Month: May 2017

best that ever

my violent law
my oppressing order
knees locked heels digging
lookup bluesky reeling
silhouettes surround swirling circling
smoke and flames
your hope despair your rage
my war

president street at sunrise
(criminal and governor spiro agnew mistook a hole in the ground after several days of unrest after martin luther king jr. was murdered in 1968, condescending to community leaders in his president street office)

radio message to silk stockings

large shattering glass windows
rage coming up the road
coursing action
shockwaves
human lithosphere elastic
subsiding in eerie melody of alarms
then sunlit bayonets
faultlines recharging

gay street at sunrise
(several days of unrest resulting in twelve million dollars of property damage in 1968 first started in the four hundred block of gay street two days after martin luther king jr. was murdered)

bringing up

in the crackle of burning paper
lost prayers on asphalt
smoke rising into seas unknowable
your answer god
god is war

frederick road at sunrise
(in 1968 daniel berrigan, phillip berrigan, david darst, john hogan, tom lewis, marjorie melville, thomas melville, george mische, and mary moylan seized draft records from a draft office at the catonsville knights of columbus building and burned them in the parking lot)

ninetynine fortyfour b

streaming straightrun snowdrops
bursting reformate
catalytic gay colors cracking
into instant suds hydrocrackating
prolonging alkylate sliprayonlife
mild isomerate gentle butanic
efficiencyfatal
safest possible incendiary soap a motherfucker can use

charles village street at surnise
(in 1968 bill o’connor and dean pappas mixed a test batch of napalm in bill’s charles village basement for the catonsville 9, who were preparing to raid the catonsville draft office and burn draft records)

drylands in rainfall

all who wish walk here
listen and say
arms lock sweat lift
path unseen waiting earth
touch stones smell tubers watch burrows and webs
hail paths crossing
continuing together

homes at sunrise
(in 1967 bonnie ellis, shirley pryor, and lousie alston helped establish the lafayette-douglass food buying club)

polite explosion

was it new light
absent shadows
bold lines emerging contrast
absorbing and radiating strength
or universe in random beauty

brooklyn homes at sunrise
(marian johnson, and several other families, endured racist intimidation throughout 1967 integrating brooklyn homes in south baltimore, and endured)

vast classification and terminal

winchester cumberland wheeling cincinnati
lousiville saint louis effner chicago
south bend muskegon mackinaw city
detroit sandusky cleveland ashtabula
erie buffalo rochester sodus point wilkes-barre
stroudsburg new york haddonfield cape charlie
washington baltimore
industrial america

cargo pier at sunrise
(the maryland port authority acquired the general cargo facilities of the pennsylvania railroad on clinton street in canton in 1967)

blood writing

black and white orchid red clay
grey lichen textured canvass
green sword fern cooled brown lava
dappled seabird dropping shit
dharma brothers stone building
mister clean perfume war clerks
knife to tongue to pen to pray
worthy suffering plain peace

custom house at sunrise
(phillip Berrigan, tom lewis, david eberhardt, and james mengel poured their blood, cut with chicken blood, on six hundred draft files at the city central draft office in the custom house on gay street in 1967)

things and charity

in a hall of heroes who died in vain
the loyal knew well the spoils of faith
a cardinals call rang out and up
measured
echoing
falling like ash from a smokestack
then billowed back up
pouring out behind the council
and down the wide back stairs
a chorus of misled greed and hate
in awful polyphony with the rich father of mercy

war memorial at sunrise
(in 1966 at a city council meeting at the war memorial, hundreds and hundreds of the two thousand citizens attending booed cardinal sheehan’s advocacy for open housing legislation—which was, for the third time in three years, voted down by the council)

from cincinnati

coconuts dropping down south
who the hell
any pitch any curve
there will be lightning
know where to cover
wild bulls raising dust at your feet
knuckles flying like egg salad
high small fastballs
zeros and ones

memorial stadium site at sunrise
(frank robinson led the orioles to their decisive first world championship in 1966)