The Poetry Of...
Stephen Mead.................................................
The Troubles
Marauders enter the cortege,
Screeching tires, wielded hand guns-----
Oh unarmed civilians, is the violence consigned?
See it crash in the enclave, this gyre of mourning,
The black anted people & suddenly, blood
On a corsage-
What innocence was felled?
Again crowds converge, shots were heard,
A witness reported.
Later found bodies reveal Iago's philosophy:
A snake in the grass.
Should it be considered as recompense?
The principal actors in this scene emerge virgin
Pure in their own funeral processions.
Think of the Capulets, the Montagues.
Think of hamlet rebels wreaking the redemption
Of vengeance. Isn't it a pall keeping bars
In between? At the crossroads lie questions
Straight forward as queues.
Why would anyone?
Ask the man gasoline-bombed.
Ask the woman stabbed in her bath.
It seems sort of monotonous when brutality
Touches hundreds, an eye for an eye, the process
Grief underscores. So can the cycle be broken?
Out of gardens, pluck grenades. Take, bury fire
Arms. Oh Osiris, partisan in Belfast, in Iraq,
in Pakistan, and et al, et al...
What kingdom will be inherited
From this way of life, way of death?
A Certain Day In March
The dog, Duke's, black lab legs gazelle-leaping,
Dad raking the catalpa's shed twiggy beans-
Above us hung a million more waiting to drop.
I would like to catch every one of them
& pile them here, a commemoration.
I would like to show you the places
Duke took me to, such rough, dry
Wild rose hills, those bushes crowding
Into woods, the moss slick mud slopes &
Green specked with life beneath fallen limbs-----
Ripe compost, the sweet re-generational
Metaphysics of leaves-
How visceral this is:
Milk weed breeze scattered, senses hooking
To seeds, these messengers, carrying me back,
Back, sky-born, across fields & into
My old room for some impulsive spring cleaning-----
Old magazine clips, yearbook pictures
(Who the heck?) & one piggy bank
in lion guise broken (as usual) for bus fare-
Of course autobiography might embellish.
I wasn't just another lucky kite-sprite but almost
Between jobs & given to secret drinking
While under the pretense of being home
"for a visit".
The thing is I wanted to stay, ancient enough then
To read the humor in family squabbles:
Mom without her two bottom front teeth
Accidentally whistling, & Dad joining in,
Later, with snores. This was Holy Thursday.
This was the snag which they say exists in
Oriental carpets, a certain imperceptible line
In the weaving by which the spirit may go
Away & return
.....
(Come here, Duke)
always
.....
(Hi Mom, Dad, Bro, Sis)
unnoticed
Joan Floating
Burners turned herky-jerky,
the berserk motion of drunks----
From what basin do these waves accelerate?
My arms, sails, winding around masts,
take flames leeward
then shelter the hush, astonished
by what oranges, topaz, bejeweled gusts
bleed up blue.
How anguish is just relative,
indigenous to such dancing that eats,
chafes, dazzles sweat's fever.
To where is it blazing?
Not liquid bronze, this garment of flesh,
a collection of swathes
presently darkened in succession
'til only bones would resemble gold
if their char's ever washed away.
So, billowing, I smoke, float,
a swooshing of voices now crackling
their wireless to root reception in place:
There, cloud gauze, adrift, betrothing
Juno to her essence:
A sea gull's cry
wheeling circles somewhere painless
