A Sailor

A Sailor

That person who,

upon the waters,

notably once moved,

pushed along

by the hand of god,

crested waves,

and nosed troughs,

tied the seven seas

together with sheets

and gallants,

sailed,

was a sailor.

Seventeen

pictures, songs, fell in my lap

from an old manila folder,

fall leaves drift,

fighting gravity,

scattered in pant folds,

across this pine floor.

from the corner of my eye

a small bird escapes summer

stares curious from the maple rail

of a second-story bunk,

yellow wings stretch time,

blurring forgotten wrongs.

flickering tail balances this present

on that present against a final future.

evermore or nevermore?

an unlikely question from a songbird.

You, Fernando

Você, Fernando,

Uma pessoa sempre tão agradável,

Agora esgueirando-se

Meu quarto sentindo animais velhos,

Recheado com história pessoal

Mas sem palavras.

Você, Fernando,

Uma pessoa sempre tão compreensiva

Do meu mau português,

Agora comentar duramente

Quando me esqueço de um verbo,

Ou sorrir desdenhosamente,

Quando eu choro.

Você, Fernando,

Uma pessoa com seu tronco tão cheio de membros cortados,

Partes de corpo sem sangue

De pensamentos e personagens,

Muito parecido com o meu,

Devo beber minha morte

como o seu?

Tu, Fernando,

Uma pessoa sempre quebrando fronteiras,

Quanto vai sua mente libertação,

Quanta cor

Pode a lua puxar de telhados de telha,

Quanto tempo um coração
Ser ouvido após a morte?

The Choice

A cloud chose not to rain,

and yellow tropic sun

reaches through, to touch

a coconut palm, and reflect

from the edge of wings

of great white birds

traveling the river gorge.

The Mountain appears,

veiled in a shawl of mist,

north, beyond acacia

and locust trees.

Faint perfumes,

frangipani, ginger,

and an exotic feeling,

float on an east bound breeze.

The Buddha  

sits serenely,

ants and creeping vines

crawl over his folded hands.

Does he want to move?

Isms

I heard you heard we all

heard music change

to an ism rhythm

isms bag us in plastic

throw us in landfill

applaud our shuttered imaginations

isms promise outer space and give us

laugh track sitcoms give us dead children give us

gods of war give us mirthless smiles give us faces

impaled on blue suits give us lapel pins carved

in bloody rivers running from a lake

of hope.

Isms teach mothers to wrap babes

in explosives teach children to buy

cock raisers and pussy wetters

isms free elderly from streams of piss

from excrement that death

is built-in obsolescence.

Isms invisible in mirrors

lick blood from all our highway gutters

all the broken windows all the shattered cities

isms feed furnaces of greed isms feed appetites

of wolves whose tongues lick angel words

from our headless corpses.