It does not matter what you wanted
or did not want.
It does not matter
how built this city became
or how it was left to become a forest.
It does not matter
how birds sang at all hours of today
or how they fell silent for all of it.
It all matters or it does not.
None of it matters at all.

You carefully looked over your poems and songs
and then threw them all aside.
They were garbage to you or
perfect gems already cut and waiting.
You did not falter
or became a poster child for indecision.
You lost your balance
or walked a tightrope perfectly well.

You woke up angry and sad.
You woke up delirious with cheer.
You got things done early or did nothing.
You sat a long time immobile
or could not stop dancing.
You believed in God the father
or stopped your belief in a central being
and worshipped all or none
or preferred to drift among them.

Damnation and hellfire with pitchforks and laughing
or clouds of glory with angels’ wings beating to harps
You are a goddamn blessed human aging as all age
into their final chapter.
Embrace it or die now.
It does not matter
or it does. You will learn
soon enough.

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

Doesn’t take much. Doesn’t take
anything at all, in fact. I believe
I’m doing well, everything
is copacetic as the saying goes

when some little thing —
say, trying
to navigate the distance
between two familiar points

or maybe something as small
as recalling my credit card number
when distracted by the imagined flight
of a bird over my head;

maybe I’m intimidated into madness
by a snatch of a song I remember
from when I weighed less, much less;
can’t get past the chorus

so I sing it incessantly
inside my skull — then
I am transported into the soup
and stewing garbage of my soul

these days — hell, can you call
this a soul? Can you dignify it
with a word as potent as that?
Well, I call it that. I’m likely wrong

to call it that. I sit down
and try to calm myself, stop calling it
anything except — memory, I guess?
What it is, is freedom from the march

of time. I sit for a while.
“When what you need is what you want
then scream out for underground radio…”
Those aren’t the words but they will do;

a thin organ riff burns them
into me. I shrug off the credit card.
Follow that bird across the sky though
I can’t identify it. I sit with it till I am calm.

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

Not enough to assume,
as I once did,
that my last day will come
sometime in the future;

that my chest, already spasming
from something (never mind what
as I don’t want to know), will seize up
and collapse and I will die sooner

rather than later; ignore
the mounting evidence of pains
and aches and loss of function
in my legs and arms

that suggest to me that
I will go later, much later; at least
I hope so — don’t want to spend years
lingering on, pissing and shitting

myself in a bed where the nurses
and aids condescend to me
and coddle me. No. I’d much rather go

soon, in a snap; perhaps in a car on
a highway somewhere near home;
perhaps in bed, alone, undiscovered
for hours or maybe on the floor

of a coffee house, walking away from
the counter after paying my tab.
I could go almost anywhere, I think,
if I held fast to my being and then

let it go its way — memory
having its place as my head
opened up a trickle and then
gushed forth with everything,

everything left over inside
falling out onto a surface, left over
to be sorted out; all the lovely
and puzzling things sorted out.

No one will understand it still.
I won’t care as much then.
Things won’t stop. It will be spring
and then summer; you know the drill

and whatever else it is — sorrow,
wistful thinking, anger, acceptance —
there will be rain and sunshine
and heat and bloody daffodils

and all that. I will
not care then. I will
be gone
into the heart of it.

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

Wondering at this moment in
a partial insight or an old memory
incompletely stirred
if you and I keep up with anyone, really.

I miss your hands,
personally; I miss my own eyes and how
they’d flash a bit at what anybody said
if it didn’t fit what you thought.

Dear me, if that’s who you were
when I thought those things: I miss
my sharp tongue and your brilliant eyes
that now are enclosed in sad skin.

Dear you, if indeed that’s who you
became afterwards: I didn’t know you
or who you became, I wonder sometimes
if I knew you at all; now I am laboring

to know you, to know anyone in fact;
I used to know everyone so, so well. Dear me
and you: you never got a chance to be here.
You did not see your way past the husk I became.

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

in this morning’s breaking
of daylight, everything
is the same as last seen:

my light is the same, my
blood is the same, my
trash smells the same

as it did the last time
I took it out in the freeze
of a morning’s light; after,

breakfast will be the same,
and lunch will be the same;
I will have the same cravings,

the same longings all day;
everything, everything will be
the same, everything the same,

every thing, every thing…same,
and all I wanted, lifelong,
was difference, an inexorable

change from one moment
to the next. excitement,
not this steady glow that feels

like a fade. slowly, a wide open
fade across myself begins
and I can’t stop thinking about it.

I can’t stop thinking, feeling
some kind of way about it.
it’s like crossing a divide,

a continental divide; snatches
of old songs overhead. my ears
turned to their comfort, tuned anew.

they are different, yet the same,
the same as before. I push on.
no going back into it. no more

of that. of the same wind, the same
safe tunings and progressions. I turn
from them; shoulders squared, I press on.

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

( for Richard Fox)

Richard’s book
is on the shelf.
He is alive
when it’s put there.

Later on, he passes away.
One is left with his book
and stories of his uncle.

Pay them no mind today:
leave them in the pages,
remember what he looked like
after the reading;

a brilliant hot summer day, a Saturday,
a Sunday perhaps;

him sitting
with a cane and smiling
as he signed, knowing he
would pass soon,
letting the money

come for him, for his book,
capturing his memory for one
to look at later, one who sobs
once, out loud, at the thought
of his uncle, gone long
before Richard went along;

thinking of what it must have
been like to look around
in the moment after and say,
“Oh. Oh…”

Taking comfort in that.
Settling into that. Enjoying
it, even.

Even now, even long
or shortly before.
Oh. Oh.

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

The tone of morning here:
base, dark, open to
manipulation.

I drink coffee from a mug
with a picture on the side
and a motto that says,

“Kiss My Alpacass.”
It’s got a cute picture on the side,
like I said; weren’t you listening?

