The question
after the strokes
was how he would
learn to live like this:

each hand leaden
and his feet too; unable
to get up; deafened
by average sound
and his memory and sense
always a split behind.

To start out he learned
that he looked like a star,
all skinny, all fizzy,
all dangerous
to the touch.

To keep going
he imagined himself
a continuous
mistake, wire-haired and badly
groomed.

He knew he smelled
remarkably like
a shroom-covered problem
of mysterious physics.

He looked at the earth itself
as if it were a boil
waiting to burst all over
the nearest portions of the
cosmos, leaving the close-flung
dirt to sort itself out.

He came back thinking
his memory of a past life
when he was younger
had at least to be
imaginable.

To finish with that
he sat quietly in a disheveled room
and dreamed of something
different.

After all was said and done
there just had, dear Lord,
there had to be
something different.

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

I am listening to Johnny Cash,
again. I was listening to
Jesse Wells, Sierra Hull,
Ren before that. I seem
to listen again and again
to old music and then, restless
for new sounds, change it up
and find new music to hear,

and it all feels like one washes
over another, one hand cleansing
then the other. It all feels
the same to me; the same
essential thing.

I can almost
hear the changes before they
come — the lift from a sole guitar,
the fall from heights of a lyric
to a lilt, then a close.

I can almost hear them
but not quite. Waiting
for the moment I can
hear them perfectly, and
not in my mind’s ear.

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

It’s sad. I’m sad.
I can’t choose what there is
to be sad about,
but I am sad.

Sadness is
a form of this world,
one which folds itself
over you.

So, I choose
to embrace it, to be
fully sad. Birds sing
outside, sadly.

I am scratching
my parts sadly, itching
sadly, interpreting
everything sadly.

It only becomes
perfect, natural,
when I stand up
from this chair

and walk into
the kitchen from
the room where I
sit — the living room.

Close my eyes;
gonna die soon, I
just know it. I just
know it and am sad

considering it —
not mad, not even
a little. The birds
outside will still sing,

regardless of me
and my living or dying.
That’s the way of
this world, after all —

my sadness
is irrelevant to it;
it will wheel
and spin without

my happiness, my
despair, whatever I feel —
this world had millions
of years to get here,

millions more to get
somewhere else
with my sadness one
tiny piece of the

smallest piece of
time and place. Whatever
I feel today
might overwhelm me;

it doesn’t matter — doesn’t
help with the sadness
of course, not today.
But today is one day,

one instant of the whole
and none of it matters
at any rate. I might as well
put down my head,

cry for the moment,
then shake it off;
listen to the birds;
go back to being still.

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

A gentle but urgent folk song
on the radio.
Burning in the throat,
but not from an urge to sing along.
Closing my eyes to waste time —

I know I was supposed
to do something this morning
that would get me up
and mildly startle me, make me listen,
tug a shrug of surprise
from me; but

I lost it when I closed my eyes
and refused the sight of the living room
that looks so much like it always does —
if it would be different, even
a little, I could cry out — but it’s the same music
and the same sad scratchy throat
and me sitting heavily down again —

yes, here I am again, starting
the same day again for the
umpteenth time
to the same little angel dance,
nothing special; again,
my eyes are closing
and running over.

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

If you go out this morning
and walk the street you live on
will you be comfortable or will you
look over your shoulder
constantly? Will you instead look
at the hydrangeas next door or perhaps
a long stretch of green grass leading back
to a new house you never saw before?
Will you be alone on the sidewalk
or will there be someone walking toward you?
Will it be sunny, overcast,
or will there be rain?

You think you need to answer in the second before
you open the door to an outside world
that may have changed since you first awoke;
may have changed utterly due to fire and smoke
or a deluge of some sort. Perhaps so,
perhaps not, but you want this world unchanged
except for the littlest things and you must take a breath
and then will it to be so.

You take that crucial inhale
and step out in wild wonder
until you know better

for this existence you created
you don’t believe any more
much like the holes in Jesus’ hands —
you put your hands
on the world and shake your head vigorously; there are holes
or there are none. Which is true? Are you sure?

Maybe both are true and you pass through them
like a walker, a crutch only for others who pass through
to the sidewalk or the verge of a road that leads
somewhere in the rainy sunshine.

Maybe, somehow, you have ceased
the useless progress of being here
and having it be real.

