In the morning
many feathers, clotted
together with blood,
sitting on a sidewalk;

mixture of brown-black
and dirty white,
dry enough;
clasping each other
for now until rain
separates them
and they blow off and away.

Earth moves on;
a church across
Main Street, gray station
in eastward light;
local drunk lonely on
steep granite stairs that lead
to locked doors.

A single feather
broken free —
drifts up, touches
a single door.

It is Wednesday,
a day like any other;
doors that do not open,
doors that promise salvation
to those who enter,
doors shut tight against
blood, feathers,
drunks, me.

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

Each time I awake
with a swarm of questions
no one answers, or
can answer, or they
can’t be bothered by them;

I can’t even hold on to one
for more than a second.
Each one forms and vanishes
into the grey fog of me.
It renders them unknowable:

answer and question; certainty
and probe; raised eyebrow
and pounded fist on a table.
I let them go, get up from bed
and tend to the needs of living.

First to the bathroom; setting up
on the scale to worry or rejoice;
next, the bedroom to take my blood pressure
and my blood sugar and write it all down.
After that I wash the dishes,

if there are any. I make
a cup of coffee and then
I sit and read little bits that
vanish again into grey. Then
I sit some more —

all around are bits and pieces
of thought, divorced from anything
solid; I let them go as I let myself go
into a void, a vacuum. Each day
I go through the same routine;

endlessly tedious,
all vibrance drained off to a pool
of iridescence somewhere else, far
beyond me. I would ask different questions
if I knew or remembered them.

I would give up every bit of them
to go back and start over within this body.
I sit wondering about a way to get back
and nothing comes to me. Nothing
is what I’m made for. So I sit

alone and sit some more and
sit some more. Closed eyes,
terror at bay for now, for this moment;
I sit a while longer and think. And
occasionally, I write a poem.

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

I don’t know. That’s
the phrase I utter
most often;

I don’t know what to do
with stray feeling, with
random thinking. Sometimes
it perplexes me; sometimes
it maddens me; most of the time
I let it flow over me until
it’s gone.

I don’t know if I should be
bothered by any of it: the
odd musing, the terrible
sweetness of wondering
what I would do if it ever
reached into me and seized hold
and compelled me to swift action
which I would regret for ages
and ages hence.

I don’t know where it comes from.
I don’t know where it goes
when it has run through me —
does it pour out of my feet
into the earth, does it rise from me,
does it wrap itself around me
like a stole? All I know

is that I sit here bewildered
for a long time after, thinking
about self-immolation, thinking
about how I am cold in its wake
and I don’t know how to get warm
again, if I ever was truly
comfortable in this skin.

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

Did you know there is a seam
opposed to our lives?

It lumps up,
a joint compressed.

It doesn’t matter,
does it?

Did you lie about it,
or accept it as the truth?

Whatever you do
is all you can do,

you decide. It it autumn,
after all. The season

of fires, of smoke,
of falling leaves and hope.

You never once felt
the pain of it,

never felt the seam give
an inch.

It sits ruptured on the junction
between what was yours

and what is not assigned
to anyone, and

the weather lends itself
to surprise.

Do you feel that?
Do you know the truth of it?

Whatever. Whatever.
Pay it no mind

until it forces itself
forward into space.

Until you find yourself
in it, and lose.

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

Gravel-grit, words
perhaps, under wraps
behind the TV. Maybe
no words, maybe no
sound. Just before
sleep it’s so easy,
there is such simplicity
in distorting facts,
magnifying trivia, of course;
it’s so simple,
playing illusory games
with facts. Under
gravel-grit, just before
sleep, just as I
fall away from
a conscious role
into a dark hole,
did I see things as they truly are,
or
should I let the sound go?

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

Morning,
and after completing everything
I usually do — testing my blood,
my weight, my pressure — and after
doing dishes and turning out
lights in kitchen and bedroom,
I come here and sit before
a keyboard full of shame and
possibilities galore and I wonder
which I will find today.

Ghosts of past success
haunt me. Demons
of past failure snicker
at my attempt.

Meanwhile outdoors
cars go by, people
walking their dogs speak
to each other. Somewhere
a bird lets out a long,
low song — not even a song;
more a cry to be seen,
to be noticed.

I don’t know what to think
of all this. It’s not
quiet but not bustling
or bursting with sound,
either. I’m in silence,
waiting for something inside
to pop, to come forth
one way or another,

and out there seems to expect me
to partake of it when I would like
nothing more than to close my eyes
and ears to it forever.

Out there, in here —
I should say they are
the same, but they aren’t.
Out there is freedom
from wanting everything
to come inside of me.
In here is…whatever
this is. This longing
to be elsewhere. This yearning
for a release that will not come
when I ask for it.

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

Miesha, sleeping
in a bookcase,
its doors left open for
easy access,
books of poetry above her.

I seize one from the shelf,
it’s a new and selected works
of William Stafford, leaf through
and find and read again
“The Animal
That Drank Up Sound,”

thinking of the single cricket
that made it all come
whooshing back.

Outside a million cops
or thereabouts
dealing with an accident on
the street that killed
someone.
I am sure I didn’t
know the dead man,
or the car that got him —

I don’t know anyone here,
just me and the cat dealing
with what comes our way,
sleeping when we can
and peering out the windows
until we get bored, shrug,
and go back to our quiet rooms
where we live
without a cricket to wake us.

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