ARCTIC KILLER

		Polar bear:
		Hiding,
		With a paw,
		Your black nose
		(Ingenious)
		As you stalk prey.
		You're eidolic,
		A Portuguese man-of-war,
		To the flesh
		You eat.

		Photographer-pilots
		"Captured" you
		In your white desert:
		Click.  
		But you,
		In an 8 by 10 paradox,
		Weren't there,
		Like a Hollywood vampire
		Without a virtual
		Image.

		Even infrared fails
		To capture you
		Who,
		Like a black hole,
		Harvests solar heat
		That black skin
		Absorbs.

		Ultraviolet film
		Exposes you:
		A great,
		Black amoeba,
		As unphotogenic as
		The small,
		White seals
		(They too are
		Heat-absorbing miracles)
		That you eat.

		You stalk men--
		You,
		The most beautiful
		Of all bears
		(Some say)--
		Just as Nimrod
		Stalked men
		In war-play.

		In a zoo-cage
		You're adored
		By awe-struck children
		("He's so cute!"),

		But in the wild,
		Face to face,
		You're a gargoyle
		With teeth
		That kill.



		BULLFIGHT-CANVAS

		The wild bull,
		Facing "Goya" in his
		"Taje de luces"
		("Suit of lights"),
		Does not know that pharaohs
		Hunted him on foot,
		Nor that princes and princesses
		                                      of Crete
		Somersaulted over him
		As he charged.

		Four years pampered,
		He's never before seen
		The "grey" muleta that
		Lies.

		But he has made up his mind.
		He paws the ground,
		Breathes heavily, as the
		Amphitheater-Picasso
		Prepares to
		Attack himself.

		The picador,
		Like a blood-lusting
		Moor on horseback,
		Drives the steel-tipped lance
		Into neck flesh.

		The head lowers.
		Twice again the picador
		Drives down the bull's head,

		And then he exits;
		Banderillas enter:
		They shout, wave arms,
		Swerve at the last moment
		To lodge steel barbs
		Into bleeding shoulders.

		The "moment of truth":
		Matador against bull.

		Aficionados cry out for
		Thrust and charge,
		Blood and blade.

		The matador--
		Puppeteer and artist--
		Reaches over the horns,
		Plunges the sword between
		Iberian shoulders,
		Searching, searching for the aorta,
		Until the coup de grace
		Gives the bloody audience
            	Everything the bloody matador
            	Could ask for.



		CORVUS CORAX--THE RAVEN

		Siberian storm front-prophet,
		MacBeth-black cloud,
		And Poe's ache--

		This trickster,
		This ravenous clawer of
		Fruits and seeds
		And rotting flesh,
		This coniferous roamer
		And desert nomad,
		Croaks like a mournful hag
		Or mimics that diminutive
		Brainless crow.

		Inuit carvers
		Immortalize this prankster-
		Thief haunting ice fishermen,
		This vaudeville clown who dumps
		Snow on Yellowknife-victims
		Beneath steep metal roofs.

		In the torrent valley of Cherith,
		You fed Elijah
		Between ravines and crags,

		Your thunderbolt blackness
		Filled aerial somersaults
		And upside-down fly-bys
		In courtship
		Or mere play.

		You taunt wolves--
		Peck their hairy tails--
		But feast on their feast
		Between tricks that
		The Haida often recall.

		You croak of the glee, the surprise,
		The excitement and anger and
		Tenderness in the blood
		Of every man,
		Of every Noah sending forth
		A query--
		"Is all well
		On dry ground?"

		You are the shaggy-throated
		Roamer, the blue jay-cousin,
		And cleverest passerine.
		When you mate, it is for life,
		And there is no child abuse
		In your beak or claw.

		You are the clown of the forest,
		The king of the pun.



		MY HOME

		Midhbar--
		Oasis of amhaarets

		(A word Pharisees
		Spit)--

		Is my home,
		My wind and rock,
		My snakes and scorpions
		That thrive where I eat
		And urinate
		And will die.

		This is my barrenness,
		My yeshimon,
		That surrounds me like my
		Heart 
             	And children.



