If I am a temple, I’m tired enough
that the censers won’t light, broken enough
that the congregation fears a collapse,
soft enough that my gospels dissolve on delivery.

If I am a garden, I’m soft enough
to be tilled and planted, tired enough
not to care that it hurts, broken enough that
what is sown might not grow.

If I am a boat, I’m broken enough
to be an accidental submarine,
soft enough to sink slowly, tired enough
to lie on the welcome bottom until I’m gone.

Tired, soft, broken.
No one is supposed to wake up
this way — alive, awake, refreshed;
those are the preferred words.
Nonetheless, I use tired, soft,
and broken because this
is how I begin year 62.

Remember the first book
that ever turned you on
to how you wanted to live
forever after? Do you recall
the letdown when you learned
how wrong it was about how
a life should be lived?

That day when you learned
there are more things
in heaven and earth
than have been contained
in your literature,
when you saw the author
as a monster or worse,
a human; that day when you
put the book aside and said,

it’s my turn to step up and be
star-blessed with wisdom earned
through disappointment. My turn
to write the book that will disappoint
another one at some future time.

I’m reading it now
and I’m not disappointed as you were,
though I can feel how strongly
you reacted to that first devastation —

so much is contained in your literature
that I’ve just abandoned my faith
in my heaven and earth to live
in yours for the moment, turning pages,
fingers crossed, silently praying:
don’t screw it up.

Dream-shopping while odd music plays
in the backroom of the dream grocery store.
My foot tapping — wind droning, hand drum beat
and a strum — is that bandurria or
fado guitar? I should know this.
Should be able to differentiate. It’s
my dream after all. I don’t like my
instruments mixed. Give me purity,
not this wholesome mess of intentions,
though I admit to sustained grooving

as I try to pick out something for lunch
that will do more than just sustain me.
I want to eat something transformative.
I want to consume dream-flesh and become
all that suggests. The music keeps playing
and the counter clerk glares at my dawdling
and prodding about what each food can do.
“Try it and see,” is the refrain. “But I can’t
eat it all,” I cry out to the dream space.

I am beginning to love the music now
precisely because I do not understand it.
It’s evidently too much to ask that the food
be as simple as the music is not. If I am to be
transformed it will be on an empty stomach,
possessed by rhythm, longing for more.

I wake up, humming.
Where is my guitar?
So much to do before breakfast.

Sit and see the things.
All the things.
Make a plan to observe
the best things, the ones
that make for a best you
sitting there pleased
with yourself.

Examine, for instance,
the winter moths still
astonishingly alive, then
think about life in the
concrete, the me music
of surviving.

The things can be harsh
or soft. Sit with them
day or night, sit with
whatever your choice
of time of day or turn
of weather.

Maybe there’s a dog, maybe
some hawk takes a bird.

Observe the waning moon,
how the night around it
is a shade lighter on one side,
not a comment
on your life or any life,
just the moon being itself
in sunlight’s angled path.

Learn that you
are not the boss of things.

It is good to sit and see them
and learn that things
do not center you, that things
do not even try.

Trying to read
a book tonight
with my name on the cover;
title, “My Story.”

I don’t know
who wrote this but
most of the chapters seem
improbable.

I hear there’s
a movie being made from it.
I’m sure they won’t ask me to star
or consult me on the script.

Nonetheless, I’ll pay good money
to sit in a theater and watch.
Just me and my Milk Duds, just me and
my giant Coke, just me and some foods

that might kill me. That would be
something, all right. One for the sequel —
a man dies from self-inflicted damage
while watching himself on a screen.

Aren’t you dying to see yourself
fifty times larger than life? Isn’t that how
you want to go — I know I’m good
with it happening that way. It just feels right:

better than dying in bed, better than dying
a hero. When I’m gone you’ll have the fake book
and the lights camera action of the film
to remember me falsely by. Meanwhile,

I’ve got this book to finish and hope
that they cast a better person than I am
to play me. It won’t be hard. This book’s
a good lie, with good bones to work from;

exactly the type of book I’d write about myself
if I were inclined to do so, though I’m not.
I’m better as reader than writer. I’m better
in this than I ever was out there.

The disappearance of light this evening
was a comfort. I’ve fallen out
with the need for engagement, lying here
on the couch with nothing to do
but note every sign of aging
and disabling, no need to hide dismay
or fear. Strangely, I felt none;
it is accounting time. 
For once, no feeling other than
a dispassionate summing up.

Outside the feeders have gone night-quiet.
The usual flocks are somewhere
doing the same slow rebuilding
as I am before the light dares us all
to come back into daytime
where every weakness shall be exposed.
Until then? The couch, the thinking,
the steeling of my own wings
for tomorrow’s flight.

how swiftly
untouched
becomes
apparently untouchable
and unloved becomes
utterly unlovable
in our heads and
cores

how easily
another’s invalidation shatters
our own experience of
our own validity

how often
them breaking a window
to escape from us
as if we were on fire
translates into us thinking
what we see in the broken glass —
shards, blood, scraps caught
on the points — is an accurate
mirror for who we are

we must close our eyes
to all that
and chant ourselves back

repeat:
I am not
their wreckage
neither toxic
nor shattered
neither invalid
nor in flames

open your eyes

what did you understand beforehand about
the end of your self. what were you told it would be
like. did you prepare accordingly. did you feel
ready when it came and now that it has come
do you know that your eyes have closed
or are you seeing things more sharply now
that all the trappings of your self
are out of the way. maybe this is how
one becomes immortal. no one else ever knows
you are not gone. you see them mourning
and bang on the Glass between you saying

stop, no. i’m not gone. i can see all better
than before. that’s all that’s changed. i see
you and forgive you, love you, wish i had,
wish i had not. it isn’t jesus land here, nor is it
valhalla or even something better or worse.
it’s just here. it’s being here near all of
the everlasting here and always now
and not being able to be a part of it
or even to be seen. we throng here, all of us
longing to be seen and heard
and you don’t can’t won’t
see us. we never left. i’ve gone nowhere.
you can’t see me and cannot realize
how complete the world remains.
how little has changed.

whatever could you have understood
about any of this
if you had been told the truth.
no wonder someone had to invent heaven
and its neighborhood.