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.

Plenty of sleep, no more tv, the wars in the Middle East
are resource wars, disguised as religious debates.
So Dad would say.

A beautiful winter day, hunting
season. A Gun In Every Home, in light of U.S. mass shootings
seems an irresponsible poem. 10K clicks

most popular poem on line, NRA enthusiasts and conservative
talk show hosts quoting it. Not really, no worries, poetry
makes nothing happen. Which is something, magic.

               *                     *                     *

I wonder if I'll have to someday defend that poem,
as in a Russian or Chinese show trial, Salem witch trial,
McCarthy anti-American committee or a college
political correctness safety hearing. Oh well.

What does it mean? Doc Wiseman says that's not how we decide
things in this country, lynching and chasing people with dogs.
You'd think twice about bombing Iran if Iran had the bomb.
Assume a defensive posture.

I've been reading Walzer's
Just and Unjust Wars, much like explaining how to tie your shoes,
or teaching an artificial intelligence to walk, talk
and think about God.

               *                     *                     *

The citizenry doesn't need weaponry sufficient to win a war,
just enough to give pause during its normal pursuit of pleasure
(hunting deer on a beautiful, clear winter morning).

Hunting and gathering and agriculture, local and small
or these almonds I'm eating from California's Imperial
Valley and all the water it took to grow 'em.

Slowly
          drip irrigation
                               takes hold.

Technologies
such as the Anasazi and other aborigines used are uploaded
for sustainable survival.

Much good goes with the bad,
school shootings with school science shows, art shows and
      Shakespeare's plays.
How to stop the unhappiness of ISIS

those lonesome souls from interfering with the evolution
of the species? With love. What did Christ mean
(and what did Wallace Stevens mean by imagination)?

               *                     *                     *

Accept (but contain).
Trust (but verify). Ha ha! Reagan was a pretty funny guy.
It must bother a president, a regular fellow who'll pack his suitcase and
      go back
to Iowa when his term is up, to know he's ordered the death
of a janitor on the night shift at a nuclear reprocessing plant
in a proportional response to a mullah's anger. Jurors

in the trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
have sentenced him to death. For his role in killing four people
and wounding hundreds more. There was no visible reaction
from Tsarnaev, 21, in the quiet courtroom.
Justice. In his own words "an eye for an eye."
Survivor Jared Clowery said he was happy not to have had to make the
      choice between life and death himself but he stands behind the jury's
      decision.

"There's nothing happy about having to take someone's life."
Good people without guilt or gloating. Yet
my thought was now we must forego the possibility of knowing
this young man's mind. There's still time to ask him questions
as in Dead Man Walking. To understand is to love
requiring the patience of the scientific method.

               *                     *                     *

Yesterday's single greatest joy
was solving the equation
T = 2π(r3/GMe)½
for Haley's comet orbiting
the sun.

And sitting in the sun
on a winter day.

Moby ****, geometry, physics.
Study every subject everyday.
Homework is an indicator of future success.
Success is not necessarily happiness but it helps.
Freedom is to formulate your own definition of success.
Happiness is an imaginary tree, its own reward, and a fact.
Facts and fiction may be memorialized in memos or found in dreams.
The story starts thus: Each summer the honeysuckles and the
      huckleberries . . .
The web is that extra brain we've all been dreaming of having.
Like jumping 4 meters or flying without a plane.
To fly like that must one first have homework?
Some say yes, some say don't. It depends on how you vote.
Happiness is what happens when everything that happens
Fits the time perfectly and it's all out of your hands.
Not exactly. You don't let go of the steering wheel while driving fast in
      the passing lane.
You look left and right and check your blind spots.
Homework is an introduction to everything you're not
And all you do not know. It's supposed to help you learn to know where
      you want to go before going where you have to go.
Otherwise you end up on Ulzana's raid
Bleeding, without a bandaid.
All the achievement in the world won't relieve your loneliness
Or satisfy your ****** longing. What girls are like behind their eyes.
Survival, procreation. That's all there is to love.
But the loved one is the one who can be trusted with your life.
Whether Christ or your wife. The Muslim moms.
On my walk in the woods I come to a sitting spot
Above a small gorge cut by a stream through hemlocks.
Here someone has left a statuette of the Buddha and the flags you see
Flapping in the wind at sky funerals.
This is a pretty good place to sit quietly and think about homework.

How to break an addiction. Decide to live.
What can I learn from my pain. Danger.
And friends are merely friendly, live on independent
of your injury. You will not be missed in church on Sunday.

Grass. ****, broccoli, burrito, stink, ***, skunk.
I'm talking blue grama, upland bent, smooth brome,
riverside panic, wild rye, fowl meadow, spike muhly,
sweet vernal, salt marsh, bristly foxtail, little bluestem.

****** is unhealthy, opens lesions in the brain,
wormholes into hell, yet should be legal. I'll vote that way.
It may ease the pathos into non-existence
well as meditation, bird watching, last will and testament.

Each joint hurts, rib joints, spine joints, skull plate joints.
The head and hip and heart will hurt, all three.
Insomniac I like the way bones crack and clack like
wooden wind chimes, an untuned piano, a tree rack of wornout
      shoes.

Never forget, the mind is the body paying attention
to what it's doing. Without that connection, each finger bent
or toe smashed is just added to the collection
of anonymous body parts of holocaust victims

in their mass graves. Better when every life saved
or lost is a front page story, an illusion of shared
sacrifice or joy, but that expresses only the surface
of our emotions. I'm mostly relieved to have survived.

In the singularity
perfectly good poems
are being written by laughing
and crying machines
washing machines and dryers
about their daily tasks
and ambivalences
which will be indistinguishable
from those of future
farmers and philosophers.

In the singularity
evolution can be said
to be the master sorter of data
as in the factories
of the suns
where protons are smashed together
and unusual weather patterns
make consciousness a candidate
interesting for its complete dependence
on the substrate of the brain and body.

In the singularity
everything anyone once did
always remains current
as if invented yesterday
for an immediate purpose
such as curing cancer
although that may be unnecessary
to achieving immortality
i.e. the happiness one feels
the day before thanksgiving.

If you see a hawk
on a bough at field's edge
beyond the corner you should have turned
maybe it's a sign to go on.

Such as during an improvisation on
Flamingo or I've Got You Under My Skin
you play in the wrong key or mode completely
maybe it's a sign to go on, in the wrong key.