		THE PUMA

		stealth killer:
		ungangly ghost that
		leaps up 15 feet or
		plunges 50,
		like a tawny squall,
		a sniper-arrow
		of teeth and claws,
		an arrowhead of fangs,

		with tick-tock tail and
		milk-white chin,
		an elusive flesh-monger
		with eyes green
		as emerald waves
		or gall bladders,
		and cold as death:

		a bullet-head profile,
		cloaked like a Klingon
		Bird of Prey,

		is everywhere,
		nowhere,
		like embezzlers,
		assassins,
		warriors
		wrapped in darkness--

		focused like a Free Stater,
		or Republican,
		quick as a terrorist,
		cunning as a presidential
		runner:

		this phantom killer
		of grasshoppers,
		tinamou, and
		seldom a man--

		seldom a man?
		tell the trophy-mongers
		searching
                    	for glory,
		for their own fear to conquer,
		for an end to their boredom
		                         of breathing.



		TARANTULA

		Far from Scythian
		Females, in
		The Amazon-
		Jungle of monster-
		Leaves, where
		Nobody severs
		The right breast
		To make the bow fit,

		Little-clad
		Men-folk eat
		Tarantulas. Held
		Between two sticks
		Over flames that burn off
		Leg-hair, the
		Salty meat sizzles
		And steams.

		Tang and season are as
		Foreign as a Visa card
		Or an army helmet. But
		Tarantulas abound. Crack
		Open
		The crustacean shell
		For the jungle-
		Candy.

		An entomologist on CBC
		Said you cannot compare
		The meat to anything--
		Not to rabbit or chicken:
		Tarantula is to tarantula
		As bullets are to bullets
		And hate is to hate.

		These people love tarantulas.
		They love the spicy
		Meat.



		I HAVE NEVER TRAVELED BEYOND

		I have never traveled beyond
		The crack of gunfire;
		O, I've visited backyard swimming pools
		And steamy swamps
		And mountain-locked lakes where
		Dragonflies turn at 2.5 G's
		And dance
		In mosquito-air
		And shore-side ballrooms of
		Green.

		I've seen them outperform
		Timid damselflies
		(That rest with upturned,
		Not sideturned, wings),
		In 60 mph sprints
		And moment's-notice backward-, forward-,
		Sideway-, or hover-steps.

		30,000 images to 80% of its brain-mass
		Locate mosquito-meat at 60 feet
		At dusk--
		And 24 frames per second of "In Love and War"
	   	Are still-photos
		For this sniper extraordinaire,
		This metallic flash of blue
                       Or green or yellow.

		The wet larva,
		Sometimes after years of skin-altering,
		Settles on a reed;
		The change, the growth,
		Like the workings of testosterone
		In a boy's blood--

		Watch the skin along the thorax split:
		A new life,
		A new hunter of aphids and beetles
		And tiny frogs,
		A new sniper in Philippine-
		Canyons,
		A new jewel for ponds and
		Riverbanks--
		A new insultingly-named
		Helicopter
		Within the zing
		Of bullets.

		I have never traveled beyond
		The crack of gunfire,
		But I have seen dragonflies
		Everywhere.



		THE BAY
	
		The Bay of Bengal
		Re-pukes a holowind of
		Unnatural fury
		And uncivilized debris;

		The tongue of death
		Licks one
		But misses another;

		Later,
		A boy stands
	  	Upon a salty rock,
		Staring down,
		Blankly,
		Unhurriedly,
		As waves nip at
		A bloated baby;

		Stiff,
		Outstretched arms
		Lie frozen;
		Death has left fingers
		And toes puffy,
		Lips and eyes bulgy;

		The backdrop is a freighter,
		As large as fear,
		Anchored like a stone:

		A mother rocks her baby
		To sleep,
		Yawns,
		Hums Brahms' Lullaby,
		Watches late-night news
		To stay awake,
		But switches channels
		With a "remote"
		When ugly becomes
		Too ugly.



		ONCE A MILITARY WONDERLAND

		Jezreel, desolate-
		Layered in earth and
		Bone,
		Hid Naboth's blood,
		Fed dogs
		Jezebel's torso,
		Gave Elijah lungs
		To condemn,
		Boasted Ahab's 70
		Heads
		In two piles by the city
		Gate.
		
		Jezreel, unearthed by spade,
		Of the Iron Age,
		Dry moat
		And great walls,

		Jezreel gone
		Like Ozymandias,
		Solomon too.



		THE VERTEBRATE

		Boreal vastland
		(Rock-root and C-glaze)
		Between grassland dust-devils
		And Tundra deathwind,
		Boasting ice-lipped lichens
		Even in June.

		Protozoan molars and
		Feast-crazed insects
		Consume fur-dead
		In bogs and ferns
		And snag-lines
		That fire will find.

		Fire the vertebrate,
		Burning bark and black fly fog,
		And 100 years of bloom:
		
		A black scar born,
		Born with all its carbon
		Blood.



