Two poems

Not happy with either one but then again, I've never been happy with any of them. They need to be reworked. No titles yet. Those are harder to write than the words that follow sometimes.


I.
In the onion heart of my inner self
I dream in languages I don’t speak
and I dream of things I know something of
It is an inverted living this dreaming whose pillar
is not my life in normal mode
But my shifted soul
in sifted thoughts

The rules are different here
permissive
outrageous and unpunished
Mostly
unknown to all
except
my ever self
All things allowed
allowed
Allowing
rules the time
I spend in this
place

That is the reason why
when I dream
I am neither me nor me
neither pinned nor pegged
I will not say if this, or that
but for one flowing constant:
In my dreaming,
I remain
As before
a Mother
a Mother
always
because



II.
In the poetry class, the students pondered
The meaning of an especially vivid phrase
“the general sat eating green mangoes with salt
while on the shelf, a jar of pickled fingers and ears
belonging to victims he had tortured, lived accusingly.”

I was the sole Latin American in the group
and for a while,
I let the conjecture fly and zip
and flower and zoom
A ping-pong game of supposed reasons
for mangoes with a pinch of salt
in this why of the why
with a bushel of morbidity thrown in
for good
measure

Then,
I raised my hand and told what I knew
He ate green mangoes with salt
because
they taste good
He tortured
I guessed
because
it felt good
to him
The dead had nothing to do with mangoes
though perhaps
something to do with the salt

In Latin America,
green mangoes with salt are
like pretzels with salt
like french fries with ketchup
like…
You get the gist
of the partnering
The necessity of
the mangoes
with the salt
No deep explanation there to figure
just mangoes
just salt

The killing
that
was something else
altogether