For Spain:

guns are the only saints you have left—
I with my earth-colored crayon
without eyes
tell my stories of women like chrysanthemums
whose deaths strew your bridal paths—
the faces watch us from red shadows
the boys stream in packs from your loins dressed in skulls
(while the street wore festival clothes we stacked the cranberries in a pyramid)—
“my blood is wood” said the tree
then fell down—
REMEMBER—
I tried to draw your portrait with a violin
the rectangles conquered your breasts
your head danced into olive mountains
(from behind stark glass the dead jagged antelope was pleading)—
at Parnassus sprung the Muses
Orpheus drew a Transsiberian rose
he hoped for color but his penis spewing gray figures
slept
(his parrot was a violet countess with butterfly feathers
his gypsy mother wore black and prayed in a botanical garden)—
AND THIS ALSO—
the woman with fig-leaves for hands who sleeping became a cauliflower
(we played cards together but as we drank the table grew into a house)—
el pan nuestro, Señor, por favor dénos—
Christ who died wore no wings and yellow pants
he was bayoneted for your freedom
his palms a choir of blood
God with Owl Eyes looked away
the gathered mourners brought diamonds for His crosses and wax for His mustache
(I prayed for the mother addicted to valium
she was cold beneath the light
Your barbs never ceased
there were seraphs with crow wings and a halo of pain
the myst lit her face her fate unfolded in an instant
piéta)—
there is a gray on my fringe that comforts me
every year the color splashes the same
the hornets live in a cave
at the very first time war
then three old ladies knitted me into black lace
I held my love in a tight fist and sold it for a coin of the Truth
the birds broke apart and played at fútbol in the streets
(while she became a painter of dark color I loved her more and more)—
in hell
the only music
is silence
the only painting
is blindness
the only poetry
on black pages
(shovel their skulls into my wagon I am the one who destroys your worlds
I beat my drums with a scythe-blade)—
Atocha is blurry and vibrates.
in Guernica the clock never strikes six.
(I studied your weeping hands death and came away helpless
I stood ragged holding a bleating lamb and watched you die from yourself
a las cinco de la tarde
the bull’s head fell in on itself
a horse exploded
his hair was a rush of wind
the lamps flared like gunfire
the bulls roared like bombs
an iron shoe split my neck
your back grew spikes
eran las cinco en punto de la tarde
and the tails were tongues of flame
and the tongues were mean and horny
in the apartments the children never shrieked
the Star stood unmoved
we suffered for our lack of penance
woman
your howl
was cacophony
in my memories Guernica is nothing but a rainstorm and a flower grows there)—
man is a being of moons and whirlwinds
like a cancer metamorphstatizing on the world’s liver
(the witches with doves for eyes ran down the steps dressed as penguins
they fucked in oyster shells and carved a path to San Isidro
with their maelstrom of sobbing)—
a schizophrenic lives in the palace
sometimes she forgets to be mad and wears her pride on a necklace of poplar leaves
(the stormtroopers dressed as cardinals
reduced your Act of Fáith to parallel lines in a transept)—
in my youth
Your vibrant Path
Your marmalade Forests
I encrusted Your guitar-like Name with all of My jewels
I ground up Your Words in my coffee
You strutted with marble Hips
now you speak and no stables listen
I reject your reality and substitute a snarl of Technicolor
(a black monk stands over me
this is my last work
your elegy in crayon)—
life is still—
moving—

Iran sonnet

Polonium is advice to humanity:
if we learn to listen it may not destroy us.
but every day a nation becomes redder
with the desire for war. Its beacon is a roar.
Its harbinger talking, then silence, then nothing.
A nothing like falling bombs and dead citizens.
The war is coming. Its sight will be through a lens
that it crafts of bones. It will denude our thinking,
show us for once and ever: what they want is more.
More land. More fever. More missiles. More men. Better
ways to make skeletons and citydust.
The next snarling war will make us all bleed.
When you draw a sand line it must be crossed.
When war begins, all have already lost. 

The Parable of Icarus

a man drove his heart straight at the sun,
hoping for a burning sensation
just below the lungs.
but somewhere in his dreadful occupation
a change occurred:
force turned to lightning, then pith, then nothing.
he fell like a shot bird
and began to curse his own awful living.
the sun stayed sullen and silent.
the man asked it why he was lonely,
why he could never find content:
the sun stayed an unspeaking titanity,
but quiet, as if thinking,
and asked of him the same thing.

Wheatfield With Crows

I stand at the field’s cross
and crucify my bitter sacrament of stagnance.

the whispering-away crows
are seven candles, self-lit in vigilance.

God take this cup from me!
it is bitter and filled with blood that is not mine.

the harvest will make bastards of us all.
the sacrificial victims stand ready in line.

a path leads weeping into you, o field,
a path that weeps like the river in Egypt.

a path like a serpentine cross,
overrun by the gospel in thorny script.

say it is my fate and I will drink your bitter blood.
blows land on my soul from the sky’s wind.

the crows are chalices with blood-seeking eyes.
they are avatars of the dark sky and fate leaves them unfrightened.

a path flows singing into you, o field,
but its song is a skull like Golgotha.

my spirit is a coat of tattered songs,
covered in crow-like fringes of raffia.

