Salvatore Ala, 24 april 2015
for Victor Hernández Cruz
Strip search because I was full of the drug love,
Strip search because my name is an eye-rhyme with Allah,
Strip search because of Mafia stereotypes,
Strip search because I was carpooling to Mexican Village,
Strip search because I carried a book of poetry,
Strip search because I was traveling to New Orleans,
Strip search because I loved a woman with two names,
Strip search because a black woman offered me a ride,
Strip search for desiring Belle Isle after midnight,
Strip search because I am not a savior but a Salvatore,
Strip search for bleeding from hands and feet,
Strip search for driving naked and saving time,
Strip search for visiting the graves of my ancestors,
Strip search for the orange blossoms on my bride,
Strip search for the smoke of ablution and peace,
Strip search for defiance at the borders of freedom.
Salvatore Ala, 24 april 2015
The most noxious landfill is language.
Books are polluted; libraries, dump sites.
Due to toxic levels of pathetic fallacy
Bookstores recall infected books;
Greenpeace intervenes poetry readings;
Poets are fined for offshore word spills.
Why must a cloud be forever lonely?
Why must the sea be always cruel?
Books burn by their own hands.
Lexicon’s toxic waste contaminates
Our graves and poisons our shadows
From which we rise to stain the world.
Salvatore Ala, 17 april 2015
We are bone, love, we are earth,
Our breathing slows and we are stone.
We are flesh, love, we are spirit,
Our eyes close and we are mineral.
We are burial places, love, we are fire,
When we kiss the ice ages recede.
We are half lives, love, missing links,
When we touch the earth grows fecund.
Salvatore Ala, 11 april 2015
My love is like the crescent moons of Arab calligraphy,
Like a language that sand erases.
She is also like the little word houses of China
Shining on their bamboo stilts
As the green rice flashes to the east.
Spanish is for the blood rose of her mouth,
French for the azure of her gaze,
Russian for her madness and passion.
Latin is for the mirror of her beauty.
Ancient Greek is our Olympus,
Our long climb to a mythical sublime.
If I spoke Aramaic I could tell you
Of the myrrh and frankincense of her flesh.
Sanskrit is for the mystic knowledge of her eyes,
Hieroglyphs are for the silence
With which she guides me to her living tomb.
She is like the inscription on a stone,
More obscure as it is revealed.
Salvatore Ala, 8 april 2015
for Kenya
The cries of hyenas are human cries
The teeth of the lion are human
Jaws of crocodiles are human jaws
Our blood changes into venom
We destroy our own young
We hunt the young of others
We smell slaughter on the wind
Why then consider ourselves separate
If we walk in animal footprints
Why number our tribes
If migrations end in murder
Why give a name to creation
If the same wild God destroys it
Salvatore Ala, 21 march 2015
Flower of kisses
Luminous arc between lovers
Flower of God
Withering when I grasp it
Flower of blood
Coagulates violence
Flower of peace
Elsewhere a weed
Flower of starlight
In clusters
Flower of time
Blossoming space
Salvatore Ala, 20 march 2015
All at once nature was old;
It touched the roots of gold--
And darkness, made of light,
Cast a shadow vast as night.
Soldiers wouldn’t fight.
Drones got lost in flight.
Artists grew so cold
Marble left them unconsoled.
All at once we saw
In each a universal flaw:
Earth was a child
Born to be reviled.
Believers couldn’t believe,
Mourners wouldn’t grieve.
Warmongers went to hell
For the sin of living well.
Politicians couldn’t lie.
Polluters wouldn’t try.
Everything went opposite
The direction of profit.
All at once the earth died;
Civilization,left untried--
And darkness, made of night,
Cast a shadow vast as light.
Salvatore Ala, 16 march 2015
From desperation repossessed,
From marriages divorced in debt,
From suicides in garnishment,
One coin of empire in demise.
From families in ruin,
From homes that were lost,
From hope appropriated,
One coin of empire in demise.
From mask of Mammon,
From fear and war,
Just such interest is accrued,
One coin of empire in demise.
Salvatore Ala, 14 march 2015
Tell me a story mother
All the hospital windows
Are black with snow
Tell me a story mother
Nurses are gathering fire
Doctors are measuring wire
Tell me a story mother
When does our care
For what is ours wear
Tell me a story mother
What we lose in time
We receive in kind
Tell me a story mother
Memory is a medicine
Exceeding what has been
Tell me a story mother
Soil is buried in soil
And grief in toil
Tell me a story woman
Death is the meaning
Of mother in my flesh
Tell me a story mother
The sick are waking
It is night and it is morning
Salvatore Ala, 9 march 2015
Tigris or Babylon or well-watered Eden,
Flowers tumbled over balustrades,
Leopard lilies sprang to the pads of their feet,
Hibiscus blossoms flared in damp sea air,
Miniature lemons orbit a space
In perception for the beauty of the singular
And the shadows of a brightening dusk.
From this terrace you can study the stars,
You can contemplate a meaning
In the shifting mirror of night’s tides.
The conjunction of the constellations
Culminates in a double star of vision:
Everything that changes stays the same—
The flower of the heavens has but one eye.
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