My Question For The Unabomber

 I asked the Unabomber

if he had ever been in love.

You know--before Montana--

before wandering the unforgiving winter woods

holding a frozen tulip

and a rolled-up poem

nestled inside a pipe as if you were a minstrel.

I asked him

if anyone had ever inhabited

the slow-cooking smoker

of his heart.

Was there ever the very emblem

of desirability

in the formula of anyone's eyes?

In your Harvard classes

full of second-week quitters

and callow

nattering plebes

was there never any elevated romantic

who might have solved for the

impossible equation

of your isolation and your need?

Oh Teddy, 

you coward,

you murderous nutjob,

if the one whose heart could have stopped you

were to speak at last to your wobbling soul,

could you still be fixed

even now,

or are you already damned? 

Perhaps my question itself

is like postage on a parcel

that can carry your remainder

softly out of shame

or suddenly into Hell?

_______

for Word Garden Word List--Ghost Eaters.

Music: The Fleetwoods Mister Blue

Greta and Ted, A Love Story

 

image by Corinne Geersten

Ghosts don't normally send fire through the mail, but they tend

to be a little bit muzzy-headed, the dead.

Water stamps temper these communications slightly

but flame is a Gypsy and wanders brightly,

making suggestions of passion on the carpets where they end.

Greta, not knowing she is dead, not knowing she's a shade,

sends these immolations postage-paid

and if such silly wooden houses go up, if roofs collapse,

then their occupants' lives, like hers, will lapse

and you can't fight infernos with a lemonade glass.

Poor Greta, sharing hell with the taciturn Unabomber,

who wishes all kinds of ill upon her,

who stinks and mumbles and never changes clothes or shaves

so that when one letter is returned to sender

she will blow and burn so that none can mend her.

Lonely Greta, sullen Ted

with a packed pipe and a black rose on their summer-dry graves.

_______

for Sunday Muse #214.

This Train

This is the train that circles the sun,

set on a single direction.

Memory has no beginning on this train,

and though I've made my nest in the straw and dirt of an ancient car,

a home in motion never feels like one.

There is no deer trail here, only deaf rails.

The way behind no longer exists except in my longing.

The way ahead is obscured but always near,

like a huntsman and his hounds and so I run while lying still.

This train is containment and escape, a snake eating its tail.

I began helpless but grew strong,

believing the power in my body drove all motion.

I began foolish but wounds made me wiser,

and though I've been quick as winter light and now slow as March thaw,

the train keeps its pace and me with it.

I have leapt and spun in circles and still I rode the train.

Now I sigh and slowly sink to my straw, 

the passing scene softer but filled with phantoms.

My life has been pursuance of prey and sidestepping of traps,

but always, the familiar yet foreign, perhaps imagined

headlong terror of the train.

________

for Sunday Muse #151.

The News From My Bed*

"Got to keep the loonies on the path"--Pink Floyd

The news from my bed is that the wall is gone.
At least I think it is. Things tend to pull the old switcheroo on me lately.

There's a guy standing there, by the jagged concrete and snaky rebar. His shirt is open and he's holding a Burger King wrapper to his bloody forehead. He looks a little dazed--meds? Or bombs. Not sure.

I get up. Yeah, I can get up. Nothing buzzes, no orderly or bitchy nurse appears. No doctor from Bloomfield Hills ladling out patronizing bullshit. If it's bombs, I hope they blew his golf club all to hell and gone.

I say to bloody forehead guy, "Hey." He blinks, hesitates, then does the guy nod. Maybe I lost my mojo in here. I tilt my head, look up at him with my soulful fucking brown eyes. "'Sup?" His knees buckle and he goes down, half over what's left of the bottom of the wall. Okay so. I get up, look around. What else is gone is the secure doors. And Madison, my roommate. She's hung up in the broken glass of the nurse's station. Poor Maddy. I notice she's wearing my Mickey Mouse sweat pants. 

I fuck with my hair, step over the wall that isn't there, and Burger King guy. I'd help him if I could, but I'm just a loon, right? Before I can decide anything, this awful tremendously loud roar happens and then there's a concussion and dust blinding me. I'm on my ass without knowing how I got there. I hear a heavy vehicle going by me, close.  I get up, my left leg won't work and I drop hard on my tailbone. So, I don't know a good affirmation for all of this. I don't know how this makes me feel, except that my leg and my ass hurt. The dust clears and I can see the buildings on fire and a freaked-out cat with its back arched and eyes big as next Tuesday, crouching and yowling as the rockets land. You and me, Puss. It takes a minute, but I scoop her up and off we go, me limping bad, Puss in full what-the-fuck mode, the Russians or the Koreans or the Martians raining shit down on our heads, and us doubtless sending it right straight back to their fucking pagodas or whatever. Holy shit, Puss. And they say I'm crazy.
_______

*my title is a brazen rip-off, as per instructions HERE.

Day 11 of the April thang, and I'm still rockin'. 

 

All Afternoon

All afternoon in my flower garden--
wolves, imps, children, heavy equipment.
I wore gloves.
I had a trowel and a shotgun. 
A bushel basket.
Tarot cards.

All afternoon, clouds traversed the sky,
reminding me of childhood days in Singapore.
Here are things which can change in an instant:
weather,
a steady heart beat,
the four walls around you.

All afternoon I'd had the urge
to shove my gloved hand down the throat of the earth
to draw out the devil's vocabulary.
Don't be stupid--
you know, the one that badgers speak,
the one that drowns anyone listening--
Drip.
Drip.
Damn.

All afternoon I slaved like a grave digger,
my straw hat gone, 
incubi dancing on the handle of my shovel.
I got a letter from the city, saying
cease and desist.
I got a letter from the Diocese,
saying I'd been excommunicated, along with the postman.
I got a letter from you
and it didn't say a god damned thing.

All afternoon I wondered why I opened it,
why I ever cared,
and whether I could use my 'do rag to flag the bombers
and sic them on your stupid paper house
with you in it.
I would like to stand on the rubble afterward, a martinet with round spectacles,
a cup of tea, 
and not a crumb of love left, 
but oh, one hell of a sense of righteous fury.
_______