Rationale Melting Into Synthesis: A War Story

The enviable will
To withstand
When faced with doubts

Tough inner fiber
Locked hands a stirrup
For that leap onto the dark steed

Where soldiers stand
In bamboo armor
Let them free

To have one clear clean
Breath
Of indefinity

Peace we know
War we know less well
Both are fraught with bravery

Ask for no answer
From siege or calumny
The soul bears scars only it can heal

Long after dangers cease
The battle rages
In the struggling breast

Having lost the power to weep
May we still retain
The trembling hand of comfort

For the aging warrior
Longing for death
To be reborn

Shall the mind be stripped
And memory washed out
Or wrapped in the honey of experience?

The Sense of Suspended Time and Muddled Energy in the Vortex

Swirls of brown and purple streaked with white
Like watching water curling down a drain
I see my life blood seeping out
Staining the carpet of past dreams

Angels stand arms folded frowning
Bodhisattvas with heavy-lidded eyes
Await my awakening
Not skipping a beat I sit abandoned

Sweetness in its true guise
Lashes my sleeping form
I dream, still clinging to my bitterness
Like the only vehicle that can propel me

Once I danced, was it yesterday
My shoes like second skin
Polishing the floor
But that was yesterday and I have nothing to show for it

The birds are my fondest remedy
Perching on the door frame
They seem to reassure my entry
Flying above my head or nesting

Shall I pick up my largest burden and walk
Will I fall again
It is a time of confusion which I’m told is worthy
Of the highest attention

Is passion surely leached from my bones
Have I nothing to wish for
Only now do I understand the snow mountains
Only now that I am exiled

Rockdale, Late Summer

I'm leaning into the wind
listening to the molecules
bouncing against each other
quiet as a parchment yellow wall

I'm imagining the taste of wine
aging in the sunlight
infused with operatic twilight
the faint aroma of Kools

I'm writing poems in my dreams
in the light from an old flame
against the window facing south
remembering a play by Oscar Wilde

It's late summer and the tomatoes are ripe
the marigolds are fragrant
the frogs are loud, the crickets are purring
piano music rolls likes waves across the lawn

I can hear my grandmother calling
"Supper time ..."
I am on my way
ready for every future possible.

Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax is Dead

In the rag-covered body on the ground
A man died here, just incidentally
This is not his home
This street, this pavement in Queens
Perhaps his home is in some corner of the park
Or that shelter over on 64th
Or maybe the cardboard tent under the bridge

But not this condo complex
Where nobody stopped to ask
Nobody dared
Or cared
Or had the brass
Even when lifting him up to see the blood

As he lay face down on the pavement
The gray cement cooling his face
On the early morning of his death
After his heroic struggle
In defense of a woman
The frail ideal of helplessness

The woman who ran away to who knows where
While the hero stayed behind to fight for her
Was stabbed for her
And bled for her and for many who did not call 911
Who did not stay and speak kind words to him
While his life blood ebbed away

Though he died without a friend,
Perhaps he found some glory,
Perhaps he was feasted by the angels
And comforted by the djinns or bodhisattvas
I like to think he would never again
Be called homeless.


Dedicated to Hugo Alfred Tale-Yax, a homeless man who fought a robber for a woman who fled, and who died April 24, 2010 while people passed by without stopping to help.