Madhouse Poems (Part One)

Madhouse

We are crazy and noisy magic
People, talking to ourselves
Soon to be forgotten, in shoes
That will not walk; placed onto massive silent
Shelves, like a book never to be read again.
Big children, in a world called
The madhouse


#2320 (3-12-2008) (11:55 PM)



Night Mind


If grapes were pretense
And thorns were self-interest
And eyes were sealed, blind in the woods
I would be the Crow’s Horn crying in the dark
Behind every pine tree, until someone found me
Turn me around; give me a night’s mind
Fly me out like bat; we all get lost so fast
When there are no paths.

#2321 (3-13-2008)


Rat Attack

In Lima, in February (2008), at noon, I’d unlock
And open our side view window—look into the garden,
See the fat rat peeking her head out and up from her
Dirt hole; we poisoned her (my wife and I)
little by little, each and every day, as she became,
braver and braver, seeing me. I knew soon she’d die,
as did her mate, about two weeks before
(hoping the human rights folks didn’t get wind of this);
somehow I think I learned its mother tongue
(I talked to her, off and on, for six days,
I learned her ways, and her face)
And I’d whisper to her in Spanish and English
(Now she learned my mother tongue)
As if we were in some private chapel in
The Vatican, and when she died, I cheered,
And said in a whisper: “…too bad
You were born a rat, not a cat!”

#2321 (3-13-2008)