Selections from
Unholy Parables

Confession

I gave birth to a child
and placed her inside
a plastic bottle

then buried her
beneath a foot
of sand.

I understand
this may seem
a savage thing to do.

But I assure you—
you’ve done it too.
And at midnight

when you turn off the TV
and climb beneath quilted covers
when your children are snug in bed

dreaming the orgies of lies
an endless feverish dance of selfish pleasures
Sometimes

it occurs to you
to remember.
And you wonder

whether she will live or die.
As it happens, friend
Last night I did some digging

And I can say this:
I have no answer
to your question.

Hard Lessons

I have learned more
in the past four years

about how to live
like an animal

than most learn
in a lifetime

because of the war

because I have learned to live
with a war.

I have learned more
in the past four years

about the shortening distance
between funerals

and more than ever
about business as usual

And I don’t believe spring
will ever feel like spring again.

Math Lessons

Nine times out of ten
I did what was necessary

Picked the children from school
slogged a dinner together

with standard selections
from three food groups

adjacent on a plate
always something green

was not a motto
but a color we took for granted

along with the value of foreign languages
and tidy rooms

It was important to have at least one sweet thing
on our lips and in the fridge

I tried to console them daily
and hid my own tears

except when weeping
for a stranger.

In Broad Daylight

I’ve seen a secret mountain
concealed in the heart
of another mountain.

Ragged human figures scramble
to ascend its barren peak
but the mountain never ceases
to lay them low.

Chariots and broken motorcycles
pay daily visits
to this hollow place
filled with sinus infections

and wilted corpses
and intravenous chain link fences
and very little that passes
for food.

In dim corners
beneath decorative sombreros—
pathetic little stashes of cash

not enough for a meal
but enough for a down payment
on an addiction
or the extraction
of a tooth.

It’s mountain without a door
or a hearth
or a warm shower

masked beneath 
a more scenic peak.

But if you know how to look
meaning how to see

it’s all in broad daylight
at the bus stop
on Harford Rd.

The Mask has Fallen

Every time I hear them
use the word freedom

I see it—
the whole procession of nails

the carnival of rusty iron spikes
raised at the ready.

Green clouds—
catastrophic weeping

the final transgression of
golden fields and braided meadows

whole forests collapsing
into powdery erosions

of broken trumpets
and torn drums covers

and then the desert
rewinds into itself—

into the coil of the rattle.
And they know

what they are saying
and they know

what they have done.

Angel Flesh

On an elegant bed
of champagne silk
I cradled my first born son
naked after a bath.

He was the age
of the Savior when Herod
would have wanted him
slaughtered.

I held the plump boy
by his pink feet
and curled him toward me
until he was a sweet ball

of flesh. Have no fears,
I whispered and kissed his ear.
He was barely old enough
to understand.

Have no fear.
I will not devour you. Even if
I were trapped and starving
on a hillside and your limbs began to appear

as succulent meals.
I would not eat you, I whispered
It was on a kingly bed
of the finest silk

in a room of brocade and gold.
From the courtyard below came cries
of unrest: Behold a new millennium
is upon us!

The Dark History of my People

I tried to write what struck me
as beautiful

But so little struck me
as beautiful

It was easy to turn
to argument, counter-argument, irony

But I refused
Because it struck me
as not beautiful.

Endless Discussion

You drew a bird
on a white page

a black bird with closed wings
a deferential bird— sitting meekly

on the top
of an empty balloon.

I sketched a simplistic pine
on mine.

It was half-time
of our endless talk

when you suddenly dared me
to rip the bird from the paper

and hold it in my palm
and listen to it breathe

and feel its heartbeat
against my skin

and once I acknowledged its realness
and once I finally admitted that it was alive

you dared me
to take it

and twist its neck
once and for all.

I wept:

This is not a bird
This is not a tree
This is not a nest
This is not a home

This is not even a poem.

Long Shelf Life

We became accustomed to a world
without water

We grew at home in a world
without gardens

We raised our children on the prospects
of cardboard

and more wars

Our daily bread
was leavened with the excretion

of combustion engines
and enriched with residue

of uranium.

For eighteen years we lectured
on the merits of public schools

but lived and died
beneath a cloud of human ash.

and often drove past
men with gangrenous lesions

hobbling through well-lit avenues

but we were accustomed
to the sins of omission

and came to believe
that there was no difference

between past and present
between hell and heaven.

In the Backyard

In early morning
before waking I heard

the sound of a spade
scraping earth

prodding, methodical
regular intervals

the crunch of gravel and dirt
shovel by shovel—

It was the sorrowful, resolute rhythm
of someone not keen to start

nor keen
to be done, as if a gravedigger

were toiling before dawn
to lay down his own son

The stabbing
sound of tool into grit continued

and I thought
it must be you

burying whatever small gifts
I gave—

the shirts, the love poems,
the Mexican silver ring.

In the confusion
of waking, I thought it must be you

burying whatever remained
of our dying love.