I stand at the cross of the field
and drink the vinegar of your blood.

my crisis is a laughing within me,
laughing at a crown of thorns and a cross of wood.

the crows wheel in the sky like body-laden wagons.
the dark wind lands blows on my soul.

God take this cup from me!
or leave it, that I may again be whole.

Masquerade

prologue
i am the one and holy ngumi
ngumi painted bird heard of nations
a last encircling laugh wholly consuming
lord of these dances dance the stations
of the cross this dance is the wind
swallowing sputtering on fire like the bush
spear of the palm of my mind
my frightening howl my hollowing whoosh
impounded as a thief in rankling chains
homesick for Africa sweet forest buffalo
my soul sinks deeper drown me rains
(betrayed of man a goddess incensed her glow)

I
this dance is the dance of life:
whirling speed, twirling dervish
canonized by blood and wind;
and watched from the skies.
sanguine they turn, turn, turn
(the burn of meaning)
and lace themselves with glaciers, march
toward a sacred grove
(pounding of rhythm we fall to the ground)
we are a garden they the gardeners:
cultivate us with your roses, o souls,
and we will whirl to your hundred slaps and blows
until the frost falls from our breath
and garlanded hyenas make a skeletal circle:
invisible like death

II
this dance is the dance of birth:
a scatter of daisies—fermentation
of emerald, the moment of mirrors:
a garish logarithm. birth smells like death
(my birth is the stage, death its ledge)
I stepped on eight knives
to enter this dance; I stepped and I faltered
by each knife, left my foot
and stepped into the world,
a mountain of flesh
(and for my audience the sky)
and I sang, and serpents;
my mother dreamed a dragon fire
and my father was drained of semen;
his legs a jumble, bereft of breath,
tasting umbilicus but marked for death

III
this dance is the dance of knowing:
a knowing like a skeletal crutch: horrible
but ultimate, a shock of paradigm, a blow
of distate at living’s back: but wonderful
to see! to chant! to glow! to wonder no more: to know!
that power usurps its pain. it makes living strange:
thought ever barbs, it pierces consciousness and burns,
recasting in its image the autumn leaf-change
and the winter haunt of morality (white urns)
it is a lion: it roars and snarls, gnashing teeth
and glorious mane, magnificent to behold:
knowing is having truth, and ultimate belief,
its dance a wobbling line, its chanting loud and bold

IV
this dance is the dance of repression:
flames from pianos, played by stretching hands:
a frost-gray wolf
who covers the moon with the moon
and coughs into lungs (frost-gray)
motion is written. icicles break at your throat.
you cacophonize, a frenetic trance
of seizure, a drum of pelicans
(beating broad wings)
over shaking ancestral leaves
(they fear to tremble)
wine-dark the seas
that drown you in frenetic dance
(a seizure)
a jolt, a convulsion, a bonfire
of vain circling rain
(thunder brimming from the clouds)
a charlatan your soul,
a laughing pelican with broad beating wings
(he rests in dim ancestral leaves)
they fear to tremble but don’t know why,
their god made them to breathe and then die

V
this dance is the dance of death:
sunset: a broad beat of wings.
the heart is long with night,
sovereign, a cloud brimming thunder.
once cherried, once a rapture,
now denoued to lightness in a soft burial cloud
(a waltz of tulips)
poseys with chafing petals,
around you in a confiding of blessings:
despair is meaningless,
solitude weariness,
this waltz an answer from the watcher:
death who adjudicates knows your hands, your eyes;
his to stand with arms out-raised. yours to die.

Soneto para la mujer más hermosa

hers is not to be called beautiful, but
to dig in medical books for mystic
knowledge, ancient Hippocratic secrets.
hers is not a vampire but singing blood;
hers a canticle of knowing, cryptic
with obtaining and rebuking regrets
for their hand-wringing or their rash of flesh.
hers a taut oath to a paralyzed god
of self-denying, a hooded skull-like wretch
who wraithes her with pierced hands, an iron rod,
and a manic word: sprechstimme of scripture.
hers is floundering, patient smiling walks
every day, every day; censure
of routine: love eats her like waves at rocks.
Love eats me like a vampire, blood for her
and I know distal alabaster chimes,
her eyes, her eyes, a routine of furor;
I know her rage for me. I know my crimes.
her is mine to protect from blasphemy.
hers a soak in mirrors by painted tears:
I remove my façade of infamy
and rock her, rock her, that hells are her fears:
my hell, the burn of sins unforgiven;
and hers, the flame of lone years in heaven.

Ode for Capitalism

so sit nights, you stinking hobgoblin,
bury your treasure seven miles deep
and laugh, but know days come when you, maudlin,
stand at tombs on Easter and weep,
hunger like wolves fenced from sheep.
you dismember form and damn the saved,
coughing their bones: you scrounge all for dirt,
and bite to make bleed, and laugh, and dig graves;
America averts her gaze.
the vile bodies fester for days.
you who alone give orders, a crown
whispering to a blind king, and you
who while a bulldozer claim sacred ground
to stand, arrest motion. your flu
inflects darker minds, unmoved by truth,
rabid and starving for their riches.
they burn their scruples to join you,
red like power, and crucify false witches;
they torture and they play bastard chess.
America watches. Her eye twitches.