since spring:

these days, demanding
an investigation at the heel
of tragedy is just
as run of the mill as digging
sixty-two graves in two rows
in a barren field with naive
trees on the horizon, burnt
by the responsibility
their amputated fingers held
upwards so that
the pointing stops here
.
20070321:1016

while the world is falling apart all
around us and the people who can –
do nothing about it, the first day
of spring arrives, and i have forgotten
just how to love when there must
be a statistic somewhere on how
often a bomb goes off
every twenty-first
second – every fifth time i
inhale or every time i blink –
and it no longer means
anything –
what you are saying –
because my ears are still
ringing and i just
cannot
close my eyes to this
.
20070321:1045

let’s keep promoting
abstinence in africa
the internal rhyme and
natural alliteration already
has everything going for it
not to mention the money
we save in not funding
contraceptives and counseling
in order to not prevent
the spread of the human
immunodeficiency virus –
as long as we are still
in the promotion season
let’s keep abstaining
from thought
.
20070321:1241

as long as we are still not
pleading guilty for
not thinking, there will be plenty
of seats on those free buses to
d.c. in the mornings when
all we want to do is cover up
our innocence and sleep
instead of marching up
the steps of the government
that should in place of the
government that could
.
20070321:1404

i recognize that i am
in love with you
again
and again
and it has nothing to do
with the way you taste
or the way you touch
only the way you press
spring into my
palms, entrusting
me to handle
all this
living, even as
the dying blinds me
.
20070321:1517

when the world is so big and you and i
are so small, it is useful to think of it
as a hinge to our hunger, a restraining
point to our preoccupation, holding
off all compulsion to slip into
the stream. you ask me to think of a way
in which you will not be tempted, and i
am offering you the world just as it is
not on a plate, but on a cutting board
.
20070322:1322

to the three-hundred-and-eighty-
five “worst of the worst” –
we don’t know you so it matters
less that you are still
held in guantanamo, captured
by a five thousand
dollar bounty – completely
lethal any way you put it –
so when the handful of trials
are buried in military
bureaucracy and the solid
evidence crumbles before
a counterfeit jury, there is
no one to say they knew you
when you were a father
or a lover, just the enemy
always a stranger
.
20070322:1200
y