Stranded

I sensed the settling dust through the fading veil of pain
Earth's hard, coarse crust pressed my temple's vein

I twisted, cringed, and rolled, and struggled up half-way
My head fell back and lolled on the sun-sintered clay

. . . .

(1983 or so)

An Adventure

(parts presented in the order in which they were written.)

[Part 2]

Oily scum slides slowly by
   In iridescent scuds.
Skimming the flimsy phosphate film,
   I feel the yellow gel below.
The smelly smog flows, sludge-slow.

The plastic bags hold the mud,
   Then tear, and melt.  The slaggy silt,
fuming, stings my rheumy fingers.
   The frothing foam frosts the bone,
And falls in gobs on the frozen loam.


[Part 1]

Rough ranges of refuse, in mounds,
   Row after careless row,
Complicated my way across that wasted land.

I finally found the faded factory,
   Squatting in smoggy solitude,
Besmeared with smuttish slime.

From a distance its shape was a shadow,
   A stern black sillhouette,
Peering through a paler obscurity.

Its arrogant obelisks spewed acrid odors,
   And soot, like an evil snow,
Descended slowly and stung the senses.

Foul fumes arose in writhing spirals,
   And wreathed about the wretched place,
In shredded shrouds of leprous lace.

(1983)

Again

A static-sensitive chip has slipped
from a conductive plastic bag.
   On an arid autumn day like today
   it may be zapped by a static spark --
   in an instant just a high-tech tie tack.

From a high window I watch a satin flag,
the Stars and Stripes,
sagging in a listless wind.
   The white stripes are bright
   under the Indian-Summer sun,
   but the red bands remind me of Maryland sandstone.
This proud banner is ponderous,
a heavy fabric trimmed in golden fringe
like silver-gilt lamé.


Hang your head for shame,
for the red badge ignobly appropriated,
for the palm cursed with 13 pieces of silver.

Now stoop your shoulder to the yoke,
   and bend your back to the lash.
Know again the bitter taste of sweat and blood;

let your children know the sweetness of freedom,
   the fatness of pride;
let them learn in their turn
   not to take your toil in vain.

On your neck hangs the millstone of guilt:

for the lame dog you whipped
   as he limped back from war;
for the hand you withheld from the heroes
   huddled in a January rain.


Fifty white men gathered in an indigo field,
Witnesses to a solemn sentence.
   A white man stood stripped to the waist,
   Bound with shackles ankle and wrist.
The whispering wind bore testimony
With fifty men standing in silence:
   Seven strokes with the leather lash
   Leave seven stripes on the white man's back.

(1992)

After the Catastrophe

fingers are slipping
gripping
the spongy blackened wet-rot logs,
and deadwood shed from sad and naked trees

And sun sets

And head turns

As dark fibrous slime finds its way into my skin
where rarified tears despoil the fine nacreous filigrees
which evening had accreted there

Now moon and stars have come and gone
And new ones move to shape the next strange state
Tracing the loops of a lemniscate

(1985; incomplete)

January Rain

But fetid liquor                   A fetal spirit
    I rain on the earth,               I lie coiled in the ground
        dissipate                          expectant
    in the besotted earth.             in the wounded ground.
Woven tendrils,                    A spindled soul
    tangled tentacles                  mucilaginous;
        suck at my substance,              rewound on its spool,
    my cohesion a vain defense         a vine twice-spliced
Foiled by gravity.                 Entwines my entrail.
    clotted in the earth,              I recoil at the sound,
        desperate                          extracted
    in the veins of the earth:         and spilled in the soil
A fibrous liquid.                  insipid flux.

(1992)

Islets in the Stream

Two fragments of a thing I wrote in 1992 called "Islets in the Stream". I guess these would be two islets, then. Stream of consciousness, don't ya know...

A kiosk stands unattended; the public has passed it by.
Notices posted in the past now flutter vainly,
as if straining to escape the push-pin prison.
They've faded in the sun, are streaked and stained by rain.
Those which once were yellow now are white; what were white are yellow.
The smooth are now seer-suckered; the origami has gone lame.
No one notices the no-longer-news; no new leaves are left on the heap.
What is readable is not read; the fingers that once lifted layers
now leave the wrinkled shingles alone.

. . . .

The windows are not covered by the diaphanous veil;
the voyeur can discern within the phantom forms cavorting.
Nearby, the brandy decanter stands unstoppered,
but the glasses have crashed at the back of the hearth,
sending showers of shards that glitter like fleeting sleet,
while the spirits that spatter on the smouldering coals
spray sparks in a twinkling arc.