Marvelously Mentored

In mind
I guide my wheelchair
forward through the valley of death
and fear rises as if lachrymal dew
But I take heart knowing
there is a private way,
a fusion of mind=body,
my tao

Out of this valley
the way is paved
with slippery tempting templates,
Sirens songs,
a lyrical playlist cunningly self collected,  
but I remain mindfully resolute
caped in electric blanket and birthday suit
my 3D hero is me, Marvelously mentored,
sans copyright.

Drop ones's poetic pants,
About one's measured feet

The painting at the head of my bed
on a single frame canvas
depicts a triptych,
a faux three pane view
of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
This tri panel composition
reminds me of the way some Christians,
fuse their three bodied god into a mythical
singularity of mystical much.

I tried and tried
to write a poem today
but
all my efforts
came to naughts,
so all I have to show for that
is simply
this

.

My black cat
of twelve years
pretends not to know me
following my five months of hospitalized absence.
Perhaps it is the newly acquired wheelchair,
or the motorized invalid bed?
Why should he be any different than some old friends
whose calls are now noticeably less frequent
than prior to my paralyzing accident?
Or perhaps it is I,
too cinched up in my need bag
to reach out for a pet pat
or a pal chat?

Jesus is said to have turned water into wine.
Today my urologist turned my favorite cordial, red wine
into water, and only five eight once glasses at that!
TKed, Syrah, Syrah.
Christ! where's Jesus when you need him?

The propane man came today.
He checked the system for leaks.
Adjusted the pilots
and checked the level of the above ground tank.
Autumn now cheeks winter
as does my life estate.

I'm shopping for a good death.
I have an unknown, but finite amount of time.
But I've yet to sort and list what a good death may be.
Precipitously quick, and unexpected would be nice.
Clear head pain management would be a god send,
Saying personalized goodbyes to family and friends
Ranks high.
I've read that 100 billion humans have thanotopically bridged that divide.
I pray that when the time comes
I end in the ranks of the top ten.

In 1947 I was born on a Thursday;
this year,
my 65 th,
falls on a Tuesday.
A "Fall"
from a 3 foot high bed
at 6:00 a.m. in April
has split my world
into a mirror universe
of can do
and can't yet.

It's in the bag
or is it?
The unmeasured liquids
that I've been drinking this morning,,
coffee, prune juice, cranberry, pill water
then the mandatory diuretic
taken at 6:00 a.m.,
a cath a ten,
lunch at twelve thirty,
and then a lap moat of **** at one!
A transfer board out of the wheelchair
onto the made bed.
Rocking 'n rolling off the wet pants,
rocking and rolling on a pair of dry slacks.
"****, ****, I hate this."

Mornings,
The blessed shroud of sleep lifts,
Ones usesless limbs
Have filled in the nocturn hours with mercury,
Not swift Olympian Mercury,
But the toxic fluid metal
That nearly weighs the same as lead.
A new day,
A new day
Weighs in
Without volitional choice.

Eventually all water drains to the sea,
and so to the body's waters drain to its urinary bladder.
But the bladder,
unlike the sea,
must be drained every few hours,
call it a normative ****** rhythm,
taken for granted, as it should be, by the functionally normal,
but the spine paralyzed
must be catherized
four, five six times a day.
**** breaks through an inserted tube,
to which I can personally report,
the ***** prefers piercing
then being pierced.

There are three B's
intimately connected to a spinal cord injury,
bowel, bladder, and blather.
The gut severed from the brain
is rudderless.
Both bowel and bladder require outside assistance
which brings in blather.
The care giver, the talker.
One time, in my case
a born again ****** searcher.
Not for ****
but for digital conversion.
My *** well in hand I heard the purr,
"Do you believe in Jesus?"

My arms wrap my body
as if I were a mummy
and in the way that mummy's are stiff,
so to my paralyzed carcass,
a living entombment of wishes
that wither by noon
then baled into flop sweat shivers
for the wet wash cloth
of the next day's care giver.

I'm a divided island.
Cleaved by a a wide sea.
My two halves communicate by note in bottles...
But the currents are inauspicious,
No word arrives from either shore,
Nonetheless the split isles persist,
"Legs, good morning,
Let's get out of bed."
"Head, we've got to **** and **** down here,
Direct us to a toilet and be quick."
Thus said,
More unread flotsom
Is added to this tangled gyre.

Mass, weight, inertial potential
universally networking
all
into Indra's
bejeweled net.

Five years before retirement
my father in law
posted a note on the refrigerator,
"Everyday throw something away."
I have come to realize
the profound wisdom of this advice.
Letting go is the enlightened path
to contentment.

The interval,
sliced, metered, warped,
occilating space time,
the field where we strut
our stuff
for an impermanent
registrar.

Time and terrible violence
scripted these four-thousand foot hills,
Every stone under foot has a fantastic tale to tell
and the deep river gorges,
patiently sculpt, sculpt, sculpt.

Three obituaries in a week
received from contemporary friends
reporting their parental loss,
all extraordinary lives
compressed within single column widths
and limited
to given story lengths.

