Julys have come and gone
in the hills of Shillong
and from the browned ORWO
the skinny boy with an oversized cap
smiles as if there's no tomorrow
but this moment
wrapped in fog and drizzle
holds everything within
the now filling life to the brim
making growth a needless shape
absurdly redundant
and never more real
than the eyes
peering from that shot of time
ecstatic in happiness
rejecting a future
too intangible
to be valuable.

So That Others May Live

My son and I go down to the beach today
And lay claim to a small square of sand
Where we ***** a blue plantation of shade
Inside a red umbrella city founded by dermatologists.

Slow cooking like a pair of pork chops basted in SPF 30
He reads a Jack Reacher novel, myself the LA Times
Occasionally, he looks up from his book and shares a passage:
How about I show you the inside of an ambulance?

The girlfriend his from Kentucky has never been to the beach
She is ensconced in the best chair eating watermelon
Reading poetry by Rupi Kaur god bless her
She should have the best seat if she’s reading poetry.

People form Iowa and Minnesota you know the ones
In the parcel of sand between us and the ocean
Have lain towels and blankets far too near the tide line and
Come noon we enjoy their Midwestern diaspora to higher ground.

We body surf in waves that are bigger than they look
He wears the right fin and I wear the left
I bounce off the bottom and get my *** sand papered
Then tumble into him like a forgotten dollar bill in a wash machine.

In the parking lot laughing and spitting salt water
I pour a bucket of sand out of my wetsuit onto the hot asphalt
And realize it will never be this way again and it won’t
The lines in his face a perfect nautical map of the future.

Could the sun be
    just
    a hole up there—
    that if I could leap
    would enter that breach of light

Someone!
   Throw me a line!
   Give me a reason
   There’s never enough
   in this life of breathing!

Someone!
   Explain why dreams roll a soul
   toward the cliffs of day
   Wakes to ache
   then stuffs its mouth
   with necessary same
  
Inhale—
   button shirt—brush hair
Exhale—
   necessary glance in the mirror
   (yes, still there)    

A lifetime!
   in a shallow instant’s stiff clear water
   (Yeah— still there)  
   in endless caverns of tired eyes
   above mouth still trying
   to say SOMETHING!  
   from ever smaller eternities
   in the glass-flat empty....

Please! Someone explain!
   this draw of breath
   one forcing itself upon another's
   life
   of beating —
   Violence in my chest!

Why hearts don’t sleep—

and I wind up watching
again and again—till
I am the ******...

...Morning lies
   in the mists of a humid *****
   who moans and sweats
   and boils her hips—
   and I wind up watching!?

“Will someone please…!"

   ...and I wind up watching
   bedspread, bed sore, death bed
   till you’re breathing easy
   when she sits and picks
   her collapsed bouffant
   damning the makeup
   that got crushed in the sheets

…Morning
Lies--

   with no expectancy
   both tired of knowing...

   ...The Devil lost his balance
   in my presence one night

...tired of knowing—

THE WILL!  
THAT WILL!

  ...walk away
   or continue to play

   I could open this screen!
   watch the world STEP BACK!
                                 SLAP FLAT!
   as trees and dwellings flush like quail
   to prop their tottering panic
   against the blue—

You—assume composure...
   compose assumptions
   Await my next—

Move like a spy

I wish to age like a wrap-around porch
In a thunder storm,
While generations tell tales,
Sipping drinks.
A porch of blinking stars,
A shelter out of rain,
With ascending and descending friends.

I will age like a tree,
Grow stronger in the wind;
Give shade and shelter to all
Beneath my ring-aged limbs.

I wish to age as a river bends,
Contiguous with all shores;
Floating everyone I know
On eternal waters,
A current winding with no rest.

I will age like a star,
Burning bright, giving light,
Something to reach for.

I wish to age like a mountain,
With secret caves and riches.
And you can rock your soul
Around, over or through,
Solid, snow-capped summit,
Beckoning you.

I will age as the moon,
In stages, full and new;
Each night different,
Unnoticeable fading,
As all who age will do.

the boy enters when he knows
others will not be there
in prayer--their silent entreaties
to a god he is not sure
listens or cares

morning after mass is best;
the bouquets are fresh
he can smell them once
the scent of the early
worshipers fades:

the pipe smoke from the old man's
coat
the widow's perfume which lingers longer than the ammonia stench
of the holy homeless who is there
every day

Christ watches over this:
a white marble man bolted
to a cross, witnessing
this spectacle for millennia

long before this cold statue
was placed in this cathedral,
he was there, the slaughtered lamb
cursed to die again and again

that is how the boy sees it;
not a promised life eternal,
but the same death anon,
anon

the pounding of the stakes,
the blood offering: the old man, the woman, the mendicant
all crucifying him again with
each plaintive prayer

once their odors fade,
the funeral sprays, the bouquets
remain--cut, dying flowers,
a fragrant impermanence
with no expectation for life
beyond their time in the
vase--no imploring a godhead
for forgiveness

no demand for blood
and perpetual death

only a little water for their brief journey
in fragile glass