elegy for Miriam Hershberger

scaffolds race up the walls like ivy

squat Inca-nosed day workers spread pasty mortar

like birthday-cake icing over square cinder blocks



two gleaming Hummers flash past,

devils under their hoods



it’s spring

the yuppies venture out on their decks, arranging furniture



magic sunshine glints on old green bottles in the magic gardens

chaste brick lips portrude among the mosaics

murals busting out all over town



Cambodian girls chatter in Khmer

far from ancestral paddies



hysterical moms from Mexico to Tibet

shepherd bewildered broods across the alien schoolyard



Philly is the city that loves you back, except when it doesn’t



chaste maiden hips on the frontiers

walking, walking -- Phnom Penh, Bangkok, Hanoi

young rice shoots sprout in your footsteps,

your laughing footsteps,

o Mennonite daughter of the lunar New Year



clamoring scaffolds rise up to obscure

paint-gleaming murals



demons in the engines jeer

infernal machines accelerate, crush the sparkling green bottles

against the pavement

heedless, insane



apsara smiles in magic gardens

ah that archaic smile!

glittering glass fragments coalesce in

crystal mosaics on the pavement



Philly is the city that loves you back,

except when it doesn’t





bardo



your face frozen in the window

I bring food offerings

to hieratic cats, their old souls

behind ancient eyes



your body entranced in the sacral bed

anointed and unguentine

once we were entwined

under the pyramids, under the sphinx



soul's boat rocking

in dark gelatinous waters

florid multiplex demons

stand at attention



this is not dying; yet it is

this is not a journey; yet it is

your face frozen in the waters

under the pyramids, under the sphinx





stupa



narcolepsy

this drowsiness

laid on thick by winter's

monochromatic brush



take the night train

the catatonic express

nod off

with a head full of snow



there are stupas

at my doorstep

shard upon shard

stone upon stone





monsoon



is this fecundity

or something worse?



a horrorshow

or a ripening?



this ominous outburst,

this sadness in the clouds



prolific, neuronal

luxuriant, intertwining



abrupt, yet not unexpected

the dissolution after the dawn



--Ross Bender

OLD HELLS I HAVE KNOWN

Walking down Baltimore Avenue West Philadelphia


grey winter twilight,


stone obelisk shrieks, catches my eye and jerks


it to the cemetery.


Brooding stone finger over whose dead bodies,


those of original indigents, outcasts, and the


immigrant veterans wounded in America's wars

---

Are there bars on the windows?


VA hospital squat and sphinxlike


imagining pale overcrowded hazy rooms.


Lighting a cigarette from machine in wall --


"kissing the wall" we called it.

---

Are there leather restraints on your wrists and ankles and foreign


barbarians playing needles on every groove in your brain over and over


until they have satisfied their inquisitorial curiosity


and you're not supposed to remember any of it


not even the Japanese smirking doctor and his sadistic reveries

---

Are there places in your mind which if unbandaged suddenly


ooze, then bleed, even though they hadn't occurred to you in years?


Are there lovers who have torn you apart, whom you have devoured


without knowing, beyond caring just because it hurts?


Are there sisters of charity to pluck the lice


from the suppurating grooves of your emotional brain?

---

The torture is real.


Are you too polite to mention it?


Do you surmise that your personal season in hell was good for your fortitude,


That you have gained something and grown in the experience?


Was it not as bad as you had imagined?

---

Listen to me it was real!


Yes, they were trying to destroy you.


Never mind who -- they'll elude you for ever.


They were trying to grind out your reason, turn you into some lackspittle dog


to bark and whine at their whims, to parade on a leash.

---

They are evil -- never mind why.


You survived.


You lost some years which will never return. In some sense you're a cripple.


But you woke up this morning clothed in your right mind.

---

---

--ross bender