Overlooking Koolau




rocky trail
illuminated
in the moonlight
ascends gradually
to an ancient place
a high windless rubble
winding away below
smooth as a vortex
draining the ocean



the right spot
sitting still as stone
breathing the air
filling the chest
as if on purpose
spherical totality
of jagged rock
curving crater rim
infinite bound sky
weight in the joints
hands on lap
vibrant silence
pierced gently
by the soft jetting
of large birds
black gleaming backs
white underbellies
in the stark light
careening out
over the precipice
soon invisible
abandoning everything
to the sheer plunge
but returning again
each for hours
cutting the air
with curved beak
and windswept wing
each its own sound
its signature
on the ear of night






						2								



shift in the moon
yawning of the earth
on its pitched axis
walking through rooms
heaped up lava
gathering places
old men talking 
in quiet tones
throwing bleached bones
into the gravel circle
coming to grips 
with the strangers 
harbored below
their pale skins
covered in frail tapa
cavorting shamelessly
with our daughters
their tiny sharp sticks
and spitting fire-killers
what gods are these
who defile us thus?




falling fitfully
into dreaming
of golden turrets
glinting like night waves
smooth moving walls
breaking into white
hushed lines of repose
unlike the creaking
of these ominous domes
turning and turning
measuring the stars
gauging their distance
cataloging them
for some later vengeance
sometimes emanating
an evil stab of light
rising like a razor
into the soft bosom
of the firmament
whose gentle rebuke
of remembered light
(nebula and galaxy)
drifts to earth 
sadly ineffectual
						3




dream over
awakening
to follow the path
shivering
back to the world
coasting down
half sleeping
to the warm bed
waiting below
in the drum of rain
dimly remembering
that wondrous chill
of full moon and petrel
subdued brilliance
overlooking Koolau





		



































Nicaragua
1988




The streets are the day's battleground
the rains have made them rivers
potholes feet deep furtive with brown swirling water
taxis swerving, stopping, cursing among them
until the wrenching straightaway
and again the skies blacken and open.


      		...


Back in the bowels of the barrio hospital
(rat crawling among the crates)
are litters of children who don't piss
getting rigid plastic intrusions jammed
fortnightly into their virgin abdomens
made to lie with rheumy old men
little christs with dirty faces
wracked with the stigmata of the age
but endlessly worse than golgotha
recurring like a dull nightmare
in the sick sleep of uremia.


			...


Nearly breathless with rage
Luis grunts his phrases in short rasps
striking his fist on the dashboard
for the physical force they need
to escape their immense gravity
"Es una verguenza! una verguenza, senor!
solo prometidas, prometidas, intiende!
Escuche bien, yo no soy sandinista,
yo soy nicaraguense, senor!"
spit with a final paroxysm of fury
as we stop to ask the way to the
  Hermanas de Maryknoll
among the cavernous ruts of Ciudad Sandino.


						2
			...



Down on the wall fronting the dead lake
two seabirds skim the silent waters
calling quietly in the gray deepening dusk
dark movement of lapping wavelets
catching the coming gulf of night 
answered among the wild green shore vines
by the tenuous first flourescence
of an awakening firefly
and soon a flurry of random beacons
sometimes simultaneously flashing
sometimes an immense vacuum
the green pollockian emptiness of nature.


			...


Mordura de serpiente? tetanus?
no he visto, nunca he visto esto, doctor
en mi pais, no tenemos malaria
and you can't do electrolytes?
or even the gases of your poor patient's blood?
or trust your creatinines or glucoses?...
the machine I bought you never came?
the box of journals I sent...lost?
Why am I here with this projector
delivering fractured words on subjects
  you've already intuited
on chemistries you can't measure.

Expensive way of indulging your solidarity, doctor
we could have used an infusion pump
next time send a Hewlett Packard
or a volume ventilator or some IV nitroglycerine
something we can use doctor, gracias
as he fusses with the green plastic Bird
insufflating the woman's chest just so
watching her color, her heart rate
and thus adjusting with his hands
the blood coursing her craggy veins
his interns rapt before his deftness.


			...





						3




girl and guy vacationing from Yosemite
have been down at the beach
saving endangered turtles with a biologist
who had spent four hours under his car
on the way because he had to make 
the conference with the villagers
so they wouldn't take all the eggs...
let some of them hatch.

$26.00 a month this guy gets paid
to do this work -- like the interns
and Doctor Jimenez who works
his revolutionary ass off trying
to be too many places at once
while his pretty girlfriend flirts
awaiting his return from interminable meetings
at least this patriot doesn't drive
a Bronco or a Cherokee
privilege slowly insinuating itself
among the companeros of Altamira.


			...


Hawaii cinco zero they say
with faraway wistful smiles
as they size up the possibilities
that the large serpentine wave
and the darkhaired beauty running
bring to mind in this swelter
of shortages, inconsistencies and basura
capitalist imperialism of the first order
appropriations of the paradisical moment
the tube a direct viral bit implanting
eye to heart, heart to waking dream
impregnating reality with the subtlest
  falter of thought, of will
such that they ask my name, my phone
detaining me for minutes to hold on to it
to indulge it and feed it...
					   cinco zero.


			...




						4




His toe the color of dirty black marble
the young campesino cried and cried
ya no guanto, ya no guanto
O mi dio, ya no guanto!
and looking at this yanqui doctor
as I talked to his burned out residents
who knew he was slipping after all the pain.

He feared the fear of the hopeless
when staring the unblinking torturer in the eye
the yanqui, the demon behind the contra
bland reassurances with hand on shoulder
palpating the veins of the groin
to feel where the needles should go
he is tense, and yet a salvation lingers.

Later, on the third day of cleansing
he looks up and in sprightly spanish
says yes, you remind of an allemane
the contra captured on the border
my hand outheld is tendered...hermanos.


			...


Hollow clattering of large falling rocks
reporting like shots through sulfur mist
of fumaroles decanting the deep caldera
loud screeching of frightened birds unseen
etched acutely out of the gray toxic depths
until clearing just enough to see
green parrots scattering hundreds of feet below
and a campesino on the far face flinging
a stone into the steaming crater of Nindira.


			...











						5




Jeeps of the realm bristle to a stop
bodies surging to see this decade's king
an owly little moustachioed man
walking slowly, shaking hands, nodding,
compulsorily epaulleted with red and black
standing adulation followed by shuffling chairs
and calls of bajo en frente!
as the sweating crowd settles in the steam
at this gathering of festive solidarity
between convulsive cloudbursts and lightning.

He begins to encant in tight-lipped control
about your friend and mine -- Che'
and about that bastard -- Pinochet'
and then about Che' and Pinochet'
revolution and forms of evil
the positivity of no, the negativity of si
the necessity of laws of emergency
to preserve the rights of a free state
the overwhelming need for disarmament
which we must never stop fighting for
and so on and so forth 
until the clapping becomes a please senor
to cease the harangue
and get on with the salsa band
patiently sitting on its congas and trumpets
as solidarity crumbles in a fit of yawning
and low intensity attrition to find some food.

  


						Steven Moser