ALL RESPONSES |
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Forever wounded. Bleeding, getting better, breathing, shaking off fever.
Sleep, angel. Reach into darkness through tears, and ask why God did this.
Which god? Another wounded angel? You played in the forbidden zone.
You were told not to go there. Go back and play with angels, those with
Scars and bloody wings. They beat up anyone who enters the playground,
But you know that. There’s nothing better, nothing. Immortality has a price.
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George and Bobby and Lizzie were the greatest of friends.
They were Bona Fides.
They were tough.
But they were not equals. George ruled them with cruelty.
One Halloween, George declared that costumes were for sissies and for girls. Bobby and Lizzie felt sheepish and small and did not argue with George at all.
And then George demanded that they take off all their clothes.
When they finally reached their homes it was morning.
Lizzie’s mother was pacing and Bobby’s had called the police.
George’s mother was afraid of George and felt no relief when he returned.
That Lizzie lost her eye mattered little.
And she would always think upon Bobby with the greatest of tenderness.
But George was forever on the TV, and just the sound of his voice made her skin crawl.
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I do not care for your beauty
any more
tears shed of icicles dying
quench my thirst, better than
you
stirring dry dust
let them take you
with their youth
drowning
the very pittance
of your smile
wore |
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Jim slipped quietly
into his clear Bacardi
151 in the back corner
of the Wisconsin tavern
back in 1978; his breath
smelled like woodsmoke
and he laughed if he lit
a match near his mouth
his eyes would explode
He seemed trapped
like a ghost, haunting
places from Viet Nam
that no longer existed
Once a month or so,
if he was drunk enough,
he used to tell stories
about shooting yellow
children while eating baked
bread, or visiting the whore
houses on free evenings
But mostly Jim cried
about his being alone,
his dreams of blood
and all the stones
he carried with him
about castles and one-
eyed-Jacks and who
was burdened and who
was dead and he used
to look around his table
and he knew it wasn’t
him, but he never had
the guts to admit he was
nothing but a statistic |
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Angel, wounded,
or fallen, perhaps,
lies drenched by the river,
a drop of blood
where a tear should be.
Can't fly.
Hurry....a stretcher
and a bandage,
white flowers to hold.
Even angels need a hand
from gloomy boys
whose somber black coats
cover wings of their own. |
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The happiest person
I know
is an emergency
medical technician
who is reaping—
the benefits of unemployment. |
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Pulling hot plates
from the machine
one to many times
the old dishwasher
told me that old men
are the most likely to attempt
suicide
one to many times. |
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The angel had fallen, crushing her wings and bumping her head;
she had bolted, Zeuslike, out of the sky, into the very earth.
Now she sits, between these boys whose devotion is concealed.
Jarvis walked determinedly, and avoiding bumps where he lead;
good is hard to carry any distance on such a shaky berth.
This Angel had fallen, crushing her wings and bumping her head.
Not much closer than the Evil in Pekka’s eyes were thoughts that fled.
Though she is slight, they aren’t pleased with her girth.
She sits between these boys whose devotion is concealed.
Though in transit she was jostled, and Pekka watched as she bled,
glaring at the afternoon, his envisioned adventures wiped off the heath.
The Angel had fallen, crushing her wings and bumping her head.
If only, he thinks, she’d worn a helmet, ruined her street-cred
he’d not be wasting his afternoon’s time with her grief.
She sits between these boys whose devotion is concealed.
Soon, they both thought, leaving her with the Elders, they’d wend
their day back to the shore, look around rocks, and underneath.
The Angel had fallen, crushing her wings and bumping her head
She sits between these boys whose devotion is revealed.
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Fix not your eyes on me:
I hold no gossamer
torn from angel wings,
did not reach for her feet
as she flew low;
if she is blind now,
it is only because
she failed to see
in the first place.
One bears the pain
of the world, and
we wound every day.
There is blame to go around.
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Do you know how many angels you have
to whom you owe thanks for your life?
What if your angels were like me?
What if they felt so much, being your angel,
that they were angry with you?
What if one needed to see you –
one who had compared for a moment
the risks between breaking your neck
and breathing into your mouth?
