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)

a friends witness

women walking with child
children laughing afraid dreaming
mothers in days slipping away
great grand old faces facing sun in wrinkles
all suddenly running
covering
burning
like oil and rice thrown in a flame
instant eternal cauldron of pain and despair
noble ignorance aside feasting on phosphorescent sands
pulls humanity back toward a lifeless sea
unenlightened unfulfilled unfurthered
stop it
all believers
be brave
some mornings come with no warning

meeting house after sunrise
(in 1965 norman morrison, stony run meeting executive secretary, poured kerosene on and immolated himself outside robert mcnamara’s pentagon office)

who may die

live still love calling
under infernocloud mushrooming miles
cast out away in steel ropes
withering shrinking in flamestorm
abandoned inside ringing glimmering wandering fire
uncrossed
wouldbegod casts and disappears
inkgreenblack oily smoke
i suppose a heavy metal bird should scream

shipping terminal at sunrise
(in 1965 a nine alarm oil fire threatened residents of wagners point who struggled on under criminal neglect by the city until the late 1990s)

rest next time

disconnected smallstreet
pigment pools punctured tears
sprinting stopping condemnation caucus
chimney sky-rockets rain mushroomthistle
tree arms temperfold
pollenpepper sneezes beat
seepingpipe molassess well
playlot furroweed
seawash lessening
faster walking risingreen souptide
kings poorman standing out of sight
summer days

small street at sunrise
(in 1964 vernon leopold was shot and killed in front of his mother’s house on parrish street by a policeman who had been drinking in a bar around the corner)

general cargo please

finger piers break-bulk
shorefigurate into yards consolidating sheds
fugitive particulate cornslagate
one-hundred year alignments
squatting bulks of coalorefertilizergrainpetrol leaching awaytide
smother the waterfront industrial vacancy
patiently waiting water as one i love
come with the sea

harbor at sunrise
(in 1964 the maryland port authority took possession of the locust point marine terminal from the b & o railroad)

skill and horsemanship

sea on land
flying horses galloping around
young crusaders battle mock enemies
ready and wielding
delight and survival in centrifugal force

former amusement park at sunrise
(after protests that started in 1955 and culminated in the trespassing arrest of hundreds of protesters, gwynn oak park, on gwynn oak avenue, desegregated in 1963)

castaways

shark gaping jaws four rows of teeth
expires slowly on deck
tail hatcheted oxygen seeping away
a messenger in viscera champagne blood commingled.
seek sailors foundered in cruelty
carry home a cargo of happiness

shopping center at sunrise
(after protests that started in 1955 and culminated in the trespassing and disorderly conduct arrest of hundreds of students who were jailed for three nights before the city government intervened, the northwood theater, on havenwood road between loch raven boulevard and hillen road, desegregated in 1963)

swimming pool age

riverside
area to flowing water
a time volume velocity
upstream momentum in density
fluid flowing streamline fashion
long ropes tie off
persons pulling
weight ground on feet
horizontal separation center of mass
red river
jatavious jamarcus takeitha litrelle ladairus latevin
walled water just waits
and we float away in moonlight

swimming pool at sunrise
(an “angry, ugly, hate-maddened mob” threatened neighbors who came to swim at riverside pool in 1962)

valley and pigs

needle into bloodstream
congestive heart
escaping maelstrom of nothing.
or dews gather dreams
dancing labor streaming
down to world
falling out to stars
resting in wind and reeds
soulharbor fecundcity
estuary unlocked corridor unalchemy
of pulsing breathing green brown black and blue
just as nothing

expressway at sunrise
(the jones falls expressway opened from biddle street to the beltway in 1962)