I
Look, it’s raining again, upon a field of Indian green.
As it did that morning thirty winters ago, when the Bishop blessed the boats
with pious indifference, and the revolution entered the twelve-hundredth phase
of its glacial cycle, with a sigh heard round the world.
Beneath the heels of borrowed work boots
the drain was clogged and slippery with orange rinds, the syrup of melting communions, the Virgin’s ribbons, both blue and white.
Midway the syllabus, first contact with the pioneers,
walkers-on-coals and holdouts from the latest truce and its destined failure. Backdate the return to reason, sweep the path free of tracks, wrestle rhetoric
into a ventilated trunk and start towards the shining city.
Its towers rise on the breath of ransom, the heritage of a thousand years
domed within a single monstrous shack, the convenience so bold it deafens
all who ask its meaning.
II
For any cat down by seven lives, the Pentecostal shenanigans
must reek to heaven of danger and stakes set high as vertigo.
One wonders, doesn’t one?
How it came to this, the great dishonorable now.
A hundred drawing rooms may leak the same anemic slights,
but add some muscle to the insults, make the dentures clack their slapstick bite
and behold the birth of the latest Zeitgeist in full red squall.
III
It’s a guessing game, a gamble, creatures that we are
of five-storied distrust and phony remorse.
There’s nothing wrong with cheating death, that isn’t the point,
but the bodies piling up taint the sweet taste of luck,
fleas swarming over ankles when Scenic View detours into Memory Lane.
The sun outroars the moon and every has-been waits to stand a round
of drinks, pity and envy on tap and ladies drinking free,
the horoscopes for once right on the money.
Pinched awake, warned away, as likely to fade as to be stubborn,
choose Now the challenge to rise to,
based on nothing an outsider might twig, nothing so mild
as that little tapping sound in the lungs
and the sputum hawked upon the dust of betting slips and i.o.u.s.
IV
Did they remember which Dead Philosopher said
history is a game from which I am locked out?
Did they remember, between mutual exhaustions,
that phrase?
Picking through borrowings and left-behinds and never quite understoods,
muttering beneath their breath
we’re ants under glass,
crying havoc, crying shame.
Nosing with fastidious grace the irregularities of the older graves,
festival of forgetful nudists, put down proper like wayward dogs,
tin cans tied to the fleeing tails by men grown misty-eyed
over perceived dishonor.
Who was it snitched the curfews they broke, delivering them stupid-
eyed into the evergreen alley, businesslike with fists and hoses,
voices jacketed, at the last, with fear.
None of what was witnessed will be believed beyond these woods,
nestling down to the banks of the swift canal, its currents
no one could overcome, its depths the temporary hideaway of
decisive moments, that once in a lifetime we kill or are killed.
To leave and then to come back,
to find the glitter, the waste, all gone.
No one to pose the question, canvas the stews for the camera-shy,
the legend of delinquency, poster-child of stacked decks.
Scratch the solution with a felt-tip pen.
Bounce the clues and pluck from the air a sad or happy ending.
Back home the boys will call him hero and only the quietest girl
will think to ask how many slaughtered hundreds danced
in that twelve word footnote.
V
There was a line through every comrade’s name but one.
In case they needed a witness for what they were planning to do.
A single name, chosen by lottery perhaps. Or sentiment. Or sadism.
If there wasn’t a prize, then what was the purpose?
They searched their souls as one might act a part,
making a great show of looking for the non-existent ticket stub,
the officers of control lurching slowly up the aisle.
VI
As to the final showdown, the one prepared for in late-night confabs
with butcher boys and bright young things,
the odd accountant sorting foreign currencies by serial number and
shag-proof protocol, there was a sense of a jigsaw’s let down,
the word ‘final’, spoken, if at all, with a come-on of suspended disbelief.
It was too late to ask who the liars might be,
every soul by then equally compromised or complicit.
The guy wires and girders had ceased to sway,
it was only a matter of waiting till the lights dimmed and the red dress
came off.
So mock-offense was given, and taken, and cheeks and bosoms
bore their raw blush to warm the coldest heart in blackmail’s den.
He’d seen into their souls and they’d let him, not the forgivable once,
but twice, and many times.
As often as he knocked their gates flew welcome wide.
VII
Long had he meditated upon the nurses in their passion-
crusher cutaways, flashing the V-sign for Victory, Peace, or Fuck Off.
The drawing of attention to oneself was usually a prelude to ambush,
as likely at the hands of well-wishers as the honors’ list of those betrayed.
Sir or Madam, the news is as bad as we’d been hoping and there’s now
no possibility the phone will ring by midnight, all time zones accounted for,
all exits covered.
He snuck past the temperance-promoting mannequins, gazing in their doll-
like zombie way, on the aftermath of scenes
no end could ever justify, in this bedroom or the next.
He found he could offer up winter and a diary of sleep,
or spring’s virginal awakening,
a hobble of the brute and squalid beautified by art’s brief kiss,
or summer’s crown that ringed his head like fever,
till autumn caught him in her suntanned arms, her dancer’s strong brown legs,
her body stripped at last to a valley of gold for all to drown in.