Pancho And Lefty

They Came Wearing Robes of Crimson And Black

I stripped to the waist and sang our death song there in the black bird rain, face and torso smeared with blood and coal ash, entirely convinced. When the rain abated, I was left to endure the smirks of neighbors and the questions of local law enforcement standing among still birds by the thousands. The entrepreneurial spirits filled trash bags with their bodies for possible E-Bay sale later. The scientific community began there inquiries with academic dispassion and great self importance.  And the old man on the corner sang, "A band of Angels coming after me, coming for to carry me home".  It was then that I saw and began to wail, to tear at my breast, to gnash my teeth

Red Wing

The people stroll separately
miserable or oblivious,
in the blackbird rain,
the birds' red armpits 
like sugar maple leaves
strewn across the black feather carpet

Fallen angels gunned down in ignorance,
their intentions completely misread.

What if that was our last chance?

Someone is chanting USA,USA,USA.
The children have already unknowingly adapted.
Look, one of them has a dead bird dressed for an outing
in a baby carriage.

A group of boys have propped up hundreds of black
feathered corpses with glue, pipe cleaners and Popsicle sticks,
rotting taxidermy in an elaborate cityscape.

They are just over there excitedly gathering stones
while the oldest of them howls
and pours a river of gasoline down Main Street.

The somber ones
dressed in black, thin, scarred wrists, skinny jeans
huddle together in the shrubs
reciting quiet funeral rites
and burying each bird,
sealing them with scented oil,
a prayer, a kiss.

There are some tears but no questions.
They understand, rightly or wrongly, that this is something they had coming to them.

I am driving through the area trying to make sense of this
distracted by a sudden awareness
of chemicals seeping into me from everywhere at once
through my lungs and skin and hair
hidden in every morsel of food
and drop of water I try not to consume.

I sense danger here.
Look at my hands tremble.

Take a well-washed mayonnaise jar
and line it with cotton balls for comfort
lettuce for nutrition
wrap it in construction paper and tape
to block out both light and horror -
a container for my soul.

Because you know what's coming down here
is not just the every day kind of
messed up.

But when I call for it,
gently,
there's no response
just a note on the refrigerator
that I cannot bear to read.

Faith

Awakened from deep sleep
last night by
the quiet but insistent voice of
one of nature's more mundane urges

Mundane, that is, only
as long as everything is
working correctly

I stood and remembered a photograph
from the front page of the New York Times

A laughing Haitian woman seated in a chair
with her leg missing
her face was wide open and
she held her prosthetic leg
across her shoulder, posing,
before the earthquake she
had been a dancer.

She still is.

Haiti - where every tenth person died
in a single night,
when the firm certainty of Earth
could not be found,
and the remaining nine became the
planet's resident experts
in psychological and spiritual
survival.

I thought about a governor in Pakistan
shot to death by his trusted protector
for
blasphemy.

Returning to bed, I heard the screaming
of something wild, something fierce
some animal
outside in the cold night.

What it was I could not imagine
though I tried until
finally, I fell back to sleep
trusting blindly and
without thought in
the wall that separated us.

Camaron

Moonlighting

So begins another year,
it appears,
of too much work and
not enough sleep.

Struggling to pay what you owe
before someone comes
and takes what's
yours away.

In the meantime, your kids grow
exponentially,
you age irreversibly,
and your life...well,

all that potential.

Don't Corner Him