M. L. Weber
from Blue Light
Begin the journey
your life demands.
Homeward, if there
is a home in death,
but first achieve the angel called Calm.
"Well, her mother hadn't
wanted her at seven and she didn't want her now,"
someone told the social worker.
"The cops picked up Jincy
walking around the streets at night and told
her they were going to take her
to the Juvenile Center. That terrified her.
So the cops
said they'd have to take her to Bellevue then."
". . . the truth will not run away from us."
murder committed
child beaten
severely about the buttocks
"These people come from nowhere
and that's where they go"
"The look on his face
told you nothing,
but his hands
were like claws"
There was a gun
in every room
of the house
"You might say
I'm a fanatic
about guns," he said
with a smile
"The agencies shuffle them
back and forth
because there's no room"
Policeman kills wife
then himself
A child's body found
weighed down with pieces
from the sidewalk
in front of the house
"They crucified Michael Jackson."
Clouds were forming
just as he laid the bodies
in the levee
He went into the Marines
so he could learn
how to beat up his father
A long period of summer
to have traveled
and in traveling lost the point of return
because the time
passed quickly, and by traveling
I remained apart
from a flow
that has taken
everything away
"Your dead
cease to love
you and the land
of their birth
as soon as they pass
the portals of the tomb
and wander way
beyond the stars . . ."
They were found
two days later
washed downstream
she collapsed as she
was booked on charges
of first degree
found shot to death
in trunk of auto
". . . they are forgotten
and never return."
Tracing back and forth
the infinity
that goes to the small
and that expands
forever
as much as space
is divisible
as in the darkness
extending
without end
"We live like plants thriving on rain, a rain of love"
rather than the step father
the defense will try to prove
that a sexual pervert
kidnapped and killed the children
"Can you see Jesus telling bed-time stories to kids?"
She told him that she murdered
her daughter and that she agreed to death
of her son
17 photos of bodies
kills owner and
wounds wife
after being told
that they could not have
piece of apple pie
"Many times after I beat him
he would lie
in his crib
and cry himself to sleep
I would sit next to the crib
and cry
and wish I could beat myself."
. . . after a lobotomy, Dr. Freeman
wrote, "We could grab Oretha
playfully by the throat,
twist her arm, tickle her in the ribs
and slap her behind without eliciting
anything more than a wide grin
or hoarse chuckle."
when he turned the corner
that's when all hell broke loose
"all you could hear was glass breaking"
a group of alumni
from the Harvard Business School
also analyzed the damage
"they are the normal shootings you would have"
You might welcome death like a twin
for whom you've searched.
You may fade into your past
but you can
scarcely recreate it,
as the scenes
contain someone else.
DETAILS OF JACKSON'S DEATH A MYSTERY
the bodies were interred
in coffee cans and the like
found underneath an old shed
presumed dead but found alive
the house of civilization
that structures our minds
make the football team
you struggle in the confines
the chains of economy
"Are you asleep,
or are you still reading
of which I would disapprove?
I most sincerely hope not," she wrote.
"Remember you should sleep
more than other people, for I sleep
less than most. And I can't think
of a better place to store
my unused share of sleep
than in your beloved eyes."
She drove the car into the lake while the children slept in the backseat.
The past events linger,
delicate like watercolor droplets
slipping down through
a water jar,
the pigment
almost a dream.
during the divorce mediation
he shot out the windows of the house
while his wife and kids were inside
though it couldn't be proven
he'd sexually molested the five children
though it couldn't be proven
Desire abandoned
only the shadow remains
knowledge breaks down
as the shadow moves across the sun
the theme that consumes
that flares in the city
where people meet
and burn the fuel of one another
taking as much
as possible.
No cosmic figure stands
across orbits, reaches from the sun to the moon,
hurls mountains from his path,
nor are there leagues of demons
who inhabit vast plains,
simply the flame
that spirals in the belly
and in the code
that builds you
from a single cell
what is the anthropology, sociology, psychology of slavery?
"We sent the ten off to work.
To all the rest, we announced, 'People
who are too sick to work need treat-
ment. Treatment starts tomorrow
electroconvulsive treatment. It is
not painful and is nothing to be
afraid of. When you are well enough
to work, let us know.' The next day
we gave 120 unmodified treatments.
Perhaps because of the smaller size
of this population, no symptoms of
compression fractures were reported.
In subsequent days, we were kept quite
busy administering the several thousand
shock treatments required."
–as reflected light is to its uncreated source–
Do you select
thoughts?
Perhaps they select you.
"For slaves, death was seen as an escape."
Numerous memories,
of skin in sunlight,
a face in a car
as it turned in front of you,
a vibrance in a voice
like bathing in
the sound, a soft accent,
a hot summer's day plays in the sound,
completely a mystery.
Silence looms like an object,
and purged by emptiness
you must begin again
bring back the past
or some imagination
of possibility
"There's no sense in going on, ever," the child said.
Afterwards, she refused to talk.
The staff was used to her hollering and kicking.
She was left alone when she yelled,
tied down to a chair,
with a feeding tube down her throat
because she could not swallow,
"would not," they said.
"We're going to prove
you can swallow," they told her
with scientific patience.
For three years they tried to make her swallow,
according to theory. The parents restricted
as the hospital had taken custody
after the parents wanted to withdraw
the child when three months of theory
dropped her weight from 36 to 28 lbs.,
but the girl had palsy–not mental illness–
she could not swallow,
she could not.
"It got so bad she would not talk. She would not
talk. She would not sit in a chair.
She just gave up her life. She just said,
'There's no sense in going on, ever.'
They said they were short on staff that night
and when they were short on staff,
they said they,
as they sometimes did anyway,
they just let her holler and kick."
