Poetry

to practice intense study. to research. to seek again. to require confirmation,
a proof. to believe.     to believe in knowing because it can be said
again and again. the proving of a theorem.    now the corollary: to have learned

in the living room again, i cannot conjure
even the space i inhabit. rain for several

Surely you stay my certain own, you stay
obtuse. Surely your kisses were little poisons 
gripping tight my lips, my arms, mapping their way
across my unsure body. Surely, this fission

system says we’re not in charge of much else
but this. system’s [planter’s raj] & the damn 
tea. the Brits sell us, Lipton sells us, Tata 
sells us. when are we permitted to unload? 

Outside the Visitor Center—patrons queuing up in
khaki camo shorts, baseball caps, Where Big Bucks 
Lie, boxes of MoonPies wheeling by—two black 
men with rubber gloves, with Windex, on a July 
Monday, polish the bronze Lincoln.

solo, skirting the rim of our smolder, our ruin,

all lotus bud, bell-beat & drum-song, those many hands &
the severed heads they hold, masc-demonic,

                    toenail polish warped waxen from sand, you leave 
          your body behind again—mere rind, edges buzzing
from unsought touch. you end up in a skeleton

In rubber rafts on the open field of the Adriatic, open field of the Mediterranean. 
In a diesel-powered ship setting out from Hamburg in 1939. 

I used to believe there was so much evil in the world,
and though I’m the gentlest of all my friends, I never saw a rose in a vase