Two Poems

Two Poems

A Choreography of Corpses

Something wants to come near,
a choreography of corpses.
Landmines, tattoos
and boys cooking rice
in the alley behind the jail.

Girls so young you could snap
them between two fingers.
Why did you join the rebels?
Nothing. Nobody. Because
the world is hard and undisturbed

by hacked roots, shallow graves wrenched from frost.
Thin flies listen for transition.
Your laughter sparks its own friends.
Something wants to come near, in boots,
with exposed wounds, brute opposites.

I know you can graph this violence,
indigestible myth, the heavy price of freedom,
fragmented families, bones, halfway sunrise to democracy.
Civilization of suffering, genius of wounding,
doubled padlocks on doubled gates.

Graph the equation: 385 prisoners in a jail
built for 125. Nails stand up through boards
to shred hijacked bus tires.
Exhausted kingdoms return to stories.
Thus the colossal waste of time.

Whiskey reveals the moon in plaster,
glittering afternoons circle disappearing jobs.
Warmth and bad fog come nearer and nearer.
There is a graph; there is a bridge
which inevitably washes away.

Variations on the Heart Sutra, Nepal 2006

Listen, Shariputra, listen.
I was kept blindfolded in a ball court for thirteen months.
I memorized the names of fifty prisoners thinking
I would be released the next day and could tell their families they were alive.
I lost track of the days after I was hung upside down
by my feet and plunged headfirst, naked, into a tub of cold water.
Awaken to perfect enlightenment. I lost track after the electric shock.

Listen, Shariputra.
Three days on a concrete floor in the snow, no shoes.
Four whacks to go to the bathroom, four whacks to come back.
No old age and no death. Listen.
No man who beats you thirty times with the plastic pipe
and also no ending of the man who beats you thirty timeswith the plastic pipe.

No names of those who lay there in silence.
No names of those who were hauled away.
No names of those who were transferred to the jail,
and no ending of names of those who died,
of those who were released and arrested again.
How old was this one? What did that one do for a living?
Fled to India? Went underground?

We give thanks to those who gave us milk to drink
when we were hungry. All those women long since gone.
I've been swept up in a tide beyond my control, Shariputra.
It is bearing me towards the fields of battle, Shariputra,
fields of cartridges, caps, candy wrappers, and flowers.
Children throwing rocks at unexploded bombs.
All living beings great beings. The heart of perfect wisdom.

Bombs dropping all around.
Just a little bit, just a little bit of mercy.
The house of a baby born two hours before the attack
burnt to the ground, a child spirited away under fire,
born into a world without shoes on its feet, without bread to eat.
May you some way, some way be healed.Kuan Yin, find us on that dark and broken cement.

We give thanks to the fire of a heart in snow, the gate of sleep,
to those who held us in their arms when we cried.
May they cross on over. Cross the bridge, nicknames
family names caste names, cross on over. Cross the bridge.
Walk through all the gates. Don't stop: the gate of the Capital,
the gate of razor wire, the gate of the prison,the gate the gate the gate.

Note: Shariputra is the student to whom the Heart Sutra, spoken by Avalokitesvara, is addressed.