I don’t have anything much: a pack
of smokes, a cupcake, half a Coke,
a sheaf of half-finished poems. A limp leg
with a delayed step and a stutter now and
then — more now than then.

This is how I live. Stammer out the poem
to the paper. Stumble to the stage
very rarely. Repeat, sipping on the Coke
until there’s just a half swallow left
in my mouth. I wonder why I don’t swallow.
Toss the smokes, toss the cup: done. I’d toss
the poems if there was an inferno close by.

Maybe you’ve been here, stuck between
the past diligence of yesterday and
the casual loss, or half loss, of today;
maybe you know there’s enough in the swallow
to sate your thirst and be done and that is why
you don’t finish. You can’t stand the thought
of being done, of having said the last words.

One day you will have no conscious choice.
You will spit a poem, savor it on your lips,
and be done. You will go home with it
hanging out there and be done with it.
You will swallow the last of the Coke and
be done with it. You will die like peace itself
in the arms of war, or you will slip away
before, or after, the war begins.

Any way you can you will call an end
to war and peace, hostility and gentle rain.
You’ll do it without an announcement.
You will slip away into a great gray sleep
and leave this mess, this magnificent chaos,
to sort itself out. How it fends, at last,
will not be your concern.

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

It doesn’t require a title just yet. Doesn’t need
a name. Inchoate and as yet lawless, good enough
for understanding, knowing the fulness of it
waits to be seen, waits to be felt as it
slams down, socks in.

Before it arrived I was old enough
to believe in it at any rate, saw it coming
(so to speak) though it pretended to be invisible.
I knew no matter how it would present itself,
I’d fall under its rules.

I spent the morning looking for it
quietly as I didn’t want it to know
I was there. But I was there
when it arrived. I fell under its spell
and now I am both bereft and filled:

bereft of my thinking that I could escape
with so much left to tell you all I’d never finish;
fulfilled that I’d already finished and did not know
the line I crossed which made it so. I only knew
poetry and magic were all I had to give you, so I gave.

Two feet and my left hand
destabilized — what of it? Not like
it ever did much, the left hand — and
always walking uphill, my two feet —
except as adjuncts they were unnecessary
or so I thought.

So I thought.
The hibiscus outdoors did more.
The bees fumbling around did more. They
were independent. Still, they did not
fumble, they did not grow crooked;
they maintained.

As I am learning to do —
but it is so hard, so annoying — feet grown hard
yet so uncomfortable walking, and my left hand
wearing a glove to halfway to the elbow,
an invisible glove.

I will learn this. I swear
I will take this to heart —
tears in all my work,
but I will learn this.

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

Listening to music and thinking of dying
as an abstract. (You cannot know it, of course,
until it happens and then you can’t tell anyone
what it is like. You will be called an abstract yourself,
naturally, almost as an afterthought. The living
will sigh and call you names under their breath,
not wanting to insult you in case…just in case…)

Meanwhile, you are listening to the music
of the acoustic guitar and there’s little to say of it
except as an abstract: the vibration of the strings
and the lyrics together are a world themselves
that you cannot enter without putting your head
into your hands.

You are crying — the song
is about life, about death, almost about rebirth
if you have the time to hear it as such.

The song ends,
but you don’t pull your hands
away from your ears, not yet. It’s been real,
too real for you.

onward,
T

Dark wood — the coffee table.
Thick, the grain hidden with black stain
and the bark on the edges black-stained
as well — an uneven top all around although
the surface is slick as glass and flat as a window
one could see oneself in — one could see oneself
in there if that background was mirrored
but it’s not. It’s a slab of blackened wood
with four legs and that’s all. Legs
don’t gambol or trot, solid
as a dead rock, and that’s it. Simple.
No matter how I try to fill blanks with it
it stays simple. I am legless before it —
unable to move as I always have before now.
I can’t see myself in there. It’s just a table,
dark wood table, coffee table, center
of the room, placed carelessly there
to hold things placed carelessly there.
I can’t move. I can only close my eyes
and wish one of us or both of us could fly.

onward,
T

Regarding the effort I’d like to take
to justify my obsession
and pursue vindication
with every single person I knew,
I can’t: the explanation for taking such time
is suspect on its face and realistically,
no one will care. Not in the short term
and none, none at all in the long run.
It is important to me alone and so it should be.

