Brooks Haxton Poems

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1985

 The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth 
 the vengeance; he shall wash his feet in 
 the blood of the wicked. Psalm 58

It was the fortieth year since Buchenwald: two thousand
Jewish refugees in Sudan starved while Reagan visited
the graves of Nazis. CBS paid off Westmoreland
for their rude disclosure of his lies and crimes:
he had killed thirty of the...Read more of this...

Every Death Is Magic from the Enemy to Be Avenged

 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
 Psalm 22

When fever burned the last light out of my daughter’s eyes,
I swore to find and kill the ones to blame. Men
must mount the long boat in the dark with spears.
At dawn, where the flowering spicebush hid my scent,
I crouched. A young wife, newborn slung across her chest,
came first for...Read more of this...

I Want to Pray

 In the hidden part thou shalt make me to know
 wisdom. Psalm 51

That young man
firing his Kalashnikov
into the playground
has been made to know
the hidden part.

Me, I want to pray.
I’m on my knees.
But all I am is screaming
I don’t know what for. Maybe
the best God can do is pay no mind....Read more of this...

Monster Minded

 The wine of astonishment
is house wine at my house.
The whiskey of it is a sauce
we savor. The cocaine
of thy judgment also
is rock crystal, blow
to blow the mitral valve.
Truly is the heroin
of thine excellency said
to be deep brown, ****
pure enough to stop the heart....Read more of this...

Rotgut

 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor 
 the moon by night. Psalm 121

On a hillside scattered with temples broken
under the dogday sun, my friend and I drank
local wine at nightfall and ate grapeleaves
in goat-yogurt glaze. The living grape vines
bore fruit overhead. Beyond our balcony,
beyond the Turkish rooftops, an old moon
touched Venus at one tip. This vintage,
he...Read more of this...

Sackcloth

 I made sackcloth also my garment; and I 
 became a proverb to them. They that sit in 
 the gate speak against me; and I was the 
 song of drunkards. Psalm 102

I made sackcloth my garment once, by cutting
arm and neck holes into a burlap bag.
A croker sack they called it. Sackdragger
they called the man who dragged...Read more of this...

Salesmanship With Half A Dram Of Tears

 Gripping the lectern, rocking it, searching
the faces for the souls, for signs of heartfelt
mindfulness at work, I thought, as I recited
words I wrote in tears: instead of tears,
if I had understood my father's business,
I could be selling men's clothes. I could be
kneeling, complimenting someone at the bay
of mirrors, mumblingly, with pinpoints pressed
between my lips. That was the life I...Read more of this...

Thy Name

 My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? 
 I will declare thy name unto my brethren.… Psalm 102

OK. Let’s not call what ditched us God:
ghu, the root in Sanskrit, means not God,
but only the calling thereupon. Let’s call God
Fun. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was Fun. Fun created man in his own image.
The fool...Read more of this...

Unclean

 I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am 
 like an owl of the desert. I watch, and am 
 as a sparrow alone upon the housetop. 
 Psalm 102

The pelican in scripture is unclean. It pukes dead fish
onto the hatchlings, and it roosts alone, like Satan
on the Tree of Life. Nobody told me. I liked pelicans.
I...Read more of this...