Maybe you can close your eyes
to possibility
and for the second it takes between knowing
and not-knowing, you suspend yourself
to judgement and leave it to itself:
a man in the holes, wondering;

but you step out of the door.

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

I am ready to swim —
ready to dive in, to feel warm
then cold getting out — so I won’t
get out — will stay in until
I am exhausted and failing to climb out
I will sink and eventually take in
water, not air; then I will be

ready to sleep. I am ready
to sleep now, to doze in the lap
of my daily life; no longer breathing
air I will snore water, will slumber
without dream or care in this world
until I come up for one good gulp
of the one good air all around us; then
I will be

ready to die, to release the water
finally and learn what the final fall
is like, say ahhhh and then let it go
too, invisible medium
keeping us here until we go
by violence or sickness or accident
or simply wearing out and leaving
for the next reality or for nothing,
nothing at all; then I will be

ready to live like a toreador,
a picador — no matador here,
friends; just one of the untreasured
who are discarded upon becoming
used up and, reaching that point
are mourned by few;
I am ready for that living
knowing I have already lived well
and dramatically finished to be left
forgotten by the masses, brushing dirt
off, alive again, silent; ready
for whatever comes.

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

Music, unknown singer,
in the background. Cat
feeding, then sleeping.
I am bent to breakfast,
praying I don’t throw up
and lose it — my food,
my mood, my memory,
take your pick — and the shades
are yet closed against the day.
I could get painfully up
from the chair and raise them
before sitting again, but
why see the incrementally different
outdoor yard, why look for
a car parked in front of my own —
in fact, why see anything?
My good memory fades
to one second long; my good mood
goes with it; my good food stays down
for another second. The cat
takes another chair and still won’t
look my way. I still don’t know
the radio singer. Open eyes
don’t recognize this day
as being different in any way.
I close them again, focusing
upon the vibrant world
I wish, so desperately,
would appear.

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

First, I remove my clothes
and go to bed nude, untroubled
by possibilities of having to rise
and run out to the street.
I am old, after all,
and it would mean nothing
to anyone of any note.

(I try to come up with a second message
I should send after that,
but it never comes.)

I sit here
deciding on the first message’s
appropriateness and cannot in fact
choose one: is it worth it
to be naked in front of everyone
in a moment of crisis or should I
wrap up in a blanket torn from the bed
and maintain decorum until the crisis
has passed?

(I don’t even know why
a second bell or buzzer
should sound.)

Well —
at least I have an exit plan.
At least I know, for one second,
maybe two,
what it is I will be doing
until I leap from bed kicking
and calling out to the gods
to save me; until
the second bell rings,
I will be sure of some form
of rescue, even if
I have to do it myself

and even if it fails me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

An empty bowl of cereal.
A half-cup of coffee.

A book of poetry titled,
“A Book OfLuminous Things.”

My reading glasses, and
the cat asleep at the far end of the table.

This is Sunday morning
on a day when the machines

keep churning and the masters
use them to plot our crushing.

A branch from the hibiscus
outside the window scratches it

and it cries out. Other than that
I’m fine. Listening to a fellow

speak of his recovery from addiction
on the radio. I close my eyes,

the cat stretches, the evil men
do their work confident of their rightness.

Every little thing contributes
itself to my comfort,

or so it seems to my own
healed safety. I open my eyes;

somewhere a child sobs in fear
and I close my eyes yet again.

What was that book again, that book
of luminous things? It seems

unreal. It seems drunk and unsure.
I open my eyes, shut them, open them

again — this time, against my fear,
I force them to stay open.

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

Be you, as serene as a cat
watching you for clues. Be you,
twitching internally; be you,
itching all over with phantom illness.
Try and do otherwise, for once;

be someone else
if you can. Assume their virtues
as the old man once recommended;
be all they can be, could be.
It’s all you can do, after all.

If you are truly committed
to it, you could try and become
a worm, or a snake wriggling archaically
on the earth. Become a robin
or some other bird — perhaps
a hawk, an eagle of some exotic sort?
It doesn’t matter much anyway.

In the end you will fade off
in the near distance, almost
as if you couldn’t be bothered
to try another form. Resigned
to what you are, you will become
sorrow to your loved ones.
Animal or not, you will be loved…

it does not matter much to the earth.

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