It is important to me alone that the people
I harmed should know of it. Otherwise
they will pang briefly or sorrow long
for the possibility it represents
and then they will forget it — or
they themselves will pass before I go
and soon enough, no one will remember me.

It may be enough that my poems may be attached
to my name and that will be an adequate measure
of my life — or they won’t be. It may be enough
that my poems have no water in them, never did,
and the soil I was sure told of water on the moon
was an illusion and the soil never was wet, not at all.
The poem itself wasn’t wet enough to dampen the soil.
All that will be left will be a shower of stars.
All that will be left will be a saddened smile
on the face of someone who wasn’t there.

onward,
T

I am looking at

first, Gaza and its abstraction; how everyone
tries to shine as babies are deconstructed
and blood pools in destroyed streets,
on left-behind rags covered in curdled puddles
while back here two sides yell and scream
for their sacred religious or secular honor.

I am looking at

next, this economy and this war; we used to shine
as brightly as confetti, glitter in sunshine
as we chugged along making people die
in ever more efficient ways; did not wait
for nightfall to slay them and did not wait
to spend a single dollar on ourselves as we
returned from the bank with our deadly paychecks.

I am looking at

two men who want to be the leader of us. One is
tall and evil, rapacious and thinks of life as money
spent and hoarded; the other is the same but
talks a gentler, feebler game. Either way the sand in Gaza
will glassify, the children here will dumbly follow
and we will all take pains to bend backwards for their consent.

Regardless:
I am looking at

a river now, a laurel on the bank above it;
I am seeing one of the scant birds left skimming low
over the water; I am smelling the faint old scent
of detergent overpowered by the scent of lilacs
that will be gone in the morning. Regardless
of the nature of world chaos, I come back to this
failing promise that it will be better someday —
maybe not for long or permanently but by God
it will be better long enough for us to sigh
and say with some truth that it will be as good
as can be without us.

It is time to say
what must be said.
Time to go. Time to go
long, get gone, get moving.
Time to spit all the cliches
you know because you are
restless and if you are going
you need to speak it into truth.

It is time to speak
the words you never wanted to
say or even have them come up,
unbidden, in your almost-dreams.
Time to let go. Time to leave,
get closure, close it down,
shut off the lights. Time to
give a last good-bye, shut the door.

It is as if you didn’t understand
the lesson you were taught:
there are no more lessons except
the Great One; there are no more lessons
except the one that says “shhh…be quiet.
There’s nothing left to teach, nothing
left to learn, and no teacher at all.”
You were responsible and if you weren’t enough

you should have taken more, should have
learned more from this. You never learned
a damn thing except how to be quiet
when the ghosts of the past roared at you;
how they rumbled and growled. It was
enough, and the truth is when you finally
learned how to be still, you sat there nodding
until you were stilled. It was enough to sit still

with the lights off
until you faded
into the Dark.

Suppose you take a moment
out of your busy day and reflect,
like a mirror, on your failings
since you fell victim to the CVA

and were unable to tell the time
by ear or simple sense of gap between
this moment and the last:
suppose time were lost to you

and suppose you have fallen prey to
a sort of despair that clings to you
with your head down, a weight
on your neck, more than a blanket roll

but less than a rock, a boulder even;
time moving so, so slowly as you try
to think fast, to respond as you used to;
suppose you found yourself like this

one day, thought it would pass
but then ths next day comes and it does not;
didn’t you ramble about your worry
that this might happen? You can’t take this

