BLACK TRAIN CREEPS THROUGH APARTHEID DETROIT

                                               after Guillermo Gomez-Pena

I read Mind Breaths in Metro airport, ordinary April human transport

  Sunday petrodreams, Allen Ginsberg dead one year today. 

Desolate transparent grandmother with astonishing heavy suitcase nods.

Sleepwalker with a silver-plated trumpet checks his two-faced watch 	

  as little child steps out of her tan flats holding black-skinned dolls

  smiling indomitable Buddha-eyed as the seven foot giant in bright purple

  suit perspiring as he eats rice-pudding, his yellow roses wrapped in

  newsprint. 

Couples with Greek crimson egg'd Easter breads cradled under their arms rush

  past the shiny candy apples & wedding photos in casinos. 

The drop-outs write their liturgical against apartheid tenement-occupied

  Detroit funeral train blue walls, Harmonie Park. 

I forgot Todd was struck by lightning until a child's black cowboy boots float to

  the surface of a soupy shopping cart ditch. 

Millions of plainclothesmen handcuff the poor in streets filled with geraniums

  & electric guitars & children with guns in their diapers memorizing the sun's

  rays shooting in like a sweat lodge 12 miles from heaven. 

There's the unacceptability of injustice--the young Muslim selling lemons

  outside the courthouse, red noisy shoes, cry of gulls, zebra-suited K-Mart

  Apollo, unmarked cars, drunks in elevators weeping for Dorothy Day. 

The twilight moves like a girl putting on a stolen leather coat from a hanger

  made of blood & olives. 

The rain soaked ceiling tiles break against the waves of selves in a new hip

  language like a deer leaping on a bed of starlings outside global surveillance,

  Russian Mars 1996 space probe crash in Bolivia & the burning of American

  nerve gas stockpiles behind green doors. 

I tell myself there was room for you to change my life, that beauty such as yours

  exists.

I paint my eyelids black for peace & literature, say goodbye to Duran Duran,

  grandfather's heavy chemistry books, Panama, Danny's unfinished novel,

  Texarkansas, Georgia O'Keefe, current US immigration policy, punk rockeros

  y rolleros.

And of the declining significance of race, I confess to you here my desire for a

  borderless world.



                                                                 5-6 April 98

FOOTNOTE TO A FOOTNOTE TO A FOOTNOTE



I live in the shadow of no man or woman past present or future.



None before or during my time or after me or after you, your time.



Others may take solace in being a footnote to a footnote to a footnote.



I live in the coherencies of the nonvisible like a nun wearing only an apron.



The generation for which there shall be no sign is no less a generation to me.



The absence of signs no less to that generation than their presence to another.



The migrations of peoples upon the overcrowded planet, aging & always aging.



Failures of envoys, instantaneous news a footnote to something no one really believes.



Clouds are not the footnote of dew--the clouds are love.



The supple way of a woman's wrist as she walks, what footnote suppleness.



Weakness--ebbing of our closest loves, ourselves--weakness has no tomorrow.



Uniformed mother off at dawn to scrub motelrooms a footnote to no heart of clay.



Those who appear to be so ingenious--yet leave behind nothing, no hand of fire.



Takeovers & mergers, buy-outs & crashes, no blackness of night a footnote to crows. 



You, the young ones, the last to dance on the cypress coffin of no other life--



No gap between you, gap amongst you, no gap inside you.



The thumbprints of inexhaustible phantoms with crutches made of ash



Hurl treasures found in only one place, the place on which one stands.



If I reach out to you without looking while I read, it is because winter is cold



& my touch is no footnote to the bridled green horse of material worlds.





                                                      10 May 1998

TOO BUSY TO WORK

Pirate multinationals with sweatshop eyes-- 

Guarding drugs, making drugs, growing drugs, selling drugs--

For years I listened to you drone on.



Now, I'm too busy to work for you!

Got my own lifetime of shit to clean up.

Useless hours spent wiping the crap from your mouth.



To unsnare souls, my industry.

Miles of love before I croak!

Reach out to the best in others.



Undaunted, I let ridgepole empires 

Sag to the breaking point,  

Too busy to become part of the machine.



Refined poisons, fickle toxins--so much to do!

Locate disease within social contexts, not Mind!

Generate world views fundamentally unified. 



Around you, mule trains of roses bloom & fade.

Why not wake up, 'stead of devising systems

That crush the good out of people.





                                          23 May 1998

AMIDAH

Amidah--I approach the alter of consciousness holding the Darkness

Within myself, as it is across all the known & unknown Universe. This 

Light--shine it upon those who have heard enough dire prediction, Whose 

Hearts are weary of the interminable wrongs against humanity. I see the

Executioners surrounding them--whose henchmen's laughter the darker 

Nets of mockery hide, mocking you, even as they mock themselves. Even 

As the seconds of their audience dwindle to nothing & the audience dies, 

True nature is strengthened, richer than the offerings of external fortune--

So, let me not despise these vast global pogroms I see growing in the vacuum 

Of their dissatisfaction with everything. What was & is to be torn down--

The nihilism of high places, commercialized despair, homelessness of the 

Concrete scream--Amidah, the only life worth living is that dedicated 

To destroying the decayed structures of Bigotry's thought left undone & 

Then make room for something other than the way it had become, & once 

Again, after many years, find ourselves contemplating this while standing 

Here, wanting to stay with you & not knowing how.





                                                 25 May 1998