A sad sad sad sign of the times:

he is writing email titles

for the smut peddlers

Strange lines, soaring lines,

devised to sweet talk their way

past my firewalls:

 Sperm anchorer cloaked at night

train swims into the tunnel too small

running leapfrogs sheepdogs

argot orb midnight juggler dance

There are lessons in this that I quite like.

Poetry is everywhere

Inescapeable.

In the last place it has any right to be.

Like a weed. Or a nun. Or a two year old.

I am, however, put off.

By the way it has been finally spelled out,

The mouse has let the cat out of the bag:

somewhere”

Those are the words that were laying in wait,

enjoying the camoflauge

of the rest of that poem

and all the other works on all the other pages

in Poetry magazine, dated May, 2005.

They were patient, those words.

They were sitting improbably

gathering dust

on the shelf of a Good Will:

They were propped up between copies of

From the Zeppelins it looks like

a tremendous dragon raked his claws across this countryside.

It is the month of November, and I am reflecting:

It is different here,

There are those siren songs:

screaming duets told by the artillary shells

and their intended targets

Two hours to go. But:

It is different here.

A boquet of every sort of foulness

the tang of the poison gasses

the pools where blood and vomit form the broth of a shit stew:

complimented by the animal naked stupidities:

11/11, eleven o’clock. How clever:

How shall I catalogue them all?

There are men far away deaf dumb and blind

There is us here following the orders

There is me here following the orders

They thought long and hard about it, an easy way to remember the time to avoid the confusion.

I wait for the whistle and throw on the gas mask

I take my stance and tuck my rifle into that forever bruised space above my hip

I try to kill them before they can kill me.

I trample my dead friends where they form a bridge over the barbed wire

I celebrate the camaraderie of the warrior now.

Then: Armistace.

We will pull our bayonets out of our opponents’ guts

but We won’t wipe off the blades on our filthy pants legs

We won’t ignore the chunks of unspeakably-colored flesh that fall by our battered boots

We’ll turn around together

We will walk back to our homes

Broken, all of us broken

the land broken and our hearts broken

But not in vain!

This was, after all

the war

to end all wars.

And lumps of flesh

Mar the reflective chrome.

The jolly orange-yellow

Of the long body is dented.

And strained purple-brown.

This

Is the bus

Which people

Are thrown under.

It is, of course,

An abstraction construct metaphor.

But nontheless.

The driver,

With his mediocre hygiene habbits…

Grins, and shows his almost white teeth.

As someone

Lets you down,

Turns there back,

Or stabs you there…

As the wheels approach

You try to not wonder what the sound of your skull being squashed will make.

Instead, your last reflection:

It’d be so much easier,

If you’d been simply

Hung out to dry.

It was a nondescript wall.

In the art wing.

Half a world away

They are gathered by a wall

Now there is a piece of paper.

And an old coffee can

Into which a box of fresh, new markers was placed.

There was God’s dwelling

And now it is all rubble except for this.

Squares and trapezoids of print

In the unlikely, bright colors

Have been blossoming on the page all day.

Much is revieled by what it is you’d like to call this place:

Kotel;The  Wailing Wall; Waqf;  or Abu  Madiyans

At the top,

In purple

It says “This is what we remember.”

If they do not rend their garments they sa:

That which they have been told to say:

They have gathered before this wall.

In groups of twos and threes and fours.

They are crying, some of them.

“Our Holy Temple which was our glory,

 in which our forefathers praised You was burned…

They are holding

Each other and they are rubbing backs

And crying, some of them.

and all of our delights

 were destroyed.”

They are holding

Hands and leaning into each other

And looking up at the paper.

Some of them are crying and some of them with

Prayers, rolled up small and tight on scraps of paper

They seem to know

An instinct, perhaps, a hidden signal.

When it is time.

They place them in the cracks

Of what remains of the wall

Solemnly, ritualistically,

They approach the paper.

And they add whatever it is they had to add.

They walk away leaving there prayers behind them

Is there a symbolism here?

It is song lyrics for some of them.

It is a love letter for some of them.

It is a long, rambling attempt at constructing meaning.

It is a long

Rambling attempt at constructing meaning.

Plattitude and sincerity

Rub elbows like the jock and the goth here

Rub elbows like the messages from those  who did and did not know her.

In my dreams I approached the wall.  I wrote:

 “Our Holy Temple, which was our glory,

was burned and all our delights were destroyed.

I will start that water flowing.

The sink is a magical river.

It will come splashing in the carafe

and though my eyes aren’t opened yet

but I know the correct volume by feel.

The machine drinks the water all the way up

With a quiet Gurgle gurgle swallow.

it settles in the tank.

I Cross the kitchen again,

 it’s extra-long in the early-morning:

I reach the fridge.  Open the top door.

There is the blast of cold from the freezer;

grounds are not where they are supposed to be.

I swear to myself in the dark empty morning.

Before uncovering them behind the broccoli.

Return to the empty table before the machine.

My silver scoop is a holy object.

Filling the filter is a sacred act.

I depress the button.

Red light behind it fills my eyeballs

in the predawn dusk.

Listen? Did you hear that.

Grumblings, snorts, almost.

A whisky-swoosh sound,

the first drips, down, down, down.

They are not just water anymore.

Maybe this day will be worth it after all.

The mug is a chalice in my hand?

How it did it even get there?

I pour it full before it the coffee done.

Somebody will complain, later

about the drops that burned on the plate below.

Just a splash of cream,

then the sugar atop:

The house is so silent it makes a sound like radio station static

the granules penetrate the liquid’s surface tension.

I sip it,

almost too-hot, perfect.

and I am transformed.

this army

of adolescent

androgyns

Where did they come from…

with the zippered hoodies

that look like the skin

of neon zebra.

Where did they come from…

Probably

they identify

themselves with a name I’m not cool enough to know, let alone speak.

I think of them as neo-emo-goths.

Where did they come from…

Wherever it was

there must have been no sun.

They are so pale.

And they maybe played the paino.

With those long boney white fingers.

Where did they come from…

With these elven-waif features

and collar length hair

too apathetic for naturally-occuring color or texture

Where did they come from…

It must have been a place

where men only

were allowed product

for fingernails and eyes, lips and cheeks.

It must have been a place

with a surplus

of Nightmare Before Christmas

paraphenelia.

Where did they come from…

was it an underground dwelling

with roots poking through the low roof

where they were lined up

bony hip jabbing bony hip

where they were in a catatonia

unblinking

unmoving

until some

unspoken signal

triggered the Great Emergence

of the Gothic Groundhog Patrol?

Where did they come from…

Countless suburban closets

where they hung

upside down on pull-up bars

in silence

for years

patiently waiting

for the whole rap chic thing

to run its course?

Where did they come from…

perhaps they arrived from

some faerie world

on magical ships

with long sails unfurled…

Were those shopping malls deemed

as good a beachhead as any?

Wherever they came from

There is this cross generational connection

It only last a moment.

(S)he is buying a stack

of C.D.s that evoke my childhood:

Oingo Boing

Morrisey The Cure

Madness, Pixies– of course the Pixies

and Sinead

The purchased is bagged

(s)he turns to face me and ruins the moment

with a Billy Idol whiplash smile

I realize this great confusion:

Is this schmaltz or for real

Is this camp or a home in the 80′s…

When you live

in a world fortified with irony

The sarcasm soon becomes

the very air that you breathe.