The picture is of a smug alpaca,
smiling slightly at the drinker
of coffee or tea or whatever.

He looks back over his shoulder,
or she does. Who knows? I interpret
everything my way,

regardless of the clues and
expectations. Weren’t you listening?
Anyone can see the creature is

genderless, sexless, a picture
on a mug meant for drinking.
It was made by someone, somewhere

in China according to the bottom;
that’s not important now. What is?
The fact of the coffee cooling off

inside it; the face of the alpaca;
the weird drone of a plane
going somewhere. It’s growing lighter

outside. The tone of morning
is changing. I am changing, too,
and no one will understand.

So I kiss my coffee cup, again,
draining the last of the drink off.
The picture on the outside

does not change, not at all.
I’d love a second cup, maybe a third one
after that. Then we’ll see

what this morning — dark, full
of mischief, unyielding in its sense
of foreboding — has for me.

Weren’t you listening? I do not
expect much more than this.
I await the daylight alone.

I close my eyes against the light
for now, and maybe for good.
Maybe that’s for the best.

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

It is written
that a man,
a gradually forgetful man,
may one day choose to remember
what he has forgotten and,
screwing his eyes shut solid
in his head, will forget it once again
and will call a woman by a name
she doesn’t recognize,
but she will respond as if it was
the right name and,
verbally, smile and then pat
the man’s hand after and go on
as if it did not matter, as it will
truly not matter in the moment
and only after will he see, in a flash,
in a whipsaw moment, how wrong
he was; then he will berate himself and
seek her name again and
find it in a book
and be crushed by it
as if it were a stone
rolling down some hill
he had forgotten;

it is written
that the man will calm down —
diminished, of course;
smaller, naturally;

it is written
that he will turn from his debacle
and, sitting down, will scope news
of distant war and
looming apocalypses
for others, thinking, worrying
that they are perhaps for him:
imagining the wary looks
of lawmen on the street,
the suspicious eyes of neighbors;

it is written
that he will turn
his own deep worry about his own eyes —
how they don’t see what they used to see
in the shade of the planet, in the
nighttime of night’s soil on the sheet —
then with a start, afraid unreasonably,
he will turn away from that
without understanding it;

it is written
that somewhere not here,
in a place not easily found,
not accessed through sight,
beyond his failing sense of order,
is the explanation of all of this
nonsense, of the thick stew
in his head that occasionally
pops up a factoid or
something resembling one;

it is written
he will close his eyes
upon this one more time,
and say to himself,
somehow:
just a few more years, just
a few more years to wait;
then he recalls the words.

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

Writing, first thing, a list of items to be done.
Chosen to remember, chosen to execute.
Illuminating this day’s chores.

I see a black snake sliding down
a path he made ten minutes before.
Perhaps I am wrong.

Perhaps that path is older, maybe
ten years or even ten thousand, and he only does
what he was asked to do by ancestors.

At any rate it has been seen. He has
been seen. Or she has been seen.
It makes no difference to me, after all.

It makes no difference, either,
that I see a hummingbird hovering.
Sucks at a four o’clock bloom. Flits off quickly.

On to the next, and then the next.
The snake raises its head as the bird slips by.
I do not think they know each other.

I worry about the bills,
the nameless faces in offices
I will call upon to help fix the mess I’m in.

I will worry about the war in which I’m suddenly involved.
Fret about peace, about the clueless President
and his lackeys, about how my neighbors have gotten mean.

But the black snake moves on, paying it no mind.
The ruby-throated hummingbird moves on,
paying it no mind.

I put my head down and close my weary,
already exhausted eyes. Try to pay it no mind.
Let it go by: already they are memories of seeing everything

in a brief moment, a second of time, a slice of
something — our words can’t explain it, not at all.
Shrug it off, then. Go back to writing down bones of the day.

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

Saturday morning
and it’s too early or late
for fireflies, too cold for anything
really, snow everywhere came in
overnight, and more, much more,
slated for tomorrow. What it is
is Saturday and I’m sitting still
with a computer on my lap, Miesha
in my customary chair bathing herself,
now and then looking up to assure
that I’m not rising up to shake her off
her seat. What it is: Saturday
and I’m afraid of another long, long day
before me — just a trip planned to get
prescriptions, get all my drugs
for a week ahead; it’s so boring here
without a care except
for all these worries and concerns
about how this will possibly end,
what I could possibly do,
what legend or map key I could
possibly use to find a way out
to some place with fireflies, some place
without a cat wary of removal
from comfort, some place
free of drugs and worries and concerns
about how long I’ve got, about this going on
until an end comes up suddenly
or gradually; what it is, is a yawning slog
through hours, days, weeks
until there is no Saturday ahead.

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

Here is a travelogue: if you look left
you will see Providence; look to your right
and you will see Worcester; somewhere
in between the two lies Uxbridge,
barely recalled now, barely there at all
in the fog around it.

A travelogue: the route was clear and the people there
less so. The way seemed clear at the time,
full of fire and occasional peace; now it seems
that it was unsure, and indefinite, and nowhere
close to the glorious march it seemed.

A travelogue: I didn’t know where it was headed and honestly
didn’t care, or rather was so sure of it going
its misleading way that I did not stop to question
any sign that it was false, or vague, or wrong.

A travelogue: now, now near the close of it,
I do not question it as I once did, do not think
to ask if I should have had another aim
to my life. It was what it was;
there was beauty amid ugly,
pleasure enveloped by pain;
there were those I loved
who did not love me back, and the reverse
was also true; all along the trees
kept faith, the dogs were faithful,
the ocean rose and fell as was described
from the first;

and I, I was
devoted to the play of things,
leaving only a small trace of myself
behind in my travels.

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