Knowledge

The serpent is eating
an autumn’s lunar
eclipse and the village
shaman stands at the ready
with his staff in hand.
The villagers cower,
and he chants the saving
songs. The songs learned
from the old shaman as a naked
boy at the knee of the wise
old man, learning the secrets
of the gods.
Now the people wait and watch,
wide-eyed as the serpent
retreats and the giant egg
in the sky is released to shine
down on the apprentice shaman.
The novice has been watching
with awe as his master shows
his command of the world.
The apprentice is no longer
afraid of the serpent as he
knows that when his time comes
he will know the right words
to save his people.
That time will come,
and the cycle will repeat.

Fumbled Intentions

Fritz Wilhelm owned
the company that
made Zyklon-B,
the gas used at the
camps. Showers
they would say,
and march the prisoners
off to be gassed. Onto
mass graves to where
no one will find
a cross over their
head. Men like Fritz

controlled the German
industrial machine
and hoped the world
would soon follow
in that gilded
Nazi Pathway.
But when a man thinks
he is in power,
the world permits
that he willfully
submits to Nuremberg

and persecution by the
victors or the man will
amble into Argentina,
raving at Bethlehem.
And along the sky,
shivering at thoughts
he should not have had,
bats fly out of the belfry
but none of his churches
ever had any bell towers,
only broken crosses.

I am the Laughing Air

Lee finds himself
thinking he is a ghost,
passing through worlds
he doesn’t understand.
All the clinical coolness
surrounding him is juxtaposed
with the airy ethereal god
figure he had imagined
a figure forced into him
since youth. Since the birth
of his young son he has felt
the surrounding world
to be out of his control.
He soon wondered if it was
his fault, maybe he could
do something. Maybe he
could have kept Lee Sr.
around. Or he could have
controlled his taste for booze.
But he knows now that
he cannot will the world
into being as he would want
it to be. So he grasps
at the laughing air,
telling me, “All the spirals
sail away from me.” I look
him deep into his eyes,
and I understand.