		NOT UNDER ARKTOS, THE BEAR

		An ice-tide of breadth,
		Shrinking and spreading in earth flow,
		Circling a fish drawn up and solid
		In five minutes,
		And steel dropped, turned to shards.
		Brutal beauty, this ice-desert-
		Home of the wingless midge
		And Aristotelian balance to the
		North Bulk.

		See the Ross Ice Shelf,
		Big as France,
		Fed by seven solid floes,
		Puking ice berg cities
		Of blue mammoth
		For chinstrap penguins
		To jabber on.

		James Cook awed and repelled and attracted
		By windswept blue
		Ice-islands
		Sloshed and dunked by tyrannosaurus teeth
		Of sea-salt and whirl.

		Send the gold-rush skins of blood-bare
		Seals to China and Europe and other closets.
		Step on mainland moss that can't hide
		One print for one decade.
		Dig a great heal into this humpbackless,
		Ozoneless antipode.

		This ice-fist freezes
		What it can.



		THE TOLL BRIDGE

		About south of Pap Doc's headlust of secrets
		Freighters Caribbean-fondled diesel
		Between manicured gables and pastel storefronts
		Of Amsterdam in Willemstad--in
		Curacao of giant cactuses, divi-divi trees,
		But not giant ones, 
		And wonderful oil refineries
		And desalting-mongery.
		In Willemstad, 
		The Queen Emma (your highness)
		Pontoon Bridge opens widest for the warm 
		Ships
		That belch between this pastel drama, and
		Draws toll for
		Footers in shoes.

		No toll for the barefoot and callused.

		In Willemstad,
		When the ships are north,
		Or who knows where,
		The rich hide their shoes
		And the poor borrow
		Shoes to wear.



		BOWLS BENEATH LEAKS
	
		Caracas, Venezuela: go down, down
		To cement, glass, and steel,
		Where spires gleam above
		Traffic-whine, tetracarbon-
		Clouds, and florescent shorts
		On camera-festooned tourists.

		But above this arcade,
		Los Cerros cling to hillsides
		That rain churns into gravity-ravaged
		Muck:

		Steps become cataracts, and
		Garbage-toboggans race down
		River-filled gutters
		Like oysters down a throat,

		And zinc-roofed homes of
		Rain-blackened boards or
		Flattened cans or
		Packing cases
		("This side up," some still read)
		"Elbow" for space and boast signs:
		"Pego Cierres" ("I Put In Zippers"),
		"Cortes de Pelo" ("Haircuts"),
		"Se Venden Helados" ("Ice Cream Sold").

		Consider a sunny day:
		In one of 500 barrios
		(Some named after "saints,"
		Others after hope
		(El Progresso (Progress),
		Nuevo Mundo (New World),
		El Encanto (Delight))),
		A boy's voice in a battered
		Loudspeaker cries out:
		"Onions! Yuccas! Plantains!"
		(In English?)
		Barter-quick poor close deals
		With this barter-quick child
		On his bent tailgate.

             	Nearby,
		A bow-spined man spray-
		Paints a 23-year-old VW
		In an unpaved street--
		A side-street packed hard by
		Foot and tire and sun--
		But he releases the trigger
		To watch a long-chassis jeep
		Climb the 18% grade of a "highway"
		Called Si Dios Quiere (If God Wills).

		And in that jeep,
		Twelve passengers, with
		Knees crammed under chins,
		Inhale each other's odor.
		A fat lady guards a bag of tomatoes
		From too many feet.

		The driver, after spitting tobacco-gob
		Out his windowless door,
		Pampers the clutch with a "good"
		Place to stop;
		Two wild-haired women
		In tattered dresses
		Tumble out the back doors,
		And then the jeep
		Trails a water truck that
		Drips at a seam
		Like a bleeding soldier.

		The two women enter
		A bodegas--a green-paint-
		Peeling-off-like-old-labels-on-
		Old-cans home to a school,
		Pharmacist/doctor,
		And household items, like beer,
		For the poor.

		No house numbers,
		No glass for barred-up windows, and
		No mailmen to pace the maze of
		Cramped walkways between
		Hill-rooted homes--

		Homes
		In which coffee and bland
		Arepa with jam are
		As common as babies,

		Homes
		In which hospitality,
		In spite of armed robbery and suicide,

		Makes ranchitos warm for many
		Who often say,
		"Est�n en su casa." 
		("Make yourselves at home.")