It doesn’t matter what you choose
or how you frame it. In the end
they will still look at you funny
and after a sigh or two dismiss you.
Shake their heads, one or two of them,
and let you go.

It doesn’t matter how you dress
or how you say the things you say.
You will still be the cause
for their shaking heads, their
worried hands trembling
when they reach out for you,
and then (reluctantly at first
but with relief at the close)
let you go.

Be well, and let me go
without a qualm or care
in the world. You should recognize me:

I’m a chipmunk
you never chased deeply enough into the earth
to understand. You should recognize me:
I’m a bird of indeterminate plumage
you thought you knew in your bones
but were never certain that you did,
not after I’d flown.

You should recognize me:
I’m you before the fire, after the flood,
sunset on your beloved lake before night falls
all the way down like a perfect blanket.

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

Call her by name.

She doesn’t answer
for more than a minute.

You pretend to care a little
because it matters a little.
Outside, the world shatters
more than a little — you
are a little shaken; more
than shaken — meanwhile
she carries you on the wave
left behind by the occurrence
of your name on anyone’s
mouth.

When she finally
uses your name again,
you have forgotten it and
shake your head like a bag
left over from a long shopping
trip. Who you are
doesn’t matter. You are
hips and toes and only
a little of you is in your head
waiting to respond to her.

Call her by name again

and you won’t forget it
though you don’t know her
at all. She is a wave in your head
and that’s what counts. She
is perfect for the cause
and that is final. Until
you forget again, she
is all you can imagine.

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

I woke up
and played Joni Mitchell
on the radio, she sang “Summertime”
with a cheering raft of friends.

Then came the Dead and “Scarlet
Begonias” –50 years today
since it was released — and then someone
did a version of a Nirvana song

and I knew I was old,
old enough
for the tears that came up
for the live and the dead.

Last night I went to sleep
thinking it would soon be
too much to mourn for me
and only those who knew me

would mourn for my departure
from the solid world,
the world of
contracts and hibiscus.

Their hands
would be clean of the holy dirt
as soon as they wiped it off
and walked away.

Like a song
they might recall it — a snatch
of it, perhaps — later,
and it would bring up a tear or two

for scarlet flowers,
for crimson blues,
for lithium marks on a bottle,
for days when living was easy.

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

onward,
T

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.