One Dream

When your mind and body
are broken from the weight of time
and at last you go through
the dark door to the
limitless light of eternity,
take nothing with you that
weighs more or less than a dream
exactly one dream
and place it under your children’s eyelids
when they are fast asleep
and let it also be the light
that wakes them

Deutschland

I should have seen
on this clear, cloudless day
something subtle, sinister
undulating into the corner of the panorama
a dark speck in the painting
or a fly on my eye
an aberrant hawk above a
sea eerily placid
among the mansions of man
there is one chilling attic
dark plumes fill the air
we will not venture
up there

Satellite

My eye was glued upon her
the brown ink of its iris wrote her poetry
its black pupil seared holes through her skirt
its retina reflected her flesh back to me, like a moon to a sun
outer space was absorbed in its corneal plasma
but never once did that eye meet with hers.

Changing the Tone

The other day, I was driving with my six-year old daughter Angela to downtown Knoxville. Where our exit ramp joined the thoroughfare, a haggard-looking, homeless person appeared, holding a sign that read: “STRANDED. Need help.” Quite alarmed by the sight of this unkempt, unshaven, toothless person staring at the people stopped in their cars near him, Angela asked, “What’s wrong him? Is he going to hurt us? What’s he holding? What does his sign say, Daddy??” Feeling weary and ill-prepared to launch into an explanation of poverty, abandonment, and homelessness with my first grader, I decided to change the tone a little bit. I answered, “It says, ‘I love everybody.’” Little Angela was suddenly beaming. “Aw…he looks like a nice man. I think he really does love everybody.” And then, when the light changed and we pulled away, she said, “Bye-bye, nice man!”

Maybe I wasn’t totally truthful, but I felt like I’d done some good.

Stealth

Numerous phone calls were placed to
the shadow
but none were immediately returned

He is dining in Spagos
eying the blonde
evading the ubiquitous paparazzi

Speaking in code
plotting the murder
deciding where the body is disposed

Watching the North Korea Military Parade

A steely sky hangs over this spectacle
here where the world is eternally gray
hundreds, no, thousands, tens of thousands or more
file upon file of sartorial flags
a military machine with a million moving parts
clicking with more precision than his atomic watch
is ticking

God help the smile that escapes from a face
a stray cowlick, a sideways glance, a fly on the nose
of a cog in this contraption
one million duplicated faces
duplicate uniforms, duplicate lives
clicking and clicking in sickeningly perfect

time, an abstraction left back in the
fire that Prometheus, a Korean, stole from the
gods, the Kim Jongs now at work on his liver
sticking the scalpel and clicking and clicking
a square with no end, a sky with no blue

surely one of these bodies, impeccable cogs,
knows thirst and knows hunger, has a child in some cell
where electricity is rationed some days of the week
a pat of rice, a weekly egg

on the face of the leader, cheeks bloated in family pride,
a dispassionate smile from high above as the sick clicking million-headed
contraption goes by; he looks at his watch through his Versace shades

Thank God for football, and oil rigs, and beer,
and George Bush and the chance to live like and think like a pig; thank God, click it off, it’s

TV