I recall a person — no matter
their gender, don’t sweat their body type —
with messy hair and porcelain voice
that broke in the upper registers
at precisely the same places it always did,
each time they spoke or unnervingly sang.
I hated listening to them but found it
required that I did so whenever they spoke
of what they knew, what they’d seen.
Damnation to them for the force they tried
and tested on me. I just wanted to sleep
very still in my own bed and blankets
and pretend I had nothing to do just because
they told me to do it. Eventually I’d get up
cursing their fragile way of speaking
that nonetheless smashed rock hard upon me
and forced me to rise. Rise I did, a half second
behind their beat as if knowing the smoke was coming
but trying to stay clear. I recall knowing them
but forgetting them, falling back into
the stagnant flow of daily life — where is the milk
for the coffee, where is the coffee cup?
Half a second, maybe longer,
maybe a full second. Maybe the messy hair
distracted me. Maybe I couldn’t get free
of the voice. Porcelain, the voice,
cracked porcelain. I recall it
as being part of a person. I don’t recall
anything beside sadness
that I cannot know them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

Second floor —
the girl
with the broken leg
and her roommate
who is never there.

Third floor, the woman
witb the brain illness
who hasn’t changed
her inspection sticker
since 2023.

On the first floor?
Me, with two strokes, a partner,
and a cat, but let’s not
dwell on that. Let’s instead
dwell on how dark

it’s getting out there
in the world, the nation,
the tents of the unhoused,
the darkening nights closing in
on Thanksgiving.

Anything other than
my ruined life. Anything
other than the destroyed Earth.
My heart skips its uniform beats
often — I try not to dwell here

in the brimful parade
of souls who don’t yet know
they are discarded and have been found
wanting. I’m waiting for the right moment
to tumble into the fire —

except, it may not come. It may instead
drag itself past this holiday
into Christmas, then past that
into a new year. Second floor may heal
and third floor may heal; I might heal myself

or figure out a way ahead.
None of us know. Meanwhile the stars
continue turning slowly, slowly above.
They don’t care above us. They just turn:
oblivious to pain, to holidays, to the setting

and the rising of the sun;
glorious to see the uncaring nature
of things. Of things invisible
to us all. The cat yawns and stretches
in my spare room where she sleeps.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

Forgotten men,
forgotten women, everyone
in between, sitting lonely
in homes and not-quite homes,
in rooms paid for weekly, shut in
and alone, sitting
unaccompanied in dark and naked rooms
and waiting to die or for something else
to happen suddenly and take them
off or out of the silence of the earth;
forgotten men and women and everyone
in between sit and stare lonely in their
shabby clothes and think of those gone first,
those lucky few and then many who went earlier
as a trickle and then a flood of relief and sorrow
and wonder that their own lot is to stay —
old homes becoming new or being knocked down
as they are, as they are; old bodies becoming
fragile as destroyed leaves on a sidewalk
with their bones showing through and them saying
they were younger once, they were stronger once,
they were handsome and strode strongly once
across their stages; and now
they sit weakly alone in rooms and wait for
the knock on the door, the hand on their shoulder,
the sheet being lifted and resting gently
over their faces before they are taken away.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

outside the front door,
hibiscus — last summer’s buds
cling to faint brown limbs
as if they have more to give,
as if they are not browned themselves.

still they promise life
as if they have more to live —
lying little pods.
they have come from nowhere else;
sit like birds, eggless.

dead buds hang, inert
on hibernating limbs — some
will fall off by spring.
some will hold on till they can’t.
spring will come when all have gone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

Grab the ladle from
the server and chug it down
despite the burning of your throat
and the protests of the people
who just came down to help.

Your clothes are ragged, your clothes
are dirty, your clothes are
mismatched and of odd sizes;
you don’t care, you don’t give
a server’s sense of ownership
of what they are
or how long they’ve toiled for you.
You just want soup, hot and thin
and enough to hold you still overnight.

Out to the day you go
and a server blesses you, tentatively
as if they aren’t sure you deserve it.
You aren’t sure either if you do
but you shrug and take it.

It’s cold out here. Wait to see
what comes for you, what mercy
might fall to you. Maybe
a bhangra song of lost love
in a snatch overheard, maybe
nothing but car horns and curses.

Tomorrow
might be different. In fact,
it might not come at all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

The angels — Rilke’s gang
of upstarts — called me. I refused
to go; after a while they went
and I was alone.

Corruption seizes the night
in the hours before sun comes up.
I wait for the tender shade of the morning,
the lighting of the blinds. I’m alone.

Cat, or a being like one, in the spare room
prowling, skulking about. In dawn’s breaking
the cat will turn into an angel like Rilke’s,
or maybe more like one of Blake’s. Either way

I will be alone. It doesn’t matter
which way they turn — into terror or war,
into beauty or inscrutable meaning. I will not
turn; I will face the day squarely. Again — I will not turn.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

I am terrible at certain things
which I should be good at
by now — all the years
in a heap strive to make me
at least competent and I should be
a master or so you would think —

but the list grows and grows
and I fail so often, even recalling them
imperfectly, even recalling them
incompletely or not at all; in fact
when I try to

I am remarkably bliss-filled, let them
go, let them fall from my head like feathers
from a bird, sometimes a drab robin,
rarely a vibrant cardinal, and once
there was a hawk feather  — this is
where my dreams have brought me:

years heaped up and up but dissolving
like castles, crude or elaborate in the waves
that lap this shore until my competence
or mastery do not matter anymore

and an hour from now in the sunset
it will be gone, all of it will be gone
and I will sit back, a neophyte,
marveling that memories do not matter
while the sun still is winter-brilliant
and I have time, short time to make more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward.
T

I take a piece of butter bread
and spread it thick with butter again
and also honey — not thick with it
but thick enough — and turn it loose
upon my tongue where it stops
me for a minute, less really
unless I close my eyes after a bite
and think: is this enough?
Is this enough to stop hunger,
end war, give me peace and allow me
to harmonize with silence for one moment
after, until I take another bite?

It isn’t. So I take
another bite, feel honey
in my beard-hairs, chew slowly
around butter — a big chunk
if you can call it a chunk when
it is so soft and when bread
melds swiftly to it until
they are one —

and I close
my eyes, alone again
for a second time this morning
when it is morning here,
night elsewhere, cusp of a day
when anything could happen,
even a piece of butter bread
coming together with honey
and extraneous butter until
you close your eyes one final time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T