On my desk, I found a pin
standing on end.
I can’t say I know
where it came from,
but I know about the angels.
On the heads of pins, there are
hundreds of angels, maybe millions—
who knows how many, but they are there.
Why angels gather, in vast
multitudes, on the heads of pins,
I cannot say. I know this, though,
when you have enough beings,
especially those with wings,
then games ensue—
and tag is the favorite game of angels.
They fly through the air, swooping
toward each other, delighting
in the freedom and the sheer speed
their glowing wings produce.
Their feathers begin to emit tiny flames
with thin trails of white smoke
while they speed along,
at speeds that defy physics,
at speeds that blur humans eyes,
at the speed of angels—
a wonder to behold,
and their laughter
rings pure,
so beautifully innocently-pure—
so pure that hearing it brings unguarded tears.
— OOO —
Even angels begin their games
with the choosing—after all,
in tag, someone must be “it”—and so
they stretch out their pale angelic-legs,
stacking their sandals like cordwood,
singing “Eenie meenie miney moe.”
One by one they are dismissed. It can take years
for the choosing to finish, but angels
have no use for time, and they delight in all of it.
At last, when there is but one angel left,
the one who is “it,”
there is a massive eruption of wings.
They blast into the air
looking like white, glowing, flaming, smoking locusts
swarming
in some blurry cloud of madness
only they can understand,
and in the cloud a chorus rises,
a chorus of laughing angels,
a chorus that makes God smile,
a chorus that brings unguarded tears.
An old woman in a purple dress
is outside kneeling on a curved brick
patio. It is 1989, Dresden in the summer
and perhaps I am the only one
aware that the bricks were collected
from the nursery that once stood
where she is kneeling. Dresden was
bombed in 1945. People
collected pieces of the nursery,
to make patios. The hanging
flowerpot outside my window is a helmet
filled with dirt. It is a part of the past
and people have absorbed it all.
There are bees here, with pollen clinging
like yellow socks. They visit every flower
in the garden. It looks like a labor of love,
the way they dive in, immersing themselves
in the petals—like desperate children
jumping into swimming pools.
On the table the newspaper is open
to a picture of a man carrying two grocery bags.
He is in Tiananmen Square, a place I
was unaware of until today. He is standing
in front of a column of tanks. Inside
each tank are crying soldiers. Men
ordered to turn on their brothers.
The old woman outside my window
smiles up at me, unaware of the past.
She is a purple thing, a part of the garden.
Today she could be anywhere
and be unaware. Today is the best day
of her life—her mind slips when she gardens.
Between the Boathouse and Anne
Frank’s, I read a favorite Haiku
over and again, until the words
have no meaning. I listen
to the sounds. I hear the poem
as though told by strangers,
and when I stop to think it
through, the Haiku, about birds
riding southern autumn winds,
is like sipping a dry familiar wine,
over and again, its insistent
finish lingering on the palate—
the way bells resonate long after
they are struck by the hammers of monks.
In the Van Gogh Museum, I whisper
the haiku to the Starry Night,
and the stars become birds pressed
into swirling winds, and I become
the face of the North Wind, blowing
with puckered lips. When I whisper
to Sunflowers, its seeds become blown-
birds slowly exploding into a paper-sky—
a smearing yellow-orange blur
suspended in the creamy air—
possessing some intangible meaning
greater than the words themselves.
And long after I leave Amsterdam,
the haiku will remain on the wind.
It will be twirled by working windmills.
It will be the unseen passenger on trains
passing through blooming tulips fields.
It will be remembered by the red-light-
district-whore I bedded. It will undulate
forever with her pale body. It will be eaten
by café diners, and scrolled on bathroom walls
by mindless travelers who believe
they thought of it first.
And when I return, someday, to Amsterdam,
I will draw it from the river. I will roll it around
in my chops. I will chew on it, like a perfect fig,
eaten over and again, until it is consecrated
on my tongue—until it transfigures, forever
dissolving like a wafer in my mouth,
something placed there by a poet-priest
—a man immortalized by a haiku.
In New York, between Adam Clayton Powell and
Frederick Douglass, there stands the Apollo Café.
People come from all over the world to listen to ear-java.
There are parades of angelic-singers gracing the pastoral-stage.
Sometimes they are practicing, like children sleeping,
waiting to die. A few have golden New York tickets.
That’s all well and good, except when the nostalgic-gates are
crashed by gorgons. They come scaled, looking for sirens,
slithering the musty building. They stare fiercely
at smoky-speakers mounted in the walls, unsure where
the heavenly music comes from. All over the theater
stone faces appear. The box-seats are filled with stone-men
smoking cigars, their hardened-hands frozen between the legs
of their screaming wives. Ushers are tipped over in mid
sentence. Chaos is in the aisles. Half the people are heavy,
leaded-stone-parishioners dutifully frozen in eternal prayer.
The others are confused, crying out in mournful panic,
What is happening. Brian what’s wrong with you?
What is happening. Brian what’s wrong with you?
Ohh, Lordy Lordy, have mercy,
Ohh, Lordy Lordy, have mercy.
The disgruntled ticket-master keeps admitting, and the doors
become jammed with frozen people, grey marbles with smiles
and ticket stubs. There is no escape for those inside.
Eventually the gorgons gaze at every soul.
Eventually they slither away, confused and disappointed.
Eventually only Ray Charles remains.
His voice can be heard echoing off hard surfaces.
Is anyone there?
Is anyone there?
