I remember,
I remember —
what do I recall?

I recall
a man dying in Arizona,
falling to the earth after a hike.

I recall an old man dying
in Washington,
far from the New England hills.

I recall a young woman dying
from aggressive cancer
in Buffalo.

I knew a man
who died suddenly in the Catskills
in New York, again.

I think I knew a man who died
somehow by a gunshot
after he returned from Afghanistan.

I hardly knew a man,
more than one, dying of AIDS
somewhere.

I did not know a woman
who died of something, something
in Sacramento.

I did not know a man
who died on a street corner
in Florida, somewhere.

There have been
others, of course, who died in
various places, men and women,

young and old, famous and infamous
and not my friends or in deep closeness
to me.

All of them say nothing
to me now. Waiting, I guess,
for me to join them?

I remember,
I remember —
what do I remember?

The woman who died
in Buffalo told me, urgently
before she went on her way,

that there was something,
something she needed
to tell me, something vital,

something
she couldn’t recall —
and she never did.

When I go
I’ll be looking forward
to hearing it.

Of course it likely won’t matter then
and I will die forever ignorant
of it.

But I will be okay not knowing it
if I get to see any of them again,
if I can recall their names,

if I can speak their names,
if they even
remember their own names.

I will forget my own name
then. I remember, I recall —
what do I recall?

Nothing worth mentioning
to you, the living.
I close the door on all of this,

silently as if I am afraid
of these old words. I am not afraid
of anything any more,

and I look forward
to learning the new words
for all things.

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

Society,
bloated
gasbag of a monster,
full-throated tooth-
grinding shape of vanilla
and old blood gone new
again, keeps me
sharp —

I need to be sharp
to know it and avoid
the parts it sends to
devour me —

take the case of an old song
that moves me toward tears,
take the case of the radio
in total —

I need to be sharp against it
so that I do not fall asleep
humming along to
the old song as if I were
sixteen again, seventeen,
eighteen and

I’m in my old Chevy
with no one beside me
and for once in my misery
I’m happy and joyfully
singing along and I sound
perfect —

in line with what society
would come to dictate
through clenched teeth,
soothing me nevertheless,
whispering sweetness in poison
as if there was no one
who could touch me
on my way to Nirvana
or Heaven or some such place —

eighteen again
and locked down
to what, I can’t imagine —

not in sixty five years,
not in a lifetime,
not in either
a dull future
or the sharpened, dimming
remembrance
of a brighter past.

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

The cat is awake,
looking for food, purring
almost silently.

Blood pressure
a tad high, blood sugar less so, and
I’ve lost another three pounds.

I am lost without
a damn thing to do
in the whole damn world,

but I’m getting better,
or so the doctors say.
I think I must say the same

or risk it — all of it.
So I keep busy. I try
not to think about it,

my life and death,
my damaged heart,
my blown-out brain.

I can’t think about it,
after all, without screeching
to a halt.

The halt comes whenever
I close my ruined, repaired eyes.
So I keep them open until

I fall asleep. Then, I wake up
and do all this again.
It gets old so fast.

This morning I remember
my dream; I was a student
in a failing high school in New Jersey,

making gentle, raucous friends;
riding around in a Jeep;
smoking weed and laughing,

always laughing. Then
I woke up. Went through
my morning routine

of testing and shaking my head
at the results.
It gets old so fast

I don’t have time
to think about the dream
while I sit around

and think, or not,
of what I have to do
or not do. But

I think about it.
Yes, I do. I think about it
and about taking

one catastrophic step
toward determining
if that dream has legs

or not, if it can carry me
anywhere I’m not,
anywhere but here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T

A minute passes
and I am touched
by what it carries:

faint scent of who-knows-what;
the comfort of the seat of the chair;
the wide, wild world crashing elsewhere
but leaving its echo on what is nearby.

I am touched by the presence
of nearness; a minute passes
and it feels so close
and adjacent to the moment and its place.

