Grandmoth (a translation)
The moth has hung itself among the portraits,
A Magrittean body-as-face.
With the frontal eyes of a predator it waits;
a cat outside a birdcage.
When I opened the jewel-box it fled in fear —
though it was the fear of an outriding scout,
his nation's might but a day's march behind;
his paltry mouthful of felt — good as glory.
I take out her necklace, a museum piece
for looking never wearing. For authenticity,
false memories fade like real ones.
I put it back and close the box, worn out
by looking up through week-old eyes
at my grandmother looking down.
Progress report
We are weak by the minute, strong by the year;
there's no precise way to judge our worthiness
as subjects — objects — sobjects! — in love; mere
bad weather can reduce us, as our impermanence
can rouse us to endure. We tried co-hibernation,
consuming only time; emerging topple-boned,
our big smash-mouth love was like a bear's swipe:
surprisingly precise. How did we refrain from
eating each other, when loosed from the black's die,
the one self-scent? . . . Next model: co-moderation.
We'll ration the bread we are to each other,
to outlast every war pent up in human nature. . . .
indentNo matter how we persist,
love's a lever. We lower when we want to lift.
The tiger, ending with a quote from FoxNews
Ye shall be slain all the sort of you; yea, as a tottering wall shall
ye be, and like a broken hedge. Psalm 62
Yearly you shrunk, paced; after inexplicable wait
you leapt the 8 ft moat and 12 ft wall
on wings presumed by the will to flight,
landing self-cleaned and bristling light
into a strange world of shrubbery for fencing:
man's maladaptive fear of seeing.
At last you saw around the corner
to the kiosk, to the music that had terrorised:
nothing, now in view. The teenage boy,
drunk, taunting, now hanging from
your latch of jaw, was wilder than you,
if wildness be the undeliberated life.
whether the escape was the result of a deliberate act —
police said they've not ruled anything out
Portrait of a family man with a portrait of his father
With a coinly profile, burnished as close to self-love
as punctilio permits, the man sits. In one hand
a manichaean cane at rest, in the other a picture
shown to his family: his mother and son seated,
his wife standing clasping the boy's head against her
crotch, steely aiming him at his grandfather's portrait.
His son stares down at