Faith

I was raised in the middle of a staggered,
squashed-together queue of upended cigar-box rowhouses
whose backyards descended the steep grade
like a flight of narrow stairs.
Our raw cement back patio was exposed to the sun,
while the one next door, a few feet lower, 
was covered by a wooden awning that was always flaking 
scabs of brown paint and riddled with carpenter bees 

that bobbed from the eaves.
The rest of our yard was also open, shadeless,
covered with scorched crabgrass, while theirs was a strip of gloom
sandwiched between a tall plywood fence
and the shaggy hedge we shared.
Where we had a swing set, they had a sour tangle of rhubarb. 

One day, just before he left his wife for a woman in a wheelchair,
the blade of our neighbor's shovel chinked stone, a large flat slab
that he pried with some difficulty from the dirt
while all us kids stood around and watched.
Beneath it was a hole, just wide enough for a child
to insert himself into. We dropped a bottle cap
but could not hear it hit bottom. There was no Wonderland 

or Devil's Eye glittering in the gloom down there,

just a dark and empty shaft exhaling musty air. 

Our neighbor quickly replaced the rock, covering it with sod,

and from then on we would only skirt -or, if dared,   

stretch to step across that spot.

A difficult epiphany for a sheltered child to swallow:

I've never unlearned the lesson that the earth beneath my feet

just might be hollow.

St. Vitus Dance

Take my ragged thumbs and plunge them 

into your skull sockets, feel my my body 
jerk
as your current rams its prow into the dock. Thus hooked,  I cab it 
thirty blocks 

to the impending crib

(no doubt already ominously thumping),

Firestones spraying rooster-tails that drench the shiny curbs.
In the backseat, I strap the razor blades to my sleeves 
and to my cuffs and pat my wallet stuffed
with bribes for the bouncers and when 

the BPMs coagulate into slurry
and the strobe lights make my eyelids hummingbird
I smash the glass, set off the sprinklers rigged
to baptize all the thrashing kids.
We unbuckle our legs and drop to the sticky floor
where we all flop like bleeding fish 

in the bow of a skiff, waiting for 

the thud of the oar, the harpoon butt of dawn
to slam up on our heads, to knock us stiff.

Beam

The fact that I felt even an ounce of doubt

worming its way through my guts, the fact

that I wanted to protest, but out of fear could not,

meant that I was weaker than the rest

who all hung, perfectly content

within their dense silence just like insects 
suspended motionless in amber.

At least no one could call them inconsistent.

It mattered not that their stoic bravery,

however unwavering, was buttressed

not by some heroic act of strength but

by planks of stubbornness and ignorance.

I must not be forgiven for my silence.

I looked on with the rest as that weight twisted

and felt my brittle spine reduced to splinters.

Didactic (photo by Ahmad Qari)

Carpet, Hoofprints

There are wet, snuffling muzzles. Foam-spattered flanks. Smudges of grease beneath the eyes. A knot of snakeskin clamped between the teeth. There are blurping cisterns of tar, spitting skillets of fat. There are bugs that crunch and grubs that squish underfoot. There is the tearing of crusty cloth, of plucked skin. There are spreading splotches of pungent mildew, fungus both fanged and furry, patchwork battalions of bacterial scabs. It's no wonder we remain inside, wiping and wiping the clean glass, polishing the slick and winking tile, trying to send the spirits scampering with a single flick of the vacuum cleaner's switch.

Egyptian Patchouli

In all the years since that weekend that
you “didn’t sleep with” some fellow you met
at GothFest at the Trocadero
I’ve only smelled it once: in the empty lavatory
of a taco joint 3000 miles away from
my railroad apartment in Philadelphia.
I recognized it instantly, that faint trace of vanilla
setting it apart from the more common varietal
hippies use to camouflage the stench of marijuana.
I instantly flashed unintentionally
on the image of your vagina, your pussy kept
so smooth and shaved, perfumed and pink.
I reeled with aphrodisia by the sink.
Since then, the memory of your fragrance
briefly whiffed that day is more intense
than my vague memories of twisting with you in bed.
We didn’t even like each other much, and yet.
I hate it when the throb of pain proves to be so useless.
I strive for relief, picturing your sexy little body
but the thought of you has gotten too polluted.
I keep slicing open my fingers on slivers
shed by your cracked porcelain beauty,
having hidden the smell of my skin beneath
the sharp, insistent scent of Egyptian patchouli.

Thrones

I stumbled across a clearing crammed with hundreds of swans, all of which were digging their bills deep into the downy roots of their quills, scraping oil across their skin with their beaks until I interrupted them and they stopped their preening to eye the intruder, the invader of their sacred privacy, their heads swiveling on their necks like feathered cobras, pupils were black wheels spinning like gears in their skulls and the air hissed, but it could have been from the reedy stream, or the breeze raking its fingers through the tresses of the willows as I heard the turning of a crank ratcheting like metal teeth in a metal mouth and I took a step backwards, my heel skidding on a slimy patch of dung that sent me tumbling to the mud and the last thing I heard as I sat there in the grime was the howl of the wind, the beating of countless wings, the grinding of a great machine breathing into my face with a thousand feathery flames.

Fusillade

Having hiked the steep path that spiraled up Mt. Joy,
we spread our lunch on one of the enormous slabs 
orphaned by the glacier, adjacent to Mt. Misery
and overlooking the fields of Valley Forge
where the troops had waited as they froze. We ate
where, famished, they'd choked down moldy fire-cake 
and grits. Wendy tap-danced on the boulder, 
breasts bouncing merrily, supermarket rose 
clutched between her perfect teeth
as I, mesmerized, sipped Shiraz and munched on
goat cheese and focaccia.
As we watched a wizened old man sweep
the cropped meadow for buttons with a metal detector
an  ethereal musket ball, loosed accidentally
by a pre-pubescent specter from Connecticut
hurtled through my throat, temporarily shredding
my vocal chords. Wendy cradled my head
upon her mammoth mammaries, lured me back to health 
with her feminine medicine.
Returning home after dusk, I slipped into the apartment
and genteelly handed you the extra rose I'd stolen
from the flower department of Wegman's.
You demanded to know where I'd been
all day, and I attempted to explain
but my gullet was still raw from choking 
on that ghostly bullet. My croaked excuses 
thumped off the plaster walls like flung sponges, 
justifications rasped against the splintered board 
that split the king-sized bed.
As I sit here now in the dark, alone, I think of the folly 
of that picnic, of Wendy puckering up 
for a picture I never took
in front of the park's sole waterfall,
the spray erasing her dress, the air around us dense
with an invisible volley of uncanny cannonballs
as I lost you both, and won my independence.