Below is a poem from my 2011 volume March End Prill (BookThug) marking an intersection of the calendar’s circle and history’s line of singularities.

Saint Patrick’s Day 2003

 

libera agonalia nefastus publicus

I’d love to tell of sudden fish

 

 

late end of January Friday afternoon

New Square Fish Market New Square NY NY Luis

Luis Nivelo single handed lifts a flashing carp on the scale 20lb

Then out and down club up to club it for Sabbath gefilte

    tzaruch     shemirah     hasof     bah    !

Diablo! 57-year-old Skver Hasid Zalmen Rosen

11 children “Luis, what?!” I heard that fish talk! 

tzaruch     shemirah    Old Abraham

buried last week? Adonai?    hasof     bah

“account for yourself

“the end is near

“pray & study the Torah”

 

 

St Patrick’s: Shamrock Irish triple deities

long before Patrick’s Trinity; Roman festival

of Mars, an enormous phallus paraded

through the streets: green for sex festivals the fashion;

Middle Ages the day Noah boarded the Ark:

World Maritime Day.

 

 

…Saddam Hussein’s got 48 hours…

…the Day of Iraq’s Liberation is near…

…do not destroy oil wells…

…do not follow orders to use Weapons of Mass Destruction…

…“I was just following orders” no excuse…

…we are a peaceful people…

…not intimidated by thuggery or murder…

…new and undeniable realities…

…a policy of appeasement toward…

…plotters of chemical, biological, or nuclear terror…

…the just demands of the world…

…to overcome violence…

…the future we choose…

…& may God continue

to bless America

 

 

Thursday morning Kenneth Masterson out the front door for his paper

“five or six dead fish about 10 or 12 inches long out by th’edge of my yard”

in the street more some rush hour road kill more across

“don’t look like they’ve been hooked”

might be white bass no ponds or lakes near

“really bad storms I wonder if some twister didn’t just pickemup & dropem”

 

 

imagine being “jess a pohet”

in Baghdad; who gives a fugg

 

if you care little abt Saddam

& less abt Geawge Dablya,

 

jess wanna pen yr little

quirky sufi scrapings

 

in peace, pumpin yr 2 wives — thassall

ye kin afford– chewing yr majoun like:

 

you’ll be incinerated along with them

maddogs jess ’cause ya happen to be an Iraqi!!!

 

I believe it ain’t unright fr me to

feel some solidarity with benighted pohets

 

‘n’ artists cowering in bum shelters,

disfigured into faceless monsters a la

 

Saddam. I is dead certain

there are more than one confreres there

 

who write Je est un autre — only we

aren’t allowed to see them, knowem.

 

Is there such a thing as Iraqi samizdat

how to send ’em secret artists a sign?