ON WHAT THE FUTURE OF CIVILIZATION DEPENDS

ON WHAT THE FUTURE OF CIVILIZATION DEPENDS

by Bruce Curley (c) retained

Bruce Curley 4210 Candice Drive Mount Airy, MD 21771 Civilization@adelphia.net

The Return The land beacons with fruit and wheat and wildlife abundant, so I crawl from the sea, seaweed draped and brine permeated to the shoreline. And I am one now, my mother and family are close by laughing and the waves beat their eternal rhythmsoftly, faintly familiar but forgotten because there is so much between now and the return. The football flies high above the waves, drops back, drops to a friend now laughing by the waves until it lands by a girl Ive been watching for hours who reciprocates with a hair toss and shy smile, and the din of the ocean is silent for some years. For a time, there is so much to be done on dry land. One day my own baby is on my shoulders frightened by the waves and their ultimate calling. I laugh at him, of course, confident after so many years with the sea and its waves that Ive mastered them, felt their power and captured it, taken it on and rechannelled it to a life beyond these shores. The land that beaconed so many years ago kept its promise. It gave me the means to support a growing family. Good and sweet

foodstuffs abundant. Clean, clear water, (even in cities) and shelter from all but the fiercest storms that claimed many far away but left us safe and dry at higher land elevations. Now...this wheel chair and these grandchildren and great grandchildren. If I could only tell them of that journey from the sea and all the lands between, the seascape and landscape and each is so dependent on the other for life. Of how the shoreline is the alter upon which the inner life should know how tenacious and beautiful and brief this life on dry land looks when the sea beacons like the oceans waves, at this end. They show me the baby and I hope I can recognize him. I wish my body still answered my thoughts, but we both know it can never be so again. I hear the waves clearly, though. Through it all, the years and cities, wars and the news media drumbeat into my head, all spread before me as on a screen, I still hear the waves. My family looks at me with such concern and pity, but it is not the time or place for pity. I hear the waves on the shore...WWOOOOOSHSHSH... WWOOOOOOSHSH...WOOSHSH... I hear their tender and light-filled call, and I surrender...I surrender. From the time I crawled from the sea theyve been calling me to them again. And the voice that has always spoken inside me even when

I failed to listen, says to me so clearly, No more crawling inland... ...it is time to answer the seas call.. it is time to return and I listen.

The Splendid Routine It is in the routines life is mastered, not the spectacular or heady. It is the sandwich made again and again to the same perfection, that feeds the millions; The 2 x 4 placed in the same position as a thousand times before that builds the house for millions; the prayer prayed with humble precision that reaches the ear of God. So, despite the media feeding frenzy, the 15 minutes of fame, the opening night glory, the awarders giving each other awards in Hollywoods special desperation, or the worship of the crowd in the stands at the sports cathedrals ritual of discipline and moxy granting blessing and benediction, Remember this: the same crowd that worships in the stands has a cadre nearby fashioning the crown of thorns,. and preparing the cross and nails It is in the routine task done well family life rewards and the world ignores that generations continue; leave the mere heady moments to the world.

St. Francis Bedside Lament But Francis looked on with increasing anguish at what he saw as a harsh and legalistic metamorphosis of his lifes dream. In his Testament, written shortly before his death in 1226, he uttered a wistful protest and tried to call the order back to his lovely Lady Poverty. A Concise History of the Catholic Church Thomas Bokenkotter, 1979, p. 160 I lifted swords with these hands once, fought worldly military campaigns and rebuilt churches stone by stone when God called me to His side by speaking my name so many times it drove me insane with flight until I returned, returned to His breath of life and His water satiated my thirst, his bread fed my spiritual hunger, and my stomach, contracted from fast, could not hold down His holy and precious wine. I took his strength, sowed it in fields and towns and villages and cities all over Italy. He gave me miracles when I did not ask for them, spoke to me through birds and animals as clearly as you would hear the voice of your own father. But now the wily Pope Honorius and his enforcer, Cardinal Ugolini, take it all from me on my deathbed. I, who know well the mind of God in a way that drives one crazy or drives one to his lovely wounds, Am baffled, continuously and to my very deathbed, by the mind of man and its perpetual machinations. They invalidate this very Testament by desecrating my temple, Lady Poverty, my only comfort, as I see my Creators face even more lovely than I have known it in this life, in this stigmatas joy, this poverty that now allows me to so easily leave this metaphysical world for the Spirit Who now whispers such sweet love, such sweet love. ---- Honorius, Ugolino, you can ignore me and make my order worldly, but not this sweet, sweet Love.... this sweet, sweet Love.... this sweet.... this....

Backyard Quiet Salvation This is the quiet of the backyard: The roses roots dormant in winter, The split oak logs ready to provide comfort and warmth promise of life through the next and the next deep freeze; The fence high enough to deter intruders, but low enough to allow the seamless bonds of the domestic nature inside the garden to commune with the wild nature outside; The gate double latched and locked against criminals bent on violating this homes domestic tranquillity; The birds abundant at feeding time tribute to my mothers admonition: "Feed the birds and you never go hungry" the reason the bird feeder is always full even in the worst weather, the birds that force us to leave the mundane to consider the heavens always to be treated with extra care and time. And this baby in my arms who startles me everyday day with the thought: "Where did he come from?!" Oh, I know the biological explanations, but they are never sufficient to answer such a mysterious question. This baby, whose everyday existence is poetry and the core reason for poetry; who supersedes all the academic and ego reasons, this life, this beautiful head and soft new hair, these eyes that can make me cry out from depths that are subterranean cavities that lay fallow until he was born but which now produce love enough for him and some extra for street orphans and incompetents, this small body whose strength is already more potent than my once formidable athletic prowess, this form in my arms that sleeps in backyard quiet,

isolated from the worlds crime and cruelty who reminds me so discretely that backyard quiet makes the poetry of the front yard performance possible and necessary and good: this life in my arms is proof of the unbroken chain of life that leads us back to Adam and the Original Sin and the promise of eventual quiet backyard salvation.

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Old American Ways (A Valentine)

"Wheres the gravy!?" she said in a voice that let me know it was no metaphor. "I threw it out when I did the dishes!" I shot back, confident my help around the kitchen would cover for any small mistakes. "You threw it out!?" she answered as quickly. "But that was Eamons food! The gravy is the most nourishing part!" "So make him other food. I dont think at 9-months old were particularly discriminating." She was not to be mollified. "LOOK! Dont ever throw out the gravy again! NEVER! And dont ever do the dishes if youre going to throw out the gravy! I throw nothing out, NOTHING! I use everything. GOT IT!" This was from the woman whos mother, I noticed when I had just taken Eamon to the doctor, had sewn his shirt with thick, shiny dental floss. The very reflection from the bright lights in the doctors office assured that the doctor noticed it, too. In the area we live, such signs can be read as child neglect

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and, given the right bureaucrat or judge, outright child abuse. "Dont you EVER throw the gravy out again! Do you understand me?! Its the most nourishing part." Properly chastised, I remembered again why I had wanted to marry a woman from an orchard family so many years and children ago, and why I still loved this one so.

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The Need for Saturday Poetry There are those who write Friday night poems, manic, frantic poems of word grenades that are thrown in your face fiercely and emotionally with no thought to consequence, restraint, or the future. "It is here, man, it is in your face and your mamma's face and dig it, I don't give a [choose your favorite curse word] see, man, it is MY poem, MY poem that matters, and only I matter in this world's creation, man, understan' what I'm sayin..." and the poet leaves the stage and spotlight to screams and high fives and another shot and beer as institutional as the poem was not. There are those who write Sunday afternoon poetry, wonders of iambic pentameter and tetrarch and word constructions so dense and thick that the early settlers to America, had they faced the same forest of words, never would have made it past the white sands of the Eastern Seaboard; great pedantic wonders of words on page and now on the Internet's wall beckoning but leaving and soul as cheated and empty as stomachs fed on grass in a famine; these poetry Pharisees and Seduces leave the lectern and seminar to the abject loneliness of he desk with no window and soldier on, cursing their superior's orders while religiously obeying them. Others write Saturday poetry, work and art poetry, poetry that takes the everyday and routine and knows that, yet, the baby must be fed, but the baby has always to be fed not only the sweet and nutritious mothers milk, but the poetry and song and gentle mental caress

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of the word will turned, so that generations hence, poetry is still sung to the baby whose eyes dart back and forth in half sleep and is touched in the deepest corners of their minds by words that connect them again to the peace of the womb and the ultimate peace of Heaven: Like Emily Dickinson, they scrub the floors of the Halls of Poetry just to raise their heads occasionally to hear the angels sing.

