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NUMBER 9
I do not know how, in this world, we can believe
in what we call love. Nothing,
and I mean nothing, dreams the same dreams
of those whose bloodied hands and torturers’ smiles
carry water away from the thirsty and food
out of the ash pits of the dungeons that the new kings
construct for migrants and the poor.
I do not know love’s contents in this race
that searches the widest firmament of its abundance
for a beast as like them as they can fathom and whose
inherent loneliness demands a pursuit of such desperate ardor
but still grinds bones of entire cities into grit and smut
or damns them with epochs of disease
carried in the soul’s blood like the blood of rats and wars
that infect ports and markets with a quickening
that ravages the heart of their remaining innocence. Go on, love
if you must. Can it save you? Our leaders go insane and our money
pays for the obscene marriages of freedom and bomb pits
for the dead. Yes, I know. I know this poem is meant to be relief
from all that, this talk of love, even of my love
for you whoever you have been, but some days I cannot
see beyond that darkness, an urgent cruelty that breeds
in the same bed with affection and necessity.
Who has unleashed into this callous universe such calumny
who has released such clinging against the devils of our fate?
*
* NUMBER 10 And yet, even now, the infinite magnificence of the world can be pronounced out of the caverns of my translucent dreams. I cross through the last wild lakelands, the sunny damp day, the deer moss, the old shore, the hot sand. Clarity comes at such expense! There is love there, love in the shallows of little lakes where scarlet birds announce themselves unbidden, where you and I discover the depth of our sanity and stake of what belongs to us what belongs to every sentient leaf and dragon fly, what belongs to belonging. Even with the grave future counting its days to us we find ways to illuminate a trail in the dark, the sweet cedar, the low places pressed down by the last snow then filled with the gloaming songs of peepers, with our gaze… I have yet to completely give in to the woeful stain, the waves that approach: oh tsunami of greed and loathing… these are the islands we have found, this is the respite the world gives to us, to be with it, in love, in love, in love with one another in love with it even as we threaten to overwhelm its defenses against the worst of our deep lessons. We were so small then, and bare, hungry too in the glade of our knowing we woke so lost but loved. *
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* In association with the "Oral History of Poetry in Grand Rapids Project", the Twilight Tribe Poets collective will have a reunion reading followed by an open reading. The reading will be held on May 7th, at QUINN & TUITES IRISH PUB, 1535 Plainfield Ave, Grand Rapids, Michigan; from 8pm until everyone is finished, or the place closes down or kicks us out. The Twilight Tribe Poets group was an alternative poetry and arts group active in Grand Rapids during the 1980s and early 1990s. For many years Twilight Tribe held monthly open readings in the East Hills neighborhood at GAIA restaurant and other locations around the Grand Rapids area. The Tribe was a diverse group of writers and poetry lovers. Their readings were well attended, often raucous, and celebrated poetry and its roots in the oral tradition. Though members of the Tribe will be featured, others are encouraged to bring work they wish to share. Drinks and food can be purchased at the venue. *