To take the pills I’ve been asked to take
is to gobble up the words I never spoke
when I was still a good child
and had not yet given over my healing
for pink and blue and red answers
to the crucial questions
sitting in a cup.

To swallow those nuggets as if they were
golden apples or bites of the same
is to imagine them as beads
of nectar, crumbs of desires and appetites
unforced upon me but still longed-for;
to want them tender and pliable
and easy enough to swallow, even if false.

To eat my way toward satisfaction
is to fill up on unfamiliar foods and cravings
and then settle back with a burp until
the next meal and the next meal and
even the next, still wondering why
I am not filled in any way that matters
and still I can catch my hunger gnawing upon me
dimly in the dark hard center of day,
dimmer still in the core of the night.

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

I take the first pill
and wait. I don’t
feel anything — yet.

Take all the other drugs
too, right after. What difference
will it make?

I’ve got a host of reasons
to take them; most of them
boil down to this: trying

to postpone death so I take them
and wait for a result, and wait,
and wait. No feeling inside.

No feeling of any type,
in fact. Maybe that’s the ticket:
no feeling until the last moment

one can feel anything, and then
I say: oh marvelous, I can feel
again. And then, it’ll be over

and I will rest, amazed
that it took so long, or such
a short time. Meanwhile, I wait.

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

There is one thing I could do:
cry like a rough wind. It might be
enough. So why I can’t shake a feeling
that it will not do?

I don’t stop
from shivering, from my body
trembling like a figure from legend
or a television show.

There are times
I startle back to consciousness
and man, oh man, I want to sob
and rend my clothing.

But then I look at my self,
my piece in this game we play,
my worn form, my bumpy face
and scarred arms still holding on.

I buck up. I bite down
and hold on like a pit bull
until weary, then I let go
and slip back to dream-state.

Man, oh man, I wish there was
another way to go but there isn’t
any obvious, no easy passage. I buck up
instead, bite down, am silent. Don’t cry.

Little man, little ape: you won’t recall
much of this in a minute or two.
Leave it and those left behind with it
will deal; cursing you, no doubt.

Don’t worry about anything. There will be
sunshine, tears, rain, fire.
What you care about
is unimportant. Be well.

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

Suppose, for this one time,
you knew this was it — that this
was the last moment you would have
and the vision of the first shoots out front
was the last vision you’d have
and the radio scratching through
“Pancho and Lefty” was the last song
you’d hear and the scent of your sweatshirt
was the final scent of your whole life —

suppose this was it, that you’d leave
love and anger and shame behind you
as you moved down the road, getting
back in your fragile car after mailing
your regrets to the world, after sending
them out and collapsing
into the car with a penultimate sigh —

suppose this was it, that this represented
you as cosmic, dying soon with a whimper
on a whisper, slipping away saying
nothing, needing their prayers a little
but not much, not even wondering
which one cared the most because you knew
without asking deep in your bones and nerves —

suppose you took it there today,
suppose you went there today,
suppose you closed your eyes and soul
thinking of them, of her, suppose
you take it and leave it and wipe your hands
as you leave, shining in your way,
breathlessly striding upward and outward
into a grander world…

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

Sunday morning: listen to Godsmack
and Disturbed for too long
and you will be “enlightened”
by the tone. This will be offset

by listening to Lisa Lisa
and Al B. Sure for too long —
don’t you have better things
to do? Don’t you have

somewhere to go and not listen
to anything? Maybe the whine
of vehicle tires. Maybe the sound
of the engine.

You get to your destination. You
make your tired visit, say all right
things. You leave and sit in your car
in silence — waiting for some sound,

any sound other than dirt screaming
at you to turn on the radio and get going.
It isn’t dirt — it is earth. Screaming at you
to get going. To go home and scream some more

on a Sunday morning
that allegedly is a day
of rest. You can’t fool me
though. I’m tired before it begins.

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

First thing up: listening
to the new Nickel Creek,
listening to Lucinda, to
Diana Ross;

reading all my
distressing mail, all my
useless mail, all my
pointless mail;

sitting quietly,
making no noise at all
in case they or someone like them
comes back and knocks on my door —

listening
to someone unnamed and then
Tom Waits singing about
a house where nobody lives;

well, I’ve been there, Tom.
I’ve been there and as
a ghost
I’m still there.

I close my eyes and
disappear into someone’s
music but mercy, please;
I’m still there.

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

Start here. You don’t know
what time it is. You look out the windows
one by one, each one limited in view
and it’s all night, all dark.

You hear birds — once you could have
distinguished one from another but no more —
you sink into their chirps and whistles
like you understand them, but you don’t

understand them. It is a pretty
sound, chimes in the morning,
means something, must mean something
but what it means is not clear,

not at all. The woman who lives upstairs
pulls out for work. You know only a little
of what she does, pulling damaged children
from damaged homes — and now the light of day

is coming into the sky, the day is beginning
to show itself in spite of the clock insisting
it started six hours ago. The clock is always
claiming something that may or may not be true.

You can’t trust a clock for much — for accurate
calls to daylight, for timing the calls of birds,
for your own sense of when it matters and what
it means; even knowing what “it” is in the first place.

All you know is that this is decent coffee, the day
is coming, the birds are indistinguishable
from one another, the woman who lives upstairs
is long gone now, you might live or you might die

once the sun is fully up and more people
come out of their homes and the day evolves
into just one more signpost on the road
to arrival, to departure, to staying absolutely still

until something
reveals itself
and you can move unencumbered
into life.

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

You don’t know me at all
if you think I am unaware
of how you feel about me —

more than slightly skittish, afraid
to confront for fear of the wash
that you suspect will come
behind it, that black wash
with flecks of crimson and
occasional white-hot pieces
of my past life magnified and
distorted and even made up
wholesale, from bitter
banner cloth;

believe me when I tell you
there was a time when I was not
this way — that there was a period
of my time here when I was different —

I do not recall it except now and then
when I am not being gnawed
by the lessons I swore I’d learned
from the weather and the coping skills
that take me a minute to see and accept —

a single second, and then it goes —
leaves its memory behind like a song,
its title unfamiliar,
its melody leaving us haunted and sad
as I bury my head in my hands
and will not look at you —

as I sit wrapped in my cloth;
as you shake your singed head.

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