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Beating the Black Plague

It is this that can make the black syrup cover my brain at such odd moments: the knowledge that though I know now the reason for your current sleepiness and lethargy is the baby, your womb that provides the miracles and the reason men like me get an extra fifty years to figure out the reason we are here still, I see the end in this, too, the corpses piled high in the plague that will hit as certainly from our ignorance as those in the middle ages who built roofs of straw that provided fine habitats for the rats who in turn supplied such fine habitat for the flees. I want you to love, as I want to live, in health and happiness and peace but the bargain we struck on the alter said, "in sickness and in health" with the sickness part first. So I contemplate this only rarely and have decided to say it once: I love you so that the thought of your eventual death is the realization of the temporariness of all this; thereby, my temporary life and love has on earth, been granted eternal worth.

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Gene Kelly

Gene Kelly skips and leaps and twirls through air that is his alone to know and feel and play with until out there he goes and out there he flies and out there he lands on a screen and there and there and there his upper body bobs and weaves into the fifteenth round while his legs and feet spin in stage-choreographed precision to universal rhythms of timing and movement that strike hard into his dancers soul and his body speaks of its pain while his smile reflects only the pure joy of a body disciplined, trained and hardened

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by thousands of hours at the ballet bar and thousands more before the unforgiving mirror and he leaps from the sound stage to the movie stage to the next stage and all that is left after the dancer exits is the Gene Kelly smile now frozen in celluloid and real heavens.

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Dried Flowers

Thats right, I threw them out. Your dried flowers, those old dried up withered dead petals and stems youve kept around for years. Like remnants of a fallow forest, they speak of death and arguments and nights spent staring at the ceiling after cold November stares and silences, after deep, deep and awful Winter silences. Thats right. I threw them out. But I also put the large pink, red and yellow roses that flare in still waters in their place. The choice is yours. Your beloved if sterile dried flowers, or my fresh-cut roses that even now beckon from bedroom night stand.

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Poem to the Scholars of These Poems

Remember this, if nothing else, of my poetry... Before making your students suffer reading or studying or reciting them, know this: When I wrote them -- all of them-at that three to five minutes I was happier than a man has a right to be in this life because I glimpsed the next. When you study these poems that transcendent moment of light, that moment I knew when the poem was given to me on the back of an Angels wings, should also be taught. It was far more pleasure than pain. Ignore the ordinary rewriting and the editors cruel rejections and the fool, drunk with pride and the self satisfied learning of the Seduces and Pharisees of higher learning. And even

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if you mock the idea as you retell it -- still tell it: Because the Holy Angels have spoken to me since grade school in my heart and then departed when I begged them to stay. Like a love lived fully but a moment such words burn more fiery because their memory lingers in the embers of knowing that metaphysical reality is only one way and not the best way of approaching this life. When this is fully understood it will be William Butler Yeats bedside poems to study... ...and the world infused with light.

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Albert Einstein's Light

Albert Einstein lays in bed engulfed in light. While his wife sleeps, he sees light in the dark. He tries to sleep but the light fills his soul. The light overwhelms his dreams each night And frequently claims him during the day. The light takes him to the cosmos. It runs with him through the galaxies And plays with him over the centuries. The light lifts him onto a planetary merry-go-round Where he laughs with Plato, Galileo, Kepler and Newton And where they explain their writings to him in detail. Einstein smiles. He turns from his thoughts To notice the dark that looms ever larger in the distance. The dark comes closer to him at the university. Then it knocks on his door like a black hole ----So dense that even God-given light cannot escape The pull of its ominous gravity. The Dark speaks: "Professor? It would not be good for you To continue teaching in the Fatherland!" Einstein hears the words, but the light Keeps appearing to him from around the black hole. Einstein thanks the good Nazi for his information. After he closes the door, he goes and kisses his wife, (The first time he has done so in years) And walks to his study. He lights his pipe, And the luminosity bounces off his match And quickly fills his soul. A supernova Bursts inside his soul, quickly eradicates The stench of the Nazi's recent visit. Einstein tells his wife to pack a few things quickly. He goes and puts a change of clothes, a pipe, And a supernova safely away in his suitcase. Later, he travels a parallax to America. There he unpacks his supernova, kisses his wife On the forehead, and rides space-time to the celestial sphere. He points the coordinates around the black holes to the Heavens. But for now, he knows he must master English To teach his new students about the light.

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And teaching students about the light Will be the greatest honor for him Until the light he has known intimately all his life Finally calls him home. Unlike humans, the light is loyal to Albert Einstein. In his final dream, the light tells him Not to worry about the atomic form of light. Light is light. He smiles as Galileo Offers him a space on the planetary merry-go-round. Albert reaches up to grasp the light ring, Throws back his head in laughter, And joins the Light.

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Everybody Should Have an Aunt Pat Everybody should have an Aunt Pat... ...Who could bake cookies from Heaven And when you took four from her tray Said, "Go ahead, Hon. Take a few more!" And when you looked to your own mother For permission, her smile and nod Said, "Go ahead, Hon." So you grabbed eight more. Everybody should have an Aunt Pat... ...Who knew what a Christmas display meant! Who even when the President himself said It was unpatriotic, put up huge displays, Galaxies of brilliant lights that said, "Go ahead, Hon! Enjoy life! Isn't it beautiful!" in that glorious, Christmasy Wonderful, beautiful, Philadelphia way! Everybody should have an Aunt Pat... ...Who defined what a 4th of July, fits Of laughter, all-American party should be, Adults arguing politics, children running Though marshlands gathering punks, neighbors Schlepping food and drink to the gathering, And fireworks that lit the night sky with The light and laughter of family love. Everybody should have an Aunt Pat... ...Whom every engaged member of my family Automatically went to when they needed a ring Because she, in her twenty years in jewelry Sales and service and marriage counseling Helped more hearts through their early love And young marriage than the average Parish priest.

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Everybody should have an Aunt Pat... ...Who, even in retirement, checked eating places For the County Health Department and, when the Roaches or rats or whatever were in violation, Shut 'em down, and thousands ate safely, Without knowing to whom they owed great thanks. Everybody should have an Aunt Pat... ...Who, after a few years at war with cancer, When told, "We can perform another operation." Had the courage to say, "No. Enough operations." And nestled her soul in God's waiting hands, And sent her heart to Heaven's gate express. Everybody should have an Aunt Pat... ...Who raised a good family, laughed a lot, Loved her husband, helped her neighbors, Honored her God, worked hard, tolerated most, Baked great cookies, and changed the world By love and laughter and lights... Everybody should have an Aunt Pat, For Heaven would be a more crowded place.

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The Clown and The Elephant Trainer "Authorities stated that the circus train accident yesterday in Lakeland, Florida in which a clown and elephant trainer were killed was not the result of sabotage. They are looking into other possible causes." January 14, 1994, 9:43 a.m. National Public Radio The clown sneers at the elephant trainer's threat -----He has heard worse threats over the years. Once he threatened to throw acid in his wife's face. Another time, to make his children toe jelly under the Elephants' feet. Even though he does not get the desired Reaction, the elephant trainer repeats his threat. "You're on notice: You will take that back!" The clown, who feels he is far superior To the elephant trainer, wants to play, So he grabs his crotch, shakes it, and laughs. With that final act of mocking by the clown, The elephant trainer makes his threat good. He repeats an order his elephants know well. "To the left, my children. To the left." The train lunges and jumps from the track, Tons of steel and people and animals fly through The air in an act that practice cannot imitate. The elephant trainer sees, as he flies, That he and the clown are going to be pinned Under the weight of the elephants and die immediately. He takes one last look at the clown. The clown tips his hat mid-air and whispers, "Why weren't you this good all those years When you were performing in the ring with me, my friend." Both laugh ecstatically as the elephants rain down on them. One year later, the half million dollar US Government Study into the Causes of the 1/15/93 Lakeland Circus Train Accident Concludes: "All evidence indicates that improper track repair and Maintenance due to inadequate funding led to this train disaster." Recommendation?: "Another 5 billion to upgrade the national rail Network to avoid a repeat of this disaster in the future."

