Bits and Pieces

In the morning, the vendor sells me
a single Charminar cigarette, which I light
with the small oil lamp on his counter.
As he puts away the gold box
with the red insignia of a triumphal arch on it
I walk down the street
exhaling smoke like the morning’s
last idea.
Two days ago
a few blocks from here
a motorcycle rider pulled
an AK-47 from under his shawl, then opened fire
while driving past three MP’s
whom he killed, after which
he roared off down Chowringhee Rd.
This is how ideas come and go, so quickly
that observers later can’t reliably describe
what they saw
-- a gang murder? an action sequence in a U.S. film? everything
about freedom
the uncommitted don’t want to know?
Yusef Lateef plays flute on my iPod.
The snow’s beautiful
for as long as you can look at it
before the curfew forces you back inside.

-- from Ice Shed Legacies / Sect. III ("Subcontinent Notebooks") / Kashmir Sequence

Graffitti Triptych Decal / "Lucidities Americana" / left panel / 17" x 19.5"

(revision)

Poem text from decal:

How It Came Alive in My Mind:
Recollection of a Work by Mexico’s Christian Núñez That I Saw in the Art Museum of the Americas on 18th St. in Washington DC

A day after being yelled at by cops, I saw a picture in a museum. The picture was a work of art. Things in museums are always works of art.

Because things in museums are art, wherever I go I build museums out of words, then stick anything I choose into them: sexy eyes, turds, a hookworm emerging from a scared kid’s nose, the Mona Lisa, my mother’s menses, anything I want. It’s all art.

Many baseball players and rugby players should be praised in art books. Photos of their movements should be used to illustrate “moional art” while many actual artists, but not all, should be reassigned to pro baseball’s minor leagues.

Christian Núñez , however, is an artist who doesn’t belong in anybody’s farm system.

The picture I saw in the museum was his, a black and white affair, but now in my mind it’s growing color just like the bearded lady in the sideshow grows facial hair. You think if the cops spied her, they’d read her the riot act like they did me?

After seeing Mr. Núñez ’s work in the museum, I immediately hurried outside, crossed the street and plastered a graffitti decal on the first surface I saw.

This is what the graffitti decal looked like --------------------------> (picture of decal)

and this is what it said:

Me is baby Democracy
growin’ up in Iraq,
I get my vitamins
by suckin‘ Empire cock.

Cuz Daddy America
thinks my cunt’s a dirty mosque,
he scrubs it with Cleanso Sperm
in the desert dusk.

Hot shit, huh? You see, I made my own museum out of words and stuck an Iraqi baby in it and named the baby Democracy. If I spot those cops, I’m gonna shake it in their faces.

I like showing folks what’s going on, it’s my art project.

If this bothers you, fuck off, join the army, kill somebody’s honey.

And by the way, watch out for that giant rabbit in Christian Núñez ’s picture. If you don’t, it’ll kick your ass. Nature’s pissed at us and wants to screw us bad.

Graffitti triptych decal / retitled "Lucitities Americana" / central panel / 20" x 19"

(revision)

Poem text for decal:

Irina Malinovskaya, Patron Anti-Saint of Immigrants & Those Suffering from Aborted Longings

Riding a horse-drawn wagon from Russia to England wasn’t in the cards, so Irina Malinovskaya’s ancestors didn’t get to ride on the Mayflower. Plus, they weren’t Puritans, which meant they couldn't have gotten on board even if they’d arrived on time. Still
migration was on their minds and so
they bided their time
-- for generations.
Centuries later, Irina was the first of her family to make it here and like most immigrants her bags were stuffed
with contradictions.
Whereas the pilgrims had killed Pequots, she killed sexual competitors, or so her detractors claimed.

No two stories are the same.
Take Mother Mary as an example. She and sugardaddy Joseph migrated to Egypt. They were illegals, not having received permission
to leave their homeland. Malinovskaya, however, wasn’t an illegal, just unstable. Which is why, the cops said, she killed the Zlotnikov woman.

The investigation went on for months.
From the moment of Malinovskaya’s arrival, there were rumors.
Some said she was an Amazon hottie with a dripping vagina made from the colored feathers of rainforest birds.
Others screamed one look from her was like the U.S. accidentally bombing an Afghani wedding
and killing the attendees.
Always one rumor then another.
Mr. Aziz, an Iranian immigrant, informed friends over cards one night
“When she told people how much she loved her new country
every nerve in their bodies danced like a Sufi mystic in a courtyard filled with the scent of nearby lemon trees.”
Meanwhile on Walnut St. in Wilmington, DE Miss Rose chuckled
“On her first July 4th here, the New York Philharmonic played ‘Lover come Back to Me’
while she performed cunnilingus on the Statue of Liberty.”

In the end, only one thing is certain:
Even if Malinovskaya slew the Zlotnikov woman who tried to steal her lover,
Sitting Bull doesn’t give a shit. Instead, he sits
in a sweat lodge on the prairie, pouring water onto hot rocks. As steam rises
like the earth's breath, he remembers earlier deaths, not the last.

Graffitti decal / 5" x 3.5"

(revision)

What I Learned from Kabir
for Sajitha

The flesh rests. It is its own bed.
The mind rests, anesthetized with clarity.
The body's voice rests, echoing faintly
in stones and snapdragon stems.

In the quiet
the quiet is itself the creek that flows
in the woods off Drummond Rd.
I crouch on its bank.
The darner fly on the fern leaf
doesn't move.

Once further north, I was lucky enough to hear
pigeons breathing
as they slept at night
on a bridge piling.

The gov't I live under is useless.
Fortunately, my anger is a form of tranquility.
On my way to battle, I do the bhangra with poplars.
A person who explodes with ideas
is a suicide bomber in a library in which
all the books say, "I'd watch my step if I were you."

Prophet
for Mickey Bykov

The silo on your back, filled
with the cow feed’s silence, yelled
“Brooklyn, look!”

Coming Back Is Always Just Coming Back, Except . . .

Where I walk in sweltering heat on the ridge
above rice paddies,
the snow’s a half-foot deep.
The mind works like this. I’m home now
not there. Still
the vividness of the man
squeezing juice from cane stalks
with a manual crusher surprises me.
For a few coins each, farmers buy cupfuls
in the heat.
I love the way
the snowy wind blows in my face.
That’s here of course, yet there’s also
back there
not in the south but in
Kashmir
a wind like this
-- and war.
Home now I walk across a field, knowing
each inch of it like the back of my hand, yet still
where the field ends and the woods begins
doesn’t seem right.
I refuse to walk there,
my headache’s growing worse,
the sun’s so hot I can barely breathe.
Later after returning to the house, I should finally shovel the walk before
someone slips.
Thank God we’re not supposed to get
much more snow tonight.

Mueller

The kids know school will soon
be out for the summer.
One stares through the window
into sunlight and is already there.
When he looks back over his shoulder
at the field he’s crossing, he sees
no footprints, not one sign
he was once back there.
After closing his eyes for only a few seconds
he wakes up in a chair.
Although his knees hurt
from arthritis when he rises
he doesn’t mind.
The only thing he minds
is not knowing how he ended up
here
80 years later
staring at a frame
that no longer has
a photo in it.