“Please stop.”
Plea from your lips.
Prayer from your heart.
Request from somewhere within
you can’t point at and say,
“…there, right there.” It’s what you take
from the mobile, fluid flutters
within. All you have, really.
Informal; a beggar’s alms, asked for
in a whisper, infrequently
but urgently.

“Please stop.”
It is not heard well, or at all, evidently.
No sign of it. In fact
it might as well not have been said.
You don’t even know who
was supposed to have heard it
or who then would have said,
with shoulders up and then down,
“suit yourself…” You might
have been free then. You might have
have heard silence within
and then, not knowing what else
could be said, have said nothing
but would have wordlessly broken
into song; melody only, no words.

“Please stop,”
but there is nothing to stop.
A maple tree, or an oak
singing; a screeching jay
singing; others unknown,
singing. You, songster
of the common man,
trying to remember words:
“like this…no, more like…” You try.
You fail. You try again. You fail
again. Left alone in roadside dirt,
old gravel, occasionally
a candy wrapper.

Sweetness discarded —
that’s you,
of course. You don’t care.
There is still sweetness
out there: wordless,
unceasing sweetness. You
just need to find it;
shut up, shut down;
suck the sugar of it;
let its music play you off.

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

There is something
I suddenly do not know
about today,
and I am lost without it.

As if the moonlit nights
stopped mattering —
those were, of course,
crucial;

as if if this daylight streaked with occasional rain
had stopped or did not even start —
this was imperative;
I am powerless to know why.

As if there were no animals anywhere, ever,
beside the dog, the cat, the random
squirrel, and of course the birds —
they mattered as much as they ever do.

As if the suburbs were erased; as if lawns
fell aside due to plunder or neglect.
As if it all disappeared quietly, whimsically.
There is nothing left here but me

as if I mattered that much, as if my arrogance
caused it all to decay and vanish, all except
for me. I am here to recall it all,
I guess. As if

my memory matters, at least as long
as I live. When I go, will it all come back?
I won’t be here, you know. Maybe it never left
as all and, as if

I am fooling myself into a conviction
that I am as critical as a squirrel to
the fashioning of this, maybe it turns back
to itself once I’m gone. As if

I had never existed, as if
I was a momentary blip
in a time click — a grain of salt,
giving barely a bit of flavor.

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

the first time i went to chicago
was also the first time i took an airplane
to anywhere else

then i went to new mexico for two weeks
and didn’t take a photograph
of anyone

after that i went to venice
and walked around the city alone
in november in surprising heat

i have been to a lot of places since then
to new york toronto los angeles and more
cities that looked alike and different

when you peeled them a little
i don’t take pictures of anyone
prefer to hold them quite still

i’ve not been to most places
don’t dream of going anywhere
don’t dream of seeing anyone

some would call this being depressed
or down or in a slump or the like
i call it what it is to me

cities of my world
behind barriers like a wall or a sword
of fire or nothing like those at all

rain on the edge of my world
a storm going away
what your world offers is unkind

i sit here and recall
the guggenheim museum in dorsoduro
workers doing the dead parrot sketch

from monty python in acoma pueblo
and i sit alone in a hotel room somewhere
where it doesn’t matter

where i could still be an optimist
or a doomsday prophet
or both at once

it doesn’t matter
none of this matters
i close here

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

There are reactions to a moment
that come across as wrong, as psychotic
or narcissistic or indistinguishably crazy;

the person who sees them has a hard time
knowing what to say, what to put down
in their report, how to respond.

What they should know is simple:
the man or woman or otherwise — we are
not choosing — let us say the person they face

is in question. Let us say he or she
or they is one of those who sits quite
demurely, legs quite together, hands

clasping each other quite silently
as if in an older place, satisfied to just sit,
no need to worry or fret. Let us further say

that the observer is just as apparently calm
and unbothered by any noise. So
the two of them sit unbothered.

Two people sit silently. When
does that happen naturally?
All over the country people

are nervous about each other, about
what they are thinking and what they
might say, but here

there is a reason for unnatural science
and that is why they sit so —
like mountains, like waves, like an unspoken

plan. One clears their throat.
The other shifts their seat. Outside
a sparrow, a common sparrow, sits

and then flits away. They might sit
a while longer. One might make a note
about it when it’s done. The other

might just go home to their dragons,
their chimeras. Shake it off.
Make dinner, watch TV, then sleep.

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

I apply myself,
more or less daily, to cleaning
the floor of the house where I live.
I still apply myself to my pills,
taking my pressure, popping my
finger daily to read the blood
and then writing it down, carefully,
in a book I keep for that purpose only.
Play one guitar or another, daily.
Wash dishes, frequently, daily;
leave one load overnight, almost daily.
Try to eat something during every day.
I sleep daily, like a clock. Almost daily.
Same time each night. Piss frequently,
three times daily; shit once or twice a week,
when I feel the need, which is less often
than daily. You ask, when do I write?
Amidst the daily chores
I find the time to sit for hours and hours
and try, but it is so damn hard
to do — maybe in the next life
when the floor is spotless and I am
out of pills and the guitar
has ceased to be a struggle
I will find the time and the will,
but don’t ask me again — I am trying
to shut down, waiting to shut down.

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

Cleveland, Columbus,
Davenport, Grand Rapids;
all these Midwestern towns
on a paper map and
I won’t get to any of them
before I die.

I say that
with finality. Say it
with conviction. A sense,
perhaps, of longing
or mistaken confidence —
or perhaps it’s just peace
that I’ve made with a shrinking circle
of where I go,
of where I can go?

Midwestern towns
are mysterious because
they aren’t; Midwestern cities
look the same as the ones
on either coast.

I don’t need
to go to Midwestern cities to know
that at some point I’d find myself
sitting in a hotel named the same
as the last one I stayed in.
There I would seize my fear,
roll it into
a small uneven ball,
toss it without thought into
my throat, feel it burning
all the way down
until I fell asleep.

Davenport, Cleveland,
Grand Rapids, Columbus.

These Midwestern cities
hold me hostage
and I’ve honestly never spent time
in any of them except
in my guts where I imagine them
as looking the same
all over their skin.

If I could? I would sit in their churches,
sing the formal parts of their services,
crush my head into their crevices;
I’d go eat in their diners, their restaurants,
choke down
their foods;

do my best to hold it together,
do my best to not break down.

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

Every time I open up a day
in silence — washing dishes

or entering thoughts in a diary —
I am shut down by a song

whenever something catches my ear
and seizes hold; an unusually strong bass

incessantly repeated
until I can shut it off

and move on unbothered
by it at the least; at the best

it is gone for good
though it will come back

on occasion, whenever I let
my guard down. I try not to,

but I do. I have lost so many
thoughts and random items

to a bass buzz now, coming up
unbidden, haunting me

like some legend from a past
I learned about elsewhere

and seized on it — yes, that’s it,
I hear it speaking to me —

except no one else
hears it but me

and I close my eyes
and try not to speak of it —

I try to move along
but it insists that I hear it,

that I listen even if
I say nothing to it or about it;

it is a snake’s hiss after all
and I am powerless to make it cease.

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