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He lives in Leeds, completely out of the literary world. — John Freeman Thrillers like The Da Vinci Code are one of the key indicators of 
contemporary ideological shifts. — Slavoj Žižek For what might break a writer’s block that grips my pen as if King Arthur’s sword, I quest through bookshops of My Lady Charity in Urbs Leodiensis Mystica, completely outside Freeman’s (as most) worlds, where locals speak blank verse (says Harrison); Back-to-Front Inside-Out Upside-Down Leeds, according to the Nuttgens book I bagged along with authors promising keys to open secrets of iambic pentameter, how it’s a ball and chain, a waltz — but best, in Žižek’s wind sock for the New World Order, Gnostic code imprinted by five feet that lead us to a Grail Brown liquefies as Shakespeare melts to decasyllabics like congealed saint’s blood in a Naples shrine. Brown quotes from Philip’s Gospel where it suits to build on Rosslyn Chapel’s premises vast hypophetic labyrinths in the air yet blind to masons’ mysteries below, who carved among the seven virtues greed with charity being made a deadly sin    ... The world was made in error, Philip wrote — Savonarola, in The Rule of Four (another blockbuster from Oxfam’s shelves) is made to quote “the Gospel of Paul” — does error here disguise some secret truth? What if  Paul’s Gospel were real, a Gnostic text thrown on the Bonfire of the Vanities so seen there by our zealot’s burning eyes, its road map to the true Grail turning to ash? My back-to-back looks on a blind man’s road to Wilfred’s city, where he came from Rome to blitz our monks for “Simon Magus” tonsures after that Gnostic heresiarch a dog denounces in St. Peter’s Acts, while Peter raised smoked tuna from the dead, explained his crucifixion upside down, then how God’s Kingdom might be found on Earth: make right your left, back forwards, low your high...

A flowery old-fashioned kind of speechlessness.

“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,” my father would say. And he’d prove it, cupping the buzzer instantly while the host with the swatter stared. In the spring our palms peeled like snakes. True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways. I changed these to fit the occasion. Years before, a girl knocked, wanted to see the Arab. I said we didn’t have one. After that, my father told me who he was, “Shihab”—“shooting star”— a good name, borrowed from the sky. Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?” He said that’s what a true Arab would say. Today the headlines clot in my blood. A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page. Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root is too big for us. What flag can we wave? I wave the flag of stone and seed, table mat stitched in blue. I call my father, we talk around the news. It is too much for him, neither of his two languages can reach it. I drive into the country to find sheep, cows, to plead with the air: Who calls anyone civilized? Where can the crying heart graze? What does a true Arab do now?

Apprehended and held without trial, our friend was sentenced: brain tumor, malignant. Condemned each day to wake and remember. Overnight, a wall sprang up around him, leaving the rest of us outside. Death passed over us this time. We’re still at large. We’re free to get out of bed, start the coffee, open the blinds. The first of the human freedoms. If he’s guilty we must be guilty; we’re all made of the same cup of dust— It’s a blessing, isn’t it? To be able, days at a time, to forget what we are. * These numbered days have a concentrated sweetness that’s pressed from us, the dying man most of all. Today we eat brunch at Chester’s, poached egg on toast, orange juice foaming in frosted glasses. He remembers the summer he packed blood oranges, stripped to the waist, drinking the fresh-squeezed juice in the factory straight from the tap. He cups his left hand under his chin as if to a faucet, laughing. He is scooping sweetness from the belly of death —honey from the lion’s carcass. We sit with our friend and brood on the riddle he sets before us: What is it, this blood honey? *

Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the air. TRADITIONAL GOSPEL SONG Blood on the night soil man en route to the country prison Blood on the sullen chair, the one that holds you with its pleasure Blood inside the quartz, the beauty watch, the eye of the guard Blood on the slope of names & the tattoos hidden Blood on the Virgin, behind the veils, Behind—in the moon angel's gold oracle hair What blood is this, is it the blood of the worker rat? Is it the blood of the clone governor, the city maid? Why does it course in s's & z's? Blood on the couch, made for viewing automobiles & face cream Blood on the pin, this one going through you without any pain Blood on the screen, the green torso queen of slavering hearts Blood on the grandmother's wish, her tawdry stick of Texas Blood on the daughter's breast who sews roses Blood on the father, does anyone remember him, bluish? Blood from a kitchen fresco, in thick amber strokes Blood from the baby's right ear, from his ochre nose What blood is this? Blood on the fender, in the sender's shoe, in his liquor sack Blood on the street, call it Milagro Boulevard, Mercy Lanes #9 Blood on the alien, in the alligator jacket teen boy Juan There is blood, there, he says Blood here too, down here, she says Only blood, the Blood Mother sings Blood driving miniature American queens stamped into rage Blood driving rappers in Mercedes blackened & whitened in news Blood driving the snare-eyed professor searching for her panties Blood driving the championship husband bent in Extreme Unction Blood of the orphan weasel in heat, the Calvinist farmer in wheat Blood of the lettuce rebellion on the rise, the cannery worker's prize Blood of the painted donkey forced into prostitute zebra, Blood of the Tijuana tourist finally awake & forced into pimp sleep again It is blood time, Sir Terminator says, It is blood time, Sir Simpson winks, It is blood time, Sir McVeigh weighs. Her nuclear blood watch soaked, will it dry? His whitish blood ring smoked, will it foam? My groin blood leather roped, will it marry? My wife's peasant blood spoked, will it ride again? Blood in the tin, in the coffee bean, in the maquila oración Blood in the language, in the wise text of the market sausage Blood in the border web, the penal colony shed, in the bilingual yard Crow blood blues perched on nothingness again fly over my field, yellow-green & opal Dog blood crawl & swish through my sheets Who will eat this speckled corn? Who shall be born on this Wednesday war bed? Blood in the acid theater, again, in the box office smash hit Blood in the Corvette tank, in the crack talk crank below Blood boat Navy blood glove Army ventricle Marines in the cookie sex jar, camouflaged rape whalers Roam & rumble, investigate my Mexican hoodlum blood Tiny blood behind my Cuban ear, wine colored & hushed Tiny blood in the death row tool, in the middle-aged corset Tiny blood sampler, tiny blood, you hush up again, so tiny Blood in the Groove Shopping Center, In blue Appalachia river, in Detroit harness spleen Blood in the Groove Virus machine, In low ocean tide, in Iowa soy bean Blood in the Groove Lynch mob orchestra, South of Herzegovina, south, I said Blood marching for the Immigration Patrol, prized & arrogant Blood spawning in the dawn break of African Blood Tribes, grimacing & multiple—multiple, I said Blood on the Macho Hat, the one used for proper genuflections Blood on the faithful knee, the one readied for erotic negation Blood on the willing nerve terminal, the one open for suicide Blood at the age of seventeen Blood at the age of one, dumped in a Greyhound bus Blood mute & autistic & cauterized & smuggled Mayan & burned in border smelter tar Could this be yours? Could this item belong to you? Could this ticket be what you ordered, could it? Blood on the wheel, blood on the reel Bronze dead gold & diamond deep. Blood be fast.

The last time I saw father alive he was using a black umbrella, closed, to beat off some pigeons hanging outside the marble portals of a museum. We were visitors, walking very slowly, so father could stoop and examine everything. We had not been in the museum, but were resting on its steps. We saw it all—the fountains, the statues, the parks and the post office. Cities are made of such things. Once we encountered a wedding coming out of the cathedral and were caught in a shower of rice; as the bride flicked her veiled head father licked his little finger and in this way saved a grain. On the next block he announced he was going to heaven. But first let’s go back to the hotel and rest, he said: I want my mint. Those were practically his last words. And what did I want more than anything in the world? Probably the ancient Polish recipe for blood soup, which was finally told to me in an empty deli in a deserted mill town in western Massachusetts by the owner’s mother, who was alone one day when I burst in and demanded a bowl. But, she said, lacing her fingers around a jar of morello cherries, it requires one cup of new blood drawn from the goose whose neck you’ve just wrung to put in the pot, and where in these days can I find anything as fresh as that? I had lost track of my life before, but nothing prepared me for the onslaught of wayfarer’s bliss when she continued to list, one by one, the impossible ingredients I needed to live. We sat at the greasy table far into the night, while snow fell on the locked doors of the church next door, dedicated to St. Stanislas, which was rumored to be beautiful inside, and contain the remains of his beloved head.

