The right eye
is the window of hope
the left eye
the window of despair

And this proposition
is proven in my photograph
a portrait of a grizzled guy
taken just before
he stepped in front of a speeding car
while gesticulating wildly

Who knows what happened there?

Yet I will live!
gather fallen timbers
to form a stockade
against time

Because finally
I have discovered
that time is not my friend

It's a simple game she plays
time girl
trickster girl
but my ancient beams
will prevail

I swear it
by a handful of ash
and mark the moment
with a rune that exists
outside of time
and says simply

Be this.
You were forever thus.

It's a difficult rune to read
and a harder path
to follow.

my hands are stained with signs of turmeric, fading yellow orange
my nose is filled with tickles of aromatic roots, ***** fibrous tubes
but these don't represent anything, except some signs of life.

my skin is inked from colorful dyes, as symbols of my truth
my face is freckled from the summer sun, as symbols of my youth
but these don't represent anything, except some signs of life.

my bones and joints, at varying places, ache
my brain and mind, at varying times, pang
but these don't represent anything but, some signs of life.

my heart has known each side of our endless tragedy
my love has discovered our infinite acts in jest
and these things don't represent anything but, some signs of life.

i'm aware of my insignificance, in my limited existence
i'm aware that that can change, as easily as it cannot
but i don't represent anything, except my experience of life.

i've come close to knowing death, more times than i'd like to count
i've come close to knowing love, more times than i'd like to count
but these don't represent anything, except some signs of life.

i've met grace and kindness in the eyes of the forgotten
i've met hate and insecurities in the faces of those with influence
but i know they don't represent anything more, than some signs of life

i know that nothing is exclusive or ultimately controlled
i know that people are stones being smoothed until they reach  round
and i know this represents nothing more, than some signs of life

i wonder deeply about the state, of our humans being.
i wonder deeply how far we've secluded ourselves from each other
and i know, sadly, this represents nothing more, than some signs of life

but i know we are that so called stone, waiting to be round.
cut from sharp abstract forms, drifting down the riverbed,
washed over loquacious time, smoothed of our shearing sides

but as long as there are signs of life
imbalance will sway our ways, time will be like running water,
endlessly working to smooth our shearing sides.

and this, as i think i know it, are the signs of life.
and this, as i know it, will change. hopelessly smoothed.
and this represents nothing more, just experience. not life.

In the mango tree
a pair of crows
have made a new home.

While up on the roof
watering the plants
I see the heavenly sight
how they raise their beak
to swallow the trickles
before the heat ***** away
and having this little favor
they're back in usual mood
cawing at their hoarsest
stay away, stay away
come no way near nest
which I do my best to do
stealing a look when they're away
at the three blue nuggets
happy in the thought of
little red hungry mouths

broken
the mangoes would grow
around an empty home.

I shared a beer and sympathy with a gnarled, obsolete man
Whose wizened visage spoke of unwise choices.
He spoke wistfully (though apropos of nothing) of an abandoned diner
Near the terminus of a truncated and decommissioned road,
Its parking lot an unhappy armistice
Of cracked tarmac and scrub grasses,
The building still sporting caricatures of the proprietors
(The artist a devotee of the Bob’s Big Boy school)
Though time had robbed them of the odd eyeball,
And a shoulder or elbow had faded surreptitiously into the background.
Much of a large sign remained as well,
Appearing to be nothing less
Than some leviathan’s abandoned crossword puzzle,
Fairly shouting “THE B ST  DA N STE K
BETW  N SYR C SE  AND OT T WAOR Y UR MON Y B CK!”  
Nothing else remained, my companion intimated,
Save the odd abandoned farmhouse and vestigial fields,
With long unmended barbed-wire fences doing their level best
To contain the ghosts of bygone and unlamented cows.

They rarely bother to mow here anymore,
Once a month, perhaps every other
(Times are tight, full burials being pretty much
A thing of the past these days)
Though it’s unlikely anyone would notice
If the grass grew a bit longish,
Or the crownvetch and crabgrass became a little more prevalent,
No one being buried in this part of the cemetery
For the better part of a hundred years now,
The stones bleached and faded from decades of sleet and sunlight
And acid rain from the auto plants of Flint and Lorain and South Bend,
(Now boneyards for gears and drill bits themselves)
Those names still legible on the teetering, unsteady stones
Mostly the stolid Scotch-Irish surnames
Vaguely familiar from the town’s founding generation
Found on its street signs or pocket-parks,
Their descendants mostly having fled to friendlier climes,
Though the odd lesser strain of the families remain
(Not that they would choose to pay tribute to those ancestors
To whom they have fared so poorly in comparison)
Though many more bear the family names of their trades,
Clusters of Coopers, Weavers, and Smiths,
Their stones bearing the sentiments of grim Victorian fatalism,
Thus in mercy early call’d away or The happy soul is that which fled.
Such thoughts are quaint, eccentric things to us now,
As would be the clothes they wore, the songs they sung,
But we would know them nonetheless,
Know the muted joy of their minor successes,
The depth and finality of their defeats,
The sting of bowing and scraping
To the owners of the mill, the haughty town fathers,
As they served them at the milliners or the drug store,
Their odd, fleeting dreams of grandeur having come to rest here,
Cherry-lidded as they proceed to dust.

my actress, who
sweated blood on Broadway each night
off Broadway too

said, on a long stroll
through Central Park. she was successful
because she did not like herself

on the stage, she proclaimed,
she was never herself, and she fell in love
with every character she portrayed  

every script was a better bio
than her own, and the playwrights knew
her better than she knew herself

and when our walk
was curtailed by a downpour, she dragged me
into a crowded cafe

where she knew half the patrons
and the wait staff, and they all knew the different
personas she had owned, on the dry stage

rain now forced her to choose  
which selves to keep, and which to lose
while she sipped scalding tea

with me, on a grey wet afternoon,
only hours before she would again be under  
the spell of the hot lights,

and read verses from the pens of prophets,
poets--those who purloined her soul for the price
of admission, to a place without self loathing