I.

There is no Eucharist in Baghdad:
only bombs, infidels, heathen
libations and the reverse equation:
Bread in the road, wine in the street.

Here is the well you can’t exhume,
a spigot of unconjugated hate,
tomb-stacked souls and barrels,
late night revisions that fuel preachers

who follow the red elephant’s ordo,
trade war for embryos, ignore the tale
of how David got on Goliath’s bankroll.

Why should Plato care? The earth and sky
are intertwined like ivy. The weeds choke
the only ones who can hoe them down.

II.

Let us hasten justice so I may write
a death knell for this empire. Let us speak
of the afternoon on which we will kneel
beside a monument, lichened orange

and green, fading in granite disrepair.
Let us lean above our corporate past
and take a charcoal imprint of those
barons’ plan for us—endless rope and rock.

Rubbing an indention, our past
is negative space, sinking earth:
a valley of letters, curving its name.

Fading light catches the texture of
words, until pale paper perfectly holds
the moon: Let our history be our fable.


III.

When the king leaves, he hands you the crown
of an expired nation. You take the throne
in a power suit and manage grumbling others.
The old king rules you from a new distance.

The red tie cinches a newcomer’s neck,
the new hire finds his phone on mute,
By the time the marginal get fire
the ash smolders and wood is wet.

Power pools in history, water runs into
footsteps. The White House hands out
old coal and books. Sam, you’re right:

We have no use for their badges, their mansions
their hand-me down scepters, unless we
want to be new despots of an old nation.

IV.

There is no grain in the grist mill, yet
the oxen lumber and labor in circles,
to soften their bones, and pawl their debts.
What isn’t closed by their path? The sun

encircles the globe. Years and days round
themselves in December. How their sweat
pours forth, unfamiliar. Do their chalk-dry
skulls rain circle dreams too? The walls block

wind and exhale sorrow. Can I sneak in,
kick dust, agitate nostrils? Make the animals
pass through doors, sit on stars, ponder grass?

Let’s say yes. There they are now, in a field:
One leg too long, plowing the air with grins,
trying to forget a past life’s imperial cadence.