Someday I’ll stand speechless
on a grand, forgotten tree of life.
The ornate order of existence
will be my partner, and my partner
will be my shadow
My shadow will be preaching, will be endowed with
all I cannot carry
in this life,
overcome with questions, The tree of life is
not but
total
illumination.
Still, some orderly lights
each resting eyelid
flaming until
night melts
+
I saw a soldier stacked upon a ceramic tree
He looked forlorn
with his bayoneted rifle
pointing at his shoe
he was only looking at the boy
who crawled out of the mud
to see the man who gratified the image
of sanctuary
in killing, between killings
birds flew out of the fist
the stomach contained
the mud The boy threw himself on
the path. The path was wet
+
falseness is emptiness
glamor is tyranny
music is the cleaning of the room
at night the tree grows
but does not manifest
its growth
except in Gate of Hell
+
I put my head on a book,
The Emissary, Random Family
Black Reconstruction
poetry the Caribbean,
Japan, Asian American history
Life in a Tomb Life in a Tomb
The poor whites were putting stars on
colorful tigers. like
a child misplaced
the object of its song turning
and turning on
a thin branch box, A chapel
could be
drawn in could be
entered, renovated
+
It is either that the tree, the mother of my childhood
among the trees, has ceased
to see, or I have
become opaque
to the laughter languishing inside
the stern expression
of every tree
inside of me.
+
The mother of my childhood
is several mothers
a rock, a large rock,
in which I became a spider,
grass
shaped like pie
or a continent, the woods,
the black house in the woods,
the large rock in the woods
where I sat like I was surrounded
by mothers, the seed of several rinds,
the shape between several seeds, alone,
the bubble orange and pink
and yellow red
and I was lonely.
I sat on the rock
each day with the bile
that made the vantage of expression
focused,
frowning like people
diving off cliffs
into the jaws of mulched atmosphere
one after the other another,
son of the autumnal mother
+
I was a son my mother’s children were breeches
casting shadows on the spider
and narcoleptic flowers
hung like earlobes
I thought I was the poet
dragged against
the soft mud of
his country
I thought being a poet was falling through trees
jumping off a low cliff
into a pot of scum
I never paid attention to
the oil that bloomed each second peppered
fruits
in the poem
slid off the roof, into the woods
trees do not touch
Not even if hands became sledges or crosses
or fins cutting through The Cut