EXPLOSION IN THE HONG KONG CHRYSANTHEMUM FACTORY

What touched it off?
Spontaneous combustion, maybe,
of accumulated sweatshop afternoons
fired by a pollen-sorter's idly lustful reverie?
Whatever.
Sudden devastation bloomed.
Dye vats burst to flinders.
Pistils and stamens missiled through the plant
while palletloads of stems stacked ceiling-high
collapsed to bury helpless victims.
White-smocked assembly-line technicians,
Chinese women, Filippinas,
Thais, Malaysians, Balinese, Burmese,
fled screaming in a fusillade of leaves.
The supervisor, a Japanese
touched with the gift of tongues,
roared maledictions in half a dozen languages
with frenzied pleas for orderly evacuation--
universally ignored.

And in the aftermath,
a ghostly silence everywhere
as everywhere
the bonewhite petals softly fell.

My Guru

when last he deigned
to visit me at home
sat unconcernedly on air,
crosslegged, three feet off the floor,
passed me a juicy pomegranate
plucked out of nothingness,
then offered tidbits of advice
on incidents that hadn't yet occurred
but that, I knew, inevitably would
and, sure enough, they did.
My greatest aggravation with the man
is that he never pulls these tricks
when there are witnesses who might
observe and verify the facts.
No--each impossible barrage
leaves nothing tangible behind
to silence incredulity.
Miracles, he sermons gravely,
are for instruction only and are scorned
by those who have obtained
the peace of true enlightenment.

All very well.
But when at last he took his leave,
I watched him to the riverbank
where he ignored the bridge
and smugly crossed the stream
treading the wavelets like a field.
Miracles are for instruction only?
Maybe so,
yet I'm beginning to suspect
that there are some things
the old bastard isn't telling me.

from Samisdat Vol. 50 #4, 1987.

Dedicated to my beloved teacher, Edward Alexander Crowley