perpetually unchanging sense of time
not being yours to govern. You can’t take
time not being yours to command. A stroke
changes all of it. A stroke humbles you

implacably. I woke up insatiable
focused on the correct time like a drink
that would soothe me and instead a clock
proves my undone worth. I’m going to sit here

until I have failed utterly. Suppose
I will find a balance between what I think
the time should be and what it is? Fat chance.
A rock and another rock, grinding me down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

onward,
T

I woke up sad. Felt
useless, worn out —
then I tuned my guitar-lele
to an analogue of DADGAD,
worn-out strings and all
until it sounded somewhere
in the neighborhood of right

and then I hung it on the wall —
two taps of the hammer, no more
than that — hung it right where
I could grab it if there ever came
a hurry to heal things, a need for speed
in fixing the earth to prevent
catastrophe, even if all that would be better
would be me

and my choice to not end
there would be negated or at least
put off. It’s there now
before breakfast and a shower,
after the dishes are done.

Before the needful, after
the needful. Right then
it was the needful; I am glad
to have it done so the music
awaits me from the white wall,
the dark wood, the still-polished strings.

I don’t know what comes next. If anyone
knows whisper it in my ear;
let me stretch my crippled fingers
to the tune.

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

having a cup of strong coffee as I type.
this is all I live for.

not even live for,
exactly. I exist for this. I make up
for all my faults, small or large, grievous
or trivial, even the imaginary ones,
this way.

if you approve
of this way of life — this shunning
of brave face, this jaw lightly open
until I shut it tight — with there
being a purpose behind it, however small
and trivial —

you can clap, you can
shower me with kisses or one good
slap on the back and heartful
congratulations — you can go for it
and I won’t mind because

today I’m like any bug
landing here for a moment:
anonymous for a brief second
but memorable.

like the taste
of a good cup of coffee,

lasting until I wash off
or am rinsed away.

Five forty six AM; I am sitting
on the edge of my seat. My heart
is a little bit faster than normal.
I am not sweating much; that’s all;
this is how an origin begins.

How the story
has grown from nothing to small facts;
how the story will grow farther and faster
in the interval and I will wake up after sleeping
to find it grown.

Five forty nine AM
and the break between starting and here
has become consequential; I am lying down
and trying not to breathe too quickly.
An origin story takes time to grow.

How the story
does grow, does slow, adds substance;
how there are names that come and go
and slowly change, and how I fold
my contributions in until they are seamless.

Six seventeen AM.
I am wrapping up. The story
will continue, of course; of course
it will. I will turn away from it. Pay it
little mind. It is in its own glory, after all.

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

I don’t know
how to say
I found you;
just — I did.
I found you
and you were
wearing the same
clothes, the same
outfit, the exact
costume she was.
I did not
know how long
I played; just
know I did
and it lasted
a little while
or perhaps longer.
Eventually, it seemed
longer. I did
the needed stretch
and you were
released and ran.
You ran, eventually,
and I fell
to the earth
and cried joyfully;
I was free.
At last. Dreams
had come…true?
Figment of imagination?
You know, friend,
I’ve lost track.
Did you exist?

Let’s suppose it was like
they say…let’s choose
to believe them when they say
it’s terrible in here.

Let’s assume
they were right — that
everything clumsy is real
and you will find no grace in here.

Let us choose to believe them
and to leave them unmocked
and untroubled as they walk away,
brushing off their hands, never looking back.

Your flights will go unseen by them.
Your rising up and up will go unseen by them.
You might have been clumsy — skinned knees
and hands as you picked yourself up and rose

for all time — you might have been awkward,
flailing as you nonetheless elevated yourself
from the earth to the air above it; no matter.
You flew and in less time than it has taken me

to tell this story, you were supported by the air.
You were lifted above and while they did not catch on,
they knew — they knew. They knew that the earth
seemed less bound. They felt it — they felt it.

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