continuity

We are all orphans                                               our own
brothers and sisters                                              children

On nights sacred
On nights profane
We press together
desperately

between I love yous
we take the time to write
love letters to our father
absentee

on certain days we read aloud his               
"check is in the mail" note           
on the fridge
set it to music
sing it beautifully
               
In winter we remember
he'll be back soon
from the store
We celebrate

As long as we have been ourselves
we have been
     alone
   together                                                           to gather
                                                                     
looking up
at the dark
with light in our eyes                                        complete
our warm hands
tightly
ready                                                                   already

Forgetting makes us present

Ay blessing of forgetfulness
If I heard every voice
Saw every face
As well as now as then

How could I choose
But love all
As I do love all
But only absence makes me faithful

Were they all with me
I could not leave them
Nor would I long for you

Thank God
For this constant despair

Without which I should be nothing
But happy

Instead
For the blessing of your touch
I pray

Instead
For the glimpse of the shadow of your smile
I toss restlessly

And when dreams come
Damn them for returning me to
Then

second snow - seconda neve

the conda navy, the conned navy, the conned knave, the fooled fool, in the fall of snow

it is a fine, dry powder of snow, a storm of sand in white
bouncing and clattering as the ground meets the grounds and so
a hissing singing static roar
never beginning or ending but being
as though it has never not snown

there are muscles of this body too which sing
of soreness or of use for what is soreness
what is use
what are these names of anterior and oblique,

of seizing and of releasing
there are those withing me
I have forgotten
how to hear
yet

there they are

even under the snow
the roots of things
are waiting

December morning ii

Standing guard over the morning frost
Lines of trees hold their
orange and red
Stubborn
 banners of war
Autumn unsurrendering

December morning

The sky is steel
Without variation
Like a mythic Alaskan fish
Circling the world
At the far edges, where the horizon crowds with buildings and winter trees
Only there can I see
Lighter blues, hints of pinks,
Clouds like coiled rope
Is it heavy with snow, this sky below which birds are wheeling black like wind-tossed winter leaves?
 Will it release, with a sigh, as a lover feeling whole again, reunited at end of day

Not not silent

I watched my children
Make war
For the right to despoil
My mother's grave
I watched my children
Burn one another
In furnaces
I watched my children
Shackle and Enslave
Their cousins
     then each other
          then
Themselves
Will you say
I should have reprimanded them
  cut their throats as infants
   drowned with their blood the violence
Of their hands
Will you say I should not have watched
All the while I was growing Chestnuts
In the earth of my garden

I ain't eaten

Can't Decolonize
What never was colonized
Can't Decolonize
What loves fierce loves hot never
owned anybody
Can't Decolonize
What takes the leather of the road
What has walked every inch of itself
Can't Decolonize
What feels the breeze feels other skins feels
my way in the world

Can't
Take out
what never took in their poison

 I got plenty fear
of those guns and tanks
I know to run
from those bodies
what pinned me down
locked me out
told me get in line
get on the bottom of the totem pole
(never bothering to learn your own ignorance, eh)
I FOUGHT
and BIT
and WAILED
and I did not win
but nor did I lose

And you can't take out of me
what never got put in
Won't submit.
Refuses to conquer

Will

Just be
and cease to be
And be again