Sociologica Obscura

I heard you were
Driving in the trees
Walking on the moon

I heard you had some pictures
When the Police showed up.

They took your stuff away
What use they got for it anyway?
That blonde wig never did fit
I tried it out on Labor Day
You remember when she gave you it?
Yeah…
Hair is just like hers, some say.
Yeah.

They took them two bullet casings
From when you shot your dog
They took all six gloves you had
Said you whispered, “Kali’s got delicate hands…”

Heard they took your sonograms.

Well they weren’t yours anyhow
I mean
They weren’t your baby, I don’t know
Not the one in her belly, I mean, but then
Is that one yours? I don’t know.
Shit sorry man.

I ain’t never seen a sound like that.

Hell, they took your photograph
They took your teeth, all eighteen
Took the can you kept them in
What’d you say? Found ‘em in a trash bin?
Probably’d never know…
They came from that one guy tugged that boat across that river.
Which one was that?

Who the fucks got something like that these days?
Well them I guess.
Said it came from some animals
You know I don’t believe that.

She saw you at the Post Office
By that big board full of faces.
These days you seem the same…
Beaten. Like a head in a box.
Except your photo aint the same
Cause don’t nobody want you.
That’s what she said. Ha.
Shit sorry man.

Why people always strange around you?
Don’t seem right, don’t seem fair.
Shit.

Sorry man.

Sisyphus Wrecks

Rusted shut and smelling of old iron,

And grease
And dust, dust, dust
Beneath tires as black and chalky white
As my hands
Fingernails framed in dirt
Beyond a carnage of knuckles
Creating stories written small upon fingertips
A convergence of nature and history
Grout black among the ridges of genetic certainty
Of hair and sweat and beating sun
Hot on burnt flesh
Shirt wet, sticking to my skin

No bullets, no blood.
Just age, just age.
Their engines seized and futile.

And we all pull off parts to hang upon our wall.
So shall I
So shall you
So shall they when we are through

Paranaguá

For Father de Carli

P

I am lost at sea, father please
remember me
in 1648 we drove our stakes into her soil
we built her from the untilled earth
shaping her with hands and mud and human toil
we toasted our coffea
we built her walls in pine
we rested to drink our chá mate as the slow tug of time drew us each out
as her paper, timber and hide is siphoned off by the sea
I became the father; a shepard to my brothers, shepards and sons
But now -
I have been called to heaven before my body is done

Do you see me my father?
untethered from my mother home
an Icarus on rainbow wing of latex tree
watch the bright petals wash against her shore
like flowers upon my funeral bones
I can see my country, her beauty laid before me as clear as my regret
I ask of you - do I appear this perfect yet?

I say now
all of it I would trade
for the feel of her soil in my hands,
for the coldest winter of my youth
Recalled under jequitiba shade
For Jose, as we laughed at him in the mornings - at his quaint cabaça,
the bomba poking at his sleepy eyes.
Does he watch the shores I wonder?
Or does he watch the skies?
They say that you know what is best.
I believe this,
For when you called me
you never told me the work you needed done was death.

Nemeleoan

Gnashing tooth in terrible fury upon knuckle and jaw

The wives watched, drinks in hand...

and I wondered everything one wonders when one watches;

Why Hercules?
Why not the Lion of Neme, mane wild and prideful?
Shoulders rude and wide, breath a hushed, whiskered noise,
coarse and rumbling low.

But no.
That golden mane, trampled under trash and mired in the blood of martyrdom
rests under the footsteps of small men,
the sputtering of their thoughts a mockery
to the memory of his rich pulse, a thundering pride of coarsing blood that shall move no more
except to drain, bubble and pop
as that grand beast’s body is strewn upon the flames like so much refuse
to swaddle their tiny hearts in the comforts of complacency,
breasts and minds never to overflow with the swelling of what was lost -
too ignorant to comprehend that they should cry.
Glasses tink and eyes wink and shoulders are clapped beneath cupped hands.
From the glare of flashbulb and colored paper ribbons twirling like snakes through the air...
not one amongst them has the decency to shy.
Not one amongst them cares.

And he -
That rippling errand boy wearing his skin as a badge,
ignorant to the stench of blood which marks him as murderer.
That craftsmen of orphans,
that pathmaker of progress,
where all the knives they did muster proved dull
where arrows bent and broke -
he showed it takes no more skill to wring out life from a throat
than to twist water from a rag.
Shall he think of what has passed or why?
How shall he recall the cause for which was fought, or what for which has died?
In drink, and gamble and oblivion -
with blind excess...
welcoming the noise of oncoming steam and falling tree
in this, the early spring of his career.
I, if only could, would witness the moment when his eyes clear;
to watch him realize that his bones too shall be ground as grist -
that one day his shall be the love scoured clean from the surface of things
by ambition’s pathetic, lamentable fist.