MEMORIAL DAY

I might have stood with my Mother
on Sparks Street cheering the veterans of America's
just and unjust wars
march past,
weeping for my Dad who died
jaundiced in the infirmary of society
not on the opera bloodied battlefield.

Instead into the cold confines of
film spectacle to see young Scandinavians
wrestle with writing and go mad,
jumping into the cold cobalt sea
off Oslo piers--

Two days ago Caravaggio's dead Madonna
in crimson cloak crossed my mind as a Reiki healer
pulled my ear lobes. The church rejected
her because she was so heavy and lifeless,
daring to lie there dead,
not asleep for ascension's sake--

That day I left behind my watch and black wrist band.
Strange, he'd made me undress--

the badboy of the Renaissance who loved his sword
and put his head into Goliath's -- eyes bulging
with crazed fury, held by David's victorious angelic fist.

To be today, not to be seen, to swear allegiance
to something else.


June 10, 2008
Lo Galluccio