The Lions of Ethiopia I You are crossing the foreign sand of youth Panting Pawing There is no night here No day Crossing Clawing Dead is the moon! Dead is the sun! Go on with you Living has fallen from you Like stars dripping down the bare arms Of a lewd dancing dawn You that is the distended part of me As the Kebessa plateau is the dry tongue Of the Red Sea Did you know back then Of secrets whispered among the leaves That cannot be written down With a cheap Bic pen Or a Cross Brothers of gold Did you know that the song of Bathsheba Caught in the ice Crisscrossing the clothesline back home Waits for a spring of ears That cannot thaw Even in the deserts of all days Dead is the day! Dead is the night! If it is dead then it is dead I tell you The day and the night Have nothing to do with darkness and light I tell you again It is time to get this right That night that you know That day Is as dead as rock Rising with all its might To make mountains of death Listless and light I tell you My lion Pacing and prowling There is no more sleeping on dusty plains No more lounging in the afternoon heat Your mate is not returning with your meat I tell you There is no more stretching no scratching no yawning No more idle chewing Upon yesterdays chips of white bone Gone is the roaring! Gone is the snoring! You that have feasted on the thickest parts Did you know your ribs protrude And you red eyes are yellow From the poisons of the grass Did you know there is less sprinting Less sighing in fading starlight No matter the endless minting Of suns sick with light But not this one dead in the night Not this one Reasonable Irremovable But not right. My lion is shivering in a sheet Dark white. II Dead is the winter! Dead is the whisper of a light snow In the ear of Israel Dreaming of January back home In Idaho I go with Israel to find an Ethiopian whore That was never paid for And riding on the back of his antique Indian Through the turquoise town of Asmaria I looked for you My lion And found nothing Not one hair from your mange It was baffling it was stressful and strange Did you limp back into the shade Angry and afraid? Riding No Gliding By hotels of blue and red plaster Israel called out to all the whores On the first second and third floors Huge empty rented rooms Cushions piled in one corner Where your companions may have once crouched Red gray tongues lapping In gold bowels of water Tasting of tin We go inside we come out We go back in Where is she Screams Israel Where is my love? Where is she My lion And you Are you in shade completely black Breaking teeth on the last bit of Israel’s whore Are you merely ivory fangs found on a dark shore Is that her ear on the red floor? III An Ethiope washes my hair Her dark fingers scrap a blonde scalp The late shadow of a dying hermit crab Drags itself across white sand I am soon sick with the wet heat Of your breathe upon my neck Strewn around my iron bed They argue about the dead Dying lions Fighting over the dead While you are already Halfway down African Alps And I ask them about you Between rubs and shampoo And these seaman and hunters and Ethiopes These dying lions Rattle yesterdays and tomorrows Popes They build a platform and set up ropes Singing Praise to the savior! Praise to the saved! But if he is dead then he is dead I tell you The day and the night Have nothing to do with darkness and light It is time to get this right Is the unseen lion the only sight? Panting Pawing Shivering in their own blood stained sheets Dying lions dreaming know There is no dawn No twilight IV Back in the barracks Stereos blasting Black Sabbath and Karen Carpenter Swells of sugared doomsday As I stand at the end Of a cinder block hall And peer through a porthole At bleached buses with charcoal drivers Waiting in formation To take radioman to their radios Iserals from their Idahos Buses anxious for fornication With the voluptuous curves of asphalt lanes And when it should never rain It rains I go back to bed In a room where walls Rise only halfway to the ceiling Where African spiders Are wheeling and dealing With the buzzing of a fly And I tell you I am sick of the long-winded sigh Of dying lions A few doors down Sick so horribly sick Of the crucifixion and impossible cry Of that insignificant fly And but for the sinking stunt Of a purple pill I would rip down the web And run down the hall To bang on the doors Of such sighing lions I would get back on the bike And search for the whores Dark and dying In the arms of sailors Lying lying always lying About their love for Shakespeare’s Ethiope The jewel in the ear Of every famine year Commemorated with statues of soap That sterilizes the earth as each melts Leaving outlines of white welts. I tell you It is not enough To rise in the morning Among silence torn open Like bullets bursting Through one ear and out the other Torn to shreds By the first calls of the prayer of the Muezzin And Catholic bells attacking them Echoing across Eritrean Highlands God at last clearing his throat After a long night of phlegm I tell you It is not enough To eat bacon and eggs and drink beer With Spec Fives who sit in the rear Of the Enlisted Man’s Club Debating death It is not enough Surrounded by dying lions Arguing death One insisting It is life without breath The other sighing If you are dead then you are dead And there is nothing left V You that has crossed the foreign sand of youth The prowling lion Of all dreams How is it you play In the dreamless day And sleep So long and so deep Always rustling unobserved Like black crows crowding a dark limb On a moonless night Is this unseen lion the only sight? And if you are dead then why are you dead? And if alive why do you live? And where do you go? I want to turn to you and ask Of this blindness But what could you know? I climb back on the back Of Israel’s bike And ride breathless To the edge of the plateau And look down at mists Trapped in dark green canyons At wind swept trees wet With the sweat of your hide As you escape down a mountain side Into another night I know you are there My prowling lion So I steady myself By the good arm of Israel And call down to you I ask you of the day and the night That has nothing to do with darkness and light I call down to you As you lope just out of sight I call down to you It is time It is time to get this right
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 00:19:17 +0000
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