(for Peggy, with Alzheimer’s, 1996)*

Absent spirit:
Soothe our hunger for consolation
In the presence of this woman
Who asks for none.

May the colored shapes we have become
Stand apart from these walls--
Where sun after sun has tiled
A catacomb of days--
Distinctly enough to radiate our love.

Banish our loss.
Dissolve the bitter mystery of why.
Forgive our numb embrace
That enfolds this slumping body
Whose eyes reflect glass,
Whose mind quests beyond a dark door
Searching for a land of lost names.

Give words to her passage.
Resolve the twisted path she must follow alone,
The cratered wastes she calls across,
Seeking a land of kindred beings with cognate powers
That name her as their own and exult.

I miss the person I used to be

You can’t really picture the place.  
You don’t recall who was there.

But you remember surprise
That human ashes are not powdery dust,
Apt to disintegrate like snow,
Or soft like bread cast upon the waters.

Dad’s ashes chafed your palms like jagged seeds
As you clutched fistfuls from a plastic purple box
And flung them down a hillside
Somewhere in Little Cottonwood Canyon.

And you remember the feeling of urgency
As you retreated up the hill.
You had motions to go through,
Space to occupy,
A black and white landscape to walk
Among small figures filing along a dirt track
In the airless September heat.

Speaking to you from a photograph,
No longer body but idea,
I say these words
Without the twitch of a muscle.

As the August wind twined your hair
Into absurd weavings,
You heard emptiness echo.
You held emptiness instead of a hand.
You heard silence instead of your name.

As my train thundered toward a dream world,
I became an abstraction,
A solemn idea demanding a ceremonial tear.

I will wander blankly in a new place
Among blank faces, thinking of you.

As trees fly backwards at the speed of sleep,
I whisper that I love you,
But the train hears only its own roar.

A real man is not a person who can
impregnate a woman; any guy can also
impregnate a woman. Even a 17 year old boy
can impregnate a woman but that does not
make him a man.
A real man is not a person who is good in
bed. Any idiot can be good in bed.
A real man is not a person who beats his
wife/girlfriend. Infact it is only idiots that
beat their women.
A real man is a person who tolerates his
woman
A real man is a person who controls his
anger
A real man is the person who shows real
care and love to his woman
A real man is the person who knows how
to solve the crises and problems in his
relationship
A real man does not beat his woman
A real man is hardworking. He is not lazy
A real man can endure, persevere and be
patient
A real man can overlook the bad
behaviors of his woman
A real man corrects his woman with love.
Real men make their women happy.
Therefore, ladies, when choosing a man, date
real men only.
Marry real men only. If you are not happy in
your relationship now, that means your guy
is not a real man.!
Look beyond *** and money and go for
happiness and peace of mind.
—Do You Agree???

I seem to find new ways to love you,
Everyday we're apart...
I used to carve your name into poems,
Into the depths of my heart...

See darling right now I'm terribly sad
But it's not really all your fault...
It's just a feeling I've grown to know.

I may be missing you but darling
I miss myself too
I miss the spontaneous free spirited soul I was whenever
I was with you
I miss the clouds when it's too hot
I miss seeing your face so clear in my mind
I miss that feeling I used to get when
I saw that you were online

I'm not okay,
No... I feel down.
'Wish you were around to stay
But there's just no ******* way
Oh what a ****** maze we're in
Lost for the right words to say, it seems...
See there's no poetry
That could bring you back to me, so lovingly
But I'm gonna write til the end of my days,
anyway...

I've got one half of a ying yang bracelet wrapped around my neck
And that "photograph" song in my back pocket has been playing since you left
I'm trying to find myself and fix myself
But I don't know what tools to use?
I'm trying to let other people see
That I too, can look quite beautiful

But I'm not okay
I'm overwhelmed
So let's just simplify this poem..
And break it down into
Less metaphors
And similes
cause this sadness is slowly
Killing me, more and more
And there's just no poetry
That could make this sound sweet
Cause it's just not...

I'm just a different kinda sad
And I don't know how not to be.

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"