You move beyond the luxury of panic,
Beyond the realm of heroic measure,
To such a point where clarity is superseded,
Itself a linear matter and beneath further concerns,
Beyond cursing yourself for failing to heed
Such self-imposed caution as had taken you this far,
And a life does not flash before ones eyes
As much as thoughts and images
Hopscotch into consciousness
Without a particular plan or pattern:
The party you left early, being under strict orders
To be home at such-and-such a time,
Only to be greeted by your mother
Who seemed genuinely surprised
You would take such strictures to heart,
Sundry boxes carried out of sundry workplaces
Under an equally broad array of circumstances,
Times you'd laid back upon the ground,
Looking at the clouds as or like a child
With no rationale save that it seemed like a fine thing,
Any number of snippets trodding on each side of the line
Separating memory and hallucination,
Wondering at last how a body mostly composed of water
Comes to such a pass,
And then there is nothing but.

When that day of reckoning comes
(Hopefully, some light years distant,
As I like anyone else, cling stubbornly if not desperately
To this process of plodding aimlessly along)
Where the book of myself is closed, I have asked,
Though how I plan to enforce the wish remains an open question,
That I am not Cadillac-carted to some incongruous green space
Where some dark-clad and stiff-collared stranger
Bounces pebble-laden soil onto the top of my bedding for the ages.
Much better,  at least to my way of thinking,
That the remnants of my essentials
Are strewn upon some cold Adirondack lake,
Or perhaps if its current residents
Are sympathetic and not particularly litigious,
The backyard of my childhood home
(I have not fleshed out that particular portion of the equation,
As I, like most people, am much less emphatic about my do’s
Than I am concerning my don’ts and won’ts.)

On the odd occasion, I am visited by a curious dream
Concerning my departure from this particular plane;
There is a fire, though not some vast, heroic Viking pyre,
(Even my reveries have a certain reserve about them)
But something less prepossessing,
Like some small pile of leaves,
Such as my father burned when I was a young boy,
And a black-suited cleric stands before the flames,
His face only somewhat familiar, yet still comforting
(A distant uncle or favorite teacher, perhaps)
And he litters the embers with the residue of my corporeal self
With words absolving the folly of my acts of commission
(The stumbling footfalls of the blind; throw them on the fire)
The shortsightedness of my omissions,
(Boorishness of children and fools; throw them on the fire)
The sum of my shortcomings and misadventures
(Victims of our angels and gods; throw them on the fire)
And the trails of smoke drift aimlessly upward,
Toward birds who cackle and twitter unconsciously,
Oblivious to all the machinations below.

A mirror will suffice, no doubt.
The high furrowed forehead,
The heavy-lidded Asian eyes,
The long-lobed Indian ears.
Brown skin beginning to spot,
Of an age to bore and be bored.
I turn away, knowing too well
My face, my expression
For all seasons, my half-smile.

Birds flit about the feeder,
The dog days wane, and I
Observe the jitters of leaves
And the pallor of the ice-blue beyond.
I read to find inspiration. I write
To restore candor to the mind.
There are raindrops on the window,
And a peregrine wind gusts on the grass.
I think of my old red flannel shirt,
The one I threw away in July.
I would like to pat the warm belly of a
Beagle or the hand of a handsome woman.
I look ahead to cheese and wine,
And a bit of Bach, perhaps,
Or Schumann on the bow of Yo-Yo Ma.

I see the mountains as I saw them
When my heart was young.
But were they not a deeper blue,
shimmering under the fluency of skies
Radiant with crystal light? Across the way
The yellow land lies out, and standing stones
Form distant islands in the field of time.
here is a stillness on this perfect world,
And I am content to settle in its hold.
I turn inward on a wall of books.
They are old friends, even those that
Have dislodged my dreams. One by one
They have shaped the thing I am.

These are the days that swarm
Into the shadows of legend. I ponder.
And when the image on the glass
Is refracted into the prisms of the past
I shall remember: my parents speaking
Quietly in a warm familiar room, and
I bend to redeem an errant, broken doll.
My little daughter, her eyes brimming
With love, beholds the ember of my soul.
There is the rattle of a teacup, and
At the window and among the vines,
The whir of a hummingbird’s wings.
In the blue evening, in another room,
There is the faint laughter of ghosts,
And in a tarnished silver frame, the
likeness of a boy who bears my name.

My ex-girlfriend and I used to play this game, I guess we made it up, called Sing That For Real. So at any time, when one of us said "sing (a song) for real" the other person had to sing it. With sincerity. Whether it was playing or not. Had to put their best effort into it, without any humor or undue theatrics behind it. Any song. You had to just sing the portion of it that you knew to the best of your ability. In public, alone, didn't matter. Over the phone. We would tell each other thru text sometimes. Sure, you could get away with not doing it and the other person would never know. But I never did. I always sang.

Because it wasn't really a game. It was a trick. A ruse to get the other person to open themselves up. To be vulnerable in front of you. Honest with you. To break yourself open--if only slightly, if only for a moment--without fear of judgement or insecurity. Without hiding behind humor or parody, to sing directly into the face of the person you love. Or on their behalf. At their behest. Have a moment of tangible honesty between the two of you. Show that person that you aren't afraid of anything, at any time. Once, at a deli counter on A1A, I sang "Not Fade Away" directly into her eyes. She showed me a secret Beyonce taught her at a pet store in front of the fish tanks. We duetted on “You’re The One That I Want” on the trunk of my civic parked in a starlit cow field. It was a secret promise we made to each other. A private joke, almost.

She hung herself in her apartment 6 years ago today. She was high on *******. She was bi-polar. She was off her meds. She was scared of herself and everyone else. I picked her up. I cut the belt. I puked downstairs in her garden screaming. I loved her so much and I'll never stop singing for her.