long before the stamps commemorating peace,
before factories resumed churning out grenades,
some made off with blueprints for conquest,
taped them to the walls of their dreams
Out of the blue our three-year-old
declares he doesn’t like the elephant.
For days he repeats—unbidden, as if recalling
a nightmare—that he doesn’t like the elephant.
Some talk during movies.
Others crack their knuckles,
drink to excess, buy things
they don’t need, make
mountains out of molehills.
It’s all too much, the floor strewn with gifts
we couldn’t possibly deserve. But our son
is happy, going from toy to toy, and so
are we, smiling along with him as he plays
with the train, the trucks, the scooter.
So much death and pain today: slaughtered fowls,
reminders of genocide and oppression, celebration
of abundance denied to billions. Cousin, did you know
400,000 Ethiopians are suffering famine?
At what time the fog took over, I do not know:
I was, if not sleeping, attempting to, tossing
and turning like a Heron’s wing, lost in fog.
Love, like light, has no mass, is information.
Not that which is found in books, newspapers,
sacred texts: Suns laugh at our quest for
knowledge. Imagine a poem with no beginning
or end, no author or reader, words or meaning—
Jeff Bezos did not leave the planet any better than
he found it, though he is rich enough to leave it and
return, alive. As I watch the skies, greedy mosquitos
stalk me like a herd of tiny buffalo.
If you’re looking for glamor, doing the most good for people and the planet may not be the place to find it.
My early poems aspired to Keats and Blake;
were about magic, dreams, and heartbreak.
Most rhymed, were trite, and told more than showed;
rolled off the tongue, no taste of the acid down below.