Saturday, May 28, 2016

from Orpheus in the Attic #11

11


"'Now I am become Death,
the destroyer of worlds." The Bhagavad-Gita
He rode on top of a white cloud.
He rode on top of a white elephant.
But this wasn't the circus
and he was no clown.
He was the father of black holes
when the bombs began to fall.

He tried to close the coffin
that he opened but it was too late.
Warheads multiplied like rumors.
Nobody kept them secret.
If you look high enough, you can see him.
He rides on top of a white cloud.
He rides on top of a white elephant.
He is the father of black holes.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

from Orpheus in the Attic #19

19


I unhook the stars from my neck
and let myself go. I descend. I ride with ghosts.
I roll and tumble into the unknown.
I parted company with the others in Tangiers.
I miss them so much.
I crossed the desert in the dark.
My throat was parched from sleeping in the sun.
Back then, I would trade all the light

of the world for water.
I wished to sing but it hurt too much.
I trudge through the dust and haze
of a dismembered continent.
I remember my brothers.
I think of my sisters.
I unhook the stars from my neck
and let myself go. I descend. I ride with ghosts.




Tuesday, May 24, 2016

A Note on Bob Dylan's 75th Birthday

Bob Dylan's brother, David Zimmerman, taught the children in my neighborhood how to sing! He was the music teacher at Sunny Hollow Elementary in New Hope, Minnesota. It is well known now that David Zimmerman contributed to the re-recording of Blood on the Tracks in Minneapolis (Christmas of 74).

Bob apparently spent some time with his brother at the grade school. After David Zimmerman worked with Bob on the album he decided to leave teaching. With Bob in tow, Mr. Zimmerman visited all his students, all of the classes. During a question & answer session, my brother Rob (age 7) asked this unknown visitor if he knew of the poet Billy L (my middle name is James). Bob said no but that he would have to check this "poet" out. I did not know about this conversation until later (my brother, after all, was 7 & really had no idea how famous Bob was; I was 17). When I heard the story a few weeks later, I was thrilled.

At 19, I studied for a semester in Rome, Italy. There was a copy of Blood on the Tracks at the University of Dallas campus where I stayed. I listened to that album every day, over & over again. What an education: The Confessions of Saint Augustine, The Sistine Chapel, Agamemnon's tomb in Greece, the Louvre in Paris (Leonardo, Botticelli, Giotto), Sophocles & Bob Dylan.


Happy birthday Bob!  

Thursday, May 19, 2016

from Orpheus In the Attic, #12

12

My memory is a closet without dimension
or doors: a mystery, often blank, sometimes dark.
A child, a stranger, waves to me
and laughs from across the room
as night begins to fall.
What does she know? What does she see?
Her mother holds her hand. They walk away
out of view but the image remains.

The vapors and debris of a lost dream
haunt me now: the barrel of a rifle,
the flash of a ballistic blast,
a pink cloud
of blood and brain,
the presidential limousine racing towards the underpass,
Dallas, Oswald and the death of umpires.
The crime that haunts the nation.

from Orpheus in the Attic, #8

8

He defaced the cones of nuclear warheads.
He ignited draft cards with napalm.
He burned paper instead of children
In protest to the regime of Diem, a Buddhist monk
set himself on fire in Saigon;
and now decades later
Father Berrigan follows him on a cloud,
out of the haze, beyond the reach of radar.

As a child, I carried the news of the war dead
on my back.
The draft ended when I was sixteen.
I would not loose my limbs or die in Vietnam.
I would not kill.
Father Berrigan was looking out for me.
He defaced the cones of nuclear warheads.
He ignited draft cards with napalm.

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

from Orpheus in the Attic, 18

18

In the valley of the green mountains,
I hear blackbirds squawk and moan.
They mimic hawks and humans.
But they never lose themselves in the dark,
in shadows and rain.
They can hit high notes beyond
any human range.
Some call them starlings or Myna birds.

I examine a photo of a ragged child
holding a ragged doll.
In Arabic, her name means “White Cloud”.
She is just five years old.
She is a refugee from Aleppo.
In a filthy camp, she waits for a chance to live.
In the valley of the green mountains,
I hear blackbirds squawk and moan.