AYIN

Alif, who can't be seen,
Has an apprentice --
The angel Ayin --
Who doesn't exist
But hopes to.
Homeless, she sleeps
In alleys, wrapped
In a torn shadow.

AN AESRED POEM

I can tell when my soul is present

Which is not much of the time

Unless it has so mastered silence

That I hear no sound as it lurks

In some dark alley of myself,

Perched on a trash bin, watching

And listening and taking notes

Which it intends to produce

Once the defending angel says

"Your witness." If it is truly in me

All the time, never out drinking

Coffee or something worse

From chipped cups with, say,

The ghosts of Edward 

And Dennis and Hedda Hopper

Tell it that I consider it a damn snitch.

UNSEEN

Angels when they descend to Earth
Make bodies for themselves. Usually,
Condensed air is their medium
But almost anything will do. Sand
Has been used, as well as wheat, pipestems,
Shadows and hand-polished anthracite coal.
There is an angel I have heard of
Who makes himself from abstractions
Running God's errands made of sharpness
Or vain regret. He only once clad himself
In Time which left him chronophobic
For some centuries. Another angel,
Called Hatif, has never been embodied
But comes merely as a voice. Accordingly,
If you were awake at three this morning
And, looking casually from your window,
You saw an angel in the alleyway
Behind your building, his half-furled wings
Almost brushing the walls on both sides
As he accepted a drink from the bottle
Extended towards him by a dirty hand
That was certainly not Hatif. The voice
From nowhere which shouted in your ear
"This is not a show -- go back to bed"?
That was Hatif.

FIXED IN POST

The fog enveloped me and wrote an address
But the letters ran and eluded all efforts
To capture them, scattering down the alleys
And up the shaded oops. I'd have been returned
Marked "undeliverable," save for my mother who,
Not knowing much about me, charitably saw
To my deliverance, on a spring day, five minutes
Before the circus, just across the street,
Began its afternoon show. What better music
For an entrance than a steam calliope
Roaring out "March of the Gladiators?"

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END

It wasn’t the demons; the neighborhood

Was used to demons, rioting in the bars

Or being noisily sick in the alleys.

Demons told jokes. Not good ones, true;

But the angels never seemed even to smile.

A barmaid told me she’d heard them laughing

I doubted this. Drink never made them happy

They’d won the war; God was on their side;

When had they stopped dancing?