Sun Bear. Matthew Zapruder

      in order to love anything

      but an animal you cannot allow

      yourself to believe in those things

      that are if we don’t stop them

      going to destroy us

Aubergine

      I lie in bed

      staring at the ceiling

      last night before

      I fell asleep

      I put the book

      on the floor

      looking down

      I see its spine

      with the golden

      simple name

      of the old

      poet who might

      already be dead

      somehow he used

      ancient magic

      everyone says

      we don’t need anymore

      to place inside

      me that perfect

      sadness

      at last

      after all the formal

      words of love

      I could really imagine

      how terrible

      some day

      not for fifty

      years or so

      but still

      for one of us

      to say goodbye

      it will be

      again fear

      that is almost

      seasickness and also

      surely irrational

      hope by that time

      I will in some

      way feel “ready”

      through me

      moves and then

      asleep again

      I am wearing

      a dead rich

      man’s black

      luxurious overcoat

      gold buttons

      it is snowing

      in a vast

      wooden hallway

      I am not cold

      someone laughing

      says just watch

      them learn the same

      lessons he means

      my children I don’t

      have yet

      I touch the head

      of a very important

      black goat

      and wake up again

      the clock radio

      says a small

      tremor shook

      some part

      of the desert

      no one lives in

      tiny drones

      we are flown

      by what we do

      not know into

      blue election

      season

      inevitable spells

      are cast

      by warlocks

      they move

      their hands

      and factories

      rise or stadiums

      into dust

      collapse

      8:10 a.m. December

      San Francisco

      rainy season

      you pull on

      your boots

      I call them purple

      the label says

      Aubergine

      you leave

      for work

      and by a jolt

      of atavistic

      sadness electrified

      I move

      once again

      to the impassive

      black desk

      to clock

      in for my eternal

      internship

      at the venerable

      multinational

      not for profit

      Lucid & Dreaming

What Can Poetry Do

      In Africa people are angry.

      They are climbing embassy walls

      and burning whatever is there.

      Each time I click on some words

      and read what we call news

      I feel certain some people

      while I was reading have died.

      I know I am here merely reading.

      I just sit in my room and worry.

      As always I can do nothing.

      So I close all the portals and go

      deep in my mind to discover

      something about Tunisia.

      Tunisia of desert silence

      broken by occasional battles

      where a man set himself on fire

      then revolution then elections.

      Tunisia whose cosmopolitan

      capital city Carthage

      the Romans completely destroyed.

      Tunisia where they filmed

      the familiar home planet scenes

      of the space movie we all stood in line

      a million years ago to see.

      I don’t know anything else.

      Now I remember something

      I once read about the forests

      people are carefully growing

      far from the capital city.

      The trees are eating the poison

      probably much too slowly.

      But still they take the particles

      and even if we don’t deserve it

      our air is a little clearer.

      It’s like the painting I saw

      of a witch in the forest

      her hair in a black column rising

      like