" A Question of Lives"
Impressions of the series 'Carnivale'
Oakies scatter in dust
drenched trucks, their black
skin washed in the crusted remains
of yesterday's gruel--life
reduced over a flame to thick
sauce in cast iron pots, buried
on roads unfamiliar. Ben buries
his mother's clay soul in dust
pockets of memory now thick
mulch for winter wheat. Her black
snarl of derision for his living
gift from healing hands, remains
in his brain as a corpse remains
on a battlefield waiting to be buried.
In California, a migrant lives
in pursuit of food shaken from dust
on his overalls. In torch-lit black
trenches, their children eat rations thick
with yesterday's dread but not thick
enough to stop bullets. Ben remains
locked in dreams of a black
bear eating German soldiers buried
in ditches. Dried blood is dust
on Russian snow. The California lives
of Chinese girls are lives
enlisted with brothels in towns thick
in piety but the suffocating dust
coats polished pews. Religion remains,
but the whorehouse burns. They bury
children in white shrouds and black
guilt. The pastor rips off his black
collar, climbs in vertebrate boxcars of lives
on the bum where young cries are buried
in the flame of open campfires thick
with silence. The ghosts of Babylon remain
with Ben, dancing in the dust.
The black blizzard marches in thick
waves of composted life, the clay that remains
is dead memory no longer buried in dust.
© 2003 Steve Williams
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