The scar on the side of your head
is the opening that spilled blood on her hand.
What if the angel came to the brink of tears
thinking of you walking around,
grateful not to have seen you die?
Would you have any idea?
Would you care about her tears, her anger?
Do you love your angel –
the mere fact that she
had the courage to risk
your neck for your air?
Would you understand that anger?
Are you risking your neck again,
five ways at once?
Are you risking your breath?
How bad are your angels?
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if i have a guardian angel
he has to be battered and torn
i’ve taken him to dark places
from the frozen streets of minneapolis
to the green isolation of the wilderness
he held me when i lost loved ones
and protected me from an insane man
who believed i was his enemy
he held me when i sat in the dark
afraid to breathe
he saved me from near death twice
and now he has to fight for me again
i hope he has the strength |
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All in all there were too many spires
bells numbering more than my feathers
Warm-hearted sins wearing red dresses
in blazing gardens waved me in
I stood there nude and alone as rain
as many sleepless eyes on my body
as once were feathers
I heard a roar of wings, a deeper flesh
and ran through acres of time and wheat
until I fell, my bee hive body
sheltering one holy thing
a feather from my unfinished
leave-taking wings
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When I was wounded,
broken:
I was his Angel.
He set my wings,
spoke sweetly of
their purpose
kissed my crippled feathers
naming every one;
whispering each name
in his breathy exhalations,
healing me.
Healing me.
He was a gifted nurse,
but he didn't love
strong women.
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When I was wounded,
broken:
I was his Angel.
He set my wings,
spoke sweetly of
their purpose
kissed my crippled feathers
naming every one;
whispering each name
in his breathy exhalations,
healing me.
Healing me.
He was a gifted nurse,
but he didn't love
strong women.
He said, “Be an angel”
when he asked me for
his keys.
I in fact was an angel:
I wept for his sins,
set loose what I loved most
my holy sacrifice
to this broken world. |
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We take hope home to our mothers
to fix its wings, to make it right,
she who is explainer and strong
in duty, whose chief accomplice is
the oven where miracles rise daily,
and, placed upon our tongues, keep
us alive. And stoves are warm
and demand no explanations.
What happened was long ago.
We were out doing nothing, you and I,
near a wash, and saw in the distance,
off to our left, something white, crumpled,
a heron? wild swan? We ran toward it
to see while underfoot the stubble
breathed ‘caution, caution.’
A wingéd thing, hope, a heap of feathers
found in a field where blood root bloomed.
So it was very early, spring still dazed
and holding onto makeshift railings.
We wore poor men’s shoes--bought big
so our feet could spread over the eight
to ten years we’d wear them. It was all pretty
colorless, the years wore black and brown
and gray. The earth and river, too. Wind
and air propagated mergers.
Even Mother found it difficult
to propagate hope. It required a role
reversal, like interacting with a third
gender, a stranger in the kitchen.
Wasn’t hope there to propagate us?
But the stove was warm, and hope, cold.
As we were. Within an hour
we felt better. And opening our mouths
to our mother to feed us again.
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We lift her because history carried us.
Along the river and its estuaries our arms tug up continuously.
What little joy is this, to dredge the air
with what should be the bringer of bliss.
Her wings cracked, voice fallen. Her eyes bound
like our lives—the poor of us who keep her off the ground. |
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Our deadened feet tromped on like stains
Spreading into the dull country
The lake, cool beyond our reach
The angel’s eyes though bandaged preached
And shattered wings and damaged spine
Feet too impaired and eyes too blind
Where do we go—where do we part
This injured demon from its heart
This choice from want and into need
Such, we youth—we driven snow
To tramp an angel to below
Denuding truth—the fall of youth |
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Saint Peter’s arranged a place for us
to meet, the time’s not arranged
but the date’s certain. What is time
to saints, anyway? Was only me
who had to wait 4 decades,
dry-eyed the last two out of
sheer necessity
He’s placed a table and three chairs
with chrome legs and cracked
seats just inside the gates so no
one can get away. They look like
the ones in that diner we went to.
We went there a lot
but I forget its name.
