A Poem By Yours Truly

TRUCE
for Don Delillo & Huang Po

1
He needed to hear
about like occasions

and remembered he had worked
with the man who broke the story

of the B-25 that crashed
into the Empire State Building

July 28, 1945
killing, by puny comparison,

only 14 people
and destroying only 5 floors.

"I saw the plane coming.
I knew what would happen

and called in the headline
before any debris hit the ground."

2
You want to see
the elements
from places where
they can't harm you.

So you look up at the sky
from which most days
nothing falls
except sunlight and dust.

Or you imagine yourself
a bird flying above
a waveless ocean
where you can't drown.

Domesticating fire
remains a challenge
as you still watch smoke
billowing from ghost towers

that frantic, frozen September morning
you learned Icarus was a suicide
with more fire inside
to erupt

than in any sun.

3
Global warming
is caused by the friction
of wayward liquidity
changing hands.

Wealth becomes anti-matter
impervious to destruction
now that it has learned
a way to flow and flood

wider than the hungriest mind.

4
Make the mind
too small for thoughts
of even Buddha to arise
or the last temptation
to eternal bliss.

Make the mind
too small to serve
as a slot for the penny
Satan gladly pays
for such thoughts

in uncontrolled recurrence.

5
River run of watchfulness
rapids of thought
carrying shredded life raft
your meager marriage to the elements
shipwrecked on the rocks
where no church
can ever be built
that will not fall prey
to the prayer
for salvation hinged
to the whims of an almighty

6
Flood tide of mindfulness
Sangha City swept away
by risen river of melted snow
from the distant mountains
that usually look lunar
on those talkless, dusty nights
when you're dry
and dying for a drink

7
When he dropped his wedding band
in the toilet as it was flushing

his first frantic thought
was that he was no longer married

then came the belly laugh
followed by the luminous

resumption of the real
and a second marriage

where Buddha himself
performed the ceremony

8
It's easier now
that there is nothing
for Bodhidharma
to appear in the West

It's easier
for the Patriarch
to spread understanding
now that there is nothing

to stop him

--David Federman, June 26, 2007