UFOs (Ziggy Stardust To Major Tom)

I saw a spaceman in the park

I saw UFOs in the dark

I saw refugees on TV

I saw the vapor trail of a fighter jet cross the sky

I heard the wail of a mother cry

There are missiles hidden in the west

There are missiles hidden in the east

I saw mankind buried in the belly of a beast

I saw a spaceman in the dark

I saw a homeless man in the park

I saw refugees in the street  I saw UFOs on TV

I saw the vapor trail of a fighter jet cross the sky

I heard the wail of a mother cry

There are missiles hidden in the west

There are missiles hidden in the east

I saw mankind buried in the belly of a beast

The Poets (Lost in Mississippi)

The poets have grown mute, listless.

They have ashes in their mouths.

Their eyes are shut.

They have forgotten the words to the old songs.

I sit beside a green pond. 

The water is cloudy.

It is snowing somewhere but not here.

I’m often awakened by dreams in the night,

by shadows 

that have not yet learned how to speak.

A mother calls out to her child 

from an opened window

but he does not hear her voice.

The world is big and vast.

I scribble these notes in the air

and a cold wind carries them away.

I Spy

In the darkness, he rises like a moonlit shadow.

He imagines himself a king.

He tells himself this is what a man is,

this is what a man does. He teaches, but not this.

The pills make the woman his subject, his concubine.

She offers no resistance.

Words begin to form in fragments but drift away.

She forgets how to speak.

She cannot move.

When we played I Spy, I would be him.

I assumed my dark skinned playmate

(whose ancestors came from Africa on slave ships)

would take the role.

But he insisted on playing Robert Culp’s part.

I would be the funny sidekick; he would be the debonair spy.

Watching TV, looking at the pictures in Playboy magazine,

we learned how to become dinosaurs

but not men.