A Brief History of Independence
our jade rockets whistled
like ordnance: tremolo squeals
as their thin traceries ripped
from the hillside into a dusk
that’s steady booms ensured
no one heard nine-year-old me
futzing with a snipped hanger
looped as cooler latches
to keep a trove of Shaefers
arctic & slushy with shards
of ice so the first long pull
ran chilly over chins: my chin’s
sticky snow cone smear
rinsed clean in the bitter
backwash dribbling down
the ringed collar of my holey
Thundercats tee: the three
good fingers from a cousin’s hand
lit my sparkler with his dying
Bic: between explosions
the only glows were Parliaments
of uncles pitching horseshoes
who remembered my birthday
three days early: a professor once
warned to never write poems
in the past tense, you will fail
she said to capture that aere
perennius & besides why nail
yourself to the cross
of nostalgia, we have enough
bum poets to populate
sixty seven moons of Jupiter
lady, there the callouses
tousled my matted hair,
July heat cured our bodies
like hogs crucified & split
in a smokehouse, there there there
I arced the slow calligraphy
of my name over & over in air
with a wand hissing stars
A Corporate Jumper’s Whispers to the Traffic
you gridlocked marionettes sweating
through Manhattan with your billion
tuneless radios are dissonant
slaves of static sunburned
biceps elbows forearms frantic
fingers like infinitesimal waxwings
aflutter on scratched Ford dashes
you dreamed would soon trade up
into the keyless leather plush
of a leased Beamer here
have the silver fob to mine
after some firefighter etches
a yellow circle measuring
how far it swims the air
like a grenade across Cambodia
where father shot shambled
jungle huts full of shrapnel his
lasting monumental shame
a preppy dope-sick son in & out
of rehab just a lump sum
not baron not priest not lord
of interest gulping zeros not
oorah sprinting breathless through
midnight tracer fire heaven
for the slug is merely the ramp
he’s waved aboard by Noah
over the good ledge lollipop
he will ask to see my body he
will identify with my examiners
blue-gloved in butcher’s aprons
having wobbled queasily
through the subway’s steel aorta
he will aim aim aim for
the birthmark on my heel
Photo credit: Ben K Adams via photopin cc