For three years the hospital
according to theory
gave her no comfort
allowed her no love
as her parents could not visit
as that would
according to theory
be abetting the cause of the illness
for three years
she lived, fed by a tube
then the food
backed up in the tube
and choked Melissa to death
Today Central Park is a green god
whose body
glows dimly beneath
the light of a cloudy sky
in the heart
of the northern part
for a while after a rain
you can be alone
and smell only green moisture
and encounter pigeon chicks
that have fallen
in the storm
too soon from their nests
but I can give them no care
I have no place to stop with them
no more than I feel I can stop
for long here in twilight
despite the empty streets
of a rainy weekday
starved infant dead
scrubbed and redressed
in christening gown
mental problem stemming from murder of his brother
MacDonald tearfully denies slaying
insists deed was done
by 3 men and a woman
21 year old Amer Red Cross Worker
found dead of stab wounds
Texas Sniper Suspect
Called Trailer Park Loner
common law wife shot and left for dead
bodies of two women
whose heads and hands
had been cut off
series of rapes of elderly women in area
shot in the face
by a blast
from a passing car
said he had a problem
that created in him
desire to cause
great bodily harm to females
"The most he ever made was minimum wage,
what do you expect from such a low life?"
charged with rape murder
arrested for murder in stabbing death
he had a problem
farm laborer contractor arrested
on charges
of murdering 12 workers
"They're all Muslims, bomb'em."
bodies found on ranch
she allegedly decapitated her aged mother
with a butcher knife and was arrested as she drove
through town in a convertible with the corpse
with an Amer flag stuck in the neck . . .
no clear cut reason for rapid rise of homicides
"She was just a sweet little girl,"
Mrs Cook said of Jincy.
"She was respected."
he had a problem,
problem, problemBowl of Love
1
Softly, lips come together
then I draw back
to look at you, while the lamp
throws your face in shadow.
I linger.
I 've said goodbye
yet do not go.
You must sleep
but do not close your eyes
nor does your breath relax,
it seems held back,
as does the moment.
2
Filling up the self almost like liquid
pouring into a huge silver bowl
gleaming in the sun.
Without sound, waves foam up the sides,
fall back, then rise,
green water
living in an immensity of silver,
stable on its eagle claw feet.
This is how you described
the "bowl of love"
in a psychological party game.
The bowl, unmoving, constantly filling,
perched on red earth
under a blue hemisphere
where clouds rush by
but never obscure the sun
whose last rays
hold in faint golden banks
as the sky deepens
while in a room the hours turn
unnoticed on a clock.
3
Slowly you come to me
as if across a gap
in time,
slowly you allow yourself
to touch,
first only briefly,
your hand pats my chest
as if it were a wall.
Away from me
only one night
you seem estranged.
Finally I lie beside you
and your leg falls over mine.
You consent to my shoulder beneath your head.
I reach to your breast
and you say,
"Why are we so friendly?"
4
The windows are open
it is yet summer–
heat builds up from the sun
though clouds,
gray ones
scud across the horizon.
A change of mood when the sky
is as dim as twilight
filled with silence
ambivalence
5
To gaze upon
an empty bowl
where a rain of love poured,
wetting the clay
6
Cactus needles over your legs and backside,
you hobbled home.
I practiced the art of the twisers.
Luckily, the light was good on the carpet
by the window, where you had to lie half-naked
so I could see the fine hairs of cactus
scattered at random, and there lusted
over your beautiful skin lying on the soft rug.
7
Love lies asleep
like some species of birds
in which some individuals hibernate
while others
go south for the winter.
Why this is we cannot say,
perhaps some choose to stay.
There seems to be no difference between them.
Meanwhile, the snow falls
and the birds lodge in cliffs.
They are dormant, impossible to stir.
8
Her head thrown back on a pillow, she will stare
into your face,
her mouth a line–
plunge ahead
into the abyss she feels
and tear her from there
to speak to you
to look at you without holding back.
She is torn,
her love
a worn bowl with a hole in the bottom.
A bowl covered with untranslated symbols,
her love
worn by the friction of
betrayed trust
the conditional love
of a father,
of a mother
who could not love at all.from Memoirs of a Cold Autumn
1
Look into a face you recognize–
in a glance,
you find calmness
or despair,
a gate to pain
or an opening on serenity.
2
Wind bells chime in a random breeze,
then fade into stillness,
not yet the storms of winter.
A dry season with the sound of leaves
shuffled by a child lonely after school,
grown separate from her mother.
Almost a teenager, she's blond, with freckles,
a full mouth, blue eyes, and a turbulent life.
Too many homes, too many stepfathers,
the first one of which she loved and lost
with the sharply conscious emotion
of a five year old.
Now she rebels,
and cries,
her tears not yet adult,
yet they are tears of blood.
A strong child,
she's too big to control,
with a will not easily ignored.
She had words with her mother yesterday–
pushed her suddenly in anger and made her fall.
Her mother, surprised and embarassed as much
by the daughter's lack of apology
as by the physical force,
took it in silence.
The girl's unchecked rage is a jagged power,
ready to die and unbending.
3
Fragment moon before dawn
lingers in memory
as a glimpse of clarity.
4
A face cut in light,
the planes of her features
distinct with shadow and brightness,
far enough away so that
you cannot tell exactly where the eyes look.
Though her face suggests
that you make contact,
you cannot be sure.
Her face sharp across the distance,
the clear air like a lens,
a lens of nothingness
without obstruction,
frictionless, only the distance
adding an otherness. A face cut in light,
a sky almost indigo,
a gray tree bare of leaves
accentuates the depth
her face of white skin gleaming
beneath dark masses of hair
real but far away . . .