Trip(tych)

I. Fall

On sidewalks where both moon- and lamp- light fail

there is no Icarus and no altitude

beyond a dwindling five foot four.

Instead, rag, bone, blood, crime scene --

oh, fuck it -- who reads the poetry of fall, anyway,

except  the fallen ? The Calle Verde

rises up  (gravity, tar, toehold, doorway, empty

nips) and all eyes snap

to instant avert on Bus 70 -- hell,

she's been invisible anyway, and now, glasses broken,

she's half-blind. One foot on each of those dark shores,

she straddles the proverbial abyss. Meanwhile, heliotropes

flourish on the altars amidst brass and aspirins, and kids

freshen everything (or so they preach) new flesh

omnivorous and bright, o wholly night,

(where face is wedded to earth)

gravidity rules, enthroned, so fulsome, so carnal,

so draped in baby-blue --  so adorable ! --

and at her feet I groveled in the gravel

spitting out teeth, blood and the throat-risen  mother

even while battered by the footfall of toddler light-up sneakers,

too weak to hiss up at them the usual memento mori

or to remind them

you are the apples of an eyeless world.

II. Recommission

Instead, preach on the humus, the topsoil, night-

soil, todesphere, decomposture.  

                                                   Translate it,

if you must, into whatever scriptural lingua franca

you most fancy (whirlwind, dust, tomb, rock, tares)

but don't manna-coat it.

                                        We can stand it.

It's where we're going, it's where the prison gates

swing open and our star-born elements

eat dirt at the feet of the bored guard:

you won't be back, he growls.

Little do we know.

III. Stone Dove

When she left

she left it behind

on her back porch rail.

At first I thought it was a ground dove,

out of its element.

The leaf-strewn sunlight,

filtered through the branches of the towering trees

she had asked me to remove,

    ( those are maples, trash trees, weed trees,

     their shade is spoiling my garden paradise)

animated it, but nothing holds that still

unless it's dead or playing dead.

It fixes my kitchen window

in its sharpshooter's laser

gaze -- pinpoints me heartlevel

while I dishwash. I know

it's no peace dove, no wedding flock escapee,

no simpleminded pigeon, bobbling and googooing for snacks,

no dingy, unpleased holy ghost:

no, it's a mourning dove

and it's got me in its petrifying sights.

2014