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.