BobbiDykemaKatsanis

untitled, for a friend

first inhalation
steel-sharp with fear,
born into strangeness,
love that stings like fire.

a father:
big-bellied, deep-voiced,
cruel mouth of gold-capped teeth,
boot heel clicks on hardwood floors
like sight adjustments on an M-16.

held in his lap,
age seven,
teased so mercilessly
I summoned all the force of childhood
protest: urine, tears, and vomit.

framed in that house
are stories, secret, sealed
behind six pairs of lips,
beneath a gathering swarm,
whispers of new souls
schooled in misery,
fresh plums in tender flesh.

children growing a wolf behind their eyes
ready to snap,
with snarls and swaggers just like his,
piercing new lungs
with terror’s metal scent.

can hope,
locked suffering thirty years
in creaking echoes,
breathing, barely,
find its rusty key
taste free, wide sky?

January 17, 1991

across the wintry, desiccated dark
telephone bleats,
reveals not voice
but lightning strike of pain,
shrieking, howling, sobbing, screeching
like they’d murdered her own son.

that anguished mother
did not need an ambulance,
firefighters, or police—
but a world that made some sense,
where children were not sent
eight thousand miles
to aim their guns at children,
where days to honor men of peace
were not defiled by mortar rounds
exploding into flesh,
where rippling desert
vultures did not dance
over fresh human carrion.

a world where giant deadly jellyfish
had not unfurled across Hiroshima’s sky
and billowed in the wind.
the sirens’ keening
recalls another desert mother’s dying son.

“it is finished,”
is what they thought he said.
which was ridiculous,
for it had just begun.

eve of destruction

what thoughts passed through
those coiffed and balding Roman heads
when Nero bowed his final melody?
what sort of pall was cast upon the party,
earlier days’ golden dishes retrieved from the Tiber?
Cicero’s eyeballs rolling in their sockets
from his ignoble post,
any dampened spirits, or togas, that night?
did anybody notice? did it matter?

thanks to diaries, witnesses,
cinematic reconstructions,
we have a sense of what went on
inside the bunker underneath Berlin,
Adolf embraced his Eva, bit the bullet,
Frau Goebbels kissed her brood goodnight
and put their lights out.

but what about the other, ancient kingdoms?
the Easter Islander felling her last tree,
what was he thinking?
planning breakfast, visiting the shore,
a sacrifice perhaps?

is there a vacuum, soundless,
in which empires collapse?
how many take notice, how far in advance
are restless citizens tormented in sleep
with nightmares of enslavement?
animals start and panic in their stalls
before an earthquake,
there are signs—
do people read them?
is it just the daily news, the daily round,
the market closed today, our stock is down,
let’s have some dinner and a drink,
dear Nero, play another happy tune.

prayer to an unorthodox saint
for Anna Akhmatova, 1889-1966
“I believe in the forest, and the meadow, and the night in which the corn grows.” Henry David
Thoreau

Anna, Anna, blessed Anna,
mother and grandmother of powerful Words.
midwife of a land in terrible birth throes
lasting decades.
Anna: how your heart cried out,
your voice lanced festering wounds.
your son—o blessed son!
imprisoned, you became Pieta,
stood in line, huddled against the cold,
to bring him bread, and meat.
another mother in that bitter queue
called out your name.
O, Anna! can you describe this?
she begged of you.
I can, is what you said,
and she was palpably relieved.
the mere chance
that her story could be told
redeemed its awfulness.

and so I soldier on.
though I am not you, Anna,
your story gives me hope.
its searing lines
have chiseled the hard spaces in my heart
and cracked it open wide for good.
if I could be as eloquent as that—?
that Muse, terrible angel,
whose talons grip my scalp,
refusing sleep; she will not let me go.
and in this night,
where something strange and beautiful
is struggling to be born,
I wait, in hope.
one eye could open,
one small life could change
a fraction, one
brave damaged soul could heal.
I soldier on,
and birds begin to sing in darkness,
hours before the dawn.

Benediction

Lord, bless all the farming towns.
Bless their divorcees, and all the ones
who had to get married.
Bless their alcoholics, and the parents
who resent their kids.
Bless the farmers who never want to see
another udder, and go on milking.

Let their spirits soar above the stifling confines
of everybody knowing what truck you drive,
and how late it was parked at the bar last night.
Let them dream big.
Let them buy a brand new truck that starts
every morning all winter.
Give them a way to make the payments.
Help the calving season go smoothly,
and let their wives surprise them with a kiss
as they head out the door.

"The way the media is now, with the control by the corporations, it’s only artists who can really
speak the truth." --United Mine Workers Association Communications Director Phil Smith

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