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To Believe in Angels

There are those who do not believe in angels. As for me, I tasted the cold blued steel of the rifle barrel after climbing the hundreds of ladder steps to the tower, pointed it to the sky, at the ground, at my own brain, until, when the time came to pull the trigger, an angel made me think of my mother, of my family, of what the future could be and then led me gently back to the earth, eventually to the cool, healthful waters of Shiloh. Several children latter, I stare into the gray-blue eyes of my 4-month old and thank God that angels, human and divine, walk the water-filled planet.

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Domestic Bliss for a Manic Depressive

Who put these Q-tips On my side of the bathroom drawer? The same woman who, When I was in terror, Being forced by the police to return To the VA hospital mental hygiene ward, Reached over in half sleep And grabbed my trembling hand And held my body close to hers to say, "It's only a dream, Bruce, It's only a dream." Until the sweat beads cleared from my skin And the scary government people in the dream Were far away in their government buildings again. The Q-tips plentiful in the drawer, The government workers away in their buildings, My wife at work and my mind able to write poetry, Could this be called a manic depressive domestic bliss?

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Girl at the Deli You walk into this friggin deli where youve never been before all summer hot and friggin angry and there, behind the counter, she stands, lips big enough for a zip code, hair as fine as spun satin and silk and skin that breaks your heart in two... you look right at her and stammer, c..c...c...coffee and she says back, two or three sugars? and you stumble again uh...two...uh...three and cotton wads grow in your mouth, you smile wanly and she smiles back so unspoiled and athletic and young and that chemical reaction starts in your brain and WHAAAAAAAMMM!!! once again life has possibilities and hope. She brings you a cup of coffee and you sip it and want to spit it out because it tastes like its been there since World War II but you smile instead because you notice how fine and bright and clean her eyes speak to you now and although you want to say Dear God! How can you sell this turpentine as coffee?! you smile again and gulp it down quickly and say, Just what I needed! Hits the spot real well! And she smiles and says, Best for miles around! How long have you been in these parts?! and now you know the chemical explosions are going off in her brain, too, so you drink some more coffee that is so toxic and strong and fierce that your taste buds have all mutinied but even it cannot kill the wonderful chemicals that now grant you the absolution, benediction, and grace of love and suddenly you know Robert Graves knew what he was talking about: for here, between the provolone cheese and the Zinfandel wine, is clear and living proof of the unbroken chain between the ancient Celts and the current White Goddess.

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Mid-Life Crisis

Sugar and salt make it taste the best! she said, and I was pulled from the tailwind of the marital argument with my current wife and, startled, turned to see her by the side of the Starbucks coffee condiments stand while I poured whole milk into my coffee. I looked at her and smiled. She repeated, Sugar and salt. If it has sugar and salt it always tastes better. Her face lit up again and I noticed ringlets of auburn hair beside her expanding smile. How much sugar does he like in his coffee? Lots! her friend answered. Yeah. My old man used to sit at the dinner table and pour sugar into his coffee until half of it spilled out on his plate. Maybe he likes it like that. I said. She laughed. As she laughed, the claddagh ring on my marriage finger came into full view and the sugar and salt taste in my mouth suddenly turned to garlic and vinegar.

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Before I could get that sugar and salt taste back, I fled into the coolness of the night air and the anonymity of the food shoppers outside, remembering that I had a fan to buy for the house, children to raise and a wife who wanted me home so she could see her brother-in-law perform in a bar somewhere. It would be a Walter Mitty, not a James Bond, night.

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Coffee Money

Despite the pre-Cana classes, Despite the best advise of friends, Despite an industry devoted to it, Let me tell you friend, this basic truth: Coffee money will save a marriage every time. Every Friday I take the hundred dollar bills And place them under the coffee can Where my wife takes them and spends them On all the bills that accumulate in this family: Coffee money will save a marriage every time. So no matter what poetry may tell you of love, And no matter those fancy $1,000 relationship classes, If you really want the marriage to last more than the wedding day, Go to the store and buy a tin of coffee even if you dont drink it, Coffee money will save your marriage every time.

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Coyotes Lament Honey... this woman had her tongue in his ear, one hand in his hair, another God knows where, and they were speeding down I-270 in a massive Jeep going 80 miles an hour! For shame. For shame. Why doesnt that happen to me anymore? Oh, theyre probably not married. she replied, as if that answered it? Who knows if they were married! Point is, think about what I said! Her tongue was in his ear, her one hand was in his hair, the other hand was...well... it could have been anywhere, and they were speeding down the highway! Now thats living! I said, turning over sideways, dreaming of highways and freedom and excitement and love out of whack with all sense of propriety. Like I said,

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they probably werent married? she said again, as if that answered anything. Outside, a coyote called to a jackal loudly, while the jackal ignored the coyotes call. But, AHHHH that moons bright tonight. Just the kind of moon a coyote might use to guide him to the highway.

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Mid-Night Milk Run

Ladies, Beware of men too willing to go for a gallon of milk at night. Such time allows copious amounts of time to hand the bookie or the dope dealer or the other woman or any number of temptations family money or the path to your mans heart. So when he returns with that gallon of milk always check it twice: Once to make sure all the cream hasnt been skimmed from the top; And once to make absolutely sure both he and the milk are still pure and white.

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The Last Rose The last rose of the season remains uncut on the rose bush in the unnoticed corner of the yard by the crumbling yellow pine fence. I could, it is true, cut it and bring it to you, as before; Or simply snip it and place it in the Waterford vase in the kitchen... but it is the end of the season. This ruined Fall could soon be Winter. The days with no talk could be weeks Until the weeks are years, and divorce. No, that rose will remain where it is. When it dies, its stem attaches to roots That are strong in minerals, dirt, water. And Spring has so much renewal to give.

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Skaters at Dusk

It is the grace of the skater sinewy-strength of muscle, tendon and cartilage blended in spun harmony and perfect symmetry that glides past you now, young impetuous reckless that reminds you fiercely and with no mercy that your days of young impetuousness and recklessness are over ... ... over even more than you can imagine, really, but grace and its verities have only begun to replace the burden of action with the privilege of reflection and day-long thought -and the careful realization that advice is now rarely given even when

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so desperately sought by ice hockey player and performance skater alike. the

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Whose Pictures Remain Take in the baby pictures first. New spirit and new flesh shining Like the sun and moon and stars All at once saying: Laugh with me! Love with me! Why cant you see That this is so much fun! Take in the wedding pictures next. Remember that day and the days after, How everything was new and good And somehow different and more loving Than it had ever been before that day. Forget what has been said and done since. Look at that picture like you did that day: Fresh and young, fertile and vibrant When pledges of fidelity and eternal love Were so easy to give and to keep. Then look at the graduation shots. Great big photos that never look natural But in that unnatural light and setting say, Ya made it kid! Despite the difficulties, Despite the money problems! Despite... Well...because of you f own and your familys Secret and expressed belief that you would! And how your face blesses that frame Because it is you and your accomplishments Stated before the whole family, and world. Then go to the walls. All the walls. Look at the progression of the baby To child to man and woman in states of life Too complicated for TV of Film to capture, Despite their having had a corner of their own The entire life of those pictures And the life they record and reconcile. Consider how many millenniums This genetic dance has been done, At times a minuet, but most times A mashed potato, and the generations Those pictures both descend from and proceed, From Israel to Alpha Centuria In a genetic soup whose ingredients The scientists may analyze and computerize But whose broth will remain the final mystery. And if youve still got the strength, Go to the inner sanctum -----

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Mom and Dads sanctified chamber. Who has the honored place on the dresser, And who was banished long ago to the far wall? How many generations gather together In pictures here? Great grandparents shots Faded and worn, still exist through the magic Of science and the wonder of love! Old uncles And older aunts, cousins and treasured others Framed tenderly glass, wood and brass? And there, that picture of all eight children To which rosaries and benedictions to the saints Are the primary reason that all eight still live, Despite the ravages of genetically cursed blood And inherited disease, testament to the will And sacred grace that overpowers genetic destiny By the raw but real power of family and blood Ties that somehow overcome the blood curse: That now means 21 grandchildren know love. And travel to a bedroom in the future, One the genetic scientist and doctors Even now want you to see as the only way. They point to pictures of beautiful, healthy children, So perfect and trouble free and good... But there are only blank spaces on these walls. Where the picture of a poet could have been, There is only one more computer engineer. Where the picture of a building contractor was There is only one more electrical engineer. Where the picture of a truck driver once hung There is only one more genetic scientist. Where the picture of a car mechanic did hang, There is only one more justification lawyer. See how science has triumphed at last Over superstition, ignorance, and pain!? They ask, and such sadness spikes the soul! Ask them to turn now to their wallet or purse, To the pictures to be found preserved therein. Who would you sacrifice like scientific Abrahams On the altar of a more perfect, predictable race? The Nazi doctors did this and were called butchers, Our genetically conceived, genetically dependent Gene splicing scientists do it and receive accolades. Look at these pictures anew: And again at your wallet and purse. Consider the blank spaces left When picture frames are removed from walls. Now look at the walls of this fragile human family And consider: In this genetically engineered future,

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Whose genes are now to be blessed Whose genes are now to be cursed, Whose to future and whose to the trash can, And the current and past consequences Of power man and arrogant men, And how the Albert Schweitzers of the gene cult May one day turn out to be instead The Joseph Mengeless of the Apocalypse laboratory. If we are at the top of the food chain: Who would we eat our own young?

