They Ate Every Leaf
caterpillars
crawl,
chew,
devour
green leaves;
hear them--
chomping, omnipresent
like air,
bullets,
love,
chewing
like ashurbanipal
lopping off heads--
trees leafless
like auschwitz's prey.
Touched?
A touch--
Whose fingers on
Whose cheek?
Not like a marigold?
Like a marigold?
Poignant?
Not poignant?
Exit parson's nose
And swastikas?
Melt down belly-gods
And what
bombs?
Leave the gold
For what
peasants?
A touch--
Acid prints on
What textbooks?--
Like death-showers
For whose
skin?
Touch history
While it's--what?--still
Warm?
United They Stood
A good-as-naked man,
A bloodless alloy,
Beats his sword
Into a plowshare.
Concrete, glass, and steel
Tower like Babel.
And mothers will drink
Their children.
Once A Military Wonderland
Jezreel, desolate-
Layered in earth and
Bone,
Hid Naboth's blood,
Fed dogs
Jezebel's torso,
Gave Elijah lungs
To condemn,
Boasted Ahab's 70
Heads
In two piles by the city
Gate.
Jezreel, unearthed by spade,
Of the Iron Age,
Dry moat
And great walls,
Jezreel gone
Like Ozymandias,
Solomon too.
Over The Shoulder
Ground black, coarse, grey, or raw:
Make soap. Make glass.
Make hypertension.
Louis,
Make the French Revolution.
Trade lumps or slabs for gold or grain,
Moors,
Pay the Roman wage for
Flesh-slashing,
The Greek wage for slaves not
Worth it.
Vince spilled some. That
Late Supper. Judas' upturned
Saltceller,
His doom,
Unhonoured below the grains?
Unhonoured intestines!
Judas the world:
Throw some over your shoulder,
Preserve a few fish.
A Day Of Target Practise
Dad aimed the 30.06.
"What are you doing?"
"Shhh! It's a fox."
Down the bush-bullied trail,
Much down,
I, at 14, saw--
"That's not a fox! That's a--"
"Shut up. It's a fox."
He prepared his finger to squeeze
The black trigger.
His body? his thoughts?,
His heavy rifle?--a single stroke
Of annihilation?
Four people suddenly appeared
Behind the fox. Their laughter
Ended, as they saw us.
I felt the whole world
Hold its breath,
Heard racing hearts everywhere.
Dad sheepishly held the barrel down
As they nervously passed by,
They, and the wiggly cocker spaniel,
Between walls of wild bushes,
Climbing away from us,
Away from the mahogany butt
And oiled steel.
I've never gone hunting with my dad.
Aliens
Near my vinyl-sided home,
High-voltage cables—
Parabolic smiles
On a naked
Slope—
Pass through
Porcelain fingers of
Giants—
Robot-like aliens of
A dark world.
They want to invade my
Home
With electricity,
Driving out darkness
With the image of
A fireplace,
Venetian blinds,
And catalogue-furniture:
I recline in my lazy-boy,
Charging my brain with CNN,
As Kurds,
Refugees of Earth,
Try to escape despair
And death.
They want to invade
Peace
Because countrymen invade
Their homes,
Their tents,
With the wizardry
Of death.
They want to electrocute
Chaos
And hunger,
But they retain no power
Except to run
Weakly.
Granville's Cafe
Coffee-customers
Laugh, squeal,
Interpret laughs,
Sip, grimace, snort,
Try to get free re-fills,
Poke at smoke rings,
Drink Jet Fuel
(Two shots of cappuccino
In a milk shake),
Praise lead guitarists as
Obscure as Johnny Winter,
Condemn ismism,
Dream about fortunes,
And power--
Which one wouldn't admit
To dreaming about--
Admit to living Freudian/Jungian
Jungle lives
In which "east is east
And west is west"--
And if anybody forces the
Two together,
Quick tongues
Kill the romance,
Make pride scarlet,
Like cappuccino-bitterness
On a taste bud.
Hummingbirds
spring-humming birds,
as peculiar as gone-to-seed
dande lions,
quiver with
x = y-precision;
they chase kinfolk
from the red juice-feeder.
as graceful as a whisper,
as gentle-looking as a sleeping
child,
they dart and hum--
tiny heli-planes,
minuscule,
zigzagg ing
missles,
nectar-
eating
pecking order-beasts
that d i s a p p e a r
each
fall.
The Puma
stealth killer:
ungangly ghost that
leaps up 15 feet or
plunges 50,
like a tawny squall,
a sniper-arrow
of teeth and claws,
an arrowhead of fangs--
tick-tock tail and
milk-white chin--
an elusive flesh-monger
with eyes green
as emerald waves
or gall bladders,
and cold as death:
a bullet-head profile,
cloaked like a Klingon
Bird of Prey,
is everywhere,
nowhere,
like embezzlers,
assassins,
warriors
wrapped in darkness--
focused like a Free Stater,
or Republican,
quick as a terrorist,
cunning as a presidential
runner:
this phantom killer
of grasshoppers,
tinamou, and
seldom a man--
seldom a man?
tell the trophy-mongers
searching
for glory,
for their own fear to conquer,
for an end to their boredom
of breathing.
Local Boys
We practised dying,
The local boys and I,
Contorting in Untouchable
Shadows, falling over board fences,
Jerking, twisting in pain on weedful
Lawns, practicing for the big contest.
"Let's find out who can
Die best!"
The Eliot Ness of 27th Avenue,
The boy with the Tommy Gun, yelled:
"Ratatatatatata!" He fired gleefully
At a "Valentine's Day" line up
Of Olivier-performers
Scattering like bats.
Sometimes I won, and that was
A great day, to die, twitching in the sun,
Better than all the other boys.
Haiku
The soldier
Dead in his foxhole, still
Clutching his rifle.