My face tells me nothing. Not nothing but nothing useful, the
complications of ageing humorously but not exactly how to avoid
injury.

Permanent injury is a now popular cliché. At this age any injury
could result in pneumonia, pain in bitterness for your peers,
your jury.

What a headache I have! And never forget injury provokes
at best only pity. Friends are merely friendly, they belong to the
majority.

They forget your name and so should you, who are you? Even you
don't know for sure. In relation to community, no change was noted in
      the
registry.

Still, man's mercy, economy's ecology, there's some joy in being small,
some joy in staying strong, and keeping death before you without
perjury.

Unsafe to run the wind. A big stick might hit your head. Then
the hip and heart and head will hurt, all three. Un-
fortunately.

I like a strong wind. Dangerous to go out in. As a fire or flood.
I like the way we are at risk, not a risk-averse weasel. A carnivore,
very hungry.

Pay money, take chances. Yo's an elegant contraction of you.
Cool. Message from street to board: mongrels rule. Democracy or
tyranny.

Scared to die? Why? Take appropriate measures, descend through
meditation. Be empty, rest. And to your friends and sons be as
gravity.

Tired of death. It's what it is. Let's play sports, have ***, kayak
to the huckleberries, fish for marvelous fish, live a wonderful life, give
generously.

Done blowing, O wild wind? Not yet? So be it. I lay my head
in your felt hands. The motion of the branches, evolutionary branches,
      are my
guarantee.

That's all folks, 7:30. The sky is clear, the crows are out. The clouds
are with my mood commensurate. I should shout, having lived
prodigiously.

I can't blame the teenage girl for being forward,
then passive aggressive. It shouldn't make one angry;
she has her interests and that which bores her.

Or the adolescent boy for being antsy, a little loopy
and aloof. Under that hat he wants to be good,
is deeply disappointed with the world (and the food).

Robert Francis: the finest poet no one reads.
We care not. Such prisms of philosophy need
no acknowledgment. The catamount is only believed

to be extinct. The wildlife tree, a mere bole,
deep in the forest, far off the road, when it falls
takes many squirrel turbines and spider spans down with it.

Noon, Julian has nothing much to do
and likes it that way. That way nothing much gets done today.
Every man, every tree, lives with disabilities.

Crooked finger, rotten bole, under stars, over soils.
The I in my old poems is no longer me. The one
in this one will be someone else soon.

Might as well go to market.
Gather money, kindling. The economy
scary, debt deep, winter coming. Reminds
me of my youth, cold poor and scared
but living truth? ****. Never
have I understood life's meaning,
significance. Not to say there is no purpose
necessarily, just I don't immediately get it.

Other hand, if you don't think too deeply
about death, this being but a dream, sleep
of a god snoring with apnea or whose alarm
goes off, wakes up for work, spring and expecting
spring's good as it gets. Rhodora in winter
completely forgets what its blossoms looked
like, how attractive to bees and flies!
It's probably healthy that everything dies.

The dire economy can bring us together
or lead us to war. It's cold then warm. Your lover
doesn't write letters anymore giving
thanks or encouragement.
Friends never really know each other,
nemesis. Just as it is impossible to say
what you mean, your closest lover's near but
external, forever. You're alone.

More than ever men have one mind
and finding it's as easy as flicking on the
tv, huckleberry, but that always was
the problem. We march to war in rows and back
in columns. Learning who you actually are
is difficult as sitting still
ten minutes without a thought or want.
Nothing to say. Nothing to do.

Interior solitude, imperative belonging.
Repetitive dreaming. Until you draw
a circle with a dot
at the center. Stop. Full stop.
On a dry rocky ridge, hot
or in a frozen swamp. One heron
and yourself. It is possible to hear
not far, a car, a train, a plane.

Cold, a killing cold
is the best defense against aliens. And viruses, bacteria
are our friends.

Perfect rest, perfect motion.
Another autumn, another election.
So aimless and sublime.

Back and forth, forth and back.
Rock and roll, spoon and bowl.
What a symmetry, calculus, trigonometry.

Measurements reduce violence.
Makes sense. Temperature measures change. Time's irreversible.
Change is all that's visible.

Learn the changes, then forget them.
Lost my timepiece, lost my metronome
now my music is ethereal.