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Old American Ways (A Valentine) Wheres the gravy!? she said in a voice that let me know it was no metaphor. I threw it out when I did the dishes! I shot back, confident my help around the kitchen would cover for any small mistakes. You threw it out!? she answered as quickly. But that was Eamons food! The gravy is the most nourishing part! So make him other food. I dont think at 9-months old were particularly discriminating. She was not to be mollified. LOOK! Dont ever throw out the gravy again! NEVER! And dont ever do the dishes if youre going to throw out the gravy! I throw nothing out, NOTHING! I use everything. GOT IT! This was from the woman whos mother, I noticed when I had just taken Eamon to the doctor, had sewn his shirt with thick, shiny dental floss. The very reflection from the bright lights in the doctors office assured that the doctor noticed it, too. In the area we live, such signs can be read as child neglect and, given the right bureaucrat or judge, outright child abuse. Dont you EVER

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throw the gravy out again! Do you understand me?! Its the most nourishing part. Properly chastised, I remembered again why I had wanted to marry a woman from an orchard family so many years and children ago, and why I still loved this one so.

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Jack and Red Hugh O'Donnell "I guess it's no use being Irish unless you realize They'll break your heart in two in the end." Danial Patrick Monyihan's reaction upon hearing the news that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Oh Jack... Today I wept bitter Irish tears When I visited your gravesite's eternal flame And heard what they ask of you still. "Who's here?" they said, laughing in that Empty-headed and arrogant way That can lead to dead babies in lands far away. But the decency of the guard clipped their cruelty. "Please get your feet out of the fountain!" he ordered As dozens soaked their smelly feet in Bobby's fountain. Oh Jack..... I see Jackie jumping out of the limo Reaching out for sections of your brain That splattered across the trunk Trying desperately to put you back together, Trying desperately to bring you back to life... (Everything after a mere shadow...) And even then they, the empty-headed ones, Criticized her, saying she should have stayed By your side when right in front of their eyes She was trying to bring repair your dream, Rekindle your life, your breath, your spirit, Your magic, you with such abundance Of the magics, to life. Her, "I love you!" As you bled to death in her cradling arms The reason Rose loved her to the very end. Whatever sins she has been accused of since, I forgive. I forgive her because despite rumors on rumors She knew that "They" did not get you that day... "They" the CIA; "They" the KGB; "They" the Castro Cubans, "They" the Mafioso's; "They" the Military; "They" the White Supremacists; "They".....Who knows!? Round up the usual hatemongers. It doesn't matter. In the end we all were killed like Oswald in the end. Oh Jack....

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We needed you then. We need you now. The myths alone.... Myths to build a country! Myths larger than life itself! Myths sustainer of a nation! Myths soul nourishing fluid! Oh Jack..... I see you fresh and young A vital 35 at the Cheltenham Mall. The crowd so mixed by preference, No multicultural government program Or diversity corporation training coercion Brought together Jews, Irish Catholics, Methodists, Ukrainian and myriad others All comfortable they were Americans Who believed when you spoke Of a better America for their children And their children's children. I sat on my father's shoulders that day, Working class shoulders as powerful And graceful as the mind that told me, "Remember this man, Bruce. He's going To make this country great for working people! He's the next president of the United States!" I was only five that day, but I remember The joy of my father before you And the unity of purpose and direction Like I remember the brief joy of my early years. Of Jack....... I remember you like I remember How my own father choked to death So many years later so alone in a dark room. For before both there was great joy, Great accomplishments, great blood love In the beginning that leaves me numb And baffled that such agony, such horror, Could be deliberate or conspiratal Or an act of God...and thinking of the possibilities Only leads to more confusion and heartbreak. Oh Jack...... Just recently, after three centuries It was finally proven that, as suspected, The Irish legend Red Hugh O'Donnell

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Really was poisoned by the British. The order was discovered In Mountjoy's State Papers. And for those who think They may keep your assassination Just as secret in the end, Your smug killers should know, That although it took three centuries To prove Red Hugh O'Donnell's murders Had him assassinated with poison Today we have computers. To draw the ties that bind such evil And when the day or reckoning comes, They will be driven from this land Like before the breastplate Of St. Patrick and his legions. Oh Jack....... They killed your spirit No more than the Viking barbarians Killed the spirit of Brian Boru Or the British Red Hugh O'Donnell. As me dear father used to say to me so often I guess it's no use being Irish Catholic Unless you realize your spirit lives forever When they break your heart in two in the end.

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Silenced Bird Song "Bird song most often functions to advertise territory and to attract a mate. The same song has different meanings depending on who hears it. Once the male has accomplished attracting a mate and establishing a territory, he tends to stop singing." The Bird's Eye View National Bird Feeding Society, Spring, 1994 p.9 So the reason I am no longer inspired to write poems of you has nothing to do with the ennui of the Europeans, or of the vacuum that explodes like a North Korean nuclear bomb from behind my peaceful rest to another confrontation along our personal DMZ, complete with taboo subjects that once broached, lead to interminable silences and Serbian sniper stares at each others' confirmed, but ever growing and shifting front lines, until our children are like baffled U.N. "Peacekeepers" who rub our backs and perform funny Irish jigs ...anything...to stop, even briefly, our Belfast mornings and Londonderry nights while our British conscious tortures us with our memories of great past literature now mocked by no trial internments, each sentencing the other to seethe in our own mental Cell-Block H trying to understand how something so beautiful could have come to this concrete cell's questions, both of us relishing the role of relentless inquisitor while fearing and knowing, like an Afrikaaner judge, the pattern all too well: one minute the victim I torture

46 will be the presiding magistrate the next and the cycle continues unceasingly like conflict and war, conflict and war in this century. No...my inability to write poems of you, dear, has nothing at all to do with my connection to all these people and to all these events that I share with them in the Nietzschean compromises of this Faustian marriage. It is merely the birds' song that has stopped. It has stopped for reasons far deeper and more incomprehensible than any story on the evening news. I sang a song deep and long in poems to attract you...years ago. Now...that same song I can no longer sing because, like the birds, now that I have attracted a mate and established a territory, I stopped singing. Still... every once in a while the thought arises: Were I to fly to another nest, would my song ignite anew ...or be smothered in the same biological and gender destiny?!

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Walking to the Other Side

I have heard my own footsteps on the oak boards of my home as they travel thump/thump thump/thump thump/thump to remind me that I walk this earth for a time... ...who will stand there when the dirt is thrown on my coffin and say they cared that my footsteps were once and they, then, heard them passing still awake half conscious and had no doubt that I just walked by, saying The time for tears is over: for I have walked to the serenity and peace of the other side.

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a dream of love

we make love----and all the pent-up power within her is unleashed and I am swept past great cities that came and went armies that changed maps and prophets who threw out the call until finally crystalline figures line the dwelling and I am totally in awe of her shape and strength I who won her from her father and brothers in a fight that almost cost my life I who had some part in the children who burst forth from her

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I who never quite comprehend her even realize that right now she consumes me she absorbs my strength and life and determine what direction they take I follow her deep into space past galaxies and years to glimpse beyond life and thought our destiny lived now lived before lived tomorrow all as one for this knowledge -----I follow.