On the mirror
in lipstick
was
written "solipsism"

The double chamber,
the grit,
the granular source
and collective pit
of one's corporeal time
accelerating
each instant
through
that check valve
of
now/then,
.
.
.
that
drop
zone
below
the present tense.

Today, a convention
within these mountains,
a cloud 'n vapor parade
displaying every pantheon
that history
and the Jungian collective
ever imagined,
morphing before my eyes,
now the Cherokee chief,
that once owned these peaks,
reigning over the D-land mouse.

It's an elevator ride.
You decide whether
it's down or up.
The car slows and halts
to fill or empty.
You ride,
you ride,
you ride
knowing that only
the suicidal select a stop.

Forsythia,
here blazing out,
in,
is it tractor,
   center stripe,
      or school bus yellow?
A distant cousin to the olive tree.
Would that a rioting branch,
when offered,
would never fail to restore
tranquility and peace.

Your words,
your thoughts,
your form,
warp and woof
a numinous weave,
a diaphanous dress
that once
only gods could wear.

A light rendered note
on vellum
only you and I can see
upon which
I tender thoughts
that gently thread
you to me.

Your scent lingers,
the shape of your body lingers
upon the linen
where we bed.
Wrinkles in time
will smooth the sheets
but I believe
we have created
a lasting perturbation
within the continuum of time 'n space.

Laurel, rhododendron,
waxy leather leaves survived
again beyond odds.

At 5:14 universal time,
this date (03/20/2012)
the earth and sun axis
were in parallel alignment.
and the sun and earth's equators
were in plane agreement.
Would that humanity
could find such common equilux.

Within a veil of light rain
a redheaded woodpecker
percussively rap drills
his evening dinner.

Supporting experience
this communal thread
that here
and where you are
knits our beaded thoughts
into a secular rosary
that we with pleasure
interworry.

Belching choo choo white,
Vapor clouds, shadow-skud
This Appalachian range.

Amorous sparrow
Does a tree branch song 'n dance,
Female weighs option.

The chief
at the top of the test pattern,
always black 'n white,
facing left to right,
encircled
then squared
and circled again
at each corner quadrant,
with radiating strobe lines
for adjusting
vertical then horizontal,
our fledgling video message
that now nascently probes
the Universe for intelligent life!

Where would we be
without the ******,
the flare 'n ripple
that cups to meet
but in duty
never truly mates?

I date myself.
A rotated heel
in spring soil
grooves an
agate pocket.
Marbles, glassies, boulders
and an instructional introduction
that life is a matter
of skill, bluster and chance.

My fortune
to abide
& be witness
to a dynamic sky
against a ripple of defining mountains.

A thought had me
but melted away
then another
that failed
to hold my attention
then another for just a second
that promised
insight
that vapoized
into a scattered inattention.

A thought had me
but melted away
then another
that failed
to hold my attention
then another for just a second
that promised
insight
that vapoized
into a scattered inattention.

The till
of majestic mountains
trail to the sea,
as my thoughts of you
break off and tumble
through time
that merges the sacred
and inexorable forces
that will collectivize creation
back to a Time sub zero
Inverse
of unimaginable demensionless pointedness.

Leading sounds of spring
Are now preceding the season.
Scattered platoons of yardmen
clunk aluminum ladders
that thunk debris littered roof gutters,
bang a size range of galvanized nails
into an exterior catalogue of materials
needing attentive appending.
The leaf blowers, the leaf blowers
exhausting NASCAR level roars
attempting to push back
last fall/winter into their calendared slots.
And the first nice day Harleys
rumble distantly along the gorge road below.

There is
  an interlude
      within silence,

a white on white chimera,

that anoints the thee and thou

in transubstantiation

  that wafers us.

Standing in this drawing room,
eighteen foot ceilings,
Battery Street windows look out on Fort Sumter
still protecting Charleston's slave trade bay.
No rockect's red glare tonight,
but a musum cocktail party,
awed by the riches that slave trading
  did generate,
though the word "slave"
never came up.

Oh, to be a tortoise
and never need a house.
No realtors, no mortgage,
never a call for
roofers, plumbers...
or ever to build a shelf!

Had Chaucher written of you,
prescient to have told
your Canterbury tale,
"When in April ..."
So long ago,
but you
just a few decades underway  ...
The Quarry man's daughter,
what mid trail story
would he have chalked
on his writer's slate?

You and I could be lichen.
You'd be algae
and I fungus.
E plural unis.
I would envelop you,
not to smoother,
but to romance, house, protect.
You would photosynthisize the sun
filling our pantry shelves.
Oh, what fun we could have
if we were a lichen.

You,
with your pyrite tooth
and zirconia lobes,
those decades of *******
native vitality
for made in asia
Trinketronics!

Reading between between the lines,
the shadow zone of interstitial spaces,
the quiet and rhythm
    separating sentences,
        I senced that your yesterday's day
was one,
      that given a choice,
  you would not choose to repeat.
I repeat this feeling guilty
   that I failed you
by knowingly remaining silent.

A bit luni,
or so it would appear,
to add an extra day
every fourth year,
though leap we must,
Feb adjust,
for a near annum would get lost
over the next fourteen-hundred years.