Medals on your chest,
        exact as my fact. Day of
        days: loneliness close to you,
        Captain, debts befriend memories
        always forgotten.

        Your body wakes to your own slavery:
        sharp invisibility of your own punishment...

        "Zap, zap," some ray-guns say to rag-color pigeons
        pecking cement, now dishwater-color smoke and ash.

        "Yardbird, yardbird," a short man shouts, with too many clothes on,
        slopping vodka, daylight, down his robot throat-hole.

    When I was a child, my mother was fond of reading stories to my brother and I at bedtime. Among the most memorable for me were the Uncle Remus tales of Joel Chandler Harris; in particular, the battles between Bre'r Rabbit and Bre'r Fox.

        When I've traveled somewhere so distant I cannot help her,
        my very hands buried, or lost, or ash,
        when I've come to the world no one returns from,
        may my daughter have grown yet more brave and whip-smart

        1.
        Murdered girl, man dragged to death through the dirt.

        2.
        Plastic bag tattering the branches of an ordinary tree.

        3.
        River near which the maples age, darken and brighten and increase their rings.

        God bless cars with red cellophane tape over brake lights,
        padlocks for trunk locks, different color doors, lumber for bumpers,

        windshields zigzag fractals those who outlive lightning wear
        everywhere under skin, nearly insignia, tributary maps.

        Keep them distant from auto impound's concertina wire,
        corkscrewed as cartoon pigs' tails or paper streamers from exploding

        No need to introduce yourself.
        We've met before.
        Don't you remember?
        We met
        In Paris
        Of '43.
        Then again
        In the camps of the following year.

        1.
        Every morning
        I take little
        white pills to save me
        from rage
        rage against
        the fuckers who bought
        the election
        this time
        rage against
        the black
        cops who beat me

        Austin heat blazed and blew

        When I knew who I wanted to be

        Breezed in and bought you

        Quarters for change

        Sound of you and April

        coursed through me

                From across the flower garden
                the monks' chanting
                wakes me as it does 

                every morning. From our bed 

                I can see into the temple
                windows-shadows