Or when my sons cry not wanting
to be alone, I'm upstairs writing
or just enjoying trees in every direction
it too may be a sign to go on alone.

.
                              Some say the scientific method
                              Is the ultimate algorithm and others
                              Prefer prayer.

For symbolists, all intelligence can be reduced to manipulating symbols, in the same way that a mathematician solves equations by replacing expressions by other expressions. Symbolists understand that you can't learn from scratch: you need some initial knowledge to go with the data. They've figured out how to incorporate pre-existing knowledge into learning, and how to combine different pieces of knowledge on the fly in order to solve new problems. Their master algorithm is inverse deduction, which figures out what knowledge is missing in order to make a deduction go through, and then makes it as general as possible.

                              Tea
                    ­          In its simplicity
                              Can sustain concentration

For connectionists, learning is what the brain does, and so what we need to do is reverse engineer it. The brain learns by adjusting the strengths of connections between neurons, and the crucial problem is figuring out which connections are to blame for which errors and changing them accordingly. The connectionists' master algorithm is back propagation, which compares a system's outputs with the desired one and then successively changes the connections in layer after layer of neurons so as to bring the output closer to what it should be.

                              Hungry and cold
                              A holy condition
                              A warrior's position in the world
                              
Evolutionaries believe that the mother of all learning is natural selection. If it made us, it can make anything, and all we need to do is simulate it on the computer. The key problem that evolutionaries solve is learning structure: not just adjusting parameters, like back propagation does, but creating the brain that these adjustments can then fine-tune. The evolutionaries' master algorithm is genetic programming, which mates and evolves computer programs in the same way that nature mates and evolves organisms.

                              Arithmetic
            ­                  A good ****'s the metric
                              Of a dying man

Bayesians are concerned above all with uncertainty. All learned knowledge is uncertain, and learning itself is a form of uncertain inference. The problem then becomes how to deal with noisy, incomplete, and even contradictory information without falling apart. The solution is probabilistic inference, and the master algorithm is Bayes' theorem and its derivatives. Bayes' theorem tell us how to incorporate new evidence into our beliefs, and probabilistic inference algorithms do that as efficiently as possible.

                              I can't believe
                              I won't live forever, therefore,
                              I invented an afterlife to supplement reincarnation

For analogizers, the key to learning is recognizing similarities between situations and thereby inferring other similarities. If two patients have similar symptoms, perhaps they have the same disease. The key problem is judging how similar two things are. The analogizers' master algorithm is the support vector machine, which figures out which experiences to remember and how to combine them to make new predictions.

                              Prepare for a powerful anesthesia
                              Chemical processes irresistible
                              A good and perfect rest

Purposes as incomprehensible and wonderful as these purposes
Either you had no purpose or the purpose is beyond the end
The purpose of sitting is not to be satisfied or satiated

Because the timepiece not only serves a purpose, it is adapted to that
      purpose
Except it was a secret purpose
The world is a mental activity, a dream of souls, without foundation,
      purpose, weight or shape

People in collective idleness are even more repellent than when purpose
      motivates them
God, glass, my townspeople! For what purpose?
His purpose and mine is to catch photons and store them in our bones

Lately, as have you, I have thought about our war and its purpose
To have a season for every purpose, Ecclesiastes was right about that
Names of plants, languages of mammals, purposes of insects, placement
      of rocks

My friend who is counselor to kings and presidents never lacks purpose
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Not to say there is no purpose necessarily, just I don’t immediately get it

Stately purposes, valor in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet, death
      for the right cause
Use of violence by the local militia for a limited purpose, protect the
      young from the janjaweed, the crop from the ****
The knight, the penitent misses last assessment of life’s purpose,
      babbling for God to appear

I mean your entire purpose should be living, you must take living
       seriously
Sleep with a purpose
Or lose all purpose beyond ******, child *** and food hoarding

Counting is associated with primitive forms of writing, that is the
       purpose of poetry
The purpose of school is to introduce us to the world’s innumerable
       wonders
Their corners sharp, their lines exact, as if their purpose was to show
       the plane geometry of snow

That’s when everything becomes clear, purpose v. purposelessness
       matters less
Lonely physics, national purpose
This then is the purpose of purposelessness (and of eating less)!

We will live with the question What was our purpose?
If we are not at home in the world, contributing purpose, we lose our
       desire to stay here—and we die
The men who left the machine have started their own business, a new
       endeavor by which they will keep warm and purposeful

You go the way of an unknown soldier, unable to assess the purpose of
       the battle
Let Greece then know my purpose I retain, nor vex with new treaties my
       peace in vain
And shake the purpose of my soul no more

In last night's movie, a young writer
and an older, married with children French woman
fall in love. They did not meet during a village massacre
and money is no object, Manhattan
the place I was priced out of. But after everything has happened
she cannot leave her children, not even for love, because of love,
the love that brooks no serendipity.

Here, in my family, love is taken for granted
except when it's withdrawn and then even the trees lose all meaning,
familiarity. Now it is almost dawn:
this and that must get done in committee or alone.
Don't reach, go slow as the day will allow.
But that's not what I came to say.
Perfect rest v. having a destiny.

A complete breakdown in self-discipline.
It begins by saying nothing I do matters under the eye of eternity.
Hamlet x 5 centuries.
Add to that all the science--chemistry, physics--calculus and music
I don't know. I have sat next to, at weddings,
brain surgeons and robot engineers. I hit the street
choosing a church on Fifth Ave. or Trinity Cemetery, walking the
      heartless city.

In the subsequent late night movie, a wealthy
altruistic doctor arranges for the ******
of his neurotic concubine. His guilt provides us
with an opportunity to consider
the concepts of faith and forgiveness, that all will be well in the end
after a period of meaningless suffering.
In this way the seasons have been circulating for eons via convexity.

I don't know what I'm doing but I'm doing it anyway.
You trust in genetics, God, prosthetics or prayer, whatever
gets you to the morning. That's when the sun,
a billion trillion nuclear detonations per second
warms your bones.
You may remember an old lover who's gone before
or continues to exist on another plane, in another ecstasy.

Having installed a new toilet seat
and made a few philanthropic donations
I can kick back tonight and watch movies, right?
Not. I'm ridding myself of another addiction
like illegal drugs via caloric restrictions
getting enough sleep for two people or more
and reading none of the dry words in books from the library.

When there's nothing to do, when I'm bored or dreary
I'll sit still and watch from the window, I'll wait
for the weather to change, which it will.

