You are the royal we
to the left of Mohammed
and the right of queen bee.
The diamonds in the grass
makes an effort
to be a carpet for you
because like a cat
most of us rest in your lap.
Nothing important exists
outside you.
The UN would be smart
to be run by your diplomats.
Luxury items should be delivered to you
on a regular basis
because [...]

I note it driving behind them:
the sly glance out their rusty passenger window
to the three trees rooted temporarily in boxes.
Easily steal-able (I imagine) into their GMC bed,
drop down the rattling tailgate, late at night.
They talked excitedly
the two dirty fingernailed men, faded jeans,
turning hard at the next curve
in their greasy cocked caps
and a whiff of Top [...]

Why did you do it,
what advantage was there to it
for you wearing down like glass
this marching toy
of quivering, flowering
confusion of radishes
me?
This is the journey, Alice
or walk away to a sofa
to lie on pillows
and bury the roots
away.
Even dead, though,
marks will appear
on the forehead
and our progeny
will jiggle on strings
with clanging cans
for shoes.
I believe this was
to be [...]

It’s not a big thing
when the BMW pulls over
silver blue and German grace
and the Guatemalan gardener adjusts his hip
the nearby ridge
with his leaf blower and rake
noting the pure white man inside
with his acceptable rock music
choking
weeping
hands shivering over the eyes
weeping till the cows come home
weeping for whatever nameless loss
he’s found
as Guatemala
back and forth with his machine
sweeps [...]

The diamonds on your buckle,
like the stars on old glory,
demand attention, rising
above your passing parade
in which the light heartedness
of children running to keep up
belies the seriousness
of those desperate wars
now being celebrated.
I salute it all (a hand over my heart)
for nothing is ever as simple as it seems
when battle scars drift into dreams.

I haven’t known him well,
the chocolate man
with his caramel freckles
and sugar plum hands,
weeds dancing in the exhaust
of his pick up as it backs up
to his green garbage cans
at 5am.
Does he feed on his rage
that I sensed that day
offering our gardener
(”Slave” he called him)
to take his garbage cans too
to the top of the hill?
He wouldn’t be [...]

Balloon tires rusty rattling
roll to a stop on the melting summer
black macadam, (braids undone),
her foot
(its journey from the
humming pedal soft
with ocean salt dune crust
to tufts of roadside
grass and dirt)
is sneakered down to rest
while our car passes
and her short breath (sipping
her back to this same road
where her 10 year-old self
I catch a flash of–-hip toweled
now and [...]

Axiom
A rhyme
a day keeps
the monster away.
Camera
So you step off your metal steed all salt and pepper beard and panavision confident, gentle banners flying.
You woulda been at home at some round table in the 14th century, a side kick to kings
with an eye 4 the daughters (but subtle about it, guarded, a chivalrous hand) searching for [...]

He strides in w/a deep blue canvas bag
over his Hemingway shoulder,
thoroughly muscled. My age.
And when the black (jovial)
male nurse calls us pre-ops
I overhear that he came
by cab and has no relatives
to contact.
He moves better
than the rest of us,
the bile of fear rising
in my throat
as the math problem
that I’d like to solve
of my wife grows [...]

The flickering morning bus to my right
(passing the Rite-Aid at Beverly and La Cienega)
proclaims from her metal flanks
that the joyful black boy billboard prince
wants a bajillion McDonald’s McNuggets.
And a head turns.
I spot it
(the guy in the Caddy in front of me,
dawn sun across his retrogressive bow
just his silhouette).
A frown?
A Jesse Helms stiffness in [...]