Peter Schwartz. Poet

cairo

yahweh, the widow's jewel
wished from dry wombs
floating over the dirty nile

half-seed
half-stone; scrubbed
by bleeding hands
purified by allah

whose silence equals not
one camel, without
validity to place

all coffins elsewhere
and frame sleep
in human acreage

empty as
a fly's eye

train station

loyal to the point
of vertigo; I clutch my talisman of miscellaneous
and try to remember it all.

the smoked-in, the boxed-out, the fly-
by-night, the cut-away, the poor excuses
for beacons that became more than
their names, dates, locations.

of course the nervous passengers
pass along semitic cigars to celebrate
their bicentennials; their peepholes
into the infidel's distant lounge
of reasons.

I try.
loyal to the point
of vertigo; I clutch my talisman of miscellaneous
and try to remember more.

the tuned-in, the bottled-up, the drown-
ing-in-motion that seem to collect like underground wings
dipped in white gasoline, a few hairs
away from their own lethal nutrition
with a taste for years.

a cemetery pause in clay hardens into
never fever, and teaches its tired formula
for winning the deal that includes
a witness relocation program

no names, no dates, no locations.

dead by dinner

I am time's meal
ill-consumed and presumed
spit bones and hurt burdens
worked and reworked

still three times before
my heart will capitulate
even after all these years

so let there be a letting
if only for an after
for truth lies in a shining scalpel
not this body, this bag of dead rain
I starve against.

©©Copyright 2006 by Peter Schwartz