Logic of Real Arguments

By way of explanation, I should note that this poem is very old to me--it was written on a camping trip in 1995, after finishing a dreadfully dry philosophy course with a textbook entitled "The Logic of Real Arguments." And then, at a campground in upstate New York, I watched a drunken couple argue. Needless to say, they didn't use the techniques outlined in the book.

The Logic of Real Arguments

A puts a hand out like a crossing guard--he wants it all to stop.

B says “You never talk--who are these ghosts that haunt your tongue?”

The books are closed on this game; we are taking no more bets

Good blood has incurred bad debts before this.

I had a textbook, read it cover to cover.

I was so prepared--I knew the rules--

I thought--and I was wrong--

That I knew you.

B has thought this all through--each conclusion follows premise

Like a wind-up toy.  A can only shout, but that will do.

Throw out your guidebook—it’s the same in every language,

Kind words strangled in your throat before these.

I had a textbook, told me

“Cut through words to structures,

Dispel needless emotions,

Think clearly now.”  But...

I shout and you crumple.          

I learn to fight dirty and win.

My record speaks for itself,

It has learned to shout for itself.

echoes #3: manifestations

i trace your face with this pencil tip

and every time i miss your lips:

the line of your jaw as you set your mind

on an ideal that you could never find

in a house as once upon a time

as mine. i trace your face;

i get it wrong. i look for you

and find sad songs amongst

my shoes, in my garage,

behind the cans that line the cupboard

mass-produced and stained incarnadine. i find

quotations in the oddest places:

snapshots of strangers writing books

that slow-dissolve at the opening line.

i erase my mind but still

the blank tape signifies, a simple hiss of absence

a white noise kiss that never lands

like hands that tilt

towards a face they cannot touch

so only trace in faulty lines

a set of signs that point towards the house

of once-upon-a-time,

the for sale sign, the windows hollow

like my tired eyes.

Echoes, #1: burst (photo echo)

i have this photograph.

i have this photograph

of you.

i have this photograph

of you at sunset. 

i have this photograph

of you. at sunset. by a pool

in a mountain stream. your camera

is pointed at me. your flash

is lit. a halo of white

obscures your face; you--

an invisible angel

lost behind the luminous machine of memory.

only your suntanned arms,

your stomach,

your independent legs, remain.

i assume you have 

somewhere in your possession

an identical photo of me:

stupid sideways grin

and unkempt summer hair

mercifully obscured

by the light i shone on you

exactly when you chose 

to shine your light on me.

our fingers must have moved

in perfect sync that one time once;

our two hands must have been a single hand

a gesture an echo

an act of attention

a mirrored action

a union that spanned

the chasm of a mountain stream 

that fading afternoon.

i can no longer say

where we were, or why, or even when.

i remember only you:

the pool, your arms and legs,

that burst of perfect white.

the trivia of time, of place, of motive

fades away.

bells in the city

bells in the city

where was i? somewhere.

could have been anywhere, i suppose.

stepped out into the street

and a bell chimed.

deep. sonorous—that’s the word.

the sound of brass bones in a body of stone.

the sound of coffins in slow procession

through dim grey streets. people would

stop, bow their heads: people used to

know their dead.

time parcelled out

in slow steady drops

like rain washing filth

from ring of the city sky;

washing mottoes from over the doorways;

melting the sneers of gargoyles

on the old church spire.

i paused, one foot in the air;

waited for the echoes

to disappear around corners;

watched them as they ran

along the windows of the bank.

somewhere a man is asleep

in a bus shelter, out of the wind

but still cold. all these great clangings

gather to him,

their clapper tongues lolling

like guard dogs around a king.

they mark his hours

measure the yellow of his nicotine beard,

carve deep the lines of his eyes.

i put my other foot down.

time resumes.

On the Publication of the Photos of their Mutilated Corpses

A preface: I wrote this poem a few years ago about Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam's two adult sons; but I have a sinking feeling there might be a grain of truth in here today for Osama Bin Laden, too. 


I am saddened by the way we move so quickly to demonize our enemies, so slowly to wonder how they came to be the enemies that they are. 


And I am terribly conflicted about the idea that the US, or any other government, can hunt down and kill people in other sovereign countries--even if those people are demonstrably bad citizens of the world. 


Don't get me wrong: part of me wanted Osama dead, just like a lot of other people wanted. But part of me doesn't think people should celebrate anybody's death by violence, and finds the whole thing tragic. Right now, those two parts of me aren't speaking to each other.


On the Publication of the Photos of their Mutilated Corpses

Some have chosen today

as a day of celebration—good

has thoroughly kicked the ugly ass of evil;

bombed the living shit out of the house where evil hid

for three months, waiting for a chance to run

for a dusty border.

When the walls had been well-reduced

to smoking, heaving rubble, good stormed in,

guns barking like rabid unclean hounds

and ripped holes in the body of evil,

as well as that of evil’s thirteen year old

son. And a bodyguard, presumably 
also evil.

Photos were taken

for publication so all the world

might smile or tremble as it chose

at the manifest evidence of the love

of one God or another

at work in the world.

But I am inexplicably sad—

perhaps perversely so—because 
at the same time

on the same block 
of the same dusty town,

the two derelict children of a derelict man

(raised on power divorced from responsibility,

broken and reglued

by a cruelty greater than their own

until they could not function except

as breakers themselves)

ran out of straws to grasp at,

were betrayed by a mercenary friend

who sensed a shifting of the wind,

and died

as they lived:

in a hail of shrieking metal

and the soft pop of flashbulbs.