I am sitting with a beer and trying
to think of a word
because that’s what I do;
think about
how they court and marry
and argue, slap each other’s
faces across tables
and then court
and marry others;
how they swim in blood
reddening
and then disappear
until they are needed again;
there are words
used and then used again
until they lose meaning
amid their disuse — spent down
to pocket change;
there they sit in
the lint until I decide
to wipe them clean and use them
on cigarettes or
cheap candy or
hoard them in a neat pile
toward what end — who knows,
they might end up here
or somewhere else;
who knows?
Someone else can try them
if they like — they can leave me
and go on, maybe for
a better place,
some comfort to stay in,
somewhere to call home.

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

in the long run
of this world
there are more things
dreamt of,
etc., but you turned down
an opportunity
to go and learn of them,
preferring to stay home
than to be disappointed
as you have been
by so much.

what
a marvelous chance to
unlearn this kind of failure —
deciding not to leave,
letting
the lump in your throat
subside on its own
in say a year or so;

leaving you with a sort of regret
that only rises over
a third strong drink
late at night when you dare
to close your eyes
and open up,
somehow.

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

1.
A slight but vital twist
on recalling what I’ve seen;
stopping in the middle
of a thought —

did I say that evil or kind thing
to a woman, a girl, a boy,
a man? Did I, could I,
differentiate? Or

maybe I didn’t say it
at all, merely thought it
or most devastating —
I’m thinking of it now

for the first time, the
only time?

2.
I could sit with this,
I could; instead I sigh
out loud. I could tear out
what little hair

I have left — I’ve tried
to grow it to a stage
where I could tear it out,
after all, rage and grief

are important to me
as emotions I can support
having — but damn,
hair takes so long to be graspable —

instead, I sit, or stand, or shuffle off into the gap.
My brain stays. This is my way now.

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

Dear Jacob — asking us
what poem he should read
and then saying (when he got
to the stage), “This is by request…”
every time, every time.

Dear man who wrote the book,
“I cry a gentleman’s issue” (whose name
I don’t remember, though I’m trying like mad) —
folded arms holding your cane,
your voice like maybe a god’s voice
saying, “I am the wolf and I am
HUNGRY, ahhh…”

Dear Marcel in French (who was
Belgian, if I’m not mistaken) and indeed
all the dear other nameless women,
dear forgotten nameless men;
you are all a part of me and my poems.
I sit here and imagine you with a divine voice
behind my closed eyes.

What would I not give up
to return to Eleni’s at night,
some rainy Sunday night, across from
the Brown Square Social Club,
careful not to park on their side of
the lot?

Well,
I wouldn’t quit my day job.
I wouldn’t quit my money or my
suffering for it or the machinations
of petty workforces to get me fired,
to get me gone.

But
I would give up
my tenderest moments there
at Eleni’s and elsewhere — surrender
those movements toward ecstasy
as well as my downward spirals —
I’d give up their words I took to mean
so much so long ago, surrender them
to smoke and fog and other miasma,
other distractions in memory’s cave.

I’d close my eyes to them, to Marcel
and Jacob and the guy I can’t name;
I’d imagine them gone, or not imagine them
at all.

After all
it’s not likely that I am
in their heads either.

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

To sit without entertainment
or reason beforehand
and then to turn away
and go elsewhere,

to go to a spring in a surprising ledge and drink
ice-cold water and not care about
origins or what it might be bringing
into you.

There are reasons to go
into nearby woods as if there was
nothing to worry about: after all,
there isn’t.

Anyone could pass there
and not be found until too late
for anyone to care more than
a little bit;

other than wringing their hands
over your disappearance, other than
searching for you and then
abandoning that search

and letting you be, leaving you
to be a sweet pang of sadness;
other than that, why not
let you be? It won’t matter,

after all, to you; it won’t matter
after a small time to those
who knew you. In a crisp
New England summer,

in a not unexpected twist,
you’ll be gone. Your loved ones
will turn away after a bit
and leave you there, as you wished.

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