It’s such a good
spring day here —
good birds calling,
good shoots
of green, good sights
of people on foot,
lightly dressed and smiling
as they see the good gold sun — 

that it becomes
hard to believe
that it’s also spring in places
where the calling
is the sirens
of ambulances,
the people are
heavily dressed in blood,
and the sun
is somewhere behind
the smoke
from a bomb. 

The sky negates
what the air whispers:
that this
could happen anywhere
and everywhere
soon.

In spite of that

I go outside
and plant a seed.

I pray it takes root
and that I live
to see it full grown,

that I live to share
its fruit someday
with someone yet
unknown to me.
On that day

may we sit and speak
of good, of green and gold,
of spring

and how it never fails.

My left thumb,
numb; left big toe,
numb; the rest of both feet
perpetually burning
after first daily contact
with the floor; lately
both hands are beginning
to tingle as well.
They all still work but
are starting to cost so much
in comfort and ease 
that I’m beginning 
to avoid using them,
some days 
doing next to nothing:

staring at screens
large and small instead;
plotting dark points on 
black graphs in my head;
making this agony so mythic
that it keeps me in my bed;
holding a grudge against myself
that pushes me closer to dead.

Still, there are those moments
when the window works,
the breeze works,
the sunlight works
to remind me
that I still have senses 
that can be trusted
to offer joy as needed; still,

in spite of the long needles
in my soles,
the pricks and flames
that rise in my skin
at the slightest brush,
most days

I get up and see
how much balance
I can salvage
as I rock between those
extremes from
fearful waking to
exhausted, relieved
sleep.

the truth:

it’s exhausting being alive.
it’s not fun much of the time.
we only choose it
because the alternative is coming any way
and most of us aren’t early adopters.

the truth:

I’m glad there are people 
who like to mentor the young
because it needs doing but
I’m neither good at 
nor willing to do it.
if it happens inadvertently
as a result of my work, cool;
if not, ah, well…

the truth:

I’m pretty certain that 
even given all our best efforts otherwise
what we have here 
is a society based on 
everyone but the elite
having a bad case of 
failure to thrive
and you can’t run forever that way;
it’s failing 
by design.
we better learn 
to mine the rubble.

the truth:

I’m too old to matter
to 90% of the people
I wish I mattered to
and 90% more stupid
than I think I am anyway.

the truth:

I am beginning to forget
my power

and I suspect that’s a defense mechanism.

the truth:

I never mattered much to begin with
and 

that is a comfort.

an apparent tragedy
is visible here
above these caved sockets

whether a lost battle
or a won war
created this cloven skull

is unimportant
as this is
the end product

what is present:
bone
what is gone:

all memory
of any color
once found here

any life
any love
both long gone

so no matter
how this fatal wound
came to be

whether in victory
or defeat
gone is gone

and
dead
is dead

This last defiant breath
I will not release

without a struggle. To breathe it
would be to admit

I’m past resistance
and have surrendered

to easy despair
with the world and its 

grasp upon me, that I’ve begun
to interpret the velvet of

its grip on my throat as
less heinous than that

of an iron hand crushing
me swiftly into choke though

the end result will be the same:
my white-lit death. My tunnel

opening.  Even if I remain
alive after breathing, that moment will signify

my willingness to walk into
my own captivity to their New World —

so I fight, holding my breath
against that. If I die fighting, may it be

that my body will hold that breath
for the next fight, the next fighter,

then for the next fight and fighter
and all the ones after that;

not only for my world,
but for those to come.