I wish we’d gone
there so often they knew us.
Some celestial meeting might
not succeed in making up
for everything, and the chairs and
the table are odd, I admit it, but
that’s how i dream it. The good news
is you won’t be little anymore,
you won’t be five and three and bewildered,
and I won’t be your wounded angel.
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When I was six
Aunt Margaret took me along
to her church camp meeting by the Mississippi,
rows of sleeping tents and one huge circus canvas
for meeting and eating.
Days, we would watch
as white-gowned grownups took their turns,
walked waist deep
into the current while
one man read from a book,
another held the robed one under.
“They’ve been hurt,” auntie said,
“and now they’re getting well.”
Some looked fearful, clutched at the dunker;
many cried afterward as friends
toweled them on the shore.
Looks like the hurt never went away,
I said to myself.
“Shall we gather at the river
where bright angels’ feet have trod,
with its crystal tide forever
flowing by the throne of God.”
We sang lustily in the meeting tent.
I remembered all this from the thirties
as I contemplated Simberg’s
Wounded Angel painting this week.
The river, and someone hurt
and others helping.
“You won’t have to,” auntie told me.
“You were sprinkled
when you were a baby.”
I was glad for that,
wanted to offer a towel
to the fallen one.
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We expect them to last, last longer
than us. They aren’t made like days,
like snow, like clouds, aren’t made
to slump, aren’t meant to shatter.
It is what you love about purity, about
grace; why you love the damn sky.
Who of us, isn’t child enough to want
Forever? To believe in Happily Ever
After? No one would believe us, so
we don’t tell them about the nights
we spend under aged trees & a broken
patch of sky, we don’t tell them we
reckon; find in the songs of leaves,
the echoes of stars, find in the trembling
branches, the strength to love on.
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1.
A white rat lay low across the top of a boy’s head like a swan’s warm feather. The boy stared at me and I stared back as I jogged by the park bench where he sat on a cold day in the sun wearing only a tank top, long pants, and his pet rat with rivets of pink quartz for eyes and a rattail hanging down the boy’s skull like an angleworm inside a moustache. A tattoo’s black mantilla cloaked the boy’s shoulders and arms. Hey, he called to me in a voice as clear as fresh water: Have a great day!
2.
The encounter with such strange sweetness affected my first glance at a painting by Hugo Simberg of two men in dark clothes carrying a wounded angel on a stretcher of wood. My mind skipped several tracks to a picture book where two brown rats rescue an albino relative from a research lab, use a popsicle stick to carry the comma of her body from its cage of mazes and drugs that thinned her like the waning moon. They take her to a wild place, safe from human dominion and our terrible need to know.
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She dreamed
about leaving
Wisconsin years
before she
actually did
She worked
at a diner
on Division
serving counter
Her ex-husband
threatened her
often by phone
telling her to come
back or else
Later her collie
was found dead
in the street
One could argue
that all three
were victims
of circumstance |
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casualties fell from the sky
dropping like autumn leaves
we raked them up
at an early age
adorned in black
like preachers
this was our schooling
this was our education
this was how we learned
we watched righteousnesses
drop from the sky
ran on to the field
took a pulse
carried all signs of life
back to the medical tent
and prayed
The timeless battle
older than words
predating ideas themselves
would go on longer
than even those immortal souls
could live
yet we continued the work
until our blistered hands bled
and our back could not
stand up straight
when our hearts finally gave up
they buried us under a mountain
of angels |
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Yesterday, morning broke pink
and tangerine, bands of color
pulled taut across a pale violet lake.
This morning, night left nothing behind
but an empty glass, smudged
with prints, reflecting the tapping
of my fingers, refusing--
now that it is empty-- to hold anything
but this stolen moment, the last wisp
of a dream, a crow’s sudden caw, the first
light of morning.
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Before my first transfiguration,
I remember pouring
Libations for the oracle.
That was my job.
They would come;
Merchants, generals,
Nobles, shepherds -
Bringing tribute and questions.
None left unanswered.
Wine was spilled,
But when no one was looking,
It was put to good use.
It was a good job.
It was a good life,
Living in Delphi,
Drinking the offerings.