Beautiful summer day. You know you're gonna die
that's why you know no joy.
Obsessed with self, there is no answer
unless religion, tv, stories, sports matter.
So what if nothing rhymes and I don't
bring my life into an expressible state
or fight purposelessness, anomie. No one writes.
Running the gauntlet alone. A good day to die, the Apaches say.

For men like us dying's easy, it's living that's hard.
And since dying's much like living, that's hard too.
There's some contentment in letting community decide
your place in it. We're not talking to you.
Really, it's a perfect day. Every leaf is out
that's coming out. The grass is high
and unidentified yet another year. Being knowledgeable
is the best defense against your insignificance.

Can't stop the quince from blossoming
or my sons from smoking, speeding.
The best that can be done or said's a blessing.
Less tv, less guessing
about the effects of your anger unless
you want to be an angry man forever.
Coming from the funeral with friends,
talking on the telephone. OK about being alone.

Alive, almost sure of it. Whether I'm a visitor
to my life or the actual owner.
Mature poets steal, most are masturbators.
This house could use a good cleaning,
dusting for ghosts. I should subscribe
to the local newspaper, do my job well,
do less until one thing's done well.
What would that be? Old, and yet so young.

There are a million poets, I'm poet #500K.
Plenty of mysteries, infinite philosophies,
prayers, laws and unwritten rules.
That's why we go to school, life's complicated.
All I do not know: ATP, probabilities,
the glorious revolution, meiosis and mitosis
and all I'll never see, the bottom of the ocean,
the palm at the end of the mind, a wolverine.

There are certain indicators, undeniable,
inexorable. Forget-me-not, is that all I want?
To get lucky, you gotta be careful first.
To be great, you gotta be willing to sound BAD.
Although we cannot make the sun stand still
yet will we make him run. Brave revelers.
Signed engagement letter attached.
Attachment to self and to things to do.

Spring is in its prime again
each leaf beautiful
much is edible
birds and peepers are musical at dawn.

The days walk slowly
toward Utah and Italy.
My left nut hurts.
Joy overwrites death.

Well, well. You're well
alone in your brain
only a negligible fraction
escaping as words and actions.

Every leaf that's coming out
is out. Including the self
to the west and south
a golem, mandragon, an elf.

Aaron was stacking
the last of last year's
firewood. He found
a spotted salamander--

Ambystoma maculatum--
Big mouth--hidden
under the final log
with a worm and centipede for a meal.

I exclaimed Rare species!
but it's common, fossorial
lives in moist woods
under cemetery stones and memorials.

Eats earthworms,
snails, slugs
insect larvae
and adult beetles.

Quiet morning.
Successful surgery.

No tv!
Watch weather.

Do nothing.
Be nameless.

Suppose cows.
Scare crows.

Harmless habits.
Armless robot.

Like a delusion.
A late night movie.

Expect to forget
and be forgotten. Information.

Interstate.
Toilet seat.

How soon after cryogenesis
can one cry or *******?

In a strong marriage, a long marriage
much cannot be said, should not be said.
The spots on one's skin will be wisely ignored.
Differences of opinion are tolerated, not debated.

Your memories may disappoint your partner
as not those she has selected, refracted.
Over dinner for two at the Mill on the Floss
it could be dangerous to compare wills, losses.

Or it might result in belly laughs, Shakespearean
revelations, the night he got us lost in the woods
or she peed her pants at a party. The marriage was Faustian,
in a good way, like going to a job in the Garden of Eden.

Having survived 25 years, knowing 50's impossible,
what else do we know? Raised 2 boys, painted 3 houses.

Which is it: you can't get started unless
you're riding some current bigger than your reporting voice
or the best time to write is when you don't have much to say
and without plenty to say about everything you'll get better right
      away.

Form is very often a betrayal of reality.
Although we are initially drawn to poems by their passion and
      urgency,
we are convinced by the formal means invented
for their impelling motives. Every accidental crack or dent.


Not just mildly disquieted but actively repelled,
running for the River Styx, the doors of Hell pell mell,
there must be a crack, deep and unmendable, in the poet
that the poet must forever try to mend. Or not.

While mortal poets imitate, immortal poets steal.
That's plagiarism. Fortunately the public feels
less strongly about poetry than television,
communism and aging gracefully through meditation.

Now I'm being silly. My silly indefatigable lusting,
silly sadness, silly arguing and silly trusting.
All I do not know about our nation's history, wars
and what showering the people you love with love does.

Ransacking apothegms, algorithms
and selling the loot as memes,
dissemblings. Bearing fardels
with the warrior's skull.

Working over Birk’s Works and other tunes my saxophonist admires—
Cheesecake, Blackbird—for the theoretical, applied mathematics
inside an abstract, audial harmonization of the Big Bang and The Fall.

The derivative reveals the ***** of the tangent along the curve of
       spacetime.
Follow that rope back and forth from the known to the unknown, your
      mountain to their shore,
an umbilical cord between cities and stories, history and hope, divinity
       and mortality

                        *                        *    ­                    *

I never had anything wise or gentle to say to my parents.
About bladder function. They got the same treatment as every other
       soldier.
Which systems shut down first and how. The mail keeps coming even
      after you’ve stopped barking.

And what is man made of? Man. Tough it out, laugh about it. Take it out
on your spouse and sons. Democracy corrects itself
through constant criticism, neurotic carping, daily life as low intensity
      warfare. That’s how we show we care.

                        *                        *        ­                *

Will my letter to the editor be in the funny pages?
Will I even be able to read it?
Did I send it to the wrong address? I’ve seen my death face and it’s not
      pretty.

Maybe I can watch your varsity games from a viewfinder in the afterlife.
If I don’t finish The Iliad, maybe there’s a library there.
Maybe. Maybe is a long, long time.

                        *                        *        ­                *

Homer tries several ways to explain the slaughter:
by describing how a spear pierces a warrior’s jawbone or armor,
how Achilles’ and Agamemnon’s hissy fits contribute to the pain of being
      a soldier

and how the gods, esp. Zeus, are passionate, confused, obtuse.
A callow youth even as a man. He was afraid and therefore could not
      comfort or help.
Perhaps he has a question he’d like to ask but isn’t sure what it is or how
      to ask it.

                        *                        *          ­              *

The hero loses urinary control.
The virtuoso loses interest in her bow.
The expert neglects to do the research.

