You don’t know what it’s like
to add a word or a line
to a description of a feeling
or a sunset or a dirty coat.

You don’t know what it’s like
to love someone or hate them
or be disinterested in them
entirely as if they were simply
goose food left on the ground
for someone to pick up.

To simply not care except
as distraction from this —
this, ugh, world. This fantasy
loved and believed in by millions.
This too solid ball of rock and
marketing. I went to a store yesterday
and all I could do in the aisles
was moan amid the ersatz choices
of this flavor and that narrowing
of choices — enough to make you
crazy or perhaps dull you enough
to choose one over another; settle
down now, it’s not that big
a deal —

but it is. It is, and the more I run
from choice the more it comes
for me. Like a toad or a turtle
it serenely moves over me, a fat choice
indeed except not really,
it is a fantasy of narrowing

which is why I choose neither
as my own. I bust loose
with delicate words or smash easy
with a whisper and sit back satsified
that even if it is not an ultimate truth
or even a temporary one it is one
and it will last somehow, longer
thatn love or hate, longer
than the dirty coat, certainly
longer than the sunset —

believe me,
you don’t know what it’s like in here.

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

Undated — a message floats in midair
like an idea whose time had or has not come.
It waits to be posted, or it will be read afterward
as if it did not matter, not at all to anyone.

No stream took it, no brook known or not.
The writer looks at it, scratches his head.
He does not recall it. He doesn’t remember
writing it. It is unrelated to his poetry — he thinks.

He thinks long about how long he has waited for something
to touch one of these poems and now he finds
nothing could have come close to them with no notice.
Obvious now, and he still has no idea who wrote this.

So much is like this now –islands
in a crystal ocean too deep to measure. He tries
to connect them and there is no bridge or ferry
between them. They’re just there — or they aren’t;

undated messages that seem connected but aren’t,
land masses not growing or shrinking: just present.
He puts his head down to weep or sleep. No matter.
He doesn’t know what he meant to say. No matter.

No problem. He’s getting used
to this view of the islands.
He’s getting used to not knowing
everything he meant to say.

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

1.
Thinking all night about these things…
about how

I tell them I’m cold.

When I’m pressed to say more
and they ask if it’s fever I say
no, not that. Not this time.

I tell them I’m broke.

When I’m pressed to say more
and they ask if I’m lazy I say
no, not that. Not this time.

I tell them I’m lonely.

When I’m pushed to say more
and they ask if I’m crazy I say
well, I’ve been that, but this time…?

I tell them I’m going.

When I’m pushed to say more
and they ask when I’m leaving I ask 
if they ever knew I was here in the first place.

2.
You say it serves me right.

You say this is not
the right thing to do.

You say this is how the mighty fall
and I’ve never been mighty
but still I’m going down.

You say I’m just
not applying myself
and this is all
in my head.

I know where it is.  
Exactly where it is. After all
I live in here. I’m making room,

my old stuff is flying out
the windows

and the right thing to do may be to follow. 

3.
Cold morning
after what seems like
a year of heat.

I’m sitting now as I always do
in full daylight where I’m supposed
to be telling you the truth and making it
stick in ways beyond simple comprehension
of what words mean.

I’m not sure
it is working.
Not sure it ever has,
at least not the way
I wanted it to. 

I’m sitting
as I always do
regardless of season,
blinking in full daylight
after a whole night

of staring at the pale ceiling
of a dark bedroom
that I could only see
because of ambient light
from the flickering
security beacons on the house
next door.

Something was moving
in the yard, in the dark, 
something large enough
to trigger the sensors
but small enough to be unseen
when I rose now and then
to check.

Something was moving
out there in darkness
and there may be 
nothing left to do
but follow it.

In bed with the universal
I try to sleep, but it wheels
around my head
as it wheels around everyone’s head.
As if I am the pin in the center of
a garden pinwheel.  
As if each of us is a pin,
each of us believing
we are at the center.
As if. Look at it spinning.
How could it be
that we each are the center?
Surrender that. You and I will never know
that answer. We see it spin the ceiling,
the floors, the ocean of sleep
waiting for us, and we worry
that if we slip free 
it all falls apart. As if.
Look at it spinning around 
so many centers. Impossible physics,
maddening science. Either that is wrong
or we are. As if the universal
could be wrong.
As if. As if there is anywhere
to which we could fall
where the spinning would stop.