mah maou

So you’ve missed your boat, Prophet;
speak to us now of waiting.

The moon’s howling wolves among us.
Cold tidal pocket pool abandoned.
The hand of Death awaiting.

Silent as Eurydice:
muted strings of the heart pulled asunder,
the moon’s howling wolves among us,
the hand of Death awaiting.

And as the tallest trees grow not far apart,
nor in the shade of each other:
speak to us now of waiting.

I have been guilty of crimes;
O, how I have been guilty of crimes…

How I have sinned in the name of affluence
against my brothers, my cousins and the world.

Have sinned in the name of
comfort, convenience, apathy.

How I have been guilty of nepotism.
of sending men to war,
of wanton and wanton and systematic destruction.

O, how I have seen
with ambivalent eyes
the product of my nonchalance;

Have spat upon the graves of my fathers,
have tread knowingly
upon the graves of their fore-bearers.

O, how I have been guilty of crimes
against my brothers, my cousins and the world.

I knew a man what was stronger than steel,
done shot dead after stealin’ some meals.

Didn’t give a fuck, nor a fuck on his brain.
As J. Edwin Campbell: BLAM! He gone like the train.

A foot on his neck — one on his left arm.
Tossed out the Navy and fed on green corn.

You live righteous, so you say what you will,
though I bet he never crept up on your windowsill.

“Now,” says I, “they don’t make ‘em like that,”
and I grabs up my cane and I grabs up my hat.

When dat nigga
told me get up on da table
was like cr-cr-CRACK!
I was UNPREPARED.

the dog
ate the giraffe today
in gnashing fluffgrowl splendor
while the little ones danced and played
and the cat looked on insouciantly
from over by the elephant graveyard

(for Jan)

from whence came the mystery of the borsht?
membranous lung laced with mustaches
served in the finest china of the house:
a wooden bowl and wooden spoon
while outside the sun drops displayed
myriad glorious molecules or waves
splashed against wooden backdrops:
ramshackle cabins of soviet construction

oh, to live once again for that summer of ‘68
when fruit vendors and taxi drivers
beat out laborers for their bargains
who beat out executives for the value of their hands
and who were all beat by politik and police

when one fiery blaze electric solstace dared emerge
from the hallowed halls of the National Gallery
and die between white linen sheets in all earthly agony
in protest of the sanctity of the soul of culture of priceless human pride
and pollocks rode the underground express from Warsaw
news of Siwiec still hot on their dry lips

that your sacrifice should not have been in vain
though the machinations spin onwards and ever out
that some may still remember and by death be bound
to say earnestly and always across the dome of their minds:
Fuck the Unfeeling Ones
Fuck the Unfeeling Ones
Fuck the Unfeeling Ones

It was a ridiculous time to be throwing a party, the night before Honey Bear and I had to wake up obscenely early and drive Yunus to see the judge in Redbird County.  Yunus was Honey Bear’s uncle and was awaiting sentencing on a vehicular manslaughter conviction.  He had accidentally killed some Turk with his truck on the way home from the bar one night.

The party was Malcolm’s idea.  It was supposed to be a going away party for Honey Bear and me, but that didn’t make too much sense because we weren’t really going anywhere.  Just up the hill leading out of Amaranth a little bit, moving in to occupy Yunus’s cottage and take care of the place while he was in jail.  It was only a ten minute ride from town.  But Malcolm was our friend, loyal in his own way, and he used the slightest excuse as a cause for massive celebration.

I tried to talk him out of it, implored him incessantly to move the party to a different date.  After all, we would still be there in Amaranth for another couple of days anyhow.  Malcolm wouldn’t budge, though.  He had spent all week consulting with Yolo and Walker and Fritz and Janice and calling all the girls in his phone book, until it was written in granite across the inside of his forehead: “FAREWELL PARTY ON THURDAY NIGHT AT THE BEEHIVE.”

The Beehive was the name we gave to a big house by the river where we had all been living together for a couple of years…me and Honey Bear and Malcolm that is - the only three that had been there for the duration.  There were always a dozen other people staying there at any given time as well, since it was such a big house and there were so many places for people to crash.  Yolo, for example, with his cracked voice, grungy black jeans and crusty dreadlocks sleeping in the attic; Fritz, long and gangly with his freckles and bright orange hair, curled up on the sofa looking like his joints had somehow been put together the wrong way; Walker, dark and surly with his pants too tight to fit his hands in his pockets and smiling wryly at jokes that no one else understands - no one knew where he slept if he ever did; the list could go on…

Anyway, the party was destined to be a disaster.  From the beginning, it was clear that everyone in attendance would make it exceedingly difficult for Honey Bear and I to meet our obligations the next day.  When I pled my case to Yolo, he was unsympathetic.  “When the fuck else you wanna have a goin’ away party, man?  If I see you on the street after tomorrow, I’m gonna ignore the fuck outta you.”  I couldn’t stop feeling badly about how Yunus would react the following morning, showing up late and hungover, discheveled, unkempt, his sole voices of support during the judicial procedings.

