Is there something else
I should do?

Is there someone else inside me
whose shadow I glimpse now and then?
Someone so different
from who I think I am that in fact
it’s a new person or an old one,
and I do not know a thing about them,
someone utterly not what I am?

Is there something else
I should do?

What work is there to do
that is not being done better
by others, work I cannot do
because I would only be in the way
of those doing it?

Is there something else
I should do?

Should I be turning the Work
over to the person inside
who is not me, or to a person
outside who is not me?

Is there something else
I should do?

Will there ever be a poem
from my pen 
that does not include 
a question?  Will there ever be
a day that does not include
the nagging sense of there being
a question I haven’t asked
that I should ask, its answer
notwithstanding;

is there something else
I should do?

Is there a question
I should be asking, one
that I can’t answer ever,
one where
the pursuit of the answer
is all there is?

If anyone thinks this poem
is about writing poetry — should I 
disabuse them of the notion?
Should I strike them or laugh
as I flee from them, or

is there something else
I should do?

Praise today for the pancreas 
that’s killing me, for the blood
unbalanced, for the ache
in my right knee that thwarts
me, for the hairs that won’t stay
in my head, leaping out like rats 
who know the score;
praise them all for doing
exactly what they should be doing
in my disrepair; there’s nothing wrong here
that a good old grave won’t cure;
really, there’s no other cure
for what drives it all; I can manage
and maintain and stave off and 
fleetingly deny, but in the end 
there is only the End, so praises
for the End, here’s to settling in for it,
here’s to how I am now slowed
to think and feel differently
as this body slows and shifts; 
praise for the acceptance of this age,
praise for the acceptance of this fight
as ultimately futile
yet worth every stroke and blow I land
as a tribute to how much I have loved
and fiercely pursued love and life
in all the years
of damage I’ve done to myself;
praise to that wounded, bloated game-piece
I call my body, with its hitman organs,
its fatal surges of desire and satisfaction;
praise to how this all is closing down
over a long time, giving me so much
to consider, to savor,
to curse, to praise.

When gawking at ruins
in far off lands, when taking

photos of them and of 
the picturesque locals

for your collections,
please remember

that each person you see
is in their own way also a ruin:

beautiful, vital and worthy
of attention and respect

from you, still here and surviving
right where they were placed,

yet still a ruin
in terms of not being today

what they might have become if,
too often, armies and generations

of people like your own had not come
and swept all before them 

into collections
of their own.