smoke from a burning structure.
She was dragging three or four ropes
the color of umbilical blood.
She was guarded by her wolf familiar.
At first she terrified me.
Then I saw she was causing
certain spells to protect
far away new mothers
whose children must in the middle
of great violence be born.
The men surround the embassy.
It will never be clear who sent them.
For a moment I feel ashamed.
I breathe the clear terrible air.
Public Art
I hate bees E. said
holding a spoon
and I thought how zen
to admit it
for without
those mechanical golden
creepers moving
among the crops
with powder
on their wings
unbeknownst
we would
be super fucked
they are
said G. refusing
a small ceramic
cup of wine
necessary
and therefore good
even that one
stuck in the lamp
will just go to sleep
when you do
we could see
part of her face
frown slightly
then smile remembering
how good it will be
to be awakened
at that hour
only trucks
move in the streets
M. watched it
crawl furiously along
the intricate white
tubing of one
of those new bulbs
we all are addicted
to light he said
and it is just one
of ten thousand
husbands
then S. said
do you think its feet
hurt and I was
suddenly aware
of my toe
she is my only
husband and I
her only flower
of many changing
colors that every
morning grows
up through the black
soil of what is not
into the early
light that reflects
at least a little
color off
whichever dress
I help her choose
How Do You Like the Underworld
The completely to me magical screen
sits in the middle of this black desk
I put together with such trouble,
following the instructions, muttering
its nonsensical Swedish name like a spell.
The screen is a dark window.
It can be made slowly light
by pushing a single button. It nobly rises,
a monument to a process begun
some years ago in a completely
dust free facility thousands of miles
from Oakland where the free sun
beats gently down on the heads
of my neighbors. I hear them
now for two sunlit moments pause
to converse as their dogs touch noses.
Meanwhile in the factory the workers
wear white dustproof suits.
The boss watches from a catwalk above.
To be troubled only abstractly
by the thought the thought in me
of those totally pure white clad
very real workers makes me
a kind of boss
though I wish I were not
is the ultimate white person problem.
To solve it I would like to ask
an ancient philosopher, preferably one in a cave.
But they are extinct. The humans
who are not robots at all
are right now robotically putting together
insanely precise atomic components
that make what we do go.
Thus I can watch and interact
with people I call followers or friends.
Or rather the words they have put together.
Down the screen they scroll.
It makes me so dizzy.
For a while I watched and thought
how interesting. Then sad
thinking animals. Without a thought
to make them close
I closed my eyes and saw
a monk reading a book in the garden.
The book was about music others
left for us long ago and departed.
What can you learn
from a book about music?
Some say to settle for winter.
But they have read way too much Rilke,
he is very dead, and his problems
though cosmic did not include
the round earth becoming hotter.
I heard somewhere in Africa
they have found a glittering valley
an asteroid crashed into millions of years ago
and filled with useful silicate.
The frustules i.e. shells of single cell
diatoms, make a white earth
you can pack into tiny packets
to keep things dry on