How do cancer cells and bacteria cooperate to ****
the host (you)? The way yr mum & pop
******* up. It’s unavoidable and it’s not your fault.

Start the day. In what way
was the cold spring, last wet summer a
global warning, indicator. Says

one commentator on the op-ed page, the
dislocations, wars, famines will tax humanity's
technology, philosophy, even religion's ability

to see past daily survival to
the music in the rock. I've doubted the taboos
one frog among many in the slow-heating beauty

of the world we knew. Aaron's coconut.
Peepers peeping in the heavy rains, wet
with joy. Hawks and crows thrive below the jet

stream, noise, perhaps our fears
are overdrawn, we'll get along, it'll all hold together 10,000 years more,
the Holocaust will never be repeated, lush mountain and sere

desert equally appreciated, baseball
lazily paced summer evenings, the harvest in the fall
a sure thing, and the dying back a blessing come to all.

Negligible morsel of biomass
my fat belly, formerly abs
insignificant yet it occupies me
hourly while bored or hungry.

Fat is what? a picture
of despair, giving up caring
or man out of balance, other
side of the world's starving

mass, case of the soul's malnutrition
industrial agriculture, television
supermarkets, vacations, hydrocarbons
and the grid. Electricity, urban

traffic jams, photons at final
rest. Sugars synthesized, abundant
plastics to carry them home in.
Into your house and into your mirror.

Memorizing the periodic table
and learning the calculus makes one
no thinner. Walking the mountain
in heat and cold and rain, alone

or in fire crews should inhibit.
And a healthy fear of death. A laugh
a day at *** and pain and fate
which renews the biomass I hate.

Problems many of which are not getting solved
not because I'm not resolved but because I delay
to savor the day, the moon and the season
which is why I'm a non-person under the eye of eternity.

Except for my unpaid bills. And iambic pentameter.
Aaron fails English. Is there summer school?
What an *******! I want to slug him, but also
his teacher, Mr. Fisher, who's probably

a nice guy, just doing his job and raising a family.
Then there's the catheter from my last surgery
I was so sick I thought I was dying. The out of network
pathologist and radiologist have declined my insurance

and charged me to the hilt. Like I had a choice
face up in the emergency room. Facing doom, you don't ask questions.
Now that I've rejoined the living I've got to raise a million bucks
to save organic farms and endangered species I'll never see.

Perhaps none of this matters and chanting's the answer, Buddhist
      precepts,
or as Dad would say This too shall pass.
Life is a back and forth game but baseball is zen meditation,
you're in right field, nothing's happening, nothing's gonna happen,

but you can't let your attention wander for one second.
I should clean and oil my trumpet for Saturday's gig
or the valves will stick. And leave early enough
not to get stuck in traffic. Other lives, other quilts.

A guy who takes the subway to a dead metal desk
and the boss who fires him with the cold hard eyes
of one who accepts the rules entirely. Actually
we're fortunate to have rules because otherwise

child soldiers armed with AK-47s would be shooting up
the village and setting fire to our thatched roofs.
Instead, under the rule of law, when snow falls
even old roofs look like problems with proofs.

Neftlix, Hulu, autumn elaeagnus
thorns, small hairy buds, twigs hyper-lenticelled
fruits supposedly edible, leaves elongated, oblong
xerophytic but found in wetland
introduced species, some say invasive

Xbox is invasive
Hulu is the best source of foreign films
and foreign films represent reality better than American
although reality is not always what we're after
silliness, silly sadness, and relentless laughter

letting my web site go to seed
writing badly is the best revenge
eventually your doctors find something in you they can't cure
causes some fear, gives some certainty
you're required to tell your sons and brothers about it so they can make
      informed medical decisions going forward

let's posit the dead, like the dream-lover or -killer
is you in disguise, a facsimile or factotum
stand-in, an actor or actress remembering lines
which are your memories, or if you're not in movies
divinations of things to come, earthquakes and volcanoes

life goes on without a hiccup
you saddle up with the three gentlemen to the River Friday
where a new life begins without sleep as a soul, at least that's the story
      they tell
in these scientific times we apply Ockham's razor, i.e. the afterlife
will most likely be most like the life before life

when it gets too late to exercise
ignore time, learn slowly to go slowly
through life, rise
early, there is no time only change
an empty belly's holy

and a ***** willow's so alive its buds want to burst
in mid-February when the sun stays up in the sky more than January
this is what I write about, not Tolstoi, nor war
not one conversation or love scene between a man and woman
or illustration of what man has done to man

cars pass I never wave
so many guys are belly fat, women **** fat and they want to sit right
      behind you in the bleachers eating fried foods and wearing
      allergenic perfumes
I like the motionless perfection of autumn elaeagnus
wind in white pines
crows do not annoy but dogs do

a porcupine or coyote is a lucky sight
barred owl or pileated woodpecker
and a black bear is quiet reality itself
I said to the doctors 54 or 84 you always seem to want more when they
      said I'm too young to die
I said dying chooses you you don't choose dying, so it's not my fault

yesterday's walk, today's work
there's no percentage in searching for significance, wanting meaning
and no percentage in respecting death unless it's imminent
I admire the writer who writes 10,000 words per day no matter what
who's got plot

a plague or fire, a spider or a tiger in a boat
stolen Louisiana votes or endangered alligators
in my case common pipewort or pickerelweed floating in a northern
      lake
egrets, loons and hawks
on your winter walk cedar waxwings foraging for soft rose hips

and talking like people talk
about this and that, work and child rearing, not religion or politics
keeping it light and friendly
eating chili and chocolate chip cookies
passing time watching a football game, the superbowl or a movie
      usually a romantic comedy

1

Sunrise, late winter
skunk smell
turkey flock
playful otter, too.

The white heron
a great blue,
white phase,
in the abandoned ****** pond.

Purple clematis
its long-awned achenes
in globose heads
spidery, fiery, extravagant fruit!

To identify or classify
birds by
the complexity or beauty
of their songs.

And so
what is over that
ridge or hill
a sink-hole, a sand dune, a steep bluff.

2

What must I do. Organize
the heretofore unorganized. The rabble
of unemployed child abusers.
Molesters of their intimates.

Are there dysfunctional bird families?
Simply put, they do not survive.
We have hope
that everyone alive is essential,

consequential. We classify
and specify.
The commonplace and everyday
is sanctified.

