One small victory —
did not spill tea sitting down —
one win starts the day.
It is solid, hard.
Another will come
without a warning
or a sign — comfort ignored
except now, perhaps.
Now is perfect; sip
a little tea. Rest.
Upon rising, sun.
Upon sleeping, you learn the moon
keeps watch as a sun
but weaker, cooler.
Close your eyes and rest.
So much to learn, still.
So abundant, that learning,
should you follow close.
Here is learning too,
in this cup of tea. Rest.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
A piece of skin fell from my face
this morning in the shower;
not a large piece, a flake in fact,
just enough to concern me;
looking at it in the mirror
I wondered whether it was alone
and whether I’d lost other parts
of myself without noticing,
whether one day I’d lose
something whose disappearance
would make me more sinister-looking,
perhaps a whole hand — or worse, a heartfelt glance;
perhaps I’d lose more than a tiny flake
and I’d look at the reflection, the me
in the mirror, and wonder who I was
in the time before this one, this day
before me laid out like a predictable
clock face, this week and this year
a calendar of sameness. Whatever my fate,
I would have to be fair to it. I would have
to let it be and watch it unscroll
from a place beyond sorrow, beyond
joy, beyond the simple workaday
of breakfast, lunch, dinner, sleep.
Now, you would think
a piece of skin tumbling into the drain
ought not to matter. You would think,
but you’d be wrong.
Do not flatter yourself. Everything
matters, even that — you are decaying
amid your joys, your despair;
inexorably you fall to pieces
impervious to the vagaries
of emotion. You are failing,
falling apart without meaning
one damn thing by it. Keep it
to yourself until you go. Release it
once you do. Learn
to shine again
once it has gone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
I try to remember
each trip to Austin,
Chicago, Charlotte;
try to recall Chicago,
Albuquerque,
Providence, Boston;
think of New York City
and all the hundreds of times
I have seen it, by train and car
coming, going; nights in Harlem,
afternoons in Soho,
bright harsh day light by the wreck
of World Trade Center: the buildings
so tall, sidewalks filthy with spit and
the absence of dreamed fame; then
I mildly miss Los Angeles
or Costa Mesa, Dallas or
Arlington, Chicago again or
this time Arlington Heights, Philadelphia
or Cherry Valley — nostalgic
for antiseptic edge towns and their ersatz chains
of numbered office buildings
and saddening streets orderly
and numbed to anything but commerce;
I think of where I’ve been for
poems and money, money grubbed
in offices and conference rooms,
poetry dubbed in bars and libraries; always,
always writing more in ice-tinged rooms
that looked the same outside and inside;
and where am I now? Two strokes and failing eyes,
sitting damn near silent in Worcester, limited by inability
to drive, likely to never fly again; the nasty word
retirement looming
over my works —
where am I now?
I type the words, sigh
for the past beatings and love
they took.
I type the words, sigh
for the cities and towns
they hold.
Holding so much
and so little,
I type words. I begin again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
Note — think this will be the last public post on this forum. Not getting a lot of feedback from regular readers here, and I do think that’s critical. So I’ll be limiting who sees the posts.
I’ve also decided to release yet another chapbook of just poems written since my strokes in March of 2024. (I know, I know…said I was done. Call me a liar, a dreamer, a fool…you get to read the poems, right?)
Last, my poem ” Winter And Spring” made it to the Worcester Magazine spring issue…many thanks to Victor Infante for inviting me to contribute.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Listening to the Beatles,
knowing there are two left
and they’ll die sooner or later,
likely sooner, most likely
in my lifetime.
Thinking of Jill Sobule
dying in a house fire, and she
was a year older than I am,
just a year…
and all the others
who died before me, older
and younger…and I’m still here
for the most part,
part of me
went with each of them,
part of me
lingers a while
with a shrug and a smile
and says it won’t be long now
before I go too, thank
perspicacity, thank indifference
to consequences, gratitude
to the powers above and below
for letting me go.
Singing tunelessly to myself:
It’s been
a good life and in the end
the love you take is equal to
the love you make...
as the hibiscus leaves are just
starting out, as the blooms
are yet to come.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
A day like flat ginger ale
and it tastes the same: no spark,
no bubbles, barely a ghost
of its past.
I am like that, too. Today
I am a ghost of my past.
My hands don’t feel well,
my feet feel poorly,
they are just a smidgen
of ill health compared to
my memory and emotion,
of which the less said —
don’t recall the rest of the words
in that song, like all the others
running through my limp head
all the time.
A river ran through my hometown
growing up, brown foam gathered
in the corners of the banks, the water
smelled crusty and metallic. I hear
it’s better than it used to be. I hear
they have prettied up the banks. I hear
many things, many and varied things
I hear and see; I am going home soon
to see how the river has changed, to see
if it bubbles, is it flat, and what does
my memory do if it’s gone — if it has become
a ghost of itself, repeating small words
in fading light?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
The sun is angry this morning.
No — the sun smiles down at me today. No —
the sun is doing what the sun does, impartial
to my needs, or anyone else’s needs
or desires. Irrelevant to desires
or needs entirely, in fact.
The sun
does what it does, and the earth
quakes or is benevolent or doesn’t care, and oceans
rise and fall and do not care, regardless
of how I see them or don’t see them
from here.
From here I could close my eyes,
block my ears and nose, give up my senses
and think dark and lovely thoughts
and postulate a different world of clouds and seas
and above all the raging, indifferent sun,
and none of them would care.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
Dark Matter 