Petty Fingers

My fingers feel petty today
tapping under a sky of blue chalk.
Somewhere else, across
a stately mountain range,
body bags are catching limbs
and a Brooks Brothers Store
is doubling for a morgue.
Rubble is a hailstorm
that violates the autumn flesh.
Inconceivable and firm,
set fast on sorrow’s acreage.
I check the Dow and
hate the shape of dollar bills,
my shiny dimes of selfishness.

All who shed their dreams for ours,
plummeted to granite slabs,
perished in atrocity
will be remembered in their graves.
Wreaths of jasmine line the streets.
“Why the risk?” reporters ask a fireman
who came so close to losing limbs,
drug a flock of slaughtered lambs
to cherished urns on mantles
of un-chosen grief.
I listen for the hummingbirds
of steel planes and zipping swords
of our defense that circle in the quiet air.

All the dead are Aslans on the altar block.
Its pale marble never pure,
aching to unload a wound.
Justice brews like chicken stock --
strips mittens from a mountain lion.
Men will stand in breadlines
of a just revenge, become
the crumbs of sacrifice.
Freedom’s cello tightens strings.
Some orchestras must play their scores
with cross bows of our skeletons.
These heroes are our tourniquets.

First Published in Thunder Sandwich

New York, New York

From distances, from cobblestoned naiveté
you were a city of chills:
crowded streets of suits and ties,
surly frowns, prison bars on window glass.
I saw a pasture drowned in mace,
maps of penciled busyness
turning pages of an hour.
Footage shines on CNN;
heroes cut my tongue in two.
Now I wallow in my shame,
wear the rust of judgment blades.

New York, New York
will sing again and I will proudly
sit a grain in little pills of subway cars,
read graffiti like a kiss
my feeble lips must herald
in their cracking pose.
Bays around our liberties are filling up
with scraps of hate personified.
Terror tried to slit your wrists;
fingers joined in trinities;
a poem of hope emerges from the graven ash.
Moons above the urban rubble
linger in chipped bars of soap.

Strike the ivory with our blood --
fragrances run rivers
from collective streams.
War drums beat. I never thought
I’d grab a stick, pound
with all my muscle fire.
Never thought I’d love
the sound of steel planes
cutting through the cotton clouds.

First Published in SpokenWar