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Of Your Earthen Body

This water gains power and flows full, increasing in pressure Until it runs into The forest.................., the dam.................. ...............the massive dike. The pressure builds -----------And this life giving water pushes and slams Seeks some final release until it can no longer be contained inside. And nature demands her satisfaction and pulls the waves with a full-bodied moon That y..a..n..k..s the water through the vacuum. It is here life lives here the soul dances here evolution rules Until, there is no quiet. There is no peace. There is only the answer, "Because there is no other!" To my eternal question, "WHY!" "AAAAAUUUAAAGHGHGHGHGHG!!!" I scream in surrender As the seed-bearing water overflows the dam, enters the fertile valley, And embeds silently In the reservoir Of your earthen body.

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My Father "One might say that any great creativity bears within itself a tragedy. And so this is mine..." Boris Pasternak May 21, 1928 Moscow, USSR My father, always ran and ran and ran to other people constantly seeking from people a pat on the back. My father, was eaten alive and spit out, totally destroyed by a world he could not understand and that could not understand him. My father, laid on the living room couch and slept and slept and slept for years. He'd been..................broken. My father, choked to death one night and I swallow and drink ever since once through the heart and once through the head before he reaches my stomach.

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This Broken Silence They came for the communists, and I did not care, for I was not a communist. Then they came for the Jew, and I did not care, for I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Catholic, and I did not care, for I was not a Catholic. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to protect me." Reinhold Niebuhr I It was the silence That most terrified us. The silence at night. The silence at dawn. The silence of day. We'd lay down Pained At night......forbidden.... To cry out Our pain to each other. So.......silently, so silently..... Each second of the night passed, Silently, for five years. II Stienberg screamed once. Screamed, "You Nazi scum!!! Well pay you back someday!!! Your Reich will last a few years!!! We've been around millenniums!!! We'll see who survives who!!! Stienberg screamed this out In the Silence of night. He was executed In the silence of dawn. We learned the lesson quickly. Every execution From that day on

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We viewed in silence. Cold, black-steel silence. Cold, gray-dawn silence. II Sister Anne prayed once. Prayed out loud. Prayed, "Dear sweet, sweet Jesus!!! Forgive them all! They don't Know what they've doing to you!!! Prayed it again and again While a group of old Hasidim Like a flock of battered sheep Who were shorn of their wool locks In frosted dead of winter Were pushed by the dreaded overseers Headlong into the concrete ovens. The Commandant Had the ovens opened mid-burn And Sister Anne was told To view the Jewish sheep Now charred and black Before being thrown in with them. She was executed In the silence of day We learned the lesson quickly. Every murder we witnessed From that day on We prayed, Those of us who still prayed, In silence. Cold, ebony-dazed silence. III The Pole was silent once, But only once.

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Commandant screamed, "Give me an answer, swine! Give me an answer Or you'll die!" The Pole remained silent. Stared, Eagle eyed, Determined And strong, (all 78 pounds of him) Into the Commandant's glare. The commandant placed The lugar's barrel Tender and gentle-like Into the Pole's mouth. "TALK!!! WHO DID IT?!" BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABBBBBBAAAAABBAAA!!! WWWWWWWWWHIRZZZBAABBBDDDDDDACKUHH!!! GI commando's carbine plug Found the Commandant's head. Silence cracked all over. Cracked by bullets of life. Cracked by guns of love. Cracked by voices Gruff with fatigue, GI voices of Pennsylvania, Georgia, California, Montana. Nervously viewing Our gaunt bodies And death eyes They tried To crack the silence With their foreign talk. "FREUND!!! AMERIKANISHER!!! SEE!!! FREUND!!!" "Howzabout a candy bar, buddy? Hershey's chocolate! Real good stuff! Here, have one, man!!!

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"Who here needs A plug a tobacco? "Watcha'll doin' Standin' around quiet for??? Ya'll free!!! Free, ya hear!!???" The voices spoke to us from everywhere As the gates swung open. Then these strange tongues Of liberation, of life, of love Asked us to state the abuses Of our tormentors for the record. But all we did Was stare back in silence. The silence of Stienberg. The silence of Sister Anne. The silence of the Pole. The silence of the Commandant. The silence of five years Under the Commandant's rule Who, dead and bleeding before us, Even now made sure the nightmare continued. IV Seven years later, In a synagogue in Philadelphia I took an American wife Because she knew nothing Of the Silence. Even today, Here incessant American chatter Is like life itself to me. And silence, Like loneliness and pain Lies buried With the Commandant.

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But I know how to speak With a voice bold and ecstatic Of life and love This moment of present This moment of future To my children. You see, My voice shouts To them, To honor Stienberg, Sister Anne, the Pole, and the American GI. It has been resurrected From our crucifixions, And from The Chosen voices Of millenniums past.

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I Am the Serbian Sniper I I am the Serbian sniper, and you cannot stop me. Three confirmed this week, seven the last, And it is all the same to me. Some movement?! Down "Sniper Alley" a child dares the run, And I see her form clearly in my sights. Perhaps a Croat. Perhaps a Muslim. Maybe a Jew. In seconds, I make them all one In death the way they could never be in life. The head appears huge in my scope. I squeeze lightly the trigger. Her head cracks back in one movement. She is the one of a thousand rabbits I have hit so easily. The bullet hits both And their bodies spasm and the blood squirts As they hit the ground lifeless. Like the rabbits I downed by the thousands as a child in the forest Along the Adriatic, I do the honorable thing. I await to make sure she is dead. If she moves, I will put another bullet into her body or head To end her agony and win another confirmed. Unlike the rabbit she pretends no stillness. I chalk another form on the hard wall. II I am the Serbian sniper whom the might Of the new European Community, UN, US And the so-called "world community" combined With its bragging of "human rights" cannot contain. I daily ruin their plans of a "new world order." They fail to realize I am the new world order. I create it with each bullet splintering bone, With each quart of blood drained from a fresh hit. I am the enforcer of purification, perpetual war. When they hold conferences, I unleash bullets. You can see who gets more headlines each hour. In fact, I care nothing for nationalism, communism, Or even for the "ethnic purification" about which All the puke politicians in Belgrade preach. I care only for confirmed kills, for the adrenaline rush Of the aim, release, hit, blood, and stillness Of the prey as it twitches and then stops breathing. For I am god at that moment deciding who will live or die.

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III I am the Serbian sniper, the fright of diplomats I baffle with my simple understanding of man's motives. One bullet from my rifle speaks more than all The documents and peace treaties they will ever sign. I am their younger brother who killed cats and rabbits While they studied so quietly and diligently at school. I am their boorish father, brother, son, they tried to disown Only to find that I have come back, with gun, for their home. I am the Serbian sniper and you'd better invite me to dinner. I am tired of stealing food from the pantry of this Squalid hotel from which I gain my confirmed kills each day. Otherwise, the people who give me my bullets Will continue to be my employers when it is a new home, And not this damaged hotel, for which I kill so deftly. And, as I prove daily with my sniping skills, new homes, Like new systems, can be built anywhere in the "New World Order." Perhaps you think we could not be neighbors? Then consider this when next you turn off The evening news because I look so far away: As long as there are rabbits in your yard, There will be willing hunters like me in the shadows Ready to take down whatever moves but never learns.

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After leaving Colleen at the Airport

All your angels haunt this apartment tonight. When I walked into the kitchen, I found one of them smiling at me mischievously From behind the kitchen door. When I turned from my writing, Another one beamed a childlike smile at me And allowed me to be happy again. This other one began to cry because Although I knew she was there, I was so unkind As to ignore her being there. (Oftentimes, they'll conspire together To sneak up behind me and tickle me and whisper Lightly in my ear, "We love you!) I keep trying to have a face-off with them. I want them to stop haunting me but they refuse. They insist I stay aware of you until you return. As much as I argue with them, They say they know where they belong....with you, And where you belong....with me. What right have I to argue with such logic?

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Wedding Poem for Brother Bob I remember, Brother we tumbled through brown autumn leaves and I rolled through them and over you and screams and cries and laughter and the smell of children's sweat and your hair with leaves stuck between. Those four toughs who came to get you and though they were older and bigger we had you and Hank and I and ties of blood between us to drive back their raw meanness with raw strength of blood. Charging like savages through the little lot laughing with torches and setting fire until out of the tall grass Mom appeared and seized our hands and extinguished our fires and gave the both of us a licking to make sure she got the right one. And I remember, Brother those days at Holy Angels Grade School when we watched for hours The Cross of Christ and The Flag of Our Country and we heard Mother Superior say President Kennedy had just been shot so we all said a Rosary together and went home holding hands because something terrible and adult had just intruded into our innocent lives. There were so many books around!