Yunus used to be a dentist when he still lived in Macedonia.  Honey Bear always called him his uncle, although he was really more like a father than anything and he actually wasn’t a blood-relative at all.  Yunus had a wealthy friend named Mr. French who posted bail, so the judge decided not to hold him on remand.  This meant that Yunus was able to live at his cottage in Elk Hills for the duration of the trail, drink gin and watch the sunsets, play Bridge every Thursday with his insane Armenian friends, and slowly build up enough optimism to be able to face his conviction and eventual sentencing with some sort of pride and perhaps even a grim satisfaction.

stacking up a pile of old capiases
and hoping I won’t be spotted
I wonder: where am I now?

staring up at the moon
with canīnus fidēlis
I wonder: where am I now?

stewing vegetables
in the coals of a fire
I wonder: where am I now?

eating tofu from the dumpster
and running from trader joe’s security
I wonder: where am I now?

belching marijuana smoke
and rubbing my nose
I wonder: where am I now?

where are the raw vegans?
where are the anti-Federalists?
where is Woody Gutherie?
where is Leonard Peltier?
where are MOVE?
where is Mumia Abu-Jamal?

I think I know the answer,
but I’ll never tell.

back in the stew
march of ought nine
shorts and sweaters

route 13 south
carving out the slow curves
bttls blasting hi/lo

one hand on the wheel
an elbow cutting the breeze
bidi hanging off the bottom lip
burning a thousand matches

smooth sweet acrid curls
blue lights in the rearview
double pinners over my right ear
a bota bag full of cheap cab
reaching up for the crash on tras2

but the five-oh screams past
and my phone is switched off
and i don’t have to reach for my back pocket
because the toll money is on the dash
and there’s an apple up there too
and missus jones is by my side
and richmond is just around the corner

your fitted,
aint.

this juice
ain’t the same
as this juice
that’s the same.

if you live in America
and don’t know how to rent a fence,
then you are a fucking idiot.

The tides will sing us akin to the oyster

on mornings touched with dew

of rolling, undulant margins redolent of sweat-anointed napes

o como sal a la lengua del enamorado.

The tides will sing us akin to the oyster,

ere being consumed with lemon

in sacrament,

unity-fitted as natives,

the saline taste of Aphrodite still wet upon our lips.

The currents will sow within

a single grain of sand,

a rubbing of elbows, a disturbance, a seed,

to grow, lie secret, intramural,

to blossom in amaranthine splendor

and beget pearl progeny,

held eternal in our ciphered script.

How from my makeshift home,
the camp in Kinsale,
I couldn’t picture the rooftops,

Buying strange meats
from the grocer in Horoměřice,
abstaining from vowel sounds,
soliciting tight-lipped, polite smiles.
Dobré, Americký, Naschledanou.

Riding the metro with mushrooms and mustaches,
Americans with iPods,
striped hipster black and whites,
under kafiyahs dangling inert, stoic,
Italians with speakerphone voices,
Slovaks with thick wrists and twinkling eyes,
laid-back Germans with bronze tits
and ham hock lunches.

Then on down the hill and into Dejvická,
to transfer lines, pass under the Vltava
and into the Zlatého Tygra,
candelabra casting shadows,
deep, stenciled pilsner casks,
pencil tallys on coasters.
Tak, tak! Pán, your glass…
Ano, ano, na zdraví!

Waking up on the bus in motion,
hocking bicycle parts at the Holešovice bazaar,
secondhand books in back pockets,
a wallet full of crowns from the printing press,
Flex, flexo, Englicky, Česká.

The golem in Malá Strana,
Kafka’s ghost,
twittering, fluttering along,
cold hands in pockets,
eyed askance amid scurried footsteps.

Writing letters into distant shoeboxes
with inscrutable postage,
destined to go unanswered,
poste restante.

Sitting on the roof of the flat, smoking
and watching planes descend into Ruzyně,
BBC World News blaring G8, Israel and the Jena 6.

And dreaming most of all
of that morning,
when birds sang brightly our departure
and I walked up the hill
from your house,
Forever to be gone.

In America
I was held captive
by the All Hail Trumpets
blown through silent breezes
to live in the Now New World
as a datum,
connected, saturated, mindless,
charged with nervous wattage
accumulated through gears and transistors
in storefront hamster wheels;

Alike to our beds and sofas,
standing rigid on dreary, dusty hardwood floors,
in remembrance of ancient hewn giants,
sanded to the finest grain,
erected o’er the tedium of insanity:
mundane, detached, removed, bemused.

And sayeth ye to those
who never would twice guess the motive:
“Doth not ye ignore the crimes of patria potestas
lest ye be swallowed yourself by the seeping ignorance,
of the All Prey God Freedom Trust Protector.”

And sayeth ye who would dare to gasp aloud:
“Chill not mine eyes
with ghastly truths,
to look upon this evil revealed,
and silence mine lips,
and bind these limbs
that, though seeing and hearing, I may not act.
And blindfold my brothers and sisters
that, though acting, I may not accomplish feat.”

Nay…rather, sayeth naught,
ye who are One with Eyes Opened Together;
may you never sink to this
lazy artifice,
bloated, dammed, routed passage,
nor feed to its dull green torrents,
dog-eared, torn, folded and battered,
unto rivers that no longer reach the sea.