GETTING TO GUANGZHOU

For every Icarus who falls

Headlong from the sky there is

An Anti-Icarus who digs a hole

All the way to China, remembering

To make a sharpish left turn when he's

Gone about two-thirds of the way

So he doesn't drown in the Pacific.

ELIMINATING ALTERNATIVES

 

Melancholy is not clinical lycanthropy,

(The state of suspecting you're a wolf)

Nor is it kuru (when your nipples

Are thinking about killing you 

By suddenly inverting and attacking

Your interior). It isn't sadness simple;

It isn't grief unmixed nor agenbite

Of inwit. Saint Theresa says that

The pain of God setting your soul on fire

Isn't really melancholy either. Durer 

Thought melancholy had a beard

All that's known for certain is that

Melancholy is cold, dry, dark and heavy.

Lucifer's been called the first melancholic 

But insists that was God, not him. "This was,"

He says, "back before the first day so there

Was no light; the mistake was natural."

JOURNEYING

 

Having suitably prepared yourself

Having dressed in appropriate colors

Having bid your reflection farewell

You shoulder your pack and move out

Your shadow shoulders his pack too

Heavier than yours and filled

With what you meant to leave behind.

MISSION

 

To weave through alleys the moonbeam

Must act as light was never meant to

Moving in slow spirals, cultivating a taste

For music played subtly out of tune.

It must ignore silver and pretend

Its pulse quickens at the sight of gold

(Where did it acquire a pulse let alone

One that could plausibly quicken?

Must it have blood too then, and veins

And arteries to hold its blood and then

A body to hide veins and arteries and all?

It must.) Learn to swagger and sway, walking

With exaggerated care after long nights spent

Drinking down by the docks until two dim moons

Shake their heads and ask why you've not found

A certain scatter of unblessed bones.

EVERYWHERE

 

Used to ubiquity, God

Going up a hill

Nods to Himself 

Coming down 

But tells St. Lucina,

Who's walking with Him,

"Don't stop to talk;

We'll be here forever."

JUST AS WELL YOU DIDN'T WANT TO BE KING

 

Since you're not Banquo or Macbeth

We're not witches right now; we have

No prophesies for you. Our cauldron

Is filled with soap and boiling water;

Return to us when you have laundry.

AFTER THE DEATH OF SMALL ENEMIES

 

In synagogue, will everyone rise

For the mourners' kaddish?

Will you light yartzeit candles

Every day just when twilight

Forbids your eye from telling

A blue thread from a green one?

Will you wonder: all those destroyed worlds --

What would they have been like?