KEITH MOUL - POEMS

Keith Moul writes poems and takes photos, doing both for more than 50 years. He concentrates on empirical moments in time, recognizing that the world will be somewhat different at the same place that today inspires him. His work appears around the world.

​Garment with Many Folds
 
            “Smithsonian to remove photos of Japanese
            destruction from atomic bomb exhibit”
            a news report
 

​With infallible pace of his patrician voice, FDR stalled
history: Dec. 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy,”
to embed in American minds how reprisal engages a gear
to mobilize 133 million constituents’ incandescent wrath
toward a dark, inferior people’s bigoted aggression; toward
suffering at lives inevitably lost; toward God, audience of one,
to aver to heaven that we arise to reassert our virtuous might,
that we must not betray ourselves to inaction and treachery.
 
Apt words for war’s element of surprise.  (U.S.A.F.M.:
“Strike the enemy at a time or place or in a manner
for which he is unprepared….  Deception can aid probability
of achieving surprise.”)  With twitching feather
the pert goose disdains the gander.
 
Mr. President, you embark another grieving generation,
re-imbued with new cause, following a persistent myth
of invulnerability, a path through ignorant enemies plain:
 
brief consensus at our independence; our entitlements;
our assumptions of racial distinction, authorizing phobia
for blacks, freedom doled to whites; reconstruction debacle;
our early and essential education in realpolitik to implicate
alliance by casus foederis; our superior right, our destiny.
 
A person may, perhaps ought, to revere the sun.  A human,
eyes tight in reverence, Mr. President, generals glory mad,
shrieks banzai as prelude to immolation, earns restoration
to that life, not to melt by our scientific prerogative for a
just indemnity, atonement to our egalitarian God listening
to factory churning, easeful with armaments leased allaying
isolation in favor of manufacture for use and constantly
ching-chinging cash transfers, and advancing munitions
technology since His flaming sword in Eden.  Mr. Truman,
unaccustomed to literary heterodoxy,  invoiced Japan
”many fold” air mail delivery.  Arizona’s oil still bubbles
its exquisite kaleidoscope beneath Battleship Row.
 
You may infer our victory, Mr. President, not by defeat of
Nazi science, but allied valor, hardly our lurid scream of “tit”
out the maw of Enola Gay on Hiroshima and indecorous “tat”
from fat boy's pranks on Nagasaki: humanity mocks redemption.

Martin Luther King
                Birth: January 15, 3rd Monday in January:
                Murdered in racial war; celebrated in peace.
 

​As his life demanded of him that he speak
enlightened truth, the Reverend Dr. King
knew God precluded fear and to authorize
equal justice at the Edmund Pettis Bridge,
at both ends; duty as firm as tension cables
caressing the through span arch of steel.
 
The man marched with God amid his seekers,
amid bloodied billy clubs of bigotry, Jim Crow
staking out the garden spot of Selma, Alabama
real estate, ever known as a priori white.
 
Real history cites sure facts of the March 7, 1965
march to Montgomery.  Dr. King joined his cause
to history, captured on grainy film, blurry stills
in black and white, beginning peacefully to cross
a docile Selma river to an a posteriori destiny.
 
Like me, Dr. King knelt to a cosmos; contended
solo in his enfolding skin; bore humanity’s doubts
among rabid ideologies, ancient plagues to pock us.
Yet humble, courteous dignity overfilled him
that I cannot duplicate in erection of my pantheon.

​With My Lips Apart

​Some irredeemable nights force a watch for death.
Our aboriginal hearts pump relentlessly, tired by
bloodflow to steel an arm or spout from our wound.
 
Vanquished dreams charge through us to wake; to change
in medias res; to wash in warm rain of moody January.
 
Please discard our immersion in quarrel as anomaly .
 
Each promptly adjusts bedclothes and sheets, caresses
sentient skins not sophisticated with love’s politics.
 
We argued meaning of a momentary pause, by me,
during a ticklish summary of partisan screed; nerves
leaked, doubt squealed in like an overdue train.
 
I couldn't make you see.  I wouldn't accept why.
Frankly, I lifted my eyes toward atheist heaven
in search of facts to compel a seal with paradise.
 
You suggest travel.  “Sure, but travel near and light!”
 
I'll take my politics and shouts and hide my cynicism
with my unmatched socks if we can plan a mood walk
of accord, kick the fallen cottonwood leaves, forge
a path through clamoring rose hips splashing in air.
 
“You’ll like low garden places, in leaf mold, beneath
dripping thorns, behind stalks, private.”  “Can politics
reconcile the drear of winter’s rain?” you ask.  I ponder
wordless if pills reliably treat such unsanctioned questions.
 
Yet too warm for January, rain steams away one mood,
floods another, all still, breathless.  Coexistence sneaks
between us, finally palpable.  Eagerness builds.  My lips
part; I hand you spongy compost fragments: sweet truths
redolent of edenic gardens to find our prehistoric selves.