Obsessed with what I hope exists
but am too lazy to research:

a method for knowing when this water
was last opened and poured.

A method for determining 
when the bottle was last taken out

of the refrigerator,
how much was in it,

how much was consumed
before it was

put away. How many hours have passed
since the light last went on and then off

as the door was opened,
then closed. If it does not already exist

there must be someone in a lab
working on formulas, testing

hypothesis after hypothesis
for considering the movement of 

molecules, the conservation of energy,
how to know from the state of now

what the state of then was
and how long ago then was. 

It must be measurable. People
measure things. I measure things,

or wish I could: the progress 
of how my nerves are dying, for example.

How pain grew from a tingle
in my big left toe to that full blaze

in both feet as if I’m shoeless on asphalt 
in a beach parking lot

that comes pouring into me
at four AM when I’m just lying there

trying to sleep till the alarm.
There must be a measure of how much

that takes out of me as I lie there
already worrying about money and 

the limits of hope and how clumsy
I’ve become when I wash

a dish or a spoon; how difficult it is now
to pull a shimmer

out of my guitar
with my numbing fingers as I used to.

In the dark I can’t even recall
the state of then. All I have 

is the state of now. There must be
some way to measure the distance,

the decay, the way back to the core
of the memory of being whole.

What if I am the measure? What if 
it’s all been an experiment to see

how then becomes now? I want to talk to
the whoever in whatever dark lab

wherever it is to understand
why this is so. Wasn’t it enough

to see how I was already
damn near empty

before deciding
to change the parameters?

If not, I want to hear
what’s been learned from this;

people measure things
and someone has to know.

If you can imagine a future for yourself
without, say, bread or beer, one

where your memory
will never fire into regret 

over a stray whiff of either of those,
count yourself among the lucky ones

who have the strength
to move on completely

into some blessed world of shrugging off
any nostalgia for past pleasure

in favor of a grim determination
to get better, to stay healthy, to not succumb

to that which will slay you in increments
thanks to your body’s insistence

upon acting up and doing the opposite
of what it was built to do; if you can imagine

giving up primary sensation in favor
of living in a more or less diminished way 

compared to the way you have always lived
and still finding it worth your time to live —

if you can do this, pull up a chair and speak to me
in low tones of how you do this, for indeed

I cannot entirely find my way clear to any future happiness
knowing that I have surrendered the things that gave me

such past happiness — the tough-into-tender mouth feel
of still-warm bread, crust yielding to cloud of earth and heaven

combined; the deep bitter-over-sweet chewiness of a fine stout
at the end of a bad day and the exhalation, eyes closed,

upon swallowing that first good gulp of stress-relief; Lord knows
I miss these, and if you say it’s a question of dying or staying alive

and it ought to be an easy choice, I say
yes, exactly, it is a difference between dying or staying alive

but as I barely live and barely breathe, 
I don’t know what to call this existence tonight.  Tomorrow

I will surely be OK, and the day after, and in the long term
I’ll figure out some moderation or accommodation; but tonight

I just want some excess of good bread and good beer again,
that good life that exalted me even as it was killing me.

It’s early and I’m at the stove
eating oatmeal cooked from scratch;
steeping good tea in a great big cup
while thinking about what I know:

that I am probably going to die
from self-inflicted wounds someday,
and it’s likely the bombs that will do it
are these that I know I’ve already set.

One of these days I’ll start exercising.
Maybe I’ll be good at it.  Maybe the diet and
activity will pay off. Maybe I’ll soon be smaller,
lighter on the earth.

None of it will change a thing.
I’ll die anyway.  I’ll die because
dying’s what we do.  I might do it tomorrow,
I might make it another twenty years

before I go, but I will go.
If I go today while standing at the stove,
spoonful of mush falling from my hand
and the tea spilling as I flail and drop?

I hope I look silly down there on the floor.
Not tragic; not resigned
to ending up a punchline in a poor man’s bed.
Let them say too little too late,

chuckle a little when they picture the scene.
Let them say whatever they want
as long as they include the phrase
he went down swinging, swinging to the end.