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