A NATION OF BEARS

The Big Ones will come for you (permissibly) in the night,
in the bedroom where you sleep, where as a child
your mother kissed you on your head,
and yank you from your bed,
brandishing their badges and their clubs,
for Love consumes the flesh of Fear

and you have chosen Love.
They will drag you, as cold and naked
as a frog at night, by your pimpled skin,
through the hallways of your mother's home,
past photographs upon her wall, the cat meowing at its bowl,
out the door, into the streets and beat you,

rob you, whisper rape threats in your ear;
for Love consumes the flesh of Fear, and to those
who in the commonwealth of William Blair condone
the killing season, you are a nation of Bears.
We will have mercy, you say:
We will chew to your heart through the back of your neck.

BENJY IN THE SUPERMARKET

Let go of me, Benjy--you're a burden.
There aren't enough belts in the world
to counterweigh your yanking. My pants, thank you,
are fine
just the way they are, and if I wanted them
down they would be

with a woman I doubt would want you
anymore than I do there, yanking
at my pants and sucking
your thumb--why the hell are you crying
now for fuck's sake like some sissy?--let go
of the cart, kid! It's not a ride!

Listen: Between your smile and my eye-
bags & beard, that cashier can't have a clue
if we're Big or Benjy.
So you act my supposèd age
today, kid, and come
tomorrow, God-willing, she'll pretend to be the Mum.

BENJY'S EDUCATION

It must be a Big thing, Benjy thinks,
to throw your daughter down the stairs.
His sister's not Big like his Mummy is. But little
girls ought'a learn, Benjy's heard, what that means:
That's a Big girl's education.
And where does that leave the boys?

What he cannot understand
is how that baby boy in diapers and all his
strident squeals & moans--how all those
scales he heard played out
seemed so chromatic then--became Big,
whether he knows what that means or not.

As he looks back on his sister
at her studies (crying), Benjy is struck
with a most confusing conception of himself:
Even if I have to die, he declares,
to get to the bottom of things I will.
Tomorrow, Benjy's gonna throw himself down the stairs.

BENJY'S VENDETTA

..............For Tallulah Dunkelman

In a shopping mall once I remember him bawling,
being dragged by the wrist beyond the drugstore; having
had (finally) enough, Benjy's thrown his hands & himself down,
with a frown and a fuss
fourteen years later, to the floor.
The Big Ones seem like they're always in a rush.

And for what? Where the world sits
praying for change, another bomb in the West Bank bursts;
where the poet starts seeming like he may make
mention of a long leg's function in the Great Rat Race, he diverts…
makes petty complaint of his mother instead.
Why won't you slow down? he said,

for one little girl, three-years-old, has taken
his hand & him across the road
and he's waiting!--he is waiting for her little legs
like every Big One ought to do.
-Said: Sweetheart, you walk at what speed your feet go.
The Big Ones can keep up. Our Mummies can follow.

FAMILY TREE

Memory: of a dream of a boy who is voiceless, mouthing
for a mother who is faceless, and falling
from a bed onto a hard and wooden floor, and his father
racing in to check. From there begins depression,
midnight hunger, images of Auschwitz & wooden shoes,
the daily news: the universe in all its eternal bleakness.

In twenty-ten I'm twenty-four and my father no longer races;
he is a pig's valve and a zipper, a yellow beatless chest,
one instance of Intensive Care in which my sister (inconsolable) stressed
that every Big One one day becomes faceless.
Memory: of decrepit Autumn leaves. Memory: of decomposing Earth.
I have fallen, Mummy. I have only ever fallen,

and I, like my Benjy, like my father's Benjy, must
decay, into wind & worms & trees
& Tatte--can you hear him underneath that beeping?--, how soon until we are a tree?
When will my branches, like your branches' branches, be
your father's branches, Tatte? We have fallen, Tatte. We have only ever fallen.
How soon until I can decay?

IN ACCORDANCE TO THE MURDER PACT

--said: Never mind to every tear,
to all my pride, my trunks of fear,
and drifted down river on raft
until the waters whipped him, tossed & gored,
and he tethered my legs to mast.
Not one black cloud moved quickly on.

Each drop of rain that fell upon him drowned.
I might have drowned that day as well,
tethered out yonder on the deep mad river, moaning,
"Come back, you fool, come back…" and diving,
he cried: She is a woman over whom every cloud moves past!
and the waters that day were winning.

Since then I see her less,
whether in her walls or waiting. I could not make it last unless
I clung to dried pansies and a scrap of her dress,
joys both true and untrue.
Eventually their sickly cloud moved thickly past.
I untethered my legs and went home.