Civil War

The civil war comes rumbling
through like some angelic beast
fresh-fucked and smiling,
an apex predator,
there’s nothing in nature to oppose it,
the food chain funnels upwards to its teeth and tongue,
never mind the clocks and calendars
its lifespan is that of the human race,
detached, disinterested, never taking sides
it has no favorites or enemies,
everyone is equal fodder for its hunger,
it will eat everything
and disgorge the wealth of earth
to the bankers and generals
who animate it from afar
in a drone game of robots and effigies
joysticking human chesspieces
to wherever they best
siphon blood off into profit.

The civil war lounges
in its ursine smell of heat and carrion,
fur matted with sex and death,
it’s going to colonize you,
spread like a cancer,
fill your life with fire and shrapnel,
displace you to trails of
estrangement and hunger, and
even if you get out of the war
you’ll never get it out of you
it’s going to stay inside you
inviolable and sacrosanct
traveling everywhere you go
eating you from inside-out
chewing the smiles off your face
chewing like a parasite in your belly
devouring your sustenance
eating all you swallow or love
before it can nourish or heal you.















Shatter Zones

In the shatter zone too long,
I too become brittle, partitioned, fissured,
carved by faults
corrugated by mountain ranges
borders divide me
and I flow
to divergent watersheds
disconnected from any center.

Roads run through me,
rivers run into walls,
I am displaced
along a trail of cheap hotels,
young girls always on offer down the hall
through a doorway
stained with the grime of hands—

traveling without books,
digesting words and miles
like the tribes who wrote their languages
on skins or buckwheat cakes, then
ate them when on the run and starving…
words become bodies,
bodies become words,
till every footstep sings
the face of earth.

I want to drink wine
made by women chewing millet
and spitting it in a gourd to ferment—
but they don’t sell the home-made stuff
in the bus depots, so
I buy factory liquor
laced with formaldehyde
to lubricate the ruts and gears of the road
as I turn like a cog in the apparatus
of machine administration,
as wheels and gears turn in me,
a synchromesh of distance, far vectors, exhaustion,
a simultaneity of
estrangement and belonging,
my wild desire for borders and margins
to push against and surpass,
and my saner, secret wish
for centeredness, connection,
the slow symbiosis of self
into a single piece of earth,
into a single love and lover.

I offer my bottle
to the man next to me on the bus,
he drains the last few drops
and chucks it out the window
to the cornfields,
as if innocent any concept of litter or pollution,
as if human endeavor and design
could never be detached
from the flowing landscape we flow through,
as if he knows
a factory bottle is a particle
of industrial production
that travels through the world
both discrete and interconnected,
just like you and me—

If I go further
it’s just because I can’t be still
when others are lock-stepped
into forced migrations,
cocked weapons of assimilation
jabbed into their backs—
cultures filtered through steel prisms
of diffraction and dispersion,
struggling against the current
of automatic expansion, infinite consumption,
like salmon trying to swim upstream
to reach the source where they were born,
but someone has reversed the flow
a bait-and-switch in which
displaced peoples are stranded on a stony shore
instead of arriving at the home
they’ve migrated lifetimes to reach.

❖

Anyway, tell me
which place on earth
is not a shatter zone,
mosaic of
cultures, languages, tribes?
Where are skin and soil not
cracked, broken, thick with blood and salt?
If you don’t recognize the violence
you’re complicit to,
that’s just because it’s
smoothed with petroleum butter,
flattened by a steam roller
for us to drive and drive
as the world burns
in some far place.

❖

Like a salmon I crossed the sea
but I reached no sanctuary, no home,
only a further shatter zone

where life was a watch shop in a strip mall,
seconds ticking blandly towards oblivion,
gleaming with gold and jewels,

memory was a blade that cut itself,
a machined edge to eviscerate the past,
bleed away all that was not anodyne, orthodox,
while violence was camouflaged
with shades of comfort and convenience,
and stitched in the logo of a shirt.


In the shatter zone too long
I too become a continent of divisions,
my only wholeness is the rhythm of the sea
that carries me away in waves—but
it’s just temporality,
a soft-shoe shuffle,
and all the guns and mortars,
all the jet planes and grenades,
are on their way
to the bottom of the sea,

sea of
foam and salt
lime and clay
urchins and cetaceans
heartbeats and heartbreak
and everything between,
where we abide
beneath
waves of transformation
waves of sex and death
waves of violence and the sea
waves of you and me.















Opiate Consciousness

drifting through mountain waves
on gasoline fumes
the engine a fluttering heart
gashed-out hillsides and concrete obelisks
a landscape of butterfly wings
with time receding like a tide
and metal girders marching in
rust and rivet consciousness
desire for a bone of joy
buried in a pretty girl’s womb
or tossed from heaven
from the table of a feast
trenches dug out with machines
berms of gridded earth and
tunnels drilled through stone
efforts of human design
virus consciousness
of increasing acceleration
military love
engulf the world in
cordite and brass
one more road to follow
one more border up ahead
a membrane to part and enter
pendulum consciousness
floating on opiate wings
butterfly trails
night day night day
turning over
in someone’s dream
of endless games of chance
cloud consciousness
rise and drift away.















and then the generals unleashed their armored toys
and their child soldiers
to cross the border to your home
they tied the snouts of the animals
so they could not howl
they cut the electric wires
so you could not flash
your messages to me
I connected my memories to a car battery
but they trip and stutter
over the bodies face down in the rice fields
it was inevitable as extinction
the contract signed and sealed by the presidents
ratified with the blood
leaking from your mouth
that you could not swallow
without my lips to kiss you

they threw your father in a well
he was already mute
and could only tell you with his eyes
that our child was dead
we gave shelter to the children
who grew up to hold rifles
as they marched to your village
in truck tire sandals
it was too late for me to say
I love you
those words only cause more pain
in a time of violence
the soldiers dipped your womb in salt
and ate it raw
I was bound with a rope made from your hair
I was held across the border from you
I was burned by fever
even before they lit your house on fire
you spent all your money
on cold drinks for your father
sugar and ice
a token gesture of cooling
against white phosphorous burns

the car battery ran low
I lost the signal
I didn’t know who was dying
me or you
or both
and everyone in between
our world became a coral garden
bleached the color of bone

I was ready to cross back over the border
nothing remained for the soldiers to take from me
but a message came
that you had gone down the well
to touch your father’s lips
I went anyway
but I was caught by the toys we gave them
brass marionettes guided by satellites
and a jack-in-the-box
with a weeping leer
even the oxen howled through their halters
immigration police
locked me in a guardhouse
I heard your voice through the walls
but the border between us was closed
closed by the earth you dug up with your fingers
which you ate when you didn’t believe I’d return
lime and chalk streaked your brown skin
you gave your voice to your father
when you kissed his lips
then you could only look for me
at the bottom of a well

the soldiers made me join them
as they razed your home
I didn’t try to escape
I had nowhere left to go
even my memory
was parted out to snipers and artillery officers
I searched for a well
where I could lie down in peace
but earthen walls could not soothe me
or heal me
your lips stopped trying to find me
in the dark
the sky is streaked with fire
high above
just like the earth below
you said you’d wait for me forever
but no one gets that long.