Back in January seeds started flowing
From the balcony.

On Sunday we read
The poems of the deaf and
Watched the matches stumble
Drunkenly through the darkness.

In March my hips began to
Fill out like my mother’s.

A monsoon of bullet ants
Waged war along the perimeter of the bath.
I squashed three under my thumb.
Hide, I told them. I have dropped mercy off the edge of the hanging bridge.

In May the stars were soft,
The ants came back to bite me in my sleep.

I tried to clasp your nose to keep you warm
But all the heat had flown from our bodies.
Sacrifices were made along the way.
The ants, admittedly, least among them.

Peaceful morning
Closed eyes drown out the day
Until he stirs and his voice sings
“Morning”

if you don’t know by now,
going to early mass is not my thing,
as I am one of those peeps of the tribe
that for your sins, died and then, again, and again

‘bout 6:00am, exchanging messages with
my fellow Indians (nooo, I’m not Indian) poets
on mundane subjects like tradition, grandchildren,
nagging wives, profits, revenues and earnings, expenses
(of that, more later)

now that we are living on the isle-no-elation,
the distractions are numerous though varied,
so I find myself unloading the dishwasher,
chopping, peeling, red, yellow peppers, cucumbers

then to a puzzle I am sent, how to fit in two
big cases of water into a Manhattan-sized
closet which shall we say, with largesse, isn’t
large-esse, comes pre-crammed from urban foraging

which means it’s coffee prep time so more
cleansing of yet another device, which happily
annoys by providing step by step, non-negotiable demands,
what me, just another human pretense machine, must execute

ménage a trois, three poems are pre-forming in
a mind that says concentrate, please don’t slice a fingertip,
but if you must, that romanesque nose, certainly
could use a trimming, if you are so energized & inclined

and it’s Sundae morning and I deliver the coffee,
making the route I’ve been plying for many morn,
this one is black, this one is oat milk, extra hot,
this one is awake, cause she’s giggling at **** emojis

oh yes indeed, a liturgical motet, a prayer to a lord,
I’ve never seen, but who insists on interrupting me,
when the mood is upon him, as if we humans were his own
coffee machine toys, don’t forget to make him herbal tea

and you say this is not a poem, and you whine,
overly long, and I laugh and say please, please,
don’t read it, I’ve got plenty others that garnered
accolades of multiple thousands and love this one better

feeling so holy, feeling so hollywood, my tasks nearly
completed, return to bed, when the nagging begins,
what have I forgotten, ****, my own coffee hides,
in the microwave and by now needs a reheating twice

and while I must off to write of Indian traditions,^
the gains and losses of grandchildren, grandmothers,
a new debate rages, how shall I end this morning-prayer,
and
I offer myself
three choices,
in a language I speak in the original,
Hallelujah, Amen, and Selah.


8:49am
Manhattan Island
May 17
2020

~for the (young) fathers~

Sunday.

An ordinary Sunday, with blue sky accoutrements.
They say, mostly sunny, with a high temperature of 75 Fahrenheit.
The children in the ever-shrinking bed shout Yay! Gesundheit!
when they hear me say Fahrenheit, ensues laughter belly originaheit!

The mother sleeps drowsily through the morning event planning,
content that as Mother’s day nears, she’ll wait for breakfast in bed,
but until then let’s all pretend she is sleeping late with three kids
decorating the plateau where their notional was celebrated+conceived.

The father reviews the day which has been quite full, even though
not yet Nine O’clock has to make an appearance. Last nights dishes
washed and shelved, breakfast made, puppy fed, hard boiled eggs peeled, muffins with Frenchified pear mermelade have magical disappeared!

His coffee needs a rehearsal reheating, but never mind, lukewarm will
be just fine, for the warmth of an ordinary exquisite Sunday suffuses
his chest, and the breathing heat of a mess of bodies roiling and rolling
is so more than sufficient, he whispers ‘thank you’ to no one in particular.


Sun May 3

a sink with broken eggshells at the bottom
skin turning flush red from the inside goo
always making you itch
because everything is so nervous
if it wasn't there would be no purpose
no jackknifing or tossing
no thrashing or abrasive arm wrestling
to feel a stillness inside your stomach
like an eye of a storm
patiently smug
because  the turbulence is never
in
only around

the debris will never hit your cornea
no splintered pupil
always wanna be tender
but I think brave is best

I’ve never laid eyes on you before.
But I’ve felt you.
I’ve felt your rumble,
bellowing against the walls
of my house.
And I’ve heard you.
Your lonely howl
sighing against the small window.
And you’ve taken away my sight;
The way you ****
light out of a house,
a deep cry filling the air.
Yet the worst is
that even in the dark,
I can smell you;
toxic fumes billowing
in the humid air.
& As you came at night,
the only sign of you
was your roar,
the shattering of wood,
and each light
dropping in the city.
You may be beautiful,
but you left behind
violent demolition.

Burn, Ovid
by Michael R. Burch

“Burn Ovid”―Austin Clarke

Sunday School,
Faith Free Will Baptist, 1973:
I sat imaging watery folds
of pale silk encircling her waist.
Explicit *** was the day’s “hot” topic
(how breathlessly I imagined hers)
as she taught us the perils of lust
fraught with inhibition.

I found her unaccountably beautiful,
rolling implausible nouns off the edge of her tongue:
adultery, fornication, *******, ******.
Acts made suddenly plausible by the faint blush
of her unrouged cheeks,
by her pale lips
accented only by a slight quiver,
a trepidation.

What did those lustrous folds foretell
of our uncommon desire?
Why did she cross and uncross her legs
lovely and long in their taupe sheaths?
Why did her ******* rise pointedly,
as if indicating a direction?

“Come unto me,
(unto me),”
together, we sang,

cheek to breast,
lips on lips,
devout, afire,

my hands
up her skirt,
her pants at her knees:

all night long,
all night long,
in the heavenly choir.

Keywords/Tags: Ovid, god, religion, church, Sunday school, ***, lust, desire, passion, choir, hymn, hymns, devout, devotion, faith, purity, chastity

The squall rousted the last of the roses,
a flutter amongst the mango blossoms.
The storm billowed with savage abandon,
a waterfall cascaded down the wall.
Lightning graffiti scrawled across the sky,
charcoal thunder rattled the fogged windows.

I held her trembling hand and stroked her back
as she leaped at the sound of every crack.
We breathed in rhythm — a steady tempo —
in-out, in-out, our tempest ritual.

He came to report a discovery
of roe while cleaning the rohu for lunch.
Spicy fritters added to the menu —
swift improvement to inclement weather.

dusk: golden, slow
musk: fading with the rain
—i was in the summer of my life

we ambled along the railway
all the way to the west
my heart so heady and blurry
and we were still walking

yet i felt i belong to a foreign place
i had yet to know,
but i know that's where i should be