^{Dedicated to the Poet Agostinho Neto,
President of The People’s Republic of Angola: 1976}

1
I will no longer lightly walk behind
a one of you who fear me:
                                     Be afraid.
I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits
and facial tics
I will not walk politely on the pavements anymore
and this is dedicated in particular
to those who hear my footsteps
or the insubstantial rattling of my grocery
cart
then turn around
see me
and hurry on
away from this impressive terror I must be:
I plan to blossom bloody on an afternoon
surrounded by my comrades singing
terrible revenge in merciless
accelerating
rhythms
But
I have watched a blind man studying his face.
I have set the table in the evening and sat down
to eat the news.
Regularly
I have gone to sleep.
There is no one to forgive me.
The dead do not give a damn.
I live like a lover
who drops her dime into the phone
just as the subway shakes into the station
wasting her message
canceling the question of her call:
fulminating or forgetful but late
and always after the fact that could save or 
condemn me

I must become the action of my fate.

2
How many of my brothers and my sisters
will they kill
before I teach myself
retaliation?
Shall we pick a number? 
South Africa for instance:
do we agree that more than ten thousand
in less than a year but that less than
five thousand slaughtered in more than six
months will
WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME?

I must become a menace to my enemies.

3
And if I 
if I ever let you slide
who should be extirpated from my universe
who should be cauterized from earth
completely
(lawandorder jerkoffs of the first the
                   terrorist degree)
then let my body fail my soul
in its bedeviled lecheries

And if I 
if I ever let love go
because the hatred and the whisperings
become a phantom dictate I o-
bey in lieu of impulse and realities
(the blossoming flamingos of my
                   wild mimosa trees)
then let love freeze me
out.
I must become
I must become a menace to my enemies.

^{for Allen Ginsberg}

Allen couldn’t sing the Blues 
So he started howling 
Not like Howlin’ Wolf but 
Howlin’ Allen 
Howling all over the place 
About sex & God & global excess of carbon emissions 
Howling about soil erosion 
Plutonium 
Thee proliferation of firearms & runaway nuclear reactors 
Howlin’Allen 
Howling like a threatened endangered mammal 
Howling that inborn instinctive howl 
That introspective retrospective collective howl 
That blunt unbending howl against war 
Against corporate leaders and political corruptness 
A mean in-your-face howl 
An agitated howl against co-opted colleagues 
Allen howling with the declining whales 
Howling a long intense rampaging howl 
A meditative in-depth soulful joyful liberated hypnotic howl 
A drunk sober howling complex of seductive tongues, 
Heated finger fetishes, intoxicated manifestoes 
exotic erotic encounters 
A howling existential beatnik collage of poetic massages 
Allen couldn’t sing the Blues 
So he became Howl