potrero
to a Mom the 'Sco subsequently exiled
_____is wise enough to try to find her first
only in his Bic on Papermate tweak
_____sketches:  the sachem's wampum at gym class.
He's young enough to make us
_____wish him all the hurt he deserves
when instead of sitting in bilge to achieve Hong Kong
_____he backtracks, crosses Indian lands, to find his mom.

The Flayed Man

When great beasts descend to sleep
Night lumbers over all and wakes.

On high sits white cold mother moon,
Goddess of moths -- they swarm

Worshipful.  Unblinking eyes,
Lids torn off in a crime

Named Justice stare, unwavering,
at a black lake.  Rare

Diamonds peregrinate, defiant glints,
Across its surface signal,

Beware:  in the jail
Of mute, broken shadows

Which fled the razor-edged shore
You may be seen

 As you are beheld.
Your scream, heard by his mind alone

Will outlive you.
Starless black, remorseless, your barren home

He takes, leaving you
unable to escape walls that never warm.

Pity from the victim
Meets steel thorns of gloating mirth.

Glares from hate's faces taunt
You with an adamant northern waste,

Where wind bent pines
Mock sanctuary, a dry, empty enemy's place.

The Farallones

"A Jennifer Beales flash mob?
There?  To that song?"

She, exasperated, shuts
her laptop, sits somewhat askance, wrong.

We huddle in the windswept
clapboard New England-style shack.

Dusk, without fail,
that ubiquitous smell:

guano and what may as well
be dog shit:

Seals and sea lions.
One day they'll bark for real.

They'll scream, an army
at our rear as we evacuate

To the dinghy, which will
sink and rise

on the swells.  Seagulls,
an incredible

mess of them, will blacken the sky.
San Francisco,

faded and frayed, these days so worn
will never not be our port.

We, the PBS losers, the abstruse
vermin wranglers

have never had a choice
but to slouch home, derided

or ignored.  It is to be hoped
at best the latter

as our fondest reminiscences
mean nothing

to the stroller-shoving fag,
to the Valencia Street

Betty Paige-banged hag
who drags her feet on stable concrete.

Prophet

An infant's cry
from a reed raft.

This shore
begs you remember

Seneca.  Quote
Aristotle.  Boats

now ply the black
sea between stars.

Think we of ourselves,
in dusty, rustling fields?

Open wide your mouth
to suckle milk, to speak truth.

Appeal to the crimson ones.
Advocate for broken sons

of Armageddon.  Won
or lost, this case must

bend the ears
of the sage and the dear.

Elephant In The Room

Penny cruel
Sun-bright glare
Tracks reflect

Day until
Shadows roll
Over - wheels stop there

Look up
Windows bereft
Of faces bent

Over books
No one rides
Outbound; look down

Gold lettering on green
The name of a town
Citizens insist on leaving