In that old story, the boy is depicted as delicate, lithe, and beautiful. Ovid had it wrong. Yes, the boy was beautiful, beautiful enough to capture a god’s attention, but he was not delicate. He was anything but delicate, his muscles toned from working the fields. Listen to me; the gods are fairly conventional. A lovely woman is transformed into an old hag, a too-slow voyeur becomes the quick stag to be chased and shot through by a single arrow. So, in the case of this young man, he must have been strong, anything but delicate like these flowers. The gods are convincing when they need to be. Believe me, they are honey-mouthed and persistent. The boy had to be strong, but he was not stronger than the gods. He was seduced; who isn’t seduced by immortality? In the field, the boy was every bit the archer as the god. He was just as powerful with a spear, a slingshot, or a discus. Ovid writes that Apollo loved the boy, loved him more than any living thing on this earth. But we know better. The gods love only themselves. In the field, a clearing ringed by trees, the boy did not try to catch the discus. He was running from it, running from the god who took pains to aim so as to slice him clean through with a single shot. You see, this is not love. A god commanding spilled blood become delicate blue flowers is not love.

Note who’s got to go today, don’t fuss about the means, just go ahead behead, impale, starve, strappado, the sheer assortment of choices enough to make a crown crow. They never loved me enough. It must be said: They were a disappointment. When divine mother love wears out, I just reverse the robe from blue to red. I like a flat ground to build the next town, city, empire of disgust. All the waste you see, that’s what I did, none of that happened to me. I did that. I made that. I killed that. I.

It is not bad.  Let them play. Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane Speak his prodigious blasphemies. It is not bad, it is high time, Stark violence is still the sire of all the world’s values. What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine The fleet limbs of the antelope? What but fear winged the birds, and hunger Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk’s head? Violence has been the sire of all the world’s values. Who would remember Helen’s face Lacking the terrible halo of spears? Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar, The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar? Violence, the bloody sire of all the world’s values. Never weep, let them play, Old violence is not too old to beget new values.

How they woke, finally, in a bed of ferns — horsetail ferns. How they died singing. All night, meanwhile, as if somehow the fox’s mouth that so much of this life has amounted to had briefly unshut itself — and the moth that’s trapped there, unharmed, gone free — a snow fell; the snow-filled street seemed a toppled column, like the one in the mind called doubt, or that other one, persuasion, the broken one, in three clean pieces    ...    Well, it’s morning, now. Out back, the bamboo bows and stiffens. Thoughts in a wind. Thoughts like (but nobody saying it): Nobody, I think, knows me better by now than you do. Or like: The bamboo, bowing, stiffening, seems like nothing so much as, in this light, competing forms of betrayal that, given time, must surely cancel each other out, close your eyes; patience; wait. Maybe less the foliage than the promise of it. Less that shame exists, maybe, than that the world keeps saying it does,know it, hold on tight to it, as if the world were rumor, how every rumor rings true, lately. When I’m ashamed, I make a point of reminding myself what is shame but to have shown — to have let it show — that variety of love that goes hand in hand with having wished to please and, in pleasing, for a while belong. So shame can, like love, be an eventual way through? There’s a minor chord sparrows make with doves that’s not the usual business — it’s not sad at all, any of it: this always waiting for what I’ve always waited for; this not being able to assign to what’s missing some shape, a name; this body neither antlered nor hooved — brave too, this body, unapologetic    ...