On an abandoned field
decrepit stock cars sit —
their painted numbers peeling,
their tires rotting to ground level,
children warned away as if from bees,
adults standing far, far back — fearful
of the fever again, afraid
of noise and hot wind.

You don’t understand
how it was for them, how it would have been
for you — the flow of cars
ratcheting by you so fast you
couldn’t catch up to them — not thinking
about anything except going fast
and holding your own fear in abeyance
long enough to relax when it was over.

Instead — you are an adult now, almost
an old man — you feel it all at once.
The pedal, the steering wheel, the sound
of tires on dirt. These kids don’t know.
You long to show them but it’s getting
late. Come on, you growl — it’s time
to get out of here. Above their protests
you indeed hear the faint roar of engines,
but you shake it off as if it were poison.

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

Today is the day
when the President wakes up
bubbling at the corners of his mouth
and a shark takes issue
with his face
for having no sharp teeth.

Today is the day
when the President’s honorable adversary
dines upon shark for breakfast and feels strong
as an ape munching on Gaza
who claims the office upon knowing the President
has no stomach has for the war beyond winning it.

Today is the day
no one cares about the war, the President,
his adversaries, his allies,
Gaza, the great state of Texas;
today is a calm day indeed when
it comes to the conduct of the war because

today is the day
when the earth warms up one more degree
and some of us grow terrified but
the bulk of us relax in the comfort provided
by the hope of two more degrees
and two strong arms to rock us;

today is the day
when the light grows behind the shades
and the blinds illuminate by degrees
and we grow to dread the sunrise for coming up
this slowly, as if the sunrise was not inexorable
and the buds on the trees could grow more swiftly.

Today is the day
no one cares here in the suburbs
or in the calm milquetoast of a small city
where in the twilight before the day begins
we start the car radio on the way to work
and shake our fat heads at the noises;

today is the day
you pace the living room seeking comfort,
a quick end, a surprise of violence
instead of the shrug you normally feel.
You are going to make it. You aren’t going
to make it. You care or you don’t.

Today is the day
you sing along with the President,
the Vice President, and all the members
of Congress. You have a fine voice,
strong lungs, a penchant for singing.
You aren’t a shark or an ape, thanks to some dark god.

In the blue before dawn
you think of the Gaza kids before pulling away;
in the blue before dawn you think of other kids
the world — kids in Moscow, in Nagadoches.
You shake them off, like the song says on the radio.
Warmer and warmer. Sun’s coming. Shake it off.

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

You don’t even stop
to think about it.
You breeze through
as if it were nothing
worth considering —
maybe it is, of course;
maybe it means nothing
all these years later, when

all kinds of flowers bloom
by the front door, all kinds of bees
roll around the flowers, all kinds
of danger and crisis are out here
and maybe it means nothing,
nothing at all.  Outside it’s easy

to believe in nothing,
after all; you came up
believing in things that turned out
to be of no value to the world
and you turned from them into
a trust in the artificial values
they gave you to trust; now
you are punished by them, the crosscut
of saws over your back, the whine
of lying voices in your ears
stung by the hornets, bitten
by the long snouts of the weasels
elected since the days turned corroded
and false.

What happened to us? Eh,
what happened to the rest of them?

You correct the message. You are all set
with the message, after all. You’re fine —
after all, nothing will touch you,
you are magic, you are nothing
but smoke to them, scheming,
figuring, calculating the end —
and you don’t even figure, and

the bees don’t care.

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

Upstairs one of the women
is walking around. Around
and around…she’s got hard shoes
on, clickety-clack; she stops
and starts, starts and stops.
The dog is doing nothing,
the roommate is doing nothing,
all of them do nothing until
she comes downstairs and leaves.
Sun is just coming up and I
ought to be satisfied that no one
cares what I was doing at the same time,
but I’m crushed for a split second
because I don’t matter in the slightest
to the affairs of the neighborhood.
The poetry, the music, the trenchant
observations, even the struggles —
all of that becomes a shrug to them,
or it will when I’m gone. Even after
I’m gone it will be ignored and no one
will know. The dog upstairs, for instance,
won’t care in the slightest. In some ways
he’s the one I think about the most.
He never would have cared in the first place.
He might have woofed once or twice,
seen me going in or out, but
he wouldn’t care after that — not that
he cared at all. He’s the one
I love the most of all. He cares
not a jot what I do, or did,
or care about as I wring my hands
and fret about the state of things
without me and my earthshaking.

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

At first a cat
sleeps, then wakes, sees you,
goes back to sleep.

Then there is
an explosion in your head,
and you do the same.

It is dark and
not yet close to
alarm time, wake up time.

You watch light changing,
growing behind
worn blinds in the bedroom.

A wolf, somewhere,
eats a sheep, licks his
hungry jowls afterward.

The cat sleeps. You
try. The wolf sleeps.
You try. The explosion

you try to cover sleeps.
Did it ever happen or was it
a mistake, you wonder. Maybe

it was nothing. All
in your head and it’s
the same in the imagined

aftermath. The wolf
didn’t exist either. Did
the explosion, the cat?

Aren’t you a fool
for being alive and not
quite awake?

The light inexorably
continues to increase.
A cat jumps up, gets down,

goes on its way
and when you open
your eyes it’s all you have.

Morning
isn’t enough. It
diminishes you.

You are a fool,
but no more than a normal man
first thing in the morning.

Crestfallen. Still
asleep. Wide awake.
Lost in the cat’s cry.

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

When they put the body into the earth
I will not be there; what they put into the earth
will not be me but will be a remnant, discarded,
left behind.

