OUR WALL MADE IN CHINA ON THE MEXICAN BORDER

A brutal horror beyond

Our imagination really

Breeds reassured
In unrelenting focus

Just south of here.


Consider US

As a gigantic party


Cruiser

Perhaps we'll get a clear picture

Of reality once

This metaphor

Is deciphered.

The degrees


Of fastidiousness

By which we create


Our nemeses

Would be shocking

Indeed if we

Weren't so insulated


Against it.

The gross demand

For illegal drugs


For instance,

Consumes trends

Toward epidemics

And cartels stand


Drawn north

Along the black undercurrent

The mere government


Have not elected

To target the real


Article of drug abuse—

The User's Victimization—

Just goes to show

Eyes that see


Who bother to look

Register the thought

That they must

Want it that way

For how could it be

Otherwise?



Meanwhile we troll

A suppurating wound

Right on up


Through the Americas

In turn We, the Cruiser

Literally spew

From multiple spigots

Astern—human generations

Of gang bangers—


In our view

To their lands

Returned.

If you ask me,
that there Sirs

Is a recipe

For making your own worst enemy

Welcome to the States of America

That must all remain

United behind this Great Wall


Made in China

Just a looming shadow

From our southern borders

Encroaching on us all

To eclipse freedom itself.

MASONIC ASH TRAY

for Kyle McBride 

Glass blown ash trays embossed in silver caught
the dropped excess of a generation's shrugged off after
thought and here I sat the grand kid who bought
into all of that left with a legacy of corrective lenses
scattered across the table top with a candle and a
bowl of sand reminded of how we're distracted to
see clearly by those diligent to the status tug of war
the radiant seventh letter in the compass and the quadrant
to receive the tapped sacrament of four Cuban cigars
was the crafted destiny of this charming rugged heirloom
to grant a new dawn with balanced diplomacy seemed to be
the message embedded in the lead crystal the dragon fetus
in the pyramid spawned by the pornography of science just
goes to show how to fill an ash tray with my grand father's memory

BACKGROUND

Look
hold my hand.
Notice how everything but our hands
becomes hand.

This is how it is,
you and I.
We are held in everything's palm

Look
at my eyes.
See how all but our eyes
is eye.
We are watched by everything's eye

Lay
your mouth against mine.
This is my joy,
to kiss
and be kissed by the universe

THE REPLY

for Craig Fields



. . . His sigh
broke the stillness
with a weighted delicacy

as if to say
don't
you
under
stand . . .

and each word
bled slowly
as from a wounded mouth

'I,
too,
have
given
up.'

my face shuffled the subtle expressions of terror

the moment was brief

and so quiet

ASK YOURSELF

Fast-forward ten years later fast-forward ten years again
It takes a real long time to make the people comprehend
That we're our own masters and there is nobody else
And no one left to blame unless we blame it on ourselves
Who set the course of our lifetimes and the skies right overhead
Who built the cities from the ground up and who buried the dead?

ITERATION ZERO

I studied the shape of an African map
Lost in the shadows of etchings cooked
Into the occlusion drawn across stars
A chart of territories and island's teeth
Death's head eye sockets and nostrils
Flank the harbor beneath the calm waves
Holding secrets trapped in a darkness
Inscrutable to the divers of memory
And all of her children since the terminal
Point of anti matter has fanned out
Into the future on renewed cycles of flight
Whose direction dictated by a law
Immutable in the eyes of God
Pliable to the ears of Man
Thus able to alter the dream
Woven from every child's heart
Into the cages that bind us
Under a massive hypnotic spell
Introduced from the Realm Above
Directly into the Kingdom Beneath
From former exactitude to a latter blur
The pieces of which may shatter
Into a semblance of the Whole
To be picked up and examined
On the lonely beach of the heart
Abandoned by the brother of man
Left stranded on two paws
With quill points spring loaded
For a new walk across ink's
Undulating surface of reflections
To switch the oldest shell game
For the mind's eyelid lowered
Over the cold night of awareness
Which must grip every host
That ever looked to the stars

CARBON COPY

A different vehicle for staring.
The seperate outlet of look.
Sight captured by no one.
Eminently describable.

Any missing puzzle pieces fit.
The world's face reknits
beneath the skin. In the center
of the pupil the portal irises open.

Another mask woven for a new vision.
Formed of bones dissolved below
the surface. Seeing the world clearly
through the silence of a vacuum.

From the point of view behind
the stars before they were made
to mark the skies as another
disguise for seeing.