Five Poems

What

I.
My first dream came with a gift of What?
the infant's first wordless question.
I stand before you a sleepwalker
rubbing out, out the damned spots of yesteryear.
A saint or zadig invented the words:
'¿qué causa?' 'what?' so we might ask honest questions.
In a dream of curiosity, I ask - what, how, which, where, why?
The dream of curiosity stages matters out of the question:
dramas about the living and the dead,
where each often plays the other. A little rouge,
a little powder, a change of wigs, who knows what's what?
Night changes to day, and day to night.
You think it's all sun and moon, not trickery?
True I hold the portfolio chargé d'affaires of my life,
but I am a corrupt official, easily bribed
by a tree into saying 'beauty is the answer.'
...