#poetry - to the immigrant idealist

you are young and naive,
but your parents are realists
and sent you here for a dose.

so, i know its fresh water
we expect you to piss on here,
something you'd never do at home,

just do it, kid, take the dose,
like your parents wanted,
close your eyes, if you have to---

close your eyes, kid,
and become an American.

na, na-na, na, na, na

one night for some odd personal reason
i got in a sport fisherman's boat
and stole out in the harbor of the old whalers,
passed through the hurricane dike walls
and lost myself in thought by the time
the old lighthouse rolled on by.

the wind picked up and became storm.
the high seas proved to be
a better captain than me,
and i went into the hold for the night
holding on to the thought of lost time.
but it did feel right then to be on the sea.

days may have gone by, i kept myself hidden.
then rough waters calmed
and the keel scratched hard and loud,
when halting, i knocked my head and reeled about.
topside. cloudless the sky. full day light.
and deserted beach stretched out like wings.

i fell out of the boat, flat on the sand.
dune grass in the wind clawed out for my hands.
i struggled to my feet and saw a high wall of stone,
lonely and natural. there beside this wall
a deserted rowboat lay, half eaten by the ages,
and upon the wall were scratches. legible. a message.

dear angel

to come of age, a crucible,
to make it there, a cannibal,

calls the coming age, your crucible,
but not to me, a man of all,

so not to be an animal
i am here, not there, a wall.

na, na-na, na, na, na.

there were no signs of life beyond these words,
there was only a hint of death
in the half-eaten row-boat.
i thought i might look around for bones.
i thought i might try to pull a fish from the sea.
i made a sandcastle and sat inside it awhile.

a crucible is not dreading the time
it takes to be ready,
for the things that are constant,
for the things that are changing.
i am not a wall. i can have more
than just a few lines scratched upon my surface.

i can launch from the port of the whale
and land on deserted shores
and encounter the echo of old woe
and be perhaps its only witness
and return to port, and make room in my heart,
for an angel or a half beaten rowboatman.

i can do these things and more,
and will, but still---
na, na-na, na, na, na.

Generatta

I sit here, where Eliot could not,

Twenty floors above the street.

People below are color spots—

Trowsers, rolled? Flat-front or pleat?

Of their flesh is a matter of guess.

That they are human, a matter of faith.

What are they—  What? Tsk tsk, sot—

I simply take note of their game,

Watching as the hawk eyes prey from afar

Through great lanes of land and air,

But I do not swoop, I lick my feathers clean

Of the knowledge my hawk eyes glean,

Here are not matters of pride or shame,

Here is only a question of how to compare

One spot to another, high above it all—

I do not swoop because swooping involves me,

And well, you see,

The twenty floors between,

Naturally, disinterest me.