Ethereal or dissonant,
the clash that brings you home from winter and starvation's wisdom.
"Unit, corps, God, country!"

There is no religion in meditation
but it's worth visiting with your mind
in the morning. What will you find?

Equally, think about the moose and nation.
Cleaning house no less than apocalypse,
food rations. The mind lights at random.

Sit ten minutes. Breathe in, out.
Counting, or imagining the mind's a horse
galloping leads to other thoughts, not

catastrophe but also not allowed. Visit
with your bones which will outlast
words and desires. In them there's a fire

banked low, where particles of sun are
stored and slowed, or stilled entirely.
That's where I reside. Not really,

not certainly, not virtually. Then
eyes open, flowering or snow falling, the day begins
no wiser, happier or myself.

Yr cancer is inevitable as love.
You didn't last forever. The pain
wasn't the main problem, unconsciousness
was. Dad cannot see or hear,
the walls of the house contain just dust,
that's it, and if he shows up as a ghost
I'm lost, all my theories false.

Dr. Cherry certified my cancer as a cyst.
A drupe, a stone, a past mistake.
I left the examining room elated,
and have gone on to conflate my happiness,
relief, with that of the whole village.
The message is: to the east and west, the self
which is carried around as a pound of garbage.

"I like to be kissed before I'm ******."
And what is poetry anyway. Its role,
local and global. Well, I for one have no
friends or family sufficiently interested
to come to a reading. Don't take offense,
we prefer novels, and especially movies,

coffee, sugar, oil, parrots, ponies, you
name it. Seven goes to six. Prices
bust and burst, but life (and school) goes
on, or whatnot. Atomic bubble gum. Protein computer.
Grass roof. Sun spot. Perfect error.
In the mirror where everybody hides the body.

Finally, I have been going for walks, girls
with protection dogs, black flies in my eyes.
Peace of noon, bird siesta. August returns,
the snow flies. Did you survive summer,
beat the reaper? I hope so, and yr fern allies.
Perfect rest is priceless, paradise.

Two fine films: The Lost City and Blood Diamond.
I joined Blood Diamond during a village massacre
and said to my wife A gun in every home.
Those devils would think twice
before razing the village and seizing the boys.

A well-regulated militia.
The local militia the most interesting moment
in a strong film with motive (economic, emotional), action (chases,
      fights) and a ****, sexless love story.
Use of violence by the local militia for a limited purpose: protect the
      community, the young
from the janjaweed. The crop from the ****.
Limited scope and defensive posture
but armed and coordinated, cooperative, the men (and the women)
      side by side.
Warriors at the gate, you will not run, you will not bargain.
Just violence = limited scope, defensive posture.

Great music. Cuba, Africa.
The Lost City, when the communists tell the club owner under threat
      of violence
No saxophones in the band. The saxophone!
Invented by a Belgian--Look what the Belgians are doing in the
      Congo!
When the state's violence is turned against the citizenry
for non-violent acts.

This quiet neighborhood, July,
undergirded by violence, force. That's a given--
any farmer, custodian, EMT will tell you that.
Without just violence
Gandhi's scope, and King's, might be vanishingly limited,
negligible (but not non-existent)?
                                                  ­     Regarding King
the matter is simple -- he was non-violent but dependent upon
federal force to counter the South's violence.
No doubt without the larger force, the non-violent would be
      overwhelmed by southern violence.
Here, non-violence was a tactic, not an ethic.
Gandhi, however, had no violent partner to protect him from the
      British. Or did he?
1. There was the potential violence of the population, which Gandhi
    restrained but could release which the British feared, and
2. It was the restrained (limited scope) violence of the British that
    allowed Gandhi to exist rather than be extinguished--this restraint
    was a (British) cultural imperative (limited scope) as well as
    emanating from Britain's view of India as a protectorate and
    valued citizen of the United Kingdom (defensive posture).

What about violence or threat of violence to compel compliance with
      community
as in mortgage foreclosure, driving without license, drug possession.
Perhaps it is necessary violence to maintain orderly commerce, the
      common space, and preempt bad behaviors associated with
      otherwise neutral, private acts.
The defensive posture is the common good; the limited scope is
      forgoing deadly force.
But the citizen, too, must maintain a disciplined, armed non-violence,
in case the state (the janjaweed) engages in an unjust, autoimmune
      violence.
Hence, a gun in every home.