Freeing General Grant
1
What kind of mind
Would encircled Grant’s Tomb
With a tiled Mosaic,
Images of Native Americans
Mingling with African History
For which the somber
Was never meant to bear
When constructed?
The man inside rests too
Comfortably beside his wife
Having done his job to free
The ancestors of the people living
In the neighborhood around him.
For years, a black man
Over saw the care of this
Great man’s grave
Grown outraged perhaps
By the outrageous attempts
Of society to undo all
Grant sought to do.
Perhaps the mosaic
Filled with images of contemporary
African American suffrage
Is tribute enough
Saying even modern man
Recognizes all Grant tried to do,
And that our greatest tribute is
To simply remember
2
You can hear
The click of wires
For miles
Along the rusted
Rail road track
While sleeping
Through the cold nights
In frozen ditches
To either side
Expecting the yard men
From the brutal
Rail road company
To snatch you up
With their pinching fingers
Men in flat hats
And polished
Waking you up with a tap
As if waking the dead
Though on most nights
These men cling
To their shacks
And their oil drum fires
You can smell
But feel no warmth from
Most nights you hear
Only the clicks
Reaching out of the past
And into the future
Along the many miles of track
Moving faster
Than any train
Traveling with the speed of light
Clicking,
Clicking,
Clicking
3
No pens this time
No paper
Just the rude intrusion of years
And doubts
Still an undergraduate
Stumbling along
You need inspiration these days
To make money
Even on the stock market
Writing down the details
Signing contracts
Packing paper the way
The pioneers once packed provisions.
Who are you, they ask?
Why are you here again?
I wait on the edge of a tear drop
Expecting a result,
A look, smile or touch
Something reserved just for me.
I waited for as much
My first time here
A stone man cracking
With each step
The weight of my troubled life
Making me sink into the ground
No pens this time, just memory
Rattling around inside
My empty head and heart
Like a dying moth inside a jar
My whole life locked up
In this coming and going.
4
He asked me if I minded
His dating you
Obviously as attracted to you
As I am
Wishing to have you
Just as I have wished.
I have known you
In my mind for months
Tracking the curve
Of your breasts
And the length
Of your thighs,
Wishing I could
Insert the key into you
That makes you start
But wishing is not acting
And I fear to return
To the scene of my crime
My head aching
With thoughts of you
The way my body does
My mind driven crazy
By the idea that another
Man might want you, too,
This man so kind as to
Ask my permission,
As if I owned you,
As if I am your father,
I should have seen it coming
Knowing other might step
Where I have stepped,
Their thoughts converted
To love making
When my mind remains
Mental masturbation,
And I am helpless
To tell him no.
5
Me, sir? I’m not a sleep
I see the sun flowering over
The horizon’s cliff’s so steep
Lighting up purple clover
Me, sir? I’m no dozer
Thought shadows seep with weary eyes
Are cut blades to the mower
Before the light of eastern sky
Me, sir? Not I, not I
I keep my head well up
And listening to the summer’s cry
Water’s flow into the valley cup
But sleep, Sir, yes, even I
Want even without the heavy eye
For not a day or hour or year
The song of dream’s claim to hear
Me, sir? Don’t come so near
Or test me with your sweet, sweet breathe
I’ve seen the spring and I can hear
Autumn’s call at summer’s death
6
You can sing new lyrics
To old rock songs all you want
But no one will listen
Are just names on maps
To flag wagging patriots
Who could care less
About right from wrong
Deaf, dumb and blind
In the presumption
That
As the sound of bombs
Bursting in the distance
Is covered over by
The sour notes of our
National anthem
We waving flags to dispel
The stench of our own
Lust for blood
7
Can you guess?
There are mysteries
Under the fallen leaves
The curling lip of trees
Bearing fruit
Squirrels squiggling out
A winter’s feast
Their thick gray tails fluffed
Their small brown hands
Always praying,
Even in the autumn rain
Priest serve them assorted hosts
each day in the park,
each greedy gray creature
rushing off to bury it
until need makes them dig
it up, ponds turning to ice
geese flying south
empty pine cones
lying like bodies on the brown lawn
and snow, drifting down
in a slowly descending shroud
that buries their faith even deeper
and keeps their secrets
8
I woke
To the cat’s yawn
Near the window
The dust thick
In the air
As it climbed to the sill
The moving curtain
Capturing the coming light
Like waves of heat
Or water,
Each dust particle
Caught in its slow
Fall to the floor
Sparkling like jewels
Winking, wandering then dying
In the thick cold rug
Weaved in with the cat hair
And the crumbs
From last night’s