The oracle was very kind to us,
Giving us fresh bread and wine every morning.
Everything was beautiful,
Even during wars,
Which were frequent.
But then I died,
And transfigured several times.
Now, I’m looking for a new job,
Preferably in the arts or humanities.
Will you hire me? |
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How swift my fall from angel to invisible past
My once white feathers plucked and thrown
The four winds of your fancies carrying them away
Leaving me straddling the opposite poles of love and hate
Bloodied by your brutality
Bereft of everything but pride
Still clutching at straws of hope wilting in heat of my love for you
Words you said echoing in my head, bouncing to and fro
Kind, giving, generous, nice, too nice , over,... over,......... over
Somewhere my feathers found by strangers seeking an angel of their own
Wished upon, dreamt on, cherished in book marks, hidden in envelopes
How swift my fall from everything to nothing
How swift your rise to shining star in another galaxy to close to home
How swift it all was
How swift
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Dawn roses on your face, your beautiful face
Behind the frosted windshield in a cloud covered sunrise~
When you drop me off, I slip over the ice crackled walkway~
And then you drive away from me, you who are so beautiful
In the doctor’s office I sit in a plastic seat~
We talk as if we know each other~
She computes my statistics while I weep~
She is anchor for a moment~ She lost a sister~
She knows the momentum of grief
how it builds, releases, builds again, and I think
of how you woke to find me standing
in your kitchen with tears on my face~
morning phone call tracking across my heart~
the whispered news of the death of my friend~
And you softened by sleep, how you were so beautiful
Back out to the bus stop, stuffing frozen hands in pockets
after I realize the mittens were left on the car seat~
These two places are already rubbed raw
and how will I bear the year ahead:
the loss of my friend and you in the dawn, so beautiful
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Bow your head
And let me tie your wrists.
Close your eyes,
Pretend you are a wounded angel
So that I can take you to the earth
beneath earth.
To Baltimore beneath Baltimore
where weeds sprout in people’s shoes.
Let’s live on a dime’s reflection
and play with the gloomy gloom of skeletons.
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Sky hard as a wall.
Sea drowned in sand.
Everything moving up
from trees ensures
earthiness of the heart
direct speaking from the wound.
She sheds radiance
the look of grace
a fold over of white
garment at her sternum.
Pain sowed and pain reaped
flesh without sheen
she’s a stippled swan.
Palm wine and cedar oil
pealed at the same moment.
Moon-like blades unlocked
the daily bread window
She thought his desire
was his whole body.
Like the wave bleating
tracing that line of foam
she wanted to touch those fringes
of soul on his surface.
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Oh poor mediary
do you grow tired
licking salt from the mines?
Down the rabbit hole
so long
without light.
Do you wonder wildly
where is the rain to drown you?
once before
i thought i saw you
leap upon a fat man
finishing an espresso
you came from the brick
and cinder of madness
for the last drop of moisture
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She asked him to put the light back into her eyes
and peel away the blindfold of mediocrity-
he said he couldn’t.
Her angel wings have fallen, they drag against the sky
the loneliness is everything nothing brings.
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It is always the same.
Anytime there is something unpleasant to do
It is always the kids that have to do it.
We had plans of our own.
All the other boys are down by the river
Right now.
But not me and John…
We have to haul this guy
To Edward’s house on the edge of town.
All the adults are really upset
But we have to do all the work.
I think he could probably walk on his own.
He doesn’t look so bad off…
Maybe just kind of sad.
Probably just depressed.
But why should we have to carry him?
Is he worried about getting his white outfit
A little dusty?
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never before was she so beautiful
as she was turning away from me
black hand of night sparkling
against her throat wrapped in scarlet knots
waves break against the rock face
fingers spreading wide
thrumming the tomb to open
the pages of her hair no more
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I've been running fast these days
chasing the sun into the moon,
racing the stream, through the brook
taking the river into the ocean,
where I sit today. Your body (and mine)
still roughly navigates this intersection
of warmth and cold.
You seem unease
with the nuances of the delta;
the brackish water too salty to be you,
too fresh to be part of me.
