Poetry - Selections from The White Crow v1, i4

I

So many souls standing out against
      what looks like meticulously barren walls.
   Spotless, seamless white and soft white light.
Great care has been taken to bring to the fore
               the majesty of oil ejaculations
   and always the cool embrace of alabaster
                  or marble
Watch where you walk
   for you are in the presence of gods whose hands
      lay before your eyes what they have seen in sight beyond sight.
Show your reverence with silent contemplation.

Even the vaulted ceilings with their gilded lilies
   command a personal quietude which endures
   days after the eyes pass casually over them
The healers of many tribes and clans
      have assembled here for the ceremony
         to speak in shades of understanding
      and textures of belief.

II

When the Mongol hordes clothed the coming day in blood
   their prey never suspected
that one day their progeny's progeny's descendants would peer
      into a Plexiglas cube and marvel
at the apparent effectiveness of such rudimentary weaponry

When the captain of the slave ship crushed a village,
   driving the beasts he had come to acquire out of Mother Africa's womb,
did he ever imagine
   his great-great-grandchildren smiling
      before a pedestalled figurine from Ethiopia,
their far distant white blood forgotten
      but not gone?

When the hunger for all things gold drove the Iberians
      across the months of uncharted sea
   up to the very doorstep of the bloodstained Sun God,
who among them saw a future in which their descendant's handicraft
   would take its rightful place in large, quite buildings
      with one or two corners set aside
for the visionaries among the oppressed?

III

If only eyes could listen,
      hands hear,
   minds unclench frustration's fists,
would we finally in this museum
   become the we that is all humanity?
Do we dare
      set aside history for one moment to recognize
   within our own lives
inconsistencies in logic and action?
      Dare we attempt such speculation
in the quiet corners of museums and discover
   that what seems to be the case
is perhaps not so timeless as we would like to believe?

I close my eyes
   and echoes of wars and loves and cathartic release
dance somewhere between memory and dream.
For me war is unreal, love is but vague speculation,
      release feels like love and war should,
and my contribution may not last the length of my life
      but I heal myself daily
try to find a better way to make my presence felt,
try to echo in my offspring's very being
      with the resonance of the loving war,
the artifacts of peaceful hatred.

what will happen to the flat white flowers in the field beyond reaching up towards the sun?

But the word
'mistress'
is whispered
hushed
on streets
and in
kitchens.

She knows this
and as her
beauty
dies
she speaks
in tongues
of cruel
design,
sentences them
each
to her fate.

In time
they will paint her
portrait
as Venus
naked
to the heart.

this house
on beecher street

my wife stoned
in the upstairs bedroom

my hands
buried in the dirt
pulling weeds
from the garden

i've got a short list
of people i'd like to see
dead

i add new names every day

my wife smiles
when the pills let her

looks at me fondly
we travel on the weekends
slow trips up north
through wine country

we have neighbors
we don't know
and i write down their names
for future reference
i keep my arms
wrist-deep
in the damp soil

my thoughts wander
too much

my wife upstairs
with a noose
around her neck

the sun hot
on my back and shoulders

i should cut her down
soon

i should laugh more often

it's on my list of things
i regret not doing