On the hills where men once prayed,
Burned sage, bathed their sins with licks of sweat,
Stoic stone faces jeer,
Their voices soar, vultures flocking to a carcass.

They laugh at the desolate plain,
Veins no longer pulsing with herds of thunder.
Slap their knees, remembering,
Countless bodies cradled in the snow,
At the altar of a dead Christmas,
Beneath the boughs of peace, of mankind’s great joy,
Tears fill the pocks in their complexions,
They recall with glee the temptresses of beads, trinkets, whiskey.

But when the men returned, as they had promised long ago,
As prayers unfinished drew to a close,
The shamed stone faces
Laughed no more.

You are faces on a photograph,
shoebox memories, forgotten space.
Salt pills and lunch pails,
burnt-out Chevrolets on 4th Street.
Used Fords bought half price.

You are warm beer on Sunday afternoons,
a rifle in the closet,
a story of a German soldier dying,
crucifix in one hand,
family portrait in the other.

You are artificial Christmas trees,
humble gifts,
wrapped in Sunday comics,
arranged painstakingly on the smoke-stained carpet.

You are a three-hour drive,
fast-food dinners,
falling asleep to the radio.

Boxes of useless necessities,
cheese knives, packing tape.
The smell of cigarettes,
scratchy blankets, brown woolen socks.

You are no headstones, no flowers,
no funeral, no recollections.
You are not yet a man,
but the flesh of his only son.

Sons of conquest, naked and confused
On torrid desert dunes where chaos reigns
Where bells of holy terror harken news
To crooked beasts, backs surely bent with shame

A prophet mutters softly in his sleep
“Lay down the rifle, face the gospel sands
From Babylon, my people all shall flee
in Canaan’s river, they shall wash their hands”

Mothers speak of birds with iron wings
Diaspora reflected in their eyes
As Joshua throws his voice up high to sing
Moses turned his shackled hands to cry

Condemn the despot, may his statue fall
Close your eyes to graves beneath the wall

In the midst of the sermon
The undignified prophet,
Ablaze with unclear thoughts,
Rose up from his pew in song.
When he had come first to the temple,
parched, face streaked white with clay,
The priest poured him wine, brought him up
from his knees.
Silent in prayer, the prophet estimates
His time of reckoning is soon.
Any day now,
The priest shall turn his back,
The temple shall crumble like brass in Jericho’s palms
And the prophet never again shall sing.

Rolling hills of fertile land, dying notes of the Dixie band
Lethal balls of lead are brand and his soul goes marching on
Rally round the flag boys and hold out for your home
Soon there will be widows and orphans when you’re gone

Shoeless half-starved rebels still believe their savior
Is just ol’ Bobby Lee – he’ll lead them all to glory
One last final surge for the cotton farms of Dixie
Soon you’ll be in heaven sipping milk and honey

Remember all you men today are from Virginia
Your Ol’ Virginia home will be there when you die
Hats up in the air for grand ol’ general Pickett
Virginia boys can’t die from the fire of the Yankees

Cannon start to fire, Johnny Rebs are falling
Got to reach the hill for the glory of ol’ Virginia
Let out the rebel yell, we’ll meet those Yanks in hell
Rally round the flag, the stars and bars pass hands

Goodbye, ol’ Virginia, we’re at the gates of hell
A slaughterhouse of rebels no one will remember
Except for those who died that day for ol’ Virginia

Is that which turns thrones to ash.
Seven years of bellies full,
since Euphrates lifted up her skirt
to let us gaze at the throbbing heaps of gold
we could not touch
(how we wished to with our sweaty palms!)
Ten years ago, the starving devoured with their eyes
tables of plenty, reaching all the way to Baghdad,
all the pledges of Jerusalem, covered with a long black veil.
My children, crying, burned windows in the sand,
for voices had been raised in the temples, altars smashed
With leaden hymnals, sepulchers dulled by ire
from their father’s throats.  Shall we make
the deserts green? My hips told me to obey,
as did the goat and the bear who I saw
lusting after women drawing water from my well, naked
through their rags.  Is this the hour
of throwing prayers high to the stars
dancing through the dawn,
beating your hides with ox tails,
conspiring with you, faith
whose name is woman?
That which breaks to pieces
hangs above us now,
a spider dancing on the blade of a night,
spinning webs below,
tempting us to reach for them.

Burnt coffee on Tuesdays, served as if
Gods were born cold and wet, blessed in a cheap
plastic bassinet, adorned in toss-away overalls,
fed on asphalt and Sunday morning matinees,
rocked to sleep to sweet Egyptian rings, grew up
beside charcoal smeared kitchen walls, learned to fuck
hot and tight in backseats, heads poking up
like marmots when headlights eat the windshield’s fog,
slammed into a brick wall of paychecks, morning dailies,
bitter chicory on the way to bed beneath a concrete blanket…
The time of tatters and hunchbacked silhouettes, of groping
for coins in the two o’clock street light, has been upon us
for a while, so too the times of the Wednesday mornings
that you aren’t here, and Thursday afternoons you promised so long ago.

If you fell, asleep, into the water,
I would wake you.  I would cast my eyes downwards as you dried with a Persian rug,
sneaking just one prying glance, only long enough to feel that surge of tightness in
my shorts and say a quick prayer for loosening

I would mumble something as your hand felt for leather and shout and move back
and forth my thigh and not sleep and spend the night with your wrists painted upon
mine, ears melting into my chest, breath pining for the sound of open doors

I would arise in you and you would make not a sound but still you know that
together we played the song of the family even if we could not yet shape all the
chords

I would see you off with a dollhouse smile sewn to my face and retreat behind the
curtains to search for a speck of solace in the clothes that you wore in the
wintertime, waiting for me to come

If I fell, asleep, into the water,
Would you awake?

Dream on Colorado,
of ruddy towers,
chiseled steeples of the martyred and maimed,
dare you forsake me,
have you forgotten my memory,
stories etched in the flesh of my earth?

Dream on, Vancouver,
for the sake of the song,
smoke woven from the pebble of your eye,
do you remember,
the choir of thundering seas,
totems lost amongst the colors of our harbor?

Dream on, Susquehannock,
breathe away the neon lights, your torment,
wallow upon the mountaintops,
cleanse graves from the sorrow,
where you will labor when your work here is done?

Dream on, Tallulah,
Sawgrass, clamshells, cotton chains
Pray for fields of indigo and rice,
Have the branches of the magnolia,
Gleaned the pleasures of the harvest
Without a cry?

Dream on, Kootenai,
Trout eyes and bottles,
Scrap silver and Winchester shells,
Spent on silhouettes of claw and sinew,
Your tracks swept away by the tides of men,
Have you run the length
Of the call of the loon?

Dream on, Penobscot,
Child of broken-back winters,
Grace of firs and granite,
Hunted by axeheads and wool,
Who will listen when our antlered
Saint is felled?

Dream on, Shenandoah,
dream of milky mountains,
winding tunes, keening voices,
pleading, rising, from palaces of clapboard
and leather. Iron, could you sing me those same songs today?