On Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford.

The book focuses on the rise of the Mongolian Empire with Genghis, raids into eastern Europe and china, and the establishment of Kublai Khan, Genghis' grandson, ans the Yuan Dynasty in China. The book spans the 12^th and 13^th centuries. The innovative brilliance of Genghis on the battlefield is nearly matched by the state-craft of Kublai. On balance, and OK book Short on details about Persian and European military campaigns, rich on details about the consolidation of the Chinese state. This book could have been called “Genghis Khan and the Unification of China.”

Ice

The brook along my
morning ride
is a beast
flayed in shame.

The hide in this dead weather

is rigid under the saddle
of the blue sky.

I can see its cycle of death;
once informal, then glutinous
now found simply.

(I can smell it in heat

somewhere in the weeds
from the truck cabin.

Asphalt, garlic acetylene, the narcotic

zinc oxide lethargy, the Cicada-ian
neuroses.)

But then it will be gone

hidden in the foliage.

Here, I am scandalized
by the ruin
smeared into
the sticks, like a beast
crushed
under wheels.

I would wear the sad thing
across my shoulders

in supple health.

But, no, I am glad to pass
this trap and ravish
organ now
and swing my body,
and expel animal
steam like bison in deep
cold.

wicker

Here is a basket of weight.
You may keep what portion
serves you
or
you may leave the collection
as you found it.

You may also donate these items.

Yet, breaks are rarely available

for the perfunctory.

You may wish to
unpack the basket
(if you can discern breaks in
the dissonance)
or repack it around you
as a kind of fossil.
(what will we find in your stomach?)

If, however, your bulk is extraordinary
you may need a porter, servant or translator.
Your caravan rich with silk, babies and wine
can turn to art, disperse a job,
or bake loving touch to clay.

Well, here you are,
and good luck.
Please expect strain
and watch out for
substance abuse.

Prehistoric Fish Chalk

I say: "let the heavens do as they will.
Let the beach sand break up and
sift to the bottom.
The trees shall grow,
the trash will grow,
the mildew in the shower
will grow."

We agree that the reins of this carriage
command a hefty charge.

The baker knows it when
a cake falls;
the barber when
he tilts the scalp one way
but the face works another.
The painter knows it in drips.
The parent in profane utterances
and the patient in pain.

Nature knows it in
lean winter tracks
between wisping and willful.

So, let's walk a while and talk
(as you step notice cracks)
and observe the roadside weeds
like shavings of a metal lathe;
let the afternoon go unplanned,
I want to know what you know
when you have told yourself.

Yet, Even trees have bony faces to hide.

Make a sound deep in your chest.

Creep out your window at night.

Glide on a glass table

in your own 50 yeald old film.

Be a hero if heoism has currency

in your field of terrors.

In the corner
is a tiny table an chair.
Sit, enjoy a cool drink
and survey what you see.
Some of these women only
"do Kennedys."

Methuselah

Make way for me

clear a path leaving town

the time has come.

The other side breaths like I 

beyond I breath like it

leaning into the harness

practice for death

eat the vines that

fasten us 

feed the bugs that

hasten us

make a path for me

you will hear my call

hold this version of me

before you speak 

empty vessel,

oh hemorrhage

lattice frame

of my spectacle

sober as sand

nourished as a broken beast 

leaning upon a post.

I loosed love

and drunk these days dreary

and

bent the boar

back to see it its own ass

and strode upon the 

mussels black

but now am warts

The first time I put my
hand on a girl's buttocks
I was pleased.
I didn't know what to do
when she didn’t mind.

I was 10

and I put it there it again (she blushed).
The line of my
forefinger and thumb a
perfect crescent
cradling her.

I thought about it.
We were both 10.

It fit like setting a wooden beam

tight without fasteners. 

She already understood
my hand was made for this
but I had loosed something
I didn't know how to value.

I wanted to tease,  to
exploit or antagonize.
Tugging her pony tail,
covering her with leaves.

Instead I was
drinking the waters at
Bath,
tasting a cheese,
noble, vital,
distinctive, out of my depth.

Over her shoulder

a pudgy thing with freckles

pants too tight and short.

(I blushed) I needed help.
A smiling fragility.

(Months later we kissed
in her bed with the horse
canopy, touched on the leather
bench in the 18 wheeler
and rode her
golf cart down the dirt
road to the edge of the woods.

I never met her family;

this awkward girl was

the only living thing

in a house of wax.)

we knew to embrace
before it was real.
My parents
called me home at sunset.

The Lascaux Nebula

This layby seeds the dream

wakes the dizzy bird

wilts the wild

bares the wires like

sinew moving electicallity

this ruby green gas  nebula
familiar like visages in wood
The mind papers the gaps

above are the cave works
obtuse, deceitful, recondite with
formulas of simple intimacy.

breaths of carbon monoxide

iron oxide

urine

brothers and spirits

or are they   

the mind recoils with the distance
this superlative smells of animals

draw the bow string,
and release (this is not about Archimedes)
a fantasy of pressure and dust and
imagine the sound
that seeded the fallow field

we below breath quietly and ask
and scrape

for DBW

Why is it that you never left
how can I bend my path to collect the ink
cloud?

Why measure bones for marrow?
This glass is empty; the liquid drained a dozen times.
hasn't it?

yet, and there is a yet, the vessel remains.
and functions; for blood, medicine,
milk into old age.

this obstinacy of quartz
movement lost in the bowels of the shelf.
--why did she save it? beyond singular--alone.

This is the cup I drink from--the one that
dies quietly and is forgotten.
Lovely to see you, the glass rim
a new vision of an old form of perfection.