The imprecision of your feelings
is everywhere; the indecision of the tide
in and out, along with the memories
it deposits at the bottom of our feet
over and over.
I have the years on my side,
their constant taste of possibilities
on the tip of my tongue
but I still remember the words
of the song you forgot to write
when the Atlantic wind took it away.
As always, you
have something I can't read, hidden
beneath the calm of your next monsoon.
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Yes, I threw the rock at my sister,
simpering and snide as she mocked us.
It knocked against her skull like a thunderclap,
felled her like a trembling maple sapling.
By the time I knelt next to her,
wings had puffed out of her shoulder-blades,
her clothes melted into clinging white silk,
her hair brightened from brown to gold.
Mother made us carry her to town, not knowing
which of us had cast the stone, so sure
the priest will find out, impose penance. But I
will not tell him that am the one God chose
as His instrument. I turned her from coal
to diamonds, and it will be penance
enough to listen to her every day,
singing those dulcet Latin kyries at dawn,
knowing I was the one who made her,
I was the one. |
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I feel the pain that no one else can realize
When I look into the eyes of those insane
Like the dreams of all those atoms in a corn field
I will be born into a world where I was never meant to be
Like the hypocrites spewing sludge for all to hear
I will wash the walls, the floors and the hearts of those who listen
Like the powerful who are not as strong in character
I will hold my own and hold yours too if you let me
Like John Landis watching Twilight Zone the Movie
I will carry every shattered part with me for as long as I live
Unlike the wanderer
I will never move on
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Based on a true story
She struggled to redeem those who wanted
to crush her. Blood flowed down her face,
a crimson tide that ran beneath their homes
and hearths. She tried to shame them into kindness,
the blaze of her honest eyes would
convince them the wrong
they were doing was not to her soul
but their own. “Neighbor?” she wept.
“Friend?” Each stone was a curse
on their town, each stone dishonor.
Evil girded their strength,
the lies her husband had told, the way he
threatened the holy man, his lust
for the younger wife and her dowry.
Her tears dried up as the pain
took her to silence. Her sons, handed the stones,
threw for the honor of becoming a man
then turned to vomit and whimper
like curs on the street.
The wails of the women filled the air
with a sorrow so bleak, it was as if
they had all been buried alive. Only her
aunt dared to carry her body to the river
to be purified. Her soul flew to
angels with gentle hands. |
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We carried our sister between us
on two bamboo poles
from one side of the sea
to the other. She wore a cotton dress.
She wore a blindfold. We removed her shoes
and her dangling feet wavered like wilted Achillea in
a gust of hot wind. Our ankles were hidden
inside glossy boots that left traces
of heaviness. The sea boiled.
The pads of our fingers reddened, blistered.
Our sister's head grew heavier, sagged
on the vine. The Achillea dried and our lips
boiled. The sun was an egg in the pan.
Our father was there. He watched the procession with
yolk eyes that thickened. |
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Nothing much moving
at eleven pm on the green
concourse; dividing time
between sun and moon
and all the idling stars
There is an old man
near the sunglasses
rack, harmonica to his lips,
fingers to brass, moving notes
to the rhythm of passing soles
He breathes low
sighs, repeats blues
in secondhand time
a lone trumpeter
calling to the walls
of Jericho in a voice
only he understands |
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Children are not supposed to pay for adult's mistakes,
nor should be victims of predators
who used to be innocent children themselves.
But children are wounded every day by words,
glares, hands, hearts filled with poison which must be released
on someone who cannot defend from it.
The bright eyes of a child are windows yet opening to life.
You can see everything in them
if time is taken to realize that even if small,
they still suffer from loss of love, attention, encouragement.
Children are the gift given to us to better ourselves,
so to give them all the opportunities
we were not offered by family or life.
They are the best of us, and their own treasure chest
which we may contribute to when given the chance.
Childhood stolen walks the world like a wounded angel.
Life in the battlefield of a city, country, household,
where the adults are blinded by pain or wants,
and cannot see the beauty of the redemption they are given,
to stop the pain by painting the dark walls of desperation
with bright colors and laughers,
the ones that had been stolen from them,
and the child held within.
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