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And once you wrote quotes from known and unknown scholars all over the bedroom walls and the arguments about the Vietnam War and the State of Our Country and only alternatives to what was then proffered seemed to suggest a way out. I remember, Brother the torpid day we almost died together when the aluminum ladder struck the live telephone wire and you hugged me and cried and we cried at the funeral and have since left unspoken the bond that formed that day. That summer we shared in the factory together (that broke our father) and a man there had insulted him and I beat a steel locker with my fists to avoid hitting that man's cruelty and cried in the car in the parking lot uncontrollably and you understood the rage enough to know to give me all the time I needed to control it. The secrets that we have traded, the looks that require no words of explanation and the years we have bridge between. That woman who tore me in two that from the moment of contact

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you viewed with suspicion because you knew, you knew, because we had shared those looks that require no explanation over space and differing time we have shared together. I remember, Brother the way your smile advances over the map of our face, and I measure each square mile it covers as I measure the thoughts that we have never spoken of the bonds and the blood between us. I remember this and pages more today, my Brother, because when we hugged and you boarded the train that begins and ends with Babs as your new wife I wanted her and every wife and every mother and every sister to know the strength of the silence, that to remain sacred, brothers leave unspoken which enjoins that even this poem leave hidden what is sealed in other chambers.

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Larry Joe Bird Where others see only obstacles, Larry Bird sees from mid-court an opening as wide as the Red Sea beneath the basket calling him. He breaks to the middle, pain stabbing his back like a bayonet slicing through muscle stabbed thousands of times before like a repeat offender criminal demanding the immediate attention of his brain, more pain screaming from his swollen ankles insisting like a wife taken for granted and ignored too many years that, "Yes, you will notice me now! I'll make sure of that There will be no more abuse!" Pain shouting from elbows angry like abandoned children from too many years of abuse and neglect, all shouting in unison, "Feel the pain now! Feel the pain now!" but like a soldier wounded in too many battles to know how to answer the pain all Larry Bird's brain will allow attention is the call of the open space calling like spiritual salvation from a mere 15 feet away. He instantly checks one last time for an open teammate in the wilderness, but there is no one to be found. Larry Bird's mind goes into overtime and his photographic memory sees the moves he mastered as a child on a lonesome court in West Baden come on his screen and a countermove from when he was only ten and basketball was pure forces its way into his consciousness

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so that before his opponents even realize he is on his way to the basket to bring faith and belief to the masses in the stands. He tips his hand to the right slams the ball to his left and then twists his body into a pretzel-like pattern and now the pain is purification, the pain is release from sin, the pain is fire and ice stabbing only numb muscle because he has mastered its force and he leaves it behind him now to leap from the confines of the earth to defy what laws of gravity that still claim some physical control of his body mass and leaps into the Heavens into the space where there is no pain, where there is no suffering but only the pure white light from the gyms stratosphere to light the way until "WHOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSHHHH" and the gym explodes like a holyroller tent revival and the Celtics fans high five each other in physical celebration like the ancient Celts embraced Brian Boru anew each time he defeated the vicious marauding Viking hordes to preserve Ireland for the Christian faith and the believers and Larry Bird lands on the earth fully aware, also like Brian Boru, that the celebration only lasts until the demands of the next skirmish or battle, until the final basket's call.

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On What the Future of Civilization Depends

I "YO! Youse guys know where the party is tonight?" The third of the summer blondes Asks the streetcornered muscled boys. "Right here, baby! Get outta dat car And come over here! We'll show youse how ta party!" Smiles Tenderness Tony to his friends First, and then to the summer blondes, Fully aware of what hangs in the balance. "Well, we're kinda lookin' for real men. Youse guys don't look old enough Ta drive our cars or even work on our engines! Wheel it Angela!" laughs Marie. They cruise around the Wildwood block, Circle and return, compelled by a mating ceremony As old as any migrating naked rhizopod's As insistent as any remoras on a tiger shark As powerful as any copulating American saddle horses. At the same time Tenderness Tony and Angela circle each other warily, Hundreds of thousands of others dance the same dance floor To repeat ancient and glorious tribal mating rites Less understood than the circling rites of shark whales off Tahiti.

II I know many who do not see the wonder of this. Instead, they spend their days saying to whoever will listen, "See! See there! This life is only abuse, death, destruction, Hate and finally pain, pain, pain and cruelty!" And it is not just journalists saying this these days.

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Perhaps such as these have never visited Wildwood, NJ At the height of the mating season. For there, on any given sultry summer night When the air is as thick with mating pheromones As the Brazilian rain forest, everything is possible. "Youse guys still where the party is tonight?" Now it is Maria talking, newly revealed as the princes in waiting Who throws out the challenge to all willing to chance the future. All three boys respond by raising themselves high To preen their feathered haircuts like cocks About to meet their flaring hens. "Yeah, Baby! I'm here for youse only tonight! He's "VAA VAA VOOOMM Vic! I'm Tenderness Tony Dis heres' happiness itself, Whose otherwise known as Loverboy Louie." This night laden with romance and possibility, Despite the miles of backed up traffic Tens of thousands in cars, clubs, bars, All along these dazzling street-lit courting avenues Rhythmically step to this genetically programmed dance Unbothered by anything but the moment of contact. Like a novice nun fingering her rosary, Theresa brushes her hair with tender strokes As Maria parks the car in one swift motion. All three watch the boys in the car mirror, Well aware of what their charged rituals Are producing in the awaiting Tony, Vic, and Louie. Each reapplies her love-red glossy candy flavored lipstick, Sprays wave after wave of perfume on her neck and breasts And saunters over to her instant date for that night. III For those who snootily laugh at these young people, Who dismiss their substandard English or their different ways, I ask youse to please consider the following. It is on the perpetual success of such everyday rituals Far more than on what laws Congress passes, Or what breakthroughs our medical schools make, Or what discount rate the Fed establishes, Or what new worlds the Hubble discovers, Or what programs the President proposes, That the future of civilization depends. "Youse guys ready to party?" Shouts Marie.

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"Yooooooooo!!! Honey! The party's just begun!" Answers Tenderness Tony. "The party's just begun!" Seventeen years later, Within a mile of where her parents met, The oldest of Tony and Marie's girls' Drives by some guys on the corner of 58th and Atlantic In "Wildwood by the Sea," And shouts, "YO! Youse guys know where the party is tonight?" When she does, on the successful answer to her question, Will the future of civilization depend.

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Apollo1-Soyuz 1975 Imagine............. For...one...brief...moment Two space ships Approaching each other In the vastness....... Of Outer Space....... You'd heard it Would be quiet.... But never knew What quiet meant Until meteors The size of cities Raced by As quietly as snowflakes. What you'd been taught In years of training Lost all meaning Out here As you contemplated Who made all this. Time...Too... Became blinking lights On a master computer That reminds you Of your eating, Experiments And bodily functions. Earth----Your home Of many years Became a distant memory Upon launch-----The Act That changed your life Forever.

Apollo--The Greek and Roman god of sunlight, prophecy, music and poetry. Also the name of the American space program of the 1970's which along with the Russian Soyuz space program, while chiefly concerned with the sun and other heavenly bodies, in the process created the inspiration for prophesy, music and poetry. Thanks.

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Imagine..... For another Brief moment.... A tap on the shoulder From your commander. He points To a spot In the blackness Where a green-blue dot Approaches. It is them. It is time. The box Of white pine spruce seeds Are placed carefully In your hand. The spot grows larger. It carries markings... "CCCP" and a red flag. A brief jolt To your cabin, A door opens And men appear Speaking words That despite Two years of classes You do not understand. They float in Smiling Holding gifts And a plaque To commemorate This historic moment For generations And ages hence. Only thirty years before In the city of Berlin Such scenes Had also taken place.

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Imagine..... At that moment What they think To themselves..... As they take pictures Of the others ships For their respective Commanding officers. Did they peer At each other Suspiciously So far from earth's Boundaries and laws? Or did something Deeper, Ancestral, Break through And dominate....... Calling for laughs And hugs And drinks and peace On this orbiting world? Did a cosmonaut say, "Comrade! Smile once more! My daughter would enjoy Such a picture!" And get the reply, "Friend, I reacon' somethin' Much bigger than us Happened out here today!"

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The Day After

I awaken...... .....in vague stirrings.... ...of dreams... Was there...... .......who handled me clean?

