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

Last night
was a powerful dream.

Got up and out of bed ordinarily enough.
Got to shower and shave and then I just sat
till breakfast, after which I sat some more.

Did not read; I can’t. Did not play guitar;
I can’t, not to my liking. I sat like a
television guru, waiting for it to come
to me, and it didn’t.

Nothing came to me.
The dream was that nothing came to me
and I wanted it to
but some force,
some divine force or wind
or other kamikaze memory
kept it from me
and I woke up stifling
under the bedclothes
longing for anything at all to come by,
shaking like a poplar leaf
or quaking like a bog;
anything in motion would be enough.

Motion excites me, riles me up.
I am awake enough
to go into motion —
tai chi would be ecstasy,
even breathing at all under tension
would be good;

anything except this stasis,
this indecision
that pins me to the hollow in my bed
and keeps me there alone

until I fling back the covers
and let something, anything come to me,
so that I may stop the holy breath
of just living and rest easy in the stillness
of being complete
as in a dream,
a powerful dream.

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

Wake up most days
and add a poem to the list
in hopes of stirring
something…

Wake up most days
and add a poem to the stock
in hopes of simmering
something…

Wake up most days
and add a poem to the life
in hopes of stopping
something…

Maybe one day
I’ll know what needs stopping.
Maybe some day
it will just stop…

and I will say,
finished. There, I’m
done with
all that…

Somewhere there will be
one poem left unfinished and they
will claim: his fault, entirely.
Everyone will blame me…

but friend, it won’t be my choice
to leave it unsung. It will sit there
like a bird on my fading face,
staring at the next person up,

waiting to sing…waiting
for you to sing. Waiting
for anyone to say a word
of it to anyone…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T