When days I wish not to say
or write a word fall upon me
I sleep within and greet the touch
of music’s hand over my eyes.

If you are, as Alan Watts believes,
“the fabric of existence itself,” well
you must be a patch, then, wind-shredded
off the coattail end.

And that’s what the music is for.
Which to keep me, also attached, I’d play
myself if I could and so would you. But you are
off in the wind flailing, remember?

Would anybody hear?

Threads flapping even more
the goodbye to an old man’s coat. But listen.
I’ve heard in it a rhythmic sound. Like the beating
of wings, lifting. Listen to us. It’s like letting

a flag fly.

Nothing wavers ahead
like steam on narrow horizon road.
Perhaps it is the now dying spirit
of a world no longer in heat,
my one chance in spring
lost carelessly in the slightest
wisp of a moment’s hand,
the hopeful rising flowers
in my lungs blanched by the
weight of what I’ve made
memory mean, of yesterday’s
sun, and shrinking.

Sublime how in a dream, I can let
that which when awake is painful and bizarre
be in my dream, so painlessly,
not thinking why at all.

My hope is simply once I’ll let
that which when asleep seems clearer in a fog
seep back to me, somehow near,
in life that’s strayed afar.

I believe in the Southern pines
because I cannot you anymore.
I believe they will keep us passing by
in your white flake car along this road,
for I believe in the Southern pines.

They will not see me kiss
your free hand, your eyes close, or
your breath as it settles, light as snow.
They will only see
a white flake car passing.

They will not know why
your eclipse on the amber window
will bring my soul to tears,
for all they know has been
a passage along this road.

I will want to come back one day
and park my soot of a car
on the side of the road.
I will want to climb any way I can
to sit and watch from their branches.

But for now, I will just believe
in the Southern pines, for I cannot you.
Believe they will keep us passing by
in that white flake car I see
in the distance, approaching.

Yet I actually did love.
And what was my love?
I, for whom love was
the mystery itself,
supposed to be
always just
out of reach, did love,
and did love that love,
the love I hoped
to miss as love,
loving too much
the love I sought
to love as love.
Had it really been
the love just
unreachable,
that still, somehow,
had been mine? Yes it
must have been, I
did love, must have loved,
even if it was
love fallen
just out of reach of love,
if ever the love
had been my love.
My love?
Oh and what a
twisting and
twisting
mordantly
lovely glass stair-
case of a love
it is.

We live to reproduce
the one inside the nothing,
the circle within without,
to survive, in any way,
the flesh-ripping teeth,
the fear of blood and of pain,
the fall and the scream and the tears—
we live to try surviving it all
with the eternal hope in us
that death has never lived,
and that life, this true love
will never die.

Now do you understand?
That must be the first line?

For I was you in my own way.
At melted o’clock.

And did you understand then?
That it was, also, to be
the last line?

In a scribble, desperate

and perhaps still
         disparate

You cannot see me but     I am
Somewhere           Underneath
The surface      Just underneath
About to break       Always still
Just            Barely           Under      
A gilded barege of light  Shifts    
Liquid leaves in gouache   Fall    
Trinkling             Over my face.

You can witness something
miraculous. You can witness

me

unreflected.



Let me explain.


You can witness something
miraculous. You can witness

me

unreflected.


I  cannot.

Sad is the love song to the woman
whose eyes unfocus beyond you.
Sadder yet is the love song
strung in the eyeless dark
to the woman who no more has
ears for you, though maybe still
a heart.

Dead leaves are colorful,
aren’t they?
laying like a frozen dance
atop the dewed staves
were seen every day
waiting below.

Dead leaves gave their bodies
to the upward aching hands
of a graying yard this morning.
Dead leaves were tranced in
the whole apparition
this morning.

The sun made snow falls
frailly through mist on my
friable face.
Am I an old man, already?
I don’t ask if it’s the change
made them fall. I don’t ask—
I know.
Time breeds wisdom
and also Alzheimer’s.
But it doesn’t matter, we’ve
learned to laugh at Woody Allen
movies, after all,
haven’t we?
Dead leaves are colorful,
aren’t they? Aren’t we?

Was what my love had loved
Or maybe knew   so simply loved
That we were going to die   We
Simply follow a loop

Only tied when time is untied   in

Death   the most extreme
Emotion   close to death of all
Emotion   the thinning curl
Where Yin approaches

Yang   I

Keep dying and resurrecting as I

Love

May beauty rot.
Is this what I want to say?
Perhaps not.

May my desire for beauty rot.
Would this be sound to say?
Perhaps not.

May everything be beautiful
so there is not
that harsh glaring
lack of.
Is this what I’ve been
trying to say?
Not even
sort of.

But you get the picture.

What are you
trying

to do, buddy??

::his
eyes being
pulled up by
the fragile question
as two
wounds
opening
glisten::

What

are you trying

to do?

(And you crack yourself up.
And you shake your head.
And your heart shakes you.
And your little mouth
          shuts.)

the hope, at least

in hope?

To go
to keep going
to keep until
you really can’t

until the last

until there really
is no more
going
or keeping
or lasting
anymore?

And that you were
certain of the last
and that it
was
at the last
at the least

as you hoped.

C’mon, man.

:morbidly urgent
whisper:

C’mon.

you don’t see
say much
says much

and more

elsewhere.

is its ending.

the truth is that the truth is that
the truth is that
the truth