Battery Townsley

* * *

Nothing is off limits, now
                                         everything is permitted.
              The last gates have been removed.

In the east there is war
            and in the west there is war.
The walls bring news of war
                           as they also bring
                                           news of love:

RASTAFARI.
         APOCALYPSE NOW
                                  NO SMOKING
         NOTHING CHANGES, JUST REARRANGES
                     I DIDN'T DO IT—BUBBY DID.
         LET ME OUT PLEASE.
                    THE ARMY IS SO LOGICAL!
                    UNITY + SERVICE = RECOVERY
                              BRIAN -n- LAURA
                                            I LOVE YOU.

In time of war the poets turn to war,
             each in his best manner.

* * * 

I look up, as a dictionary
                                        to the living language,
                              as a cur to its high table
                   I plead for a scrap and am offered the sea.

The hawk and the raven are my wardens,
                                       they review every transaction.
                  The sun on my face is a bronze coin.

                                       My steps make a circuit
                             as bread makes a circuit.

I am not afraid of the story you ask me to tell.

                  (In any case it is no longer my story.)

* * *

The lanes of the sea weave brightly
                                                                in the afternoon sun.
                   The buoys toll
                               depth, proximity.

Down by Point Reyes
                   lie a piece of rock, a chunk of wood
                              but I will not go there yet.
There remains one garment I have not worn.
There remains my brother,
                   whose wounds I have not tended.

There is an eagle branching like a tree
                                                            in each of my bodies.
                     There is a grey stone with a white band
                     in my left cheek.

You must fill me now with your story.

                     (Once, I too was a child.
                                                               —Did you not know?)