You work.  You work, Buddy.  You work.

Word of immigrant get-ahead grind I hear

huffing through me, my grandfather?s breath,

when he?d come in from Saturday?s keep-busy chores,

fending up a calloused hand to stop

me from helping him, haggard cheeks puffing

out like grey t-shirts hung between tenements,

doubled-over under thirty-five years a machine

repairman at the ball-bearing factory, ball-bearings

making everything run smoother ?

especially torpedoes.  He busted butt

for the war effort, for profiteers, for overtime pay

down-payment on a little box of his own,

himself a refugee from the European economy,

washed ashore after The War to End All Wars.

Cheap labor for the winners.

I hear his youth plodding through the hayfields

above Srednevas, and the train that wheezed

and lumbered to the Trieste, the boat where he heave-hoed

consumptive sister, one-two-overboard.

I hear him scuffling along factory smoke choked streets

of Cleveland, coughing out chunks of broken

English just to make it to Saturday morning balinca ?

how he grunted off a week?s worth of grit

hurling wooden balls down the pressed dirt court,

sweaty wisp of gray hair wagging from his forehead,

This is how the world turns.  You work hard.  You practice.

And I hear his claim as we climbed the steps

of Municipal Stadium, higher, into the cheap seats,

slapping the flat of his hand against a girder,

I built this, Buddy.  I built this.

But mostly I hear how he?d catch

what was left of his breath after those Saturday chores,

pouring out that one, long, tall cold beer

that Grandma allowed, holding it aloft,

bubbles golden as hayfields above Srednavas,

before savoring it down and taking up

the last task of his day off ? cleaning the cage,

letting Snowball, canary like the ones once used

to test coal mines for poison air, flap clumsily free

around the living room, crapping

on the plastic covered davenport and easy-chair

they only sat in twice a year.

And I?m still breathing, Grandfather, that day

you took me down the basement to the cool floor

to find out what was wrong. Come on, Snowball,

fly.  Fly! The bird splayed out on the same linoleum

where they found you, next to your iron lung,

where Grandma mopped for weeks after,

pointing with arthritic fingers, See. There.

There?s where he fell and bumped his head.

See the specks of blood? She can?t work out.

One fine morning when my work is done

I?m gonna fly away home, fly away home.

Come on, Snowball, fly.  Fly?

from Bone Orchard Conga, BOOKS

O Say Can You See

O say can you see

this country free

of bigotry, hostility, incivility

from sea to shining tv?

The tribes are picking up sides

from Ferguson to Charlotte

from Minneapolis to Cleveland

and there?s nowhere left to hide

for the children of the dream

walking hand in hand

down the black and white wound

running across this land.

What?s wrong with this picture?

Can you find the human

being beaten on this screen?

Being beaten on that screen?

He deserved it. ?Payback happens.?

What goes around, comes around,

said the eye for an eye blind men.

But the rioting is on the wall.

?Mr. President, you have a call

on the white courtesy phone.?

It?s the BLANKS? fault.  The BLANKS

started it.  You know how they are.

They don?t really belong here.

So we sell ourselves on talk shows

like bugs shaken in a jar.

And the finger of blame points around

in an angry trigger circle.

We?re all living in the same hood now,

buying into Babylonian hype.

Mad. Ave. went to bed with Holly Would

and raised a little family of stereotypes.

Say, hey can you see

somebody who looks just like me

 somebody who looks just like you,

peering out from the leaves

of our family tree

rooted in Mother Africa?

We are the children of the dream

who wandered our separate ways

along time gone, gathered together

here again today.  Remember?

Can we call ourselves brothers and sisters?

What color was the hand

Cain raised against Abel

after it fell?  How will we ever

wipe the slate clean

when the powers that be

sell us whitewash and blackball

so we can paint ourselves

into our own corners,

the mirrors of our monsters?

Can you see the eyes

of a sister, a brother,

a mother, a father

behind the masks

of your worst nightmares?

O say can you see

through the lies

that we are not us?

That we are us versus?

And where is Justice?

Or is it just us?

We are the children of the dream

wandering the desert of America

through the smokescreen

from the fire next time come home,

walking hand in hand

down the black and white wound

running across this land

healed over with each step       

together and together again.

O say can you see the person

walking next to you now?

Tasting What of the Sun We Can

At the end of summer the last
of the tall grass stems yellow and hollow.
Rafts of ironweed and goldenrod
cluster over the field, and we both
recite their names, assuring each other.

We pick bristleberries that absorbed
their fill of the sun's pulses
and smash them between roof and tongue,
tasting what of the sun we can.
We spit - ripe is a day sooner than rotten. 

I snap a black, fallen branch open
and smell the inside's incense
and hold the cherrywood out to you.
You draw in, then exhale, nodding good, 
agreeing to what is passing.