"The End of the World is Near (2006)"
”The War of Roses"
Poem for the New Year 2006


In the danger of half ice storms
I cannot find my perfect maps,
or lead filled books dragged
by red hot air balloons over
the Nile to the Valley of Kings.

Here the Pharaohs wait
with fork and plate and slaves
to accept rewards and loss
misplaced liturgies -- lies
from Priests decorated with
medals and insubstantial peace.

Every sacred word lied -- written
without translation by Apostles
with crippled hands. They led us
to the dust of Christ but chance
crawls; faked in the garden of veils
left in bed with discarded dirty sheets
pubic hairs and that sticky flood
rising and falling in the ardor of past.

Christ is not born; he will not
live in the myths drained from holy moors.

Mark down fake prescriptions
of the missal while curbs stiffen,
and the cars lurch forward
beyond the Nile and Mount Sinai
where destiny has no arms in 2006.

Marble cannot resist hammers
driven to ravage moral chains
that fear -- we are bad children
after all with half a crown,
broken legs and egg shells
that hold together all the
parts we cut from corpse.

Why do we worship mountains
and dear, dead God, Manitou --
holy rivers plugged with filth
collected by anonymous hands
locked inside Hell by Bosch's gate.

Wings brush leaves that fire scorns.
Do we number tectonic plates with law
when ethical drums and moral screams?

If we are observant, we will name
every death ring it foul or natural.

Mark down how sentiment poured in streets
when storms were let by curse to murder
slaves in the city tomb of several
millennia connected by genes and terror.

Every rock had its own name in Hell;
We trace the geothermal circus.
The air was thin where we leap
where summit called to test death.

Every sin was noticed, but we lost
where night and day stop nocturnal "O"--
that alternate cause, and easy does
the miracles, for nothing will make
the greedy human or wealthy men
share primal remains.

Into screams I predict the farce
will have its own comedy and seek
what only can be the misery and dross
of terror and the scorching heat
of the backgrounds of the deadly ocean
floor where clouds never burst again.

Mountains do speak to twist
language of a billion years into
unfurled flags while boys beat
storybooks out of dangerous rugs
dangling from the minarets.

I count morning prayers,
watch bombs reduce Baghdad's streets
for execution watch; at that fire
we begin to waltz from hell
from Milton's Paradise --
back to Allah and his Court.

In New Orleans missing man
useless lumber scattered
after flood where no creature
force could salvage human bones
by ignorant, insensitive storms
driven by intelligent weapons
into myth with Henry VI
and his entourage of political
bytes, lichens and molds.

Let the War of Roses end.
"The end of the world is near."
There is no island America.


XXX