The body will be divided up
after all– the eyes and the heart split out
and used elsewhere; they may even cremate
the remains and leave them behind, although
no one of the watchers that day will care enough
for the ashes to sift through and see me
in the grey-white pile.

I wiIl be present, though —
will watch from six feet above, hovering;
a dragonfly or darning needle not looking
for me in there but instead will look far and away
toward the random weeds: toward
the ragweed, making you sneeze as I did;
toward the poison ivy to which I was immune;
toward the sunset which left me daily feeling
elated as much as it did incompetent.

When the well-dressed men put the body into the earth
they will feel me as no more than a scant breeze
affecting them for an instant and then it’s on
to the next one — and as for my dragonfly
and darning needle, they won’t pay them
more than the slightest mind. Meanwhile,
the scraggly wildflowers
will bloom and go to seed and bloom,
again and again; think, then, of me.

The cat sleeps on the bed.
Same old thing. I sleep on the couch.
Same old thing. Somewhere a moth
crashes and crushes itself against a light.

It is the same old thing — the same
casual terror, the same joy and relief
upon getting free of them both. Same.
There must be

a break from it, a diversion
into something like boredom, but not quite
boredom; more like sameness, more like
resumption of a status quo.

The left does the left and the right
does the right and both sides are correct,
both sides murder — I do give up,
a whole passionate surrender to sleep.

There must be
a better way but
I can’t find it;
I shrug into forgetting it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T

In order to form
a more perfect union
of form and function
a decision has been niade
to release meaning from actions

so you don’t have to mean it
when you say you love someone,
you only have to pay attention
to the shape of your words
and the placement of your eyes.

It makes it easier for some,
harder for others.
It makes it damn near
impossible for others
and makes it improbable for all,

as it should be.

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

What would it take —
tripping, laughing,
falling out of clothes
into bed or even to the floor —
smashing your head
on the hardwood, then
recovering enough
to get your ass up and
truly rest wherever
you end up — alone
or accompanied, naked
again, wordless again,
listening to the birds outside
though you can’t name a one —
what would it take for you
to give up your
pleasure of the moment,
to aim for the heart, aim
for the filthy politics;
what would it take for you
to remove a chunk of soil
from your innermost part
and fling it at the monkeys —
what will you offer them
in place of all the things
that granted you purity, that
got you into bed feeling clean
and serene, that sent you
to bed in the first place
without caring that without you
there might be an offer of nothing
to the Machine and
the moment of crisis?

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

Tomorrow is a violet day
when the collapse
of the earth as we know it
comes true.

It will
implode with a rush
of music and someone will speak
on it, say it’s reggae
or rock music or something
else again and we will be left
wondering about it, arguing
about it as the silence comes
louder and louder, or quieter
and quieter.

Meanwhile
the earth (or planet or
whatever term we agree upon
if any) will fall in upon itself
while politicians natter about
and terrorist push their bombs
on us and the ocean comes by
to swallow whatever is left.

We will watch a television show
and argue about meaning and
cry ourselves to sleep and maybe,
if we are lucky, make love one last
satisfactory time and wake up
in a new world that looks uncommonly
like this one —

tinged with violet
and trending toward black, but
more or less the same except
it will take less time and just
as small, if not smaller, a presage
to tell us why it has slowed so little
that it feels the same
as all the other days before the earth
turned violet, then darkened
just a little bit more.

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

Spent a lot of time
just looking — had
one rheumy eye, the
left one; had crusties
in the right; they looked
just fine when they were open
and you were far enough back
to not see them; face had
patches of dry skin, red skin,
potato skin, tomato skin; always
one day away from a shave
and the beard though neat
didn’t say much. Didn’t
say anything — a Van Dyke,
nothing special. Didn’t smile
much. Didn’t talk much.
Up until the day he went
violently away, he kept
to himself as expected.
He never told anything
surprising or vile about
anyone, really. Cipher,
I guess, would be a word
you could use. Fragment;
a shrug of leftover man.

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

I try to read a friend’s work
but it’s too hard. The majesty
and flavor of the poem is too much
to tackle. I long to cross the bridge
between the islands of verse,
to connect through a path between
sandy hillocks and the rising sea.
Make it make sense, I whisper
to each island before I stumble
toward it over the cartoon-colored water;
it never works and instead I find myself
in tears, in wails before it — from murmuring
to screams and back again. I am left
with the tottering of meaning on a fulcrum;
trying one more time to balance
long enough to calculate what is being said,
what should be inferred, what is left behind
in the level of the rising threat from the ocean.
I fail, again and again. Having choices
such as this — surrender and let it go
or try to tangle my fingers deeper in
hair and clothing of the work…I sigh,
then bend to it. Bending low to the struggle
though I may lose. I tangle up, tear up.
I go.

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

A woman sings “God Bless The Child”
— one guitar, soft perfect voice arranged
differently than you might expect it
from hearing Billie Holiday, from hearing
Blood Sweat and Tears —
and it is good, is what we needed. Somewhere
out there is another person who needed it
this way and the earth spins toward them
as well as toward you, all in the same direction,
all at the same melancholy speed.

“Homeward,” sings another person,
a man this time, rhythmic percussion
behind the voice, almost spoken —
it is a different song indeed but tells
the same story of longing for respite
and peace at the road’s close — and
it is good too, is what we needed. Somewhere
out there is another person who needed it
this startling way and wonder at how
this earth carries them too toward you,
toward you at the same melancholy pace.

And you — what song did you hear
beyond their songs transmitted thus?
Nothing at all, perhaps, once they were done.
Was it good? Did you need it and get it?
Or did nothing come your way except
these two songs — second hand perhaps
but both good and solid as the earth itself,
meeting you in melancholy?

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