after Tyehimba Jess 

Freedom is what you can buy 
with a left jab & a right cross. 

You’ve got the uppercut of a champ.
On a sweaty August night, you watch 

Ramos v Ramos from the Olympic
on TV. You turn off the blaring AC, 

want to hear the fighters’ tssiiuu tssiiuu, exhaling
as they attempt to break each other’s skin. 

You’re light on your feet like Mando, 
got Sugar’s hand speed. Freedom 

is your girl by your side telling you to fight. 
She brings your boxing license 

in a lunch bag while you labor 
at Lockheed, roots for you in Rocky 

Lane’s garage on a Sunday 
as you spar any man who dares.
 
She wipes your burning face 
with a cool towel, the sinewed shape 

of your body surfacing quick 
after you trade in Budweiser for a jump
 
rope. Freedom is the rattle in your jaw 
the first time you take a hook 

to the gut, the way a glove slides 
across your nose slick with Vaseline 

as you size up the weary contender, 
know that look in his eyes that whispers 

across the canvas between rounds. Finish me 
already, body shriveling in the corner, you’ve won.

(for Anni, In Memoriam Madonna)

Today is Boxing Day
in an isle parts of us hail from
surely not homage to Sugar Ray
or container congloms

Coming up
Two Zero Zero Two
fast forward spin
of daily round hurtling
through eons in a muddle
of survivors amid loss

we’ll miss out on
Three Zero                       Zero Three
the next esthetically balanced annum

my wish list 
future free of media speak
GROUND ZERO

to decram landfill
will our remains circle a black sun
in cosmos-proof microchips

Madonna stay put
trajectory complete
idyll of seasons over
poets and cats and poets’ cats
warrant a corner
so rememberers can beat back
the voracious hurtling
grounded for an instant
as fleet as a final sigh

If you did—

                        it would
                       
                                    knock you down (remember Liston) &

            if

             you were

               still stand

                        ing                   you would

                                                                        have to

bust out (remember the March on Washington)

                                    of your shakin' vaulted            

            poor thinkin' self (oh yes!)

                                                & change (that's right!)

this big 'ol world (say it!)

  & if                            you did—   You (yes, you)

          would have to battle w/words & rhymes & body & time—for

your New Idea—(did you hear that )  you would
           
                                                               have to

  endure    (i hear you )  & propose (what?)
                       
                                    a new name for                        all

( a new name?)

it could be Peace

               it could be Unity (sounds easy)

                        but this poem     cannot

                                                            provide this
                                                           
                                                              or       contain this

  Word        —(Watch out!)

here it comes!  &

                         (it's gonna to sting like a bee)

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

A silver Lucifer
serves
cocaine in cornucopia

To some somnambulists
of adolescent thighs
draped
in satirical draperies

Peris in livery
prepare
Lethe
for posthumous parvenues

Delirious Avenues
lit
with the chandelier souls
of infusoria
from Pharoah's tombstones

lead
to mercurial doomsdays
Odious oasis
in furrowed phosphorous---

the eye-white sky-light
white-light district
of lunar lusts

---Stellectric signs
"Wing shows on Starway"
"Zodiac carrousel"

Cyclones
of ecstatic dust
and ashes whirl
crusaders
from hallucinatory citadels
of shattered glass
into evacuate craters

A flock of dreams 
browse on Necropolis

From the shores
of oval oceans
in the oxidized Orient

Onyx-eyed Odalisques
and ornithologists
observe
the flight
of Eros obsolete

And "Immortality"
mildews...
in the museums of the moon

"Nocturnal cyclops"
"Crystal concubine"
-------
Pocked with personification
the fossil virgin of the skies
waxes and wanes----