In the nights remembrance.... .....sounds of streams.... My strength was dismantled....... .....beam....by....beam.

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Eamons Poem Kicking your mother from inside the liquid universe of the womb... I feel so crippled and broken when considering I have so much to teach you and only the remaining lifetime to do so. It is hopeless, really, except these two gems that came down from a long, long line of men and women who survived centuries of Vikings whose barbarity was only surpassed by the neighbor invader who considered genocide by the rule of law such a jolly good adventure and stole all the food in the very middle of the famine of all famines. Through it all, your ancestors survived tenaciously creative and green as moss on the back of a stone on the gentle Shannon river and these two gems skip across that great river to the Delaware where once, when wondering of ancestral roots I asked my father, "Dad, what is it to be American?" "Work!" "What?" I asked. "Work!" he repeated. "Your grandfather worked. I worked. You'll work." "That's all?" "That's all." he answered. "Then what is it to be Irish?" "Hilarity!" He didn't skip a beat again. "Hilarity!" You gotta make 'em laugh!" So there it is, Eamon Patrick. If God takes me before I get to teach you all you need to know, let these two words suffice: work and hilarity. Work and hilarity saved your people over centuries of warfare, pestilence, invasion, slavery, defeat, and famine and eventually defeated the greatest power on earth so I could write you this poem. Work and hilarity can carry you to the universe and to other planets and when you find a particularly hard planet, name it "Work" and when you find an especially funny planet, name it "Hilarity." No matter what the planet or year,

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work and hilarity are in your genes as am I, and all of my dreams.

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My True Home

Just this morning I awoke so in love with you that inside a cloud BURST balloon-like to lift me high above the city lights over highways and country roads to an oak cabin in the woods where by a fire of apple and peach tree I laid my head against your lap and found there my true home.

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The Second Transition

her eye cut cerulean blue isolated sits below ebony eyebrows closely observes............. a stone and mortar cross shaped church cut cleanly into the side of a red clay mesa Montezuma's Castle a gentle Indian tribe that disappeared mysteriously from the lush green valley when the British defeated les Canadiens on the Plains of Abraham desert green a three hundred year old saguaro is slashed by the steel bumper of a freshly machined truck factory air conditioned drunk teenager owned her eye cut cerulean blue surveys the damage.......... apologizes to God apologizes to the Indians apologizes to Nature she tires of man's rule and in-gathers the women

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wonders if the time is right wonders if the women will rule it better wonders how she ever allowed evolution to go so haywire sees the mistake of allowing man his laws his religions his wanderings ever aware of the children decides on instinct conscious of love and continues to procreate there are years to repair the damage as there were years to allow it centuries to transmit new genetic codes reborn as there were centuries to allow their neglect her eye cut cerulean blue isolated sits below ebony eyebrows closely observes......... the second transition.

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The Life Cycle

A small boy is carried from a car asleep. His father, tenderly, transports the child from car to house. Years later, when the boy carried the father gently to the grave, and remembered powerful arms, carrying him once, from somewhere, to somewhere, the life cycle -was complete.

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Factory Mishap Pa chunka chunka...pa chunka chunka... ...pa chunka chunka...pa chunka chunka... Harry! Harry! Send that shit down here!... ...pa chunka chunka...pa chunka chunka... ...pa chunka chunka...pa chunka chunka... Yoo Harry! Harry! God dammit Harry!... ...pa chunka chunka...pa chunka chunka... Pa chunka chunka...pa chunka chunka... Whooooosh...whoooosh...shshsh...sh...sh... ...whoosh...whooooosh...shshshsh...sh... Here it comes, boys! Get ready for it!... ...whoooooooshsh...whoooooosh...sh...sh... ...whoooooooooooosh...shooosh...sh...sh... Get those palets down! Get those palets... ...whoooooooooooooooooooooshshsh.... Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosh.... Voooooooooooommm...voooooommm...voo... ...vooooooommmm...voooooooomm...voo.... They're backing up, dammit! Slow it down!... ...voooooooooooooooooooooommm...voo..... ...voooooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmm.. Harry! Harry! Slow it down! Slow it......... ...VOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM... VOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM... Bccccaccc...bcccaccc...accccacc...acc... ...bcccacccc...bcccaccc...acccccaccc...ac... Oh my God! They're going to explode!.......... ...bccccaccc...bcccccaccccaccc...bcccaccacccc... ...bcccccaccc...bcccacc...accc...accc...accc... G E T B A C K! G E T A W A Y F R O M T H E M! ...bccccacccc...bcccaccc...accc...accc...accc... BCCCACCACCCCACCACCBACCCACCCCBCCCC... Paquachaquacha...paquachacha...paquacha........... ...BAAA...DOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM............ AUGH!...........AUGH! AUGH!...........AUGH!!!!.... .........AUGH!.................................... ...BAA................DOOOOOOOOMMMMMM.... ............................................................ ............................................................

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Words Never Die

When they ask you at school, "And what does your father do?" Tell them he is a craftsman, A craftsman of fine words. A craftsman in the Medieval sense. A man who takes pride in sculpting Completed poems out of a vast quarry Of known but inartistically used language. And when they say, "But isn't that a rather unproductive And silly occupation for a full grown man?" Say to them back: "No. His words may survive intact, While your father's money is spent, And your father's property is divided, And your father's corporation is absorbed, And your father's wife grows old and dies. But words cannot be spent, divided, absorbed or die. Words never die; only the people who poorly use them."

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forces women control men's lives by

there are forces that erupt, tear apart, spill out, emerge, and reerupt, in vast spaces..... vast spaces of no entrance or exit vast interior spaces surrounded by no exteriors souls within bodies within souls within bodies spaces that exist within larger than galaxies unexplored spaces to be entered hauntingly, cautiously, for fear of no return spaces where life determines life

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within these places there are forces quite unknowable whose only manifestation is a woman's love the birth of a child forces men can touch but never realize forces women control men's lives by which men as many times ask will never know why

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The Comedians Choice

Two Comedians pummeled an audience with jokes. They jabbed at their collective neurosis. Swung wildly at their latent fears. Then kicked them right in their lifestyles. After the round was over, The comedians returned to a corner table Filled with beautiful women and booze And sat there nervously trying to calm their anxiety. Sitting there, With a choice between the women, the anxiety and the booze, Both men raised their fists to sup their glasses dry, Ordered doubles, and tapped their feet nervously.

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Reflections on New Surroundings Pigeons watch from above an L-shaped streetlight the afternoon procession of afterwork urban manandwoman home to loved ones, television, dinner, outside interests or no one. Old gray bearded wino with rayon purple scarf on neck perched in front of TEMPLE BEVERAGES featuring LIQUOR, PEPSI AND CIGARETTES (contraband up from the tobacco fields of red clay Piedmont South). Down 17th Street ONE WAY drive white orange black Capital Cabs blue and white with red roof sirened 96 CAPITAL POLICE cars AIRPORT SERVICE GREYHOUND BUS all knowing LEFT LANE MUST TURN LEFT. Along the sidewalk a young Iranian student newly arrived to the Land of Opportunity tries not to look so foreign by wearing clothes he bought in American Made in Taiwan. At Saint Matthew's Cathedral Sanctus Matthaus gold and red tiled on the front holding Bible saying, "THE BIBLE OF SAINT MATTHEW" while below him entering and leaving church goers look forward past old crippled beggar with black ski cap for spare change in hand and wooden crutch by side.

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Highway Poem for Colleen I I crash down Highway 98 Shouting your name Screaming your praises Remembering other highways..... 76 Schuylkill Expressway swift Liberty Bell love long cast Philadelphia Art Museum strong Wissahickon Creek Green Valley winding Delaware River Deep Billy Penn Principled St. Peter's and Paul's blessed. I look over to see.....Your face laughing Your face puzzled Your face angelic Your face enveloping My soul until your hand Reached across the distance to take my hand between Until your hand Became life itself for me an anchor in an anonymous And frightening urban sea. Where your hand Provided a warm and loving home After cruel, unrelenting city storms. II 78 Florida fun funny Gray and pink racing porpoises Discovering Corinthians wisdom While exceeding the legal limit Kaleidoscope of car colors Exploding in an orange sun Blue-skyed canvas of cars Cars more numerous than sand.

