Ceremonial Ghazal, and: Burning History

Ceremonial Ghazal

Drape my igneous hips in a girdle of bone
strung gleanings from charnel field's clutter of bone

You dwell in a country of exile and hush
each night I cross over that border of bone

I sought sleep's relief in your stonemason's arms
lull me to dream in a cradle of bone

Twenty year's journey on sheet metal sea
steering my ship with a paddle of bone

My broken throat cries for a sheltering sip
pour me a cup from your ladle of bone

Knit vision to language, braid words into blood
weave daylight to dark with a shuttle of bone

Live in your skeleton, lodge in your skin
build your strong house with a girder of bone.

Burning History

Half a world away, ashes
from the gutted library sift through empty
streets, deserted even by soldiers
whose weapons aimed to waste
a regime, not spare a civilization.
Smoke filters the sun white.

California poet, I finger my white
page, try to coax words from the ashes
of my overburdened brain. Civilization
keeps speeding up, gobbling the empty
spaces in the calendar. Is poetry a waste
of time, pursuit of fools, not soldiers?

I'd never don the uniform of soldier.
I'd rather dress in layers of white,
take my begging bowl, waste
my education, than to smart bomb to ashes
this old city. It would hollow me, empty
me to ravage an ancient civilization.

And what could we mean when we say "civilization"
if our conflicts are still settled by soldiers?
All night I sing to the empty
moon, her arms so cold and white.
I rub my eyes to flush the ashes
out; on my hands, the stench of waste.

I used to spend my days wasted,
having turned my back on civilization,
recycling the ashes
from my pipe, convinced of my superiority to soldiers.
I had the luck of being white:
I could choose to keep my mind empty.

But now I feel the world more empty
for the loss of books I never read. History wasted,
pages once bone white
now cinder; what will be lost to civilization?
I find myself believing that the soldiers
could have saved the library, but let it burn to ashes.

These words are ashes on an empty
afternoon. Words are not soldiers. Wasted
civilizations return to essence, white.