Gravel-grit, words
perhaps, under wraps
behind the TV. Maybe
no words, maybe no
sound. Just before
sleep it’s so easy,
there is such simplicity
in distorting facts,
magnifying trivia, of course;
it’s so simple,
playing illusory games
with facts. Under
gravel-grit, just before
sleep, just as I
fall away from
a conscious role
into a dark hole,
did I see things as they truly are,
or
should I let the sound go?

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

Morning,
and after completing everything
I usually do — testing my blood,
my weight, my pressure — and after
doing dishes and turning out
lights in kitchen and bedroom,
I come here and sit before
a keyboard full of shame and
possibilities galore and I wonder
which I will find today.

Ghosts of past success
haunt me. Demons
of past failure snicker
at my attempt.

Meanwhile outdoors
cars go by, people
walking their dogs speak
to each other. Somewhere
a bird lets out a long,
low song — not even a song;
more a cry to be seen,
to be noticed.

I don’t know what to think
of all this. It’s not
quiet but not bustling
or bursting with sound,
either. I’m in silence,
waiting for something inside
to pop, to come forth
one way or another,

and out there seems to expect me
to partake of it when I would like
nothing more than to close my eyes
and ears to it forever.

Out there, in here —
I should say they are
the same, but they aren’t.
Out there is freedom
from wanting everything
to come inside of me.
In here is…whatever
this is. This longing
to be elsewhere. This yearning
for a release that will not come
when I ask for it.

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

Miesha, sleeping
in a bookcase,
its doors left open for
easy access,
books of poetry above her.

I seize one from the shelf,
it’s a new and selected works
of William Stafford, leaf through
and find and read again
“The Animal
That Drank Up Sound,”

thinking of the single cricket
that made it all come
whooshing back.

Outside a million cops
or thereabouts
dealing with an accident on
the street that killed
someone.
I am sure I didn’t
know the dead man,
or the car that got him —

I don’t know anyone here,
just me and the cat dealing
with what comes our way,
sleeping when we can
and peering out the windows
until we get bored, shrug,
and go back to our quiet rooms
where we live
without a cricket to wake us.

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

I recall how it used to be
when I saw a thing: react,
jump back, touch it, think
about it, pass on, remember
or forget it.

It took an instant but now,
I don’t have that; between
the sight of a thing and my reaction
comes a second of blank time;
I do not choose
a reaction but deliberately
react and jump back or touch it
and pass on into memory
or forgetfulness.

I sit with the spaces between.
They do not soothe, and they
do not aggravate; they simply
exist and I sit there in them
in my almost transparent from age
Grateful Dead T-shirt
and new black sweats and wonder
what I should do in this presence
of one moment of purity.

It’s enough to be silent, I think.
Maybe this after all is what
we are supposed to do with
moments like these even if we have
just one of them in our whole
damn lives. This is how we live,
this is how we die; but mostly
this is how we live forever
in the gap between what happens
and what we choose to do next;

nothing, I guess, to do
but smile.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
T

Flat black,
flat pale blue, flat
fire red, what are the colors
they are painting cars
these days? Everything
is flat, they have TV screens
on their dashboards, every
third car is a Tesla in flat black,
no sparkle to their schemes,
they wing past me in my old
Subaru, maybe they notice me,
maybe they don’t? I know
I’m small and unimportant,
got a MMIW sticker here somewhere
I ought to apply, got a FDT sticker
I ought to add on, got
evidence of a cardiac event
I ought not to advertise,
I am scared of all of them, trucks
as large as my sense of former adventure,
roads as pitted as neglect can make them,
everyone serenely going along
as fast as speed limits wink at, but
my life is good within speed limits,
my life is fabulous if it’s much shortened
by someone in a flat gold car
who looked away to their screen
for a split moment, looked away
from a forgettable song
that cut off when our cars touched
and I’m gone and forgotten
as a sparkled firework on a long ago
Fourth of July that meant something
back then, something
not to be shrugged at,
someone to be ignored
except after death
when they will say
he was a good man though
not meant, really,
for these times.

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

My blood,
that flood within,
that unceasing flow
of dark red and almost blue —
though it remains hidden,
I will not see blue as it
blushes upon instant exposure
to oxygen — it all comes out
red, red with sugar and
panic at first
and then settles into
ordinariness;

my blood, that stream,
that river beaten by my heart
into moving — until that day
when it slows and then
adjusts to a new
ordinariness, a stillness
I will not fathom then
or ever;

I wonder about it,
blankness of time everlasting
afterward until somehow
I am awakened into a new
ordinariness, a refreshed
sense of wonder, risen anew
into love and hate and lust

and every day a sense that
this has never happened
ever before, my blood
singing with it
as if it were a virgin awakening.

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

I am sagging
where I sit, loose boned
and blemished, into
a remarkable sameness
with others like me
who cry in their coffee
and wait to fade away.

Everyone is forgetting me,
everything I stood for.
I am standing here waiting
for them to sweep by
and leave me in their wake,
standing here waiting for
anything to notice me.

I worry about my clothes,
my health, my choices for music
and reading and television.
I am this close to not understanding
the language. I am so far
from what I thought home
would be.

I would panic
if I thought it would help me
catch up. Instead
I sit here, waiting for
a signal to catch my eye,
but it won’t. At least
I’m certain of that.

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