Quarterly Reports From A Plateau
Quarterly reports
from a plateau of willows
reveal the breadth
of wilting flowers,
lilies & peonies
mere yellowing outlines of figures
carefully painting a triptych
adapted for everyone
who has become a human shield
posing with sugar
& surrendering to the violence
of their dreams to see—
do they writhe sideways
in pain?
Are their bodies covered
in chain?
Are there any songs
left to be sang?
How quickly they grow silent
in the little league baseball games
of their hearts,
like an eruption of sorrow
from a balcony
many stories above the city
waiting in vain
for some bird of prey
to carry them away
to someplace bright
where their children can run free
without fear of any blight
of teachers pinning them to linoleum
to twist their arms behind their backs
until they hurt so bad—
every time we see a pear
we must now recall
those years pressed into a wall
staring into an eclipse
of the harshest of enmities
with nothing to protect our eyes at all
The Owls Beneath Our Skin
When the owls beneath our skin
fall asleep,
what becomes of night
can only be dreamt comfortably
by apostles delighting
upon their dramatic exit
from New Jersey
years before Catholic dormitories
burn to the ground
& the smell of twisted satisfaction
remains with us forever,
like friends of dead hawks
ruining the old religion
while we hide in the library
to avoid our wives
returning to tell us
everything about our lives
is terrible, a morgue of dark secrets
nicknamed homosexual slurs
emerging from years past
when the woman who one day
would harm our child
was young, bearing witness
to her father beat a dog,
beat a horse
& brandish a shotgun
before she inhabited his body
in deference to someone’s mother
who once gave us
homosexual nicknames for fun
Like The Dragonfly
Like the dragonfly
who mistakes a helicopter
for its mother
the river curves
into another
with little satiety
& the secret society
of chosen ones
who lack empathy
for those of us stimming
along the bank
are nothing
but undeserving
of sympathy—
orchids scattered
amongst the pavilion’s
decorative fountains
will forever remain
out of touch
for people like us,
shamed into ourselves
by schoolteachers
so disturbed
by their own fictions
about mental illness
they file civil cases
against us as if court
is a church & they deliver
the benedictions
