They are sitting on a bench
at one end of a long room.

They are staring at a far-end door
and speculating on where it may lead.

They offer thoughts: it may lead
outdoors, to another room, to a hallway.

They are only sure of one thing:
wherever it leads is clearly elsewhere. 

They cannot tell if it is locked or even,
possibly, ajar; this lighting is so terrible, who could say.

It seems so easy: walk over and see,
possibly leave this long dark room,

but someone has written
names of all their ex-lovers in Vaseline

on this polished stone floor and thus covered
the distance between here and there in hazard.

They are terrified to slip and fall
on such a surface. They aren’t getting any younger

and in this light they might
hit their head upon stone and bleed out unnoticed.

So they remain on the bench.
The room keeps getting darker. 

Somehow it seems
that the room is getting longer as well.

He was bawling
as he crossed the line
to make it out
of October alive

as humble as a clock
with two broken hands
for whom time had stopped
beyond a dim recognition of its passage
a small whirring at his center

and nothing more

He had not planned to see November
but a single puff of wind
caught a maple tree perfectly
and moved it in a way he’d not considered
when thinking of reasons to stay 

When it swayed
a handful of red leaves
clinging to one branch end
lifted into a sunbeam
almost as a hand
might rise to bless one
in dire need of 
attention to their wounds

and while he never in general
was much given to seeing
such obvious and mundane moments
as signs
and indeed understood that nature
isn’t here for humanity in any sense
at all

he still found that rise
in the small spray of red
to be reminiscent enough
of a past dim moment of comfort
that for one moment he felt
more than the small whirring of time
in his broken movement

and thus moved
he broke down and cried
and chose
to make it through October
and at least see November arrive

to see what it might bring

Pistachios? Those
I once ate in great
amounts but only ever the
type with shells, and never
the ones with red paint all over.
I’d look at a bag of them and say,
there’s work to be done.  I’d fill a bowl
and have at it, dumping the shells
right back into the same bowl
so toward the end it became a chore
to find the last one left unopened.
There may have been
some masochism involved.
There may have been
some ersatz hunter-gatherer
behavior there — a rationalization
that the work excused the gluttony.
I haven’t had one in a while now;
I don’t know if I could go back to that.
Not that they were bad for me or anything
beyond the modicum of salt and the quantity
and the time I’d put into it
when I should have been — oh, it’s not like
I had anywhere to be or anything to do
back then.  I just sat on the couch
cracking open those shells.  Breaking
my nails on the edges that wouldn’t give
so easily.  Telling myself there was virtue
all around me in that sad dirty living room.
That one day, I would write about this
from a better living room and it would all be
worth it. Boy, was I wrong.

I hear people call themselves
empaths
Read a story about
empathy
Someone said
we need a world with more
empathy

I don’t understand that word
at all

I don’t much care for
too many people
I mean
I like people well enough
but they are largely
a mystery to me
because I no longer feel much
beyond myself

I don’t know how
or when exactly
that happened
I seem to recall 
a time before 
it happened
I seem to recall
such feelings

I don’t know much 
about how I got here
or what I am now
except
I am broken
How broken
I am

but I am not sad or scared

for when I look at myself
it is like looking at
a carburetor
a nearly obsolete device
that no longer works
and I have forgotten
how to set it right

I try to do right by others
because of this
I try to do right by others
because I do not
trust myself
to understand how they
might feel
if I have done them
wrong

Tell me
how I’m doing
Explain to me
what I’m doing
right and
wrong
It’s a long way
from you to me
You might have to shout
to reach me
I will be straining to hear you
I will not likely do it well right away
from my broken stand
I will try as I am
always trying

to reach you
I promise
I swear
I vow
I am trying to reach 
you
to reach 
out
get the mix right
run right

staring up from bed with
no desire to rise

a copper mouth morning

feeling no joy
at that taste 

remembering instead
ancient flavors of mint
of good tea

old memories 
fading

it has been 
industrial within
for so long
can’t recall
such shades of green

when this
copper mouthed morning
has its own hue

color of statuary
of gutters and lurid puddles
under bad pipes

lying here
in ruins
with no longing to rise
into that kind of green

trying to recall
green tea

mint

promise

A curtain pulled back
reveals the lie

that there is
an outside. I know

better.  All there is
is an inside — this view of

a “window”
is an extension of

that lie.  It suggests
an exit may be possible

when in fact all there is
is more of this cell.

Now a “door”
is being “opened.”

Even as I step through into
alleged downpour

or supposed
scalding sun, I am

being lied to: nothing
of the false outside

touches me here,
centered in cold stone

and lockdown.
This is

my weather, climate,
forecast. There is

no other — I’ve been
outside to see and

there is no outside.
None. You can

stop. Just stop —
I don’t like being lied to.

After all these years
I know:

there’s no window
and no door.

It’s too early,
the body says,
to be up
and considering
brain and soul work,
especially this current
irritating obsession with 
God-work.
The body says

it’s time
to fall
back to agnostic sleep,
to worry
about all that
later; the body says,
“take care of me,” says

it’s time to roll over
and away from the stinging
hymn that’s trying to come out
of mouth or hands
into the growing daylight.

So I turn over and try
to fall back into sleep
though I know 

that the song
will be in there
with me, like a bad
mattress or pillow,
giving me pain
in the place where I keep
my definitions.

If I succeed
in getting more sleep
it’s going to hurt
as much as if
I stay awake wrestling
with it —

God, it all hurts 
all the time. It all
hurts from bruised hip
to cranked neck
and deep into the back
of my dearest names
for myself

but it’s too early 
to think about this;

I don’t want to think about
any of this
until I’m dead but the body
won’t stop saying

“not yet.”