So many days now,
hush,
I hardly remember.
The scarce tones
sung so swiftly
from my sweet love.
Her thin waist about my elbow,
her thighs
pressed beneath my chin.
So softly how I once caressed
the thin and delicate neck,
and stroked so gently
the cords of her being.


Those are days long gone.
My fingers now,
curled with the stiffness of age,
are innate appendages,
restages
of their former days,
now limp with the ravages of time.

Bells of gray crystal
Break on each bough--
The swans' breath will mist all
The cold airs now.
Like tall pagodas
Two people go,
Trail their long codas
Of talk through the snow.
Lonely are these
And lonely and I ....
The clouds, gray Chinese geese
Sleek through the sky.

I, so young, fruitful, and high
on the extravagance of life
spot the funkiest electric travelling
beat coming into sight.

The man approaches, asking me to
come and take a walk.
But to strangers I simply
tell this man I'm not supposed to talk.

The man says kind-like smiling all wide,
"I'm a stranger than who? A stranger than you?"
Slyly replies the stranger than I.

"And so you say that I may be strange
for my tophat and clothes have such colorful range.
But if these threads force you to think such a way
just look upon my beard growing so long and gray.
And just because you do not know me, it doesn't mean
that you should "no" me."

"Perhaps your are right," I say with delight.
"From what my eyes can see you are quite alright.
The strange is no more, not for you nor for I.
For my name's McGovern, McGovern's Pollite."

"It's so nice to meet you once stubborn McGovern!
I was born with the title Sicillian Summer!
But for short call me Summer, I go by no other.
Now let us adventure my newly made brother."

And off we went 'round the world and afar.
From Orion's belt straight towards the North Star.
The great majesty's sea pulled us out with its tide.
Thus, Summer and I were a universe alike.

But Time's Father's old ticker struck at such great speed
that Summer was old now and I was displeased.
For I did not want Sicillian to leave,
but my great misfortune was Summer's last need.

"Why wary McGovern, my grown younger brother?
I've shown you the way of Sicillian Summer!
My time has run out for what times's worth I wonder.
But don't you cry now, once stubborn McGovern.

Here is a token, a keepsake for you.
My tophat is yours for my life is now through,
wear it while jumping from the planets to the moons,
and all other moments, your life's lovely tunes."


...



Summer is gone now and I walk down a road.
Top hat tight on, bearing colorful clothes.
A young boy sees me from a ways up the road
and I can't help but feel for his being alone.

I approach the boy asking if he'd like to take a walk.
But to strangers the boy tells me he is not supposed to talk.

I can't help but wonder am I a stranger than he?
Surely he is not a stranger than me!

Buzzing street lights in ‘65, while riding down broadway, I saw him raise a fist and knock on air, giving honorary mention, on a sidewalk, with licorice aromatics and things to come; a riot in mind and lost roads yet to try; I was driving down the hours, until the great eruption, the beautiful hydrogen plume, that turned my earliest stages to glass; of misunderstanding.I chose deep coma puffs for months; hoping for a big bang difference, but saw more of the same, those political chants and the binge melody; spread my head from ear to nose, and dripped to a kneeling pose that hurt the knees; that he created.There were buses choked with cigarettes and little fires that fumed high on revolution; I inhaled the moment, spiritual avenues of peace, ambience for a dime and phony masters of ‘68, who passed good karma as market produce, picked for it’s grace maybe taste; remembering a twisted paste, twirled around a pipe; I found his holiness smeared with rosin, powdered and heated in delicious spice.Banging down the hours, in the hallway and on the walls, the musicians in the park, the harmonica boy and a licorice man who posed like Cleopatra, a fist pumped high, finding power far from the action, the corner vacation it had become; one year late and an intersection erupting intolerance; a fascist dialect foaming at the mouth.It’s ****** man, the sacrifice for love’s survival, the astute grew grumpy, coyly taking savage steps for attention, a smiling Buddha danced mediocrity, and the breeze cleaned the streets of licorice lice.I pledged to mystic beasts, the iconic gods, who gave us head while swaying beads, killing rice cake hero babies, then slurped the carnage. That was the rise in ‘69, the fall of all, you young men, robed preachers; who stole the show. We worshipped your footprints, discovered nothing, but eased each in; so wild were our mouths.The cold floating fogs in ‘71, let’s drive the dark, close our eyes, seeing cars in stars, luck was far from there, it was over. Time to surrender, the freedom, the ravished femmes, the man with junk, singing ancient song, who lived in trees, who coasted hills, whose licorice taste, his heavenly dreams; visit my nighttime history, and the years we lived.

Is there, for honest poverty,
      That hings his head, an’ a’ that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
      We dare be poor for a’ that!
           For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
                Our toils obscure, an’ a’ that;
           The rank is but the guinea’s stamp;
                The man’s the gowd for a’ that,

What tho’ on hamely fare we dine,
      Wear hoddin-gray, an’ a’ that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
      A man’s a man for a’ that.
           For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
                Their tinsel show an’ a’ that;
           The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
                Is king o’ men for a’ that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca’d a lord
      Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
      He’s but a coof for a’ that:
           For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
                His riband, star, an’ a’ that,
           The man o’ independent mind,
                He looks and laughs at a’ that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
      A marquis, duke, an’ a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might,
      Guid faith he mauna fa’ that!
           For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
                Their dignities, an’ a’ that,
           The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,
                Are higher rank than a’ that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
      As come it will for a’ that,
That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth,
      May bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
           For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
                It’s coming yet, for a’ that,
           That man to man, the warld o’er,
                Shall brothers be for a’ that.

"You have to feed on something,"

they said, or I imagine them
saying, and I do... but I don't
want to feed,
at least not doing it to trade
in visible doubts for a life's
uncertain

drift between I am, and I'm not...
fed fat by the neatly packaged
carcasses
clearly drained and cellophane wrapped,
to keep unclean hands bloodlessly
far from mine.

I'm told but I won't hear, "We're more
highly evolved." We think therefore
we are so
discomfited by not knowing...
whether the fed-on think and feel
what we do

when life's last light runs out, taking
with it the green and red that played
over flesh
and bony because... if they do,
it could be, we're feeding on one
another.

"That's the unkind art of feeding."

-



I’ve been accepted in a number of small-town organizations,
Constructed by some confetti-fetishists who craved nothing more than
To write their thoughts onto the underside of a bridge,
Abandoned due to incredible uprisings of what some would call faux water.

They’d told me,
Multiple times actually,
That I was bound to their ideals and morals forever;
That they’d essentially taken the parts of my brain that mattered
And the sections of my heart I knew couldn’t feel emotion but
Hoped dangerously that they, under suitable conditions, just might
And tossed them into a box
Snuck down to the river
Let it drift away as I slept alone.

I’ve been afraid to try new things, always afraid,
Always wandering about with a finger to the air and a
Paintbrush to mark where I‘ve been.

To think that they “saved me,”
Or “kept me from a suicidal afterparty” is now
Only a thought rather than action.

And now
Slowly, gently,
He lift a glass of dust to his mouth
Wondering who he used to be
As I watch myself from the corner.



-

"Make of yourself a light"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal-a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.