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I looked over to see.....Your face perturbed Your face petulant Your face pedantic Your face prism Reflecting my soul Surprised at its power To love........To hurt To run.......To return To take.......To give To break......To survive. When your head rested Flush with sleep and dreams On my lap as I drove I would have fought the whole world Before anyone would have harmed you. III 95 Kennedy Space Center potential Rockets of love launched Booster rockets in reserve Space station steady Stars as loves highlights Suns burning at night Whole universes to be explored Worlds over years to spin lore. I looked over to see.......Your face bright Your face light Your face confused Your face eternal Absorbing my soul So that when I said I might walk away And you cried softly In truth as well could I Ignore gravity Walk from my family Walk from God's love Walk from Heaven's Angels.

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IV 84 Deep South Bible Backbone Tiny Bible churches of conviction The Word is The Word is The Word Trees so big they wore clouds Sun so brilliant it blinded Country stores of country caring Country ways of country sharing Clay and grace, earth, and rebirth. The cycle of nature ever present. I looked over to see.......Your face absent Your face somewhere Your face memory Your face paining straining my soul I drove but in a daze Half expecting you to appear At each country gas station Or store But there were only Shadows of you That disappeared And reappeared in mists and midnight forest Until finally...... I I crash down Highway 98 Shouting your name Singing your praises Remembering other highways..... Remembering there are Miles of highway In this land alone Yet to be explored. Over the miles of telephone line I hear your voice.

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Over galaxies of futures...... I promise to crash down Shouting your name Screaming your praises Remembering other highways...... Each old star a memory bought Each new star a memory sought For you......for you.....for you.....

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Poetry Work Ethic ...Then theres the poetry work ethic Different from any other work ethic because it derives from hidden places and screams,You write down this poem NOW!!! Write the poem down... despite the baby screaming to be changed, for food, for a bottle, for attention Write the poem down... despite the stabbing back pain that cleaves the body into two separate bodies each separate but greater as two Write the poem NOW... despite the boss over the shoulder always asking, I hope thats our work your doing on on our nickel? yet unwilling to accpet the answer, Yes! The work of God. Yes! The work of the Muse. Yes!..The work of ages... Write the poem NOW!!! Despite the impediments of family body, and the day time job if it is to last into the next milleneaum or even the next hour.

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Blizzard 96
A Frederick man shoveled a parking space for himself in front of his house, went inside for a moment, and returned to find someone else had parked there. He felt that he had been violated, said Dorothy Rubin, the mans neighbor. So he went and got a garden hose and encased the car in ice. Did it in layers. Thats cheeky. Marianne Kyriakos and Jackie Spinner The Washington Post Saturday, January 13, 1996, p. B4

Imagine... being trapped inside a mind like mine! Imagine all this damned snow! Imagine someone taking this space I worked four hours to clear? No way. Man do I have to take a leak.... Son of a.... The hose!!! The hose!!! And Ill lay in on layer on layer!!! Hell think his car is a metal ice cube in an ice age blizzard drink when he comes out tomorrow! Now for the first application Of H2O to this putzs car... Oh...you find offense? You cannot imagine doing this? You cannot imagine being trapped inside a mind like mine? Think of the Blizzard of 96. Think of the person that week who may not have parked in the space you spent four hours clearing, but who exasperated you in the way that putz exasperated me. Now think hard about what

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you said you would do at the time if only you had been able and his car was sitting there parked and vulnerable. Why dont you pick up the hose? Imagine... being trapped inside a mind like ours!?

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Cream Donut Yeah, yeah, I know... Its filled with enough milk and butter and sugar to meet the needs of a small country for a year. And I know its loaded with enough cholesterol to kill eight rats in a drug company lab. And I know its sugar dose is large enough to meet any alcoholics weekly sugar addiction. But... if youre ever suicidal try a cream donut. Treat yourself to its buddy donut shop sugar coffee, too. As sugar endorphines careen through your gray matter and thoughts of suicide wither on the brain vine your newly functioning and recently appreciated brain will remind you: a cigar may be just a cigar but a cream donut and sugar coffee can save your life.

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The Death of Eddie Polec Eddie Polec lies bleeding on the steps of St. Cecilia's While his entire neighborhood and a girl friend dial 911; But 911 this night has been seized by the number 666 That demands in the way that only Satan and his legions can Silly bits of information and stupid question after question While Eddie lies dying, while Eddie's life leaves him From too many baseball bats to the head and body; Until Eddie's last moments on earth are pain and suffering Beyond what young men save those in warfare feel. But Eddie has already been sacrificed in this war And like so many deaths in war, his is so senseless, So vicious, so stupid, so much the result of a government That couldn't even maintain the most basic service, Life-saving phone lines and well-trained personnel Who could be counted on at the other end of the line To know how to toe the lifeline of love and life And caring enough to spare Eddie's life for tomorrow And the children and family and celebrations he deserved. I have been at the end of 15 with bats while 40 cheered. I met their cowardice with savagery that drove them back To where they had to think twice before they attacked another With such sinful intent. But I had an umbrella and briefcase Without which I could have died like Eddie at St. Cecilia's. May the angels carry me to your side Eddie, in time, In time, and may we honor your memory and death Like men and women of Godly might who know, Deep in the deepest recesses of the heart and mind, That death's like yours can only happen over and over When mediocrity and cowardice are as common as ice cream.

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My Poetry Hangs in Donut Shops My poetry hangs in donut shops in hopes that some alcoholic satiating the alchees bottomless sugar tooth by mainlining donuts into his body who may now have determined to drink the Seconal cocktail (to leave a world that stopped noticing ten years ago that he was even there) might look up to read my poems and decide instead like me Dear ol Da to get sober if for only a year and a half so that his eight childrens last remembrance of him might be of his final fight in a life that was one long fight that led him to rise in the night (in a way only men who have slayed internal demons that attack so strongly and with the serpents cunning and vicious appeal each and every night can know) to slay the alcohol demons instead of allowing them to be his final pallbearers.

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Michelangelo and the Pope Michelangelo grabs the brush strongly, sees the spot unpainted like a world before him screaming, dips the brush brusquely into the paint he personally mixed from clays outside Romes knowledge, stares straight to the point of contact, feels the unsteady stroke, quickly adjusts the horsehair strands to within a micromillimeter of the plaster and begins the rite of sanctifying this dome again. He is lost in complete abandon to this precious work. The stabbing pain in his back is still there but his minds eye forces it to remain numb for now. Michelangelo pulls the brush to within an inch of Heaven... ...But there are steps approaching. He tries to concentrate on this one stroke, but the steps grow quicker and heavier until they stop below his scaffold. Michelangelo! A bit to the left with Gods hand! We know from the Bibles inspired words exactly where that hand was at the time of creation! Michelangelo reminds himself this is the Pope and not just one more assistant. Thank you, Your Excellency. As always, Your knowledge of the Bible is surpassed only by your God-given and perfect wisdom.

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The Pope smiles, waves to his most prized possession, and wanders off. Michelangelo turns from the Papal world and smiles at his creation. Only at such times, with an angel whispering soft correct words in his soul does he ever really smile. The angel tells him not to fear his current patron as a palace coup will replace him in a matter of days with his Medici cousin who will let him alone in his dying days to paint as he wishes with the full resources of the Papal State at his disposal. Michelangelo whispers to his heart that he will finally paint this angel into the Sistine Chapel. His guardian angel smiles back and disappears from earth. A few days later, Michelangelo begins to add another figure to his work. As the pain stabs his back anew, Michelangelo reaches down to add the former Pope to his eternal frieze as the perfect face on the body of a demon.

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Giving Speech to the Silence Someday, you're an old man and they're all gone: One to the West Coast. One to man's insatiable appetite for war. One to marry a man you ghtought unworthy of her. and the one here even now, the one who always returns no matteer what obstacles that keep the others. He's the one who from the time he was a baby understood the silences: The sound paper makes when crinkled in utter noiselessness; the sound a heart makes when contracting without the benefit of other hearts; the sound of a voice faint but recognized by the inner spirit who says at your death bed, "God I love you, Dad!?" as you journey half earth, half heaven. And you smile through the pain, try to let him know now what you never bothered to tell him back when you had so many days, that, deep within your hidden heart, he was alsyas the one who battled the silence for you making you know through talk or humor or his mere presence at the tend of other hopsital beds that nervous breakdowns bring,

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again and again he reminded you that silence is the cruelest, the most deadly illusion. And with your last breath in this world you remember quickly and silently why you loved this one so: He was the one who gave speech to the silence.