I'm dead. Unlike Frost and Yeats
nothing I've said will be remembered.
Unlike Roosevelt and Lincoln
nothing I'm thinking will win the war.

I'm going to go to my grave unsung
like almost everyone. These mountains
are my grave. A good grave
to go to. There's no such thing

as being saved. When you're gone
you're done. At least 60 million
people don't believe it, don't believe
in evolution. Man, that ape,

can heap a peck of hurt posthaste
with earth movers and machine guns.
Information technology
cannot save your soul, heck,

I've tried. Every morning
I total the polloi
coming to my site for wisdom.
The number's usually zero.

A good number to know.
When my heart fibrillates
I lay my head
against my sleeping wife.

Solace, comfort. She says,
Take your pill, fool.
In an hour at most
I'm feeling great again!

What a city I murmur to myself looking at its map.
We approached the city known as Dis,
with its vast army and its burdened citizens.
At last we reached the moats
dug deep around the dismal city.
What destroys the poetry of a city?
Automobiles destroy it,
and they destroy more than the poetry.
Dante and Virgil chased by 7 or 8 dangerous devils
Grumpy, Happy, Sneezy, Sleepy, ***** . . .
Our heroes reduced from metaphysical philosophers
interested in god and what man has done to man
to improvising primitive tools for survival.
Hope abandoned, we rate our chances of expiring
in the nuclear fire – excellent –
during the decline of western civilization.

On the other hand, I hope
our current problems are only temporary
and it’s just a matter of time before
the public ignores the 24-hour news cycle.
Bad news sells but the good life’s all around us.
One feels love and devotion
even for the 60 million who voted for our opponent.
Vaclav Havel said with a wisdom well beyond brilliance:
“Either we have hope within us or we don’t.
It is a dimension of the soul, and it’s not dependent
on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation.
It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart
that transcends the world as it’s immediately experienced.
It is not the conviction that something will turn out well,
but the certainty that something makes sense
no matter how it turns out.”

It resembles grief. But it's not quite grief. I'll give you grief.
Certain days planned to be eventful I look forward to for weeks.
Let the peaceful transfer of power proceed. The sorrow and the pity.
Never may the anarchic man find rest at my hearth.
When the laws are kept, how proudly the city stands!
When the laws are broken, what of the city then?
We are moving through some allegory between a City of Hope,
where history has been abolished, and a City of History,
where hope can be slipped in only as contraband.
Failing to achieve understanding, we're searching
outer space for an entity to unite us as humanity.
That person, or city, is consciousness.
Two ancient female poets are a revelation,
the clarity of their complaints: lost lover, lost city.
Our enemy eventually becomes our brother,
his misery lifted by coming to her city.

Lonely bagel
Loneliness bagel
The bagel of loneliness

Togetherness bagel
The bagel of being together
Bagel of belonging

Sitting, trying to write, nothing
comes to me. Nothing is what it'll have to be.
Over the weekend and immediately
following the election demonstrations in the streets,
Not my president! But today is Monday
back to work and the business of business in America.
Never have we been fierce warriors.
Rhett Butler got that right: in any confrontation
with the state a platoon of new recruits
with automatic weapons outguns the stately
samurai. Ken and I were eating veggie
burgers and drinking local beers over worries
our fellow Americans will soon start shooting
Jews and Asians, lesbians and disabled veterans
whoever's recommended on the news.
There's a learning curve to disregarding tweets
and the remedies offered on facebook. Our refusal
to be more than the sum of ourselves
is our saving grace. Therefore, let
the peaceful transfer of power proceed.
Democracy doesn't guarantee smart choices,
just a chance to correct the mistakes we'll make.

Motel room, U.S. map made of license plates
everything I need for a week is here, king-
size bed, microwave, fridge, tv, hot plate
the carpet's pretty clean, the bathroom baptized
and there are two mirrors in which to imagine
myself, to analyze and idolize.
WiFi, no Elizabethan inn,
in a century when we fear nuclear war
and are warned against the shock of fast change,
the door sports three locks though nothing dangerous
could happen in a town like this, named for spring
water found by thirsty desert travelers.
My home for a week living alone, contained
safe from the elements, roar of airplanes.

Late in life I struggle against my insignificance
When I should enjoy the freedom from performance before an audience.
Applause is happiness but if they withhold applause, embarrassment.
When Da Liu put me to work crunching hexagrams and spreadsheet
      numerology
Instead of ghost writing his books about t’ai chi for longevity
I was humiliated but freed. No need to interpret
The Chinese master’s wisdom or endure his disapproval.
All this happened in an apartment on 110th St. when I lived on 111th.
I wonder if Da Liu lived to 100 like he predicted.

Ken got me that job, old friend Ken
Who goes back all the way past high school to Thompson Junior High.
Tomorrow we’re eating pizza together in Troy.
We’ll recall Da Liu and also the painter and sculptor who had a room
In our apartment on 111th and a dog so intelligent it could walk off the
      leash
On the crowded streets of New York without an altercation,
And Zach Sklar, of course, journalist, communist and jazz aficionado
Who listened to Jo Jones and Paul Quinichette, Count Basie’s men,
Often as possible at the West End.

Trying to make sense on the trumpet, I was playing the streets for
      quarters, not much more
Than that sculptor’s dog, the sculptor’s name I wanna say
Was Mike Johnson and he was a man of few words and many women.
We had a major cockroach problem in that apartment and
The ceiling leaked in Ken’s room so he organized the neighbors
Against the landlord, into a tenants association.
We went to our daily disciplines like children of paradise or Da Liu who
      was already old by then.
When we meet for pizza it will be hard to hear now that I’m deaf
In one ear and Ken, whose name means knowledge, has trouble
      remembering some of the ancient, past taboos and practices.

To want to be famous is a silly goal for a man almost old as Da Liu.
Not the right motivation, better to shift your glances so slowly as to go
      unnoticed,
Labor for the success and happiness of others.
I’m still avoiding the deeper question
So today I ordered Da Liu’s books, perhaps the ones I worked on,
Because they offer assistance to others for further living.
Service to others, maybe that’s the key.

I pleasure in and treasure my insignificance,
It ought to be a great comfort to be so insignificant,
Being knowledgeable is the best defense against your insignificance, the
I Ching puts me in mind of my insignificance, exiled or
Sidelined to an insignificant role, insignificant and mighty happenings
Seem the same from my vantage aging gratefully, inexorably,
A way to learn your insignificance, freedom to have never been.

What luxury to get mad
about last night's basketball loss
and watch the full moon descending
at the speed the earth turns.

Things could get worse
personally and for the community.
Bombings, killings, anomie
boiling frogs and witches cursing.

The changing climate,
typhoons in the Philippines,
volcanoes and tsunamis, WWII which I missed,
Thanksgiving nor'easter, Easter twister.

What abundance to fast or feast,
your choice, stay inside by the stove
or go outside, climb the mountainside.
Live in a city or small town.

So I raged at the coaches
for their lazy zone defense
like an alien in the bleachers
unable to affect the outcome.

When my sons came home
I yelled at them too. What opulence
to be angry about nothing of consequence
neither stopped by the cops nor slipped on the ice.