The radio carrying unknown music; my eyes
noticing this slice of bread is what exists
and knowing it may be
the last thing I taste, with its narrowing
of the distance between stale and fresh;

seeing all of this in a single sweep
between what is and what is yet to come,
I choose to hang on a bit longer
to life and its panoply of sudden events
and continuance of sameness.
I am hanging on

till the last day,
when I will close my eyes
as I do now, and then
in an acknowledgement of how far
I have come, I will
not open them.

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

A piece of skin fell from my face
this morning in the shower;

not a large piece, a flake in fact,
just enough to concern me;

looking at it in the mirror
I wondered whether it was alone

and whether I’d lost other parts
of myself without noticing,

whether one day I’d lose
something whose disappearance

would make me more sinister-looking,
perhaps a whole hand — or worse, a heartfelt glance;

perhaps I’d lose more than a tiny flake
and I’d look at the reflection, the me

in the mirror, and wonder who I was
in the time before this one, this day

before me laid out like a predictable
clock face, this week and this year

a calendar of sameness. Whatever my fate,
I would have to be fair to it. I would have

to let it be and watch it unscroll
from a place beyond sorrow, beyond

joy, beyond the simple workaday
of breakfast, lunch, dinner, sleep.

Now, you would think
a piece of skin tumbling into the drain

ought not to matter. You would think,
but you’d be wrong.

Do not flatter yourself. Everything
matters, even that — you are decaying

amid your joys, your despair;
inexorably you fall to pieces

impervious to the vagaries
of emotion. You are failing,

falling apart without meaning
one damn thing by it. Keep it

to yourself until you go. Release it
once you do. Learn

to shine again
once it has gone.

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

For long nights
and calm, slow to form
mornings.

For fog-filled evenings
and boredom of dim, slow
to come to full light days.

For weird confusions
and slow to be confirmed
realities, slow to become concrete.

For awakening in night
with no chance of knowing time
beyond slow waiting for a chance to see.

For rising in full daylight or before
full daylight comes, slow realization
that it’s too early or too late to get up.

For thankfulness, for gratitude
after fear, after terror; for grinding up
slowly into a day like all others.

For plodding — one foot before
another — then sitting heavily down with
a cup of coffee; planning, slowly,

a hard day to come.

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

Death, mystery passage —
wondering this morning
what it’s like —
this morning when it seems close
and ordinary to consider it —
when my memory seems perfect
and ordered just so,
when I feel so sweet and
normal — no sense
of dread or impending doom;
just the cold in my hands
and a list of small chores
to be done to leave the home
in order for my love to grieve
quietly, with a sigh; death
one last trip to take, one final task
to undertake — and what will come after
still not known, a shrug
not a scream, tales of heaven
and hell dismissed, maybe
the old story of crossing a divide
in the mountains is right or perhaps
there is nothing, nothing at all;
death at last is nothing at all,
death means nothing at all
and any story of what comes after it
is too fantastic to tell.

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

I recall
her, nude,
her back toward me,
covered with symbols I would not
care to calculate my way through
until after, after;

then there
was the time she was not there
and I longed for symbols, for numbers,
anything at all; closed my eyes,
tried to remember, tried so hard
and nothing, nothing.

If only
I had a flashback engine to carry
my mind there, to the edge
of presence, to chug and huff
toward real memories and visions
or anything like them;

but now
that engine seems broken,
shattered or nonexistent — now
I am shattered myself or nonexistent.
Now is all I have. I don’t recall
the name for anything, especially her;

now seems
the eraser, the scrubber
of dreams and longing is all there is
to wrap myself inside, and I am left
bereft but somehow satisfied with that —
now I am parted from her, and so it continues —

brief pang
of longing, of mystery’s
dumb dim light on my ruined eyes;
wondering again
what name I should call her
should she improbably return.

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

In awe of the simple brutality
of aging:

not that
it’s without beauty,

or that joy is not
present, even in the moment

when you know
your true age at last

and it’s exactly right
as it is, even

as it assumes the mantle
of finality; when it settles upon you

that you are exactly
the right age, soaking

up that brief moment
becomes the work of a lifetime.

The simple brutality 
of it: the casual swift recognition

that while this may not be the end,
it surely is trending.  It surely

has a feel to it, 
and this is how it feels.