Eight Poems, Eight Days

I have gone far enough to know what I have lost by now.
He sat rocking the rocking chair, recounting to himself
the mystery of losing words as quickly as he found
others, ticking them off by date and hoping the years
were concealed among his readers and would not need
to be reconstructed, that particular frame of mind gone.

3 June 2013

The lovely ladies lining the streets may not be trusted
to keep secrets when they sell their wares with stories
other men told. They may or may not know the originals.
Their bodies bearing the scars and stains of their trade,
they know what they must do to house and clothe and feed
the little ones without fathers, begat before the pill.

4 June 2013

After what I knew had been lost was found, it remained
to be preserved by hand–as though I were a scribe
chiseling words that would not be subject to fire–our site
so remote in time libraries were not yet invented, 
Alexandria far in the future. After dalliance
with fathers, mothers settled into the ruins of cities.

5 June 2013

Our garden attracts beautiful women as well as living saints.
May both find something in common: a mood, a flicker of
delight, knowing the eyes are no gauge of inner beauty.
Wildflowers ripen, petals taken by the wind and sent
to the poor, those who live under the street, not so far off
they cannot follow fugitive blooms to find their bounty.

6 June 2013

Those curious come close. They trouble themselves to cry out
their grievances to us. I don’t know what the world is about,
not now. All I trust is the confusion, the resentment, plaint
upon complaint. I go to streets that are empty, silent,
fearful. Do you know why you are not here? I know I’m not
there, but can’t say why. In the hush I ask, Where are you?

7 June 2013

Events start later than anticipated by media.
There are no warnings storms may be coming.
The wind blows, haggard souls slip in and out
          of sight, the crowd swarms.
Cops drive up and down the boulevards,
combing the night
for the unexpected, which means everything 
to the lost.
Cameras and microphones abound
with the loaves, the fish.

8 June 2013

Only in daytime can you see the sky, blue clouds turn dark.
Cathleen’s friend enters the house to kiss her husband
preliminary to the hug sought after, saying no one
hugs her like him. Cathleen smiles: she knows other ways he has
she can’t give up, though God knows she once tried for many years
to forget him, yet never refused to answer his calls.

9 June 2013

Who voted against the Patriot Act, and who would answer:
The fascista prevail, far there, far here; Who does not know why
the spear of the harpoon piercing the skin cannot be removed
when pulled back to where the tip caught hold and now can only shred;
Fascist Ahab, keen-eyed Ishmael, the Pequod’s fellaheen
citizenry: Is there no purity save the world’s white whale?

10 June 2013

all copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander