Blackberry Haiku

Grey sky, torn, spit rain
A hawk moves over the lake
My son is leaving.

Tennis, late afternoon
In my line the men die young
Sweet air, long shadows.

More rain, more rain, more
On tree limbs squirrels pair up
They’ve read their Bibles.

Now: sun after rain
When my dad was hung over
It was clean, like this.

Dreaming: somewhere else
Sun on my bare young shoulders
No regrets: not yet.

The Love Songs of Slobodan Milosevic

In the snows
of Sarajevo

Such a lovely place
to kill.

Don’t you know
the ground is melting

still so may graves
to fill ?

*

Listen: Mother Earth
is singing

Like a woman
in a cell

hungry soon she’ll smoke
our shriveled

souls like cigarettes
from hell.

*

In this place
there is no grieving

breath is life
and death is birth

underneath the ground
She’s breathing

Don’t you understand
her thirst

*

Blood does not remember
violence

Only Christ will
judge my worth

Maybe soon He'll
give us silence

Until then, let's feed
the earth

On Blowing My Hand On My Nose In The Shower

Naked, fat, wet,
in default of a kleenex,
uncivilized, childish.
I am an aging
snot-nosed baby.
Such a mess: my life at fifty.
I could step out, but don’t.

My wife, my children warm me
hold me back from going naked
into the colding place.
The scalding water
washes the mess from my fingers.
Baptism? Or is this how they will wash me down
when I’m finally dead?

On Reading Berryman in the Office (2005)

He, moving from dream song to brief
petition for relief. Cannot
concentrate: this world too large
& disappointing all.
His wife don’t love him (do’ she say she do, she do ).
His kids move past him like monochrome dogs
He wants to hunker down,
to hibernate beneath deep roots,
away from baying. He wants: O heavens,
to be his own dream of self.
Grizzled old grizzly, could he jump the bony
bones of pretty women dodging caravans of husbands, raging.
But Mr. Bones, he say, Awake!He sing, Don’t hide thy light under lawn mulch. Heaven sucks.
Come on down! They’s money to be made
In America at War. Wake up old bear!
& Honey, maybe get you some today!

From The Short History of the Federal League

Emily Johnson Awakes

Emily Johnson, seventeen, wakes
to birdsong, flowing sunlight square
across paint white plank floor bedroom
movement unexpectable like water shimmering
through glass plate window with shadow
cross bisected touching slow her bedpost
pink green flowered coverlet
rolling transverse across small space of her whitewashed
sleep, (she, kicking free the bedclothes to place toes, heels,
young skin of calf leg beneath night warm flannel
nightgown into the creeping yellow square
of dust motes dancing), to kiss at last
the waking girl-child where no man's lips have ever
dreamed to touch.

Rises now to birdsong increasing
barefoot pads to window, soles darkening
always patina of dust on floor uncleanable
wiping sleep crud from pale and milk-blue
eyes, indolent scratching through flowers
her soft desired butt beautiful,
sleep-raveled, blonde American
girl hair falling unarranged to shoulders
tangled over cheekbone perfect &
unwrinkled neck

Leans outward so into the grey
slow goldening air, breathes perfect
even to her nostrils, flaring
filling lungs, breasts untouched swelling
with soft now warming air
mixed scents jacaranda, bush
lavender her mother planted
the week she was born, now grown
almost twenty years to her second floor bedroom
windowsill; hears bees, somnolent new winging outward
unseen from hives lazy almost
racing each buzzing other for day's first pollen.

She sees in first morning light:
City of her first green birth
Roofs, black shingled,
Houses, grey or brown white painted
filled with people neighbors
known seen recognized since birth
Beyond, shops mercantile dreams & drams
of calico dresses apothecaries newspapers
telling stories from around the great & rolling earth
news of kaisers tsars & foreign speaking princesses
& beyond again, kingdom even of death,
the slaughteryard already wakening to low
distantly in air warming & again beyond even death
fields green of summer corn, high alfalfa, timothy grass
and in their midst, at the edge of town
the richer emerald watered green bisected
by rounded dust diamond, tricolor bunting &
even now, at six o'clock the sudden birthing morning
an old man walks limping through the shorn
dew gleaming outfield grass carrying
a folded triangle of red white & stars on blue
& at the right field corner at margin of fair & foul
unfurls, ties on & slowly, creaking, body soul
& flagpole, pulling downward on looped rope
raises winged America visible, distant
to the young girl leaning
into the rich blue sky.

It Would Be Quiet As Waters

It would be quiet as waters
& as warm
& sweet: remembered
sweet small breast
of a newfound girl
when I was young
in Brooklyn
undiscovered country
old man’s dream

& I would feel
my blood go
sluggish heart to sleep
By deep gradations
would I see that light
that fable
neurons desperate for blood
dumb animal screaming wet grey brain good night

& then there would be god
or nothing Nothing
would be
preferred.

Excerpt from The Short History of the Tecumseh Federals:

Elwell Smith, Scribe,
Second Baseman,
Occasional Pitcher:

In those small midwestern cities where we played ball
the sun set slow and long There were no hills
to interrupt its journey to the round
edge of the world, the deep horizon's end.
Our shadows lengthened at the end of days,
the seventh through ninth innings
we became elongated
ghosts extending across dusty
infield and green untroubled grass.

When I played second, the ball would tend to jump
off the bat and skip through shadows
toward my glove. I'd move the mitt across
the infield dust, blind, instinctual, sure
of where the ball was headed from the crack
of wood on hide, the blunt fact of having chased
ten thousand grounders in my fading day
And often as not the damn ball would head straight
skipping across the infield grass into my mitt.

I'd squeeze, pick up and throw,
the ball would fly white through the darkening air
true as a rifle ball to Mintz at first;
and just like that, another out rung up.
We were that good, those summers that we played
barnstorming through the long midwest
against local boys who couldn't hit
a curve or dropping sinker off the plate
too eager always, like boys will be when
some blonde haired girl lifts up her dress for them:

Hell, that's baseball all around: you can't fake life
for too damn long. there's always
someone out there
better than you are. You try
but there's some pitcher on the mound.

Jeffries comes to mind, our rebel kid,
straight out of Memphis where the river widens out
and cotton sits on the docks in giant bales
music all night long and fine cat houses
All the best girls, clean as whistles with soft cunts
a man could die inside;
young Jeffries with
his fastball moving like a damn star
across the night sky a blur
that slapped into Arroyo's mitt so loud
the yahoos in the stands would look for rain;
religious folk, they tended all to take
it hard to think some mortal man, hell just a boy
like Jeffries could explode the day with thunder:
ball on mitt.

On Meeting Allen Ginsberg at the Supermarket

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