Insurgent Memoirs

blossoms are nothing but rot:

A mild insurgency.

12,000 more soldiers

now stand in weather

smelling blood.

The Defense Department acknowledges the use of napalm

in the city of Fallujah.

The newspaper predicts blue poles

and boating in the far north. I'll vouch for the impression

left by the rodents who emerge

on the right day in the wrong weather.

It rains across my eyes, deep as the Atlantic

and fouled by shipping. The rich are still able

to tarry a while on the bluff and watch

the sport of great unwinding mammals

growling in the surf. Cocktail hour

is a time of peace, reinforced with linen on the table,

soft music, mild torture in the anterooms, but rainclouds

cover me in my simple camp.

An insurgent bluejay tangles with my scrambled eggs.

In Guantanamo disturbing noises are produced

by the introduction of a wire into a niche.

Dogs die momentarily along the nation's highways,

cats are utterly without compunction,

men like me are squatting on every scrap of unposted land in the west,

which amounts to certain distant bluffs.

And the undersides of rotten logs.

Yellowjackets inject their measure of poison into my uncomprehending blood

causing me to swear and turn blue.

Half the daffodils

are going to bloom in a hard freeze.