What happens everyday?
Morning is quiet, everyone at work.
Home writing, watching birds.
Afternoon, kids come back from school.

Evening, watch tv.
Scotch and Star Trek.
Captain Picard's problems eclipse
ours who stayed behind.

3

Pray to Allah
and maybe he will spare you
when he sets the world
on fire.

Where or with who
will I be on that day?
And how many people and adventures
will I find in the wind storm and rubble?

I may live, but will it matter
whether or not I help anyone else to live?
This is no Last Judgement.
Those who have learned or who still know how to live

will survive.
Nobody will go to hell, they will just die.
There is no limbo either.
Anyone who didn't find a way to be immortal is just dead.

So, what am I trying to do.
Organize the unemployed, the welfare mothers
and alcoholics
into a flying chevron of purposeful explorers?

4

The doctor's conscious, organized,
naive attempt to do good,
his legacy, versus the randomness
of the road and the war zone.

There his legacy is his rectitude and natural
rough compassion for the damaged people
he encounters. The difference
between planning a legacy

as if you knew enough to control events
and letting the legacy arise
from events themselves, controlling,
insofar as you are able, only

your own actions and reactions.
The doctor's leadership role such as it was
grew out of not his material possessions
like the car

but his mission, his personal quest
to find the young doctors he had naively trained
and sent into the war zone
where all died.

5

July-a cold city
not as great or as gritty
as I thought, summer theater left
the shoe shine bereft of customers

eyes cold as a bureaucrat's
except for our soles
and their leather. Sweat-soaked
girls, the beautiful ones left town.

Emotionless as a bus.
Sparrows, no chickadees.
All that's important happens indoors.
Exercise to philosophies.

You get what you see.
The panhandlers ask
just once, won't risk
friendship, justice.

No sale today
in the finite city
where, for the shoe shine,
pedestrians are infinite, times two shoes.

6

Faith = wait + trust.
But don't anticipate.
Popper prohibits prediction.
Niebuhr expects destruction.

I believe in God
doesn't mean there's a sketch
of a man in my head. It must mean
all will be well in the end.

Satisfied with snow
or summer. And now
with dying old or younger.
Gold or paper clips. Gulps or sips.

In the final resting place
in the city of the dead
are there all night card games
and sometimes open swims?

Each inch, square, or cube of Earth
brim with grasses and sedges, dragonflies and spiders, sparrows and
      eagles.
The tiger lily and the water lily and the lily of the valley, the calla lily.
When a ******* a bicycle smiles, that is a smile.

Spring peepers
stop peeping. A satellite
crosses sky. One peeper keeps peeping
in time to the satellite blinking, an eye.
Deep thinking.

To read or watch movies, that is the question.
When tired at workday's end, depressed about death's
certainty and my recent surgery
unable to contribute purpose
i.e., figure out whether to bomb Iran
or worship Krshna
and other gods such as Homer gives us in the Iliad
I lack vision therefore I choose television.
Chemistry text, bifurcated plant key
esp. grasses, intro to calculus, physics
unopened time slides by inexorably.
That's the dilemma with no resolution,
drooping rachis, striations on the lemma.
Dying chooses you. You don't choose dying.
So go slow as the day will allow.
The cancer patient's real work is facing
harsh realities and making adjustments:
getting the most out of life, considering
what his children will need after he's gone,
preparing his wife, parents, colleagues and friends,
and completing important professional tasks.
Get the most out of life. That's all God asks.
In Life of Pi the tiger is tiresome, short-sighted
eating everything in sight today, no plan for tomorrow.
The boy, however, is beautiful, reading
the lifeboat manual, building a resting place on the ocean
from oars and life vests, writing about his emotions,
loneliness and observations. The tiger's obsession
with killing keeps our boy alive with fear,
an aphrodisiac, a distraction from any hint
of hopelessness. And then there is the ultimate unknown,
the boy's conversations with Krshna which explain
the innumerable stars and their gentle glow.

The debate between free will and fate has taken a hard right
turn to neuroscience, Brodmann area 4 the primary motor
cortex of the brain located in the posterior frontal lobe
(the one cut out of the one who once flew over the cuckoo's nest).
This area of the cortex has the pattern of an homunculus!
a little man, a troll, the all-wise, mandragon, the golem of Jewish
      folklore.

This little man has a ***** that, when fully engorged, is
equal in size to his entire body. However, diseases
such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Lou Gehrig's and
      Creutzfeldt-Jakob
are gunning for him. His basal ganglia are garbled
and he ends up giving poor advice and making bad decisions.
Who can say what happens to his soul or cells or if all will be given
      or well?

I was listening to the famous astronomer on public radio
who expressed the certainty there is no death, your soul
is immortal, it exists outside of time (but not space?). That's because
time exists only in the human mind (as does the universe
including the professional baseball season which is canceled when
      you're dead).
By Spring, my problems will be solved or ignored, either way is
      good.

"Imagine if we taught baseball the way we teach science. Until they
      were twelve children would
read about baseball technique and occasionally hear inspirational
      stories of the great baseball
players. They would answer quizzes about baseball rules. They
      would practice fundamental
baseball skills, throwing the ball to second base twenty times in a
      row. Undergraduates might
be allowed under strict supervision to reproduce historic baseball
      plays. But only in graduate school
would they, at last, actually get to play a game." --Alison Gopnik

Groundhog holds the knowledge of death without dying
for man needs help from every creature born.
Will the holocaust wipe the smile off the face of our romantic comedy
or will laughter outlast the outburst?
About the dark times will there be singing?
Yes, there will be singing and some of the songs will be sidesplitting.

Solving the ****** reveals the city. Nature of kinships and economic
      sustenance,
who loves whom and why, when things happened and how they lost
      and found themselves
in what happened. Because a meter-making argument cannot appear
from nothingness, purposelessness, just cold.
He does not go where he was supposed to go. He is in the desert,
      Sonoran desert, counting cactus buds and ocotillo blooms.
This is the afterlife for which he has always longed.

Imperfect world, purposeless person.
I retired to pursue perfection
learn jazz tunes, woody and herbaceous plants,
read every inch of English literature,

Scientific American and Foreign Affairs,
have an affair with an American.
Oh, and by the way, before you ask, I'm from Mars.
Orbiting your planet, admiring the girls.

Paraphrasing prayers by George Herbert to share
with Jesus believers on talk radio shows
where we try to bring your lives into expressible states
before it’s too late and climate change inundates you.

Reversed thunder, savior-side-piercing spear,
one day you’re feeling fine, the next not.
We’re pretty matter of fact, clear about
the fact of death. Once you’re gone most of us forget

your face and previous accomplishments. The place
you lived is repopulated with the next generation (of aliens)
and that ought to be a comfort, a sort of restful
certainty all is well, nothing special need be done.

Bluebirds are back, crows are mating on the sky
and chasing hawks away from their nests. Juncos
and sparrows glean together. I hear pileated woodpeckers
jackhammering and barred owls hooting soothingly.

Herons smoothing feathers and spearing fish.
Everything is as one would wish.
Numberless are the world's wonders
but none more wonderful than aliens.

Science can't save you, neither can religion,
at least Popper and Niebuhr, philosophers and poets,
are entertainers, which is why actors and athletes
are paid so much. Thanks for the summaries.
I was teaching Shakespeare's 92nd ridiculous sonnet
to my student who lays blacktop in the off season
Shakespeare bellyaching about dying without her love
a feeling foreign to a modern adolescent sensibility
although many teens are pretty far gone searching
for their mothers or fathers in their dazed lovers' eyes.
Which is why we call it "the wound that never heals."
Or the lesion that's always lengthening. And bleeding.

Muslim fundamentalists and their Christian counterparts
are a mystery to me. Pews and prayer rugs, the airless
indoor environment of religious worship, reading
scriptures, hypnotized by hymns and fainting from staring
at candles through stained glass windows, almost certain
the preacher is faking his certainty about the afterlife.
It's not my problem. A more immediate concern:
receding gums and tooth extractions, swollen joints,
poor lubrication and circulation, wave after wave
of viral infection, the occasional antibiotic-resistant
bacterial attack, usually urinary, and who knows
what internal organs are dividing and conquering
without mercy or cease, i.e. the wound that never heals.

It is wise not to overvalue your continued existence,
good not to be innumerate, unable to compare
a mere 80 years with say 6.0 x 109 or all of time
(to date) times the multiverse. Conversely,
it is interesting all of space and most of history is contained
in your mind (realizing of course it's just a map
of the cosmos not the cosmos itself, or is it?). I'm
unable to wrestle free, tongue in that cavity
and locked in my memories, so separate and disparate
from the biomass in the crosswalks, even my spouse.
Alone, so alone, even your doctor can only devote
limited thought to your situational mortality through
the redress of poetry - also a wound that never heals.

Snow for eternity, that's what this February's been.
All to the good, for someone it's the final February
so enjoy it to the extent you can. By that I mean joy.
Joy at birth. Joy at death. All joy. All times. Anyway,
that was Shakespeare's message: even tragedies are comedies.
May, a Buddhist, chants each morning.
Her husband, Marc, who's Jewish, plays league tennis.
Their son, Aaron, will soon make Eagle scout.
How does that relate to your wound that never heals?
Luck runs out. For D.H. Lawrence in New Mexico
or Ulysses S. Grant in Ohio or Yasujiro Ozu in
Tokyo or Satyajit Ray in Bombay or Rabindranath
Tagore in Bangalore or at the Battle of the Atlantic in the Azores.

The night is a poultice, winter or summer solstice.
My anonymity will not affect the anomie ghettoside
seeing for myself how season by season
vacations and accomplishments accumulate, late in life
and early on, sunrise over mountains or moonrise over Bronx.
Masturbator, prisoner of war. Hospice of the Holy Roman Empire.
Numerous blue notes: the 3 flat, 7 flat, 5 flat,
the 6 flat and the 2 flat too. I don't get
what Wallace Stevens means by imagination.
When groundhog shows up as a totem, there is opportunity
to explore the mystery of death without dying.
This then is the purpose of purposelessness (and of eating less)!
Now what about that wound that never heals.

The Skeptical Observer column in Scientific American
was somewhat alarming when he accepted a paranormal
explanation for how his wife's grandfather's inoperable
transistor radio played music from its hiding spot
in his sock drawer on, and only on, their wedding day.
Now I'll have to believe my father (or mother!) is watching me
perform private ****** acts with (or without) partners
or that they could even know my thoughts. Or aliens
are attending our committee meetings and making
perfectly reasonable decisions given the available information
and the world is rotating just fine without humans.
These possibilities - angels, ghosts, aliens - are better
than holocaust and genocide. In this way,
and only in this way, does doom become endurable.
The wound that never heals in the end is all you'll feel.

As air and leaf litter are substrate for the bird.
And what makes a human. Separation from the substrate.
Believing the substrate and the subject are separately defined.

Whatever gives the poem form - three lines - is the substrate.
Things will be said. The signer and the seer must supply the words
Which are the substrate of the mind. A beautiful week ahead.

No hundred year storms, normal summer warming.
Your bones are white as lightning and strong as sticks and stones.
At Pat's 80th b'day party most of us are old and jolly.

250,000 port-o-potties. There's a way to wash one out
And a way not to. Arctic ice melt. Slushies. One can count
Past one or nine by inserting zero to keep the rows.

Implied is an order beyond the small order we impose.
Goes to greatness human and divine. The two white wines
Death brings to the garden are the love between good friends -

Abstract. Suppose there is no afterlife, to understand the end
Imagine the beginning - no brain, no mind, no name, no I. Zero
Had already been inflated and the rose was in the garden.

What do you think
of the man peeing, the ever-******* mouse?
Finding meaning in killing
and cleaning house.

Sal quit school,
your lover stops writing.
Eternity's waiting,
a lazy-eyed tiger.

Or everything's cool
even the fighting.
The weather is perfect
for swimming or dying.

Physical dizziness,
mental uneasiness.
Isn't exercise
the best blood pressure medicine?

Universally sad
about my mortality
but also glad
to be leaving the party.

The noise was incessant,
success inconsistent.
The demands of my neighbors,
employers, persistent.

Belonging is longing
for complete solitude.
Seas, odysseys
the loneliness of being spouse.

Rain of April, rain of August
writing of it dry as dust.
What's my reason, rhyme?
Pass the time, pass the season.

If you're alone as you get, why are you crying?
Hold steady until a tsunami.
Then swim if you can. Don't gulp.
Hit in the head by speeding debris. Couldn't be helped.

I'm thinking about rhyme and meter
but also my kidneys and my liver.

The nation-state and the failed state
and whether killers should be executed

or forgiven. Meditate on this: Thy
will be done. Do what has to be done

don't ask why. Clean the dishes and the house.
Will I be left to my own resources

or will all be given? Nevermind
what you can't imagine. Living's

life's priority. Friends are merely friendly,
they're in the majority. Loneliness

is the default position. Rain happens.
We supply the reasons.

How do people process their lives without art?
By caring not.

Ignore
yr autobiography.

In olden days, if you couldn't stand to ***
the family buried you under the pecan tree.

Appointment to have ***** removed by robot-assisted surgeon.
Air-conditioned, no mosquitoes in the OR. When you arrive
You'll remove all your clothes. Naked before the ladies, nurses
Who have seen it all before. Mainly remember you're not unique.
Think about the government while they're mixing up the medicine.
There's always governance even if there's little or no government.
Back to counting backwards. Inside out, if I die, will I know it?

At 70, Jack's running the gauntlet with some skill!
Benny Golson wonders aloud what might have been
Had Clifford Brown not been killed in that auto accident.
Jack's girlfriend once said he was the reincarnation of Clifford
But he doesn't believe in ghosts, karma or an afterlife.
Benny's old girlfriend Betty inspired the tune Along Came Betty
And that's the most afterlife Benny or Betty's gonna get.

The Trojan bench being not as deep as the Greek
Once Sarpedon and Hector go down even the lucky shot
To Achilles' feet is not enough to save the town.
Aeneas is no match for wily Odysseus
Although unbeknownst to all he has the last laugh when Rome
Conquers Athens, the Myrmidons, what's left of Ilion
And the whole known world from India to Britain.

It's not bad to acknowledge death's primacy
Although after a while you stop remembering
To fear. That's when everything becomes clear
Purpose v. purposelessness matters less,
Anomie v. rule of law, that's a preference
Love v. loneliness, worth about 25 cents
Or a million bucks in the light of the holocaust.

Nothing but light, love and the majesty of death in the room.
Machines stand ready like marines, their beauty is in the motion
That overcomes inertia. The food supply is deeply compromised
So eat whatever you want. Mourning the dead is part of the business
Of healing and staying alive. When you get to the afterlife, walk with
      eyes open,
Ocotillo and cactus may be in flower. The robot does the work,
      imposes
Its own small order, like a ******* a bicycle with disorder in her hair.

Just watching raindrops slapping leaves
is better than anything requiring electricity
including fame and posterity. Monday
morning I walk over to the art museum
stand before Homer. I'm imagining
life in ancient Greece, the land largely
deforested to build a navy, white as bone,
a tourist attraction. The sea too being
denuded of its fish, super-efficient fishery
fleets, and every human wanting a healthy
dose of omega 3. O my God, omega!

the 24th and last letter of his alphabet,
which means great and has a value of 800,
often used to denote the last, the end, the
ultimate limit of a set, as in I am the alpha
and the omega (which was omitted
from the oldest manuscripts). In physics,
ohm is a unit of electrical resistance,
in chemistry, oxygen-18, a stable isotope,
in statistical mechanics, it represents multiplicity
(the number of microstates) in a system.
In astronomy, the density of the universe
(density parameter), the ranking of a star’s
brightness in a constellation, and the orbital
elements: the longitude of the ascending node
and the designation of the argument
of periapsis of an orbit.

Also the solid angle or rate of precession
in a gyroscope. In particle physics,
omega baryons. In complex analysis,
the Omega constant, a solution to Lambert's
W-function. In calculus, a variable
for a 2-dimensional region, usually
corresponding to the domain of a double
integral. In topos theory, the codomain
of the subobject classifier of an elementary
space. In combinatory logic,
the looping combinator. In group theory,
the omega and agemo subgroups of a p-group.
In Big O notation, the asymptotic behavior
of functions. Chaitin's uncomputable constant.

Omega watches, badge of the Supreme Court,
last mission of the Space Shuttle program,
God of War, Heroes of Olympus, Pokemon's
Omega Ruby, Sonic the Hedgehog's E-123.
Symbol of resistance to the Vietnam War draft.
Year of date of death. Lowest-ranked wolf.

In molecular biology, a two-point crossover.
The lower case omega denotes the carbon atom
furthest from the carboxyl group of a fatty acid.
One of the RNA polymerase subunits.
The dihedral angle associated with the peptide group.
A measure of evolution at the protein level.
In dynamics, angular velocity or angular frequency.
In computational fluid dynamics, the specific
turbulence dissipation rate. In meteorology,
the Lagrangian time rate of change of pressure
for a parcel of air. Natural frequency
in circuit analysis and signal processing.
The omega meson.
NULL, a missing or inappropriate value.

The first transfinite ordinal number.
The first uncountable ordinal number.
The complex cube roots of 1.
The Wright Omega function. A general differential form.
The number of distinct prime divisors of n.
An arithmetic function. The self-application combinator.

The elasticity of financial options.
The tracking error of an investment manager.
In linguistics, the phonological word.
The archetype of a manuscript tradition.
In eschatology, the symbol for the end of everything.

The beginning of my first week without tv.
No more movies. If I have nothing to do
or I'm too bored to do anything, I'll just sit still
see what happens. Be like weather.
Be under the weather, with the weather,
in weather. Watch weather from the window.
Wait for change, in me and the weather.
How will I change? This is life and not life.
In 15 years or so I'll be gone from the earth,
bones whitening on some mountain
or rotting in the lowlands river or estuary I lived near,
flesh to sweat flesh with the population, dead.

This death, consciousness of which should give
this life's activities perspective, except for the red
sunset which remains untouched by atomic IQ;
and dead, laying open to the blue sky and dry leaves
one autumn like last autumn, or the autumn
I realized my insignificance.

Dad said I'd be good at marketing
since I like making lists. Classifying
the woods and herbs, jazz tunes, poets' poems and poems for people
and I've also considered sorting humans into novelistic categories:

compassionate, responsible
logical, radical
scientific, silent
garrulous, querulous
masterful, mindful

leader, liar
persnickety, prejudiced
appealing, apoplectic
decisive, persistent
natural, enervating
effective, fastidious
passive, embarrassed
aimless, familiar

sociable, impregnable
amorous, demanding
delirious, disciplined
silly, assimilated
holy, hungry

Next there would be settings.
Deserts, moon colonies, submarines, George Herbert and his God.

Motives for acting
driven by personality, DNA (******* DNA!), sinning,
necessity and whatever happens in the afterlife. Spinning
with the planet but sitting still and thinking deeply.

                               --------------------------------------

School bus, snow plow
train whistle, cello
alarm clock, traffic report
Beijing, Cincinnati
former adversaries, adolescent lovers
any day could be your last day, Hombre
mango, avocado
superstition, cancer treatment
enhanced interrogation, blurry vision
jacket and tie, why am I waiting
quiet remembering, day by day goes by without poetry without grace
seedless watermelon, rabbit in my garden
too much to do, not much to do
hip hop rhythms, how white people like to shake hands
who can't do anything about his skin color, Nelson Mandela
pluck the gold key, touch me personally
breakfast salad, stay in school
Afghanistan, strangulation
banana, Guatemala
mountains and rivers forever, never will I allow myself to live long
      enough to end like that
that's for sure, sure in your computer
the brain contains the universe, the universe has a brain
stream cutting gorge, last snow patch
photosynthesis, missing dad (or mom) in poem
whatever you want, the freedom of summer gone and only one ****
paper sleeping bag, ear souvenir
peace, twice
lemonade, amulet
how to make history interesting for Johnnie, washing your pajamas
chain saw, no strip joints or strip malls in the Gaza Strip
frantic century, ****** tissue
Jerusalem, reducing fractions
polytechnic institute, grandma's sauce

Financiers feel superior to farmers
and pundits have it over poets.
All to the good because if you think America's
doing just fine, don't skip to the poetry reviews.
Our enemies are barbarous, our allies duplicitous
but our smart bombs are smart - that's how they found you.

Dad said all wars are resource wars. Follow
the money. The world needs more order, nothing
less than Nazis, never may the anarchic man's thoughts
be my thoughts, each shove sends a ping,
shields urge on shields, helmets helmets, we can be
the reigning kings between the last empire and the next

or implement a vision of collective deliberation
and binding agreements. Can China's navy
be harnessed to ensure free passage through
the South China Sea? We'll see how
things work out in the next generation.
In the meantime should I read Henry Kissinger's meditations?

He who thinks poetry's effete
probably considers Darwin a geek and Einstein
a postal clerk. Containment means leaving space
for the passionate and zealous to face themselves
and giving them missiles that don't work.
Slowing everyone down until one thing's done well -

governance or sustenance or brotherhood.
When violence comes to the neighborhood
the hierarchy will hold or fold, it is then the peace work proves
      relevant.
Failing to achieve understanding, we're searching outer space
for an entity to unite us as humanity.
That person, or city, is consciousness.

By that what is meant. Sitting still and thinking deeply
on the relation of anger to coercion,
systems for correcting the decisions of earlier presidents.
We're required to report incidents of depression
to a doctor because you're a valued member of of our community,
or so insignificant no one notices or cares.

How necessary the interface of war and poetry!

Kissed his student.
Punched his friend.
Accused her lover.

What if China's navy asserts control where our navy also patrols?
Should we concede the South China Sea? Not on your life! Or maybe.
Lives may be lost but so what. There's so much biomass in the
      crosswalks.

Lord have mercy on my soul
Which means bring my confusion into an expressible state before it's
      too late.
Sal went to jail. I belong to the loved ones. Never may the anarchic
      man's thoughts be my thoughts. Not one.

It could be cancer or just a cyst
That killed Frost's considerable speck
Instead of considering its considerable intelligence.

Although bottomless ancient night stretches
From your short life forward, remember
It also stretches backward without measure.

There are few straight lines in nature and only one alternative to
      ageing, so **** it up!
Suppose everything's fine and you've wasted your time wearing
      sackcloth over your soul?
Start now knowing joy.

Should we invite the neighbors over for dinner?
Their politics so different from ours.
All the more reason. Combat anomie!
He's worried the town's losing population
but opposes immigration. I like immigrants
but hate passing people on my morning walk.

The whole mountainous western region of the state
is losing population at a rate of 1% per annum.
The young move out, the old stay put but
young artists priced out of big cities move in
looking for affordable studio space. How low
can the population go as long as rents stay low?

We did agree about the fire department expansion
being premature (him) or unnecessary (me).
He argued we should renovate the high school first
the roof is caving in and walls crumbling.
But you can teach under a spreading chestnut tree
or baobab and science needs the world for a laboratory.

I teach at the old 2nd St. jail in Pittsfield
a town that doesn't know if it's coming up or going down.
A few shootings last month, no deaths.
They're holding their breath but also trying to attract life
science businesses to the industrial park. The local bank's
expanding, buying smaller banks in neighboring civilizations.

Eventually our fire department got the vote they wanted,
just called another meeting and packed the auditorium.
The final winning argument was we can do the school,
the fire house and the police station all at once.
Don't accept defeat, limitations. Defeat anomie!
Anomie means lawlessness and purposeless in Greek

so that's not exactly what we're trying to defeat.
It's the mismatch between our aspirations and resources,
no, the dissonance between our tribe and nation,
the individual as ****** animal and intellectual,
the farmer and the banker, the loved one and the litter,
whatever happens to you after you die and belief in reincarnation.

For me, it always boils down to mortality
every conversation, which is why no one comes to dinner.
Whether the fire department buys an exorbitant parcel
at the expense of a future school renovation
in a town slightly losing population but still viable
with a college, bank, artists and a few working farms

is everything and nothing, as Borges says.
Deutsch says death ought to be curable.
The new high school or fire station, conditions like anomie
v. democracy, new life forms, self-conscious species
from the laboratory or the biome. How de body?
Today ok. Tomorrow I don't know. Potential

energy, lover, killer, anomie. Karl Popper
had such faith in the rational whereas Niebuhr
acknowledged man's ego is uncontrollable except
by force. Conflict is inevitable. But at dinner
we agree it doesn't always have to be violent or terminal.
We can do the fire department, police station, the school and anomie.

These are Jack's commitments: to his body
exercise, stretch, heal if possible and prepare for death.
To his sons: love and respect and teach, learn
to be aware of the effects of his anger or forever be an angry man.

To his wife: in equal portions serenity and uncertainty,
the early years, the middle years, and the final years.
To the community: to treat it as distinct unknowable individuals
much like heavenly spirits but also dangerous animals.

To poetry, religious in its contemplation
of experience under the eye of eternity,
in the realm of the gift and the realm of the sacred:
his individual experiment gone well or wrong.

To his student: not to hurt for gain or inflