An Unforgotten Path
November 18, 1987: “Fire at King's Cross Underground station leaves 31 dead”
“The worst fire in the history of the London Underground killed 31 people and injured more than 100 when a stray match started a blaze beneath a wooden escalator.”
Chas Early, British Telecommunications
31 scorched—one week
before I went home
to London. I was lost.
7 years since I left
my childhood in England.
My father told me
to meet at King’s College,
I arrived at King’s Cross
6 miles away. Accosted
by roses, carnations, lilies,
a meadow of flowers
bunched in yellow, pink,
green crepe-paper bundles
amassed as a river. Baptizing
grouped onlookers, sliding
as snails sunken in pictures.
Memories were weathered
soiled, faded from sun
and rain, rinsing the newness
repeated by mothers,
daughters, sons struggling
to fill the gaps. I struggled
to fill the gaps without
my father, a fragile bond
as the crepe-paper bridging
across a great ocean—not sinking
in pictures of my father, ripping
at minuscule memories to fade.
From Athens to Tellico, Tennessee
In the summer of my late teens my best
friend’s father fathered me on things I thought
men should do. Away in Athens, nested
amidst dogwood trees, fields with lavender
wildflowers, blended in green tinted meadows
in Tennessee. I learned to listen to crickets
build networks where telephones may not ring
often. A neighbor called my best friend’s father’s
father and asked if he had hired help.
Just my Korean grandson and his black best
friend. My best friend’s father spoke about girls,
intimacy while driving on Tellico mountain
roads, as each car passed, he pushed my head down,
shrouded my skin from folks with hatred for brown.
An Assault Rifle Ode
1077 innocent Americans found
blooded end in mass collection.
Assault rifles held by people
with uncontrolled emotions
triggering projectiles.
An assault rifle, merely
a composition of wood,
steel, plastic or iron forged
into a projector to thrust
projectiles in rapid force.
An assault rifle cannot
be personified, no emotions,
not greed, rage, aggression,
vengeance, disgust.
An assault rifle can be an M, XM,
AR, AK, HK, bullpup, forged
by Sturm Ruger, Remington,
Savage, Smith and Wesson,
Mossberg, Heckler and Kock—
two-point-four billion in sales.
Assault rifle sales; influenced
by a country, faction, family,
person’s assault or defense.
An assault rifle does not plan
and organize its constructed
purpose, hard and cold until
inflamed from embrace.
An assault rifle is a tool, held
by people feeling controlled
emotions within the law,
protecting innocent lives
from civil disobedience.
An assault rifle held by a person
I cannot see in a blue sports car
on South Miami street corner
with muzzle pointed at me.