The Alert
says I
should take a shower
now
but
the spray comes thin
like Twiggy from
the 70s
like Kate Moss from
magazines that can't turn a
profit like David Lehman's
warm shower trickling down
a cold April back
but
now
it's the tip of March
and the thin rain
comes
like my Blood loving
into mist memories

It's like steps, baby steps
in puffy, winter's clothes
from protective parents
bundles of joy, pushing through snow
white, pure,
in innocence

It's as if seasons ago
we ankle biters collected Maple leaves
as the colors changed
and froze them in between
pages of a college student's
journal full of love and passion,
in hope

that the spring of our lives
will come too soon,
and the dried leaf
and the driven snow
will add up to
something, anything
before the winter sets
in again.

Wake, read, work
and Repeat.

Sounds like a movie
instead of coffee
with my father

distant

with David Lehman
on March 30
living The Best Years of Our Lives

reading again David
things I've forgotten
things We'll only remember

living in the Matrix
of references and inside joke,
literature search
and transposed multiplication
instead of regularized
algorithm

how funny our dad
is who knows only trees
and the bitter cold as Winter
sets in my lips are dry
what do we say
skin like parchment

how funny our Dad
who only knows
streams of information
shows as allegory
"Shaka when the walls fell"

what's a good movie
quote for Failure?

The Titanic?
always the sinking
is corrupted with an interlacing
Rose at the bow
dreaming of forever love

We dads aren't Dana Andrew
We don't even know
who
that is and don't care
We're frantically Raising
Arizona blossoms in concrete
soil two beautiful
daughters
We CK Lewis Dads

Lehman time is
over time to take a shower, work
and Repeat.

Only in last year's glow,
could this year's Red
chorizo salami come,
and I haven't gone yet.

Gone over the edge
of these Breakfast tables,
in empty cup
or full of caffeine.

Gone over to home not yet
cuz the Brain keeps
me here in a dish,
in artificial cerebral spinal fluid,
or let's just call it
Recording Solution

Don't mix the salts!
Cross-contamination
is a killer for these Recordings.

Does our family speak to us on cold winter's night?
Even if there's no creek to crackle,
no stiff spines, no furry trees,
nothing but a Van Gogh room
in Somerville
and digital clocks ticking.

Does our family still speak?
Chattering away,
Background processes,
Garbled noise, garbage without
wisdom because we've lost the sophistication
to crack ancient encryption.

We hear the history,
and mimic vocalization like a song bird,
dolphin or elephant
each with converging neural circuits.

Members living the same stream?

It's easier to hack the data line,
when we've trained on same sets:
a missing wife,
black and white photos,
and a grandfather clock.

There's an elegance
to the math

but

it's too complicated for
us to understand much less
make a career of writing
ring looped code
or father toddling

equations.

At best, we fancy Newtonian
relationships,

common sense ones that any 17
century young Romanticist
would Realize

The faster we accelerate into Love the greater
the Force of our relationship
and the Mass of our egos multiply the effect

A Love in motion stays in motion

If only we live in vacuums

our fairy tale would never end
and the forever after is locked,
safe behind Castle doors

But our stories are more like Grimm Tales

Impulse
forces of liberated Egos
change the trajectory
of our real

love.

Random white cue *****
bounce us into a side pocket.

And who's to know?

Are the cul-de-sacs
any worse than
landing in an odd corner,
bunched in with only
a stripped
or solid ball?

At least we didn't scratch
against some misshapen Black
eight

Alert!

Oh. It's only a reminder.
Automated, automatically sent
to us.

An email, a text.
They pop on devices,
trained that way.

Tomorrow's a birthday.
Always tomorrow an Alert!
Someone's born.

Yet, the helper has become a daemon.
Friendly assistance
become nudges of melancholy.

A Daemon for grieving?

How many Alerts
can the heart take?

Yearly jolts,
automated realization
that our family is fading.

Not tomorrow's children
born into midnight's Alert,
but the child father,
mother, sister, and brother we
remember in bleaching photos.

Chemically fading away,
decaying like data
on hard drives.

Our stormy lives
remembered with
a half-life of gentle reminders.
Remembered as
ghostly background processes
sending alerts of birthdays so long
ago there's no trace except
in shared memories.