Half A Decade

I’m a moment of quiet clarity
Of indecent integrity
A conceitful exposing light
A frail and open permissive night

I’m a window open to the floor
A bed at night with a whore
A lamp that burns butter for monks to pray
I’m a writer you’ve never read who doesn’t go away

An artist who would carry a tree to a stone
A reverent and lustful tome
An escaping rat from a docked ship
I’m all of these on this list


- Chris Mansel

Brooklyn Visitation

I’m thinking of you Allen
In what was once the area of the caregiver?
The restless inhibition of a lonesome traveler
Doomed to celebrity and not to sex
This asylum riddled Oedipus wrecked
The diagnosis of cancer
The transgressions of idyllic marriage?
Allen marrying on a May Day street
While Chicano worshippers roast in effigy
The office of the president

Noise would run to your window
Hospital beds turned to puzzle floors of black and white
Coffins carried of migrant workers
Shot while tossing lettuce into baskets and not into salads
The corporate dining room looking over
The hospital parking lot
The grounds dingy with rebellion and water bottles

Allen your gentle heart swarming the sutras for sound
Calming the protestors with a gentle sigh
The Internet now reaping the revenue of your reporting from Chicago
Set it now Murrow would have said

Allen your penis in the sawdust of a master’s degree dissertation
Allen your poetry read at the trail of a lover in Italian magistrates diction
Allen the de-colonized Jew Buddhist Lama resting above the blackboard
At Brooklyn College
Allen your songs of Blake in the hymn books in eastern seaboard schools

Allen what is the phrase of your humanity, where is your soul
I’ve seen you on my bookshelf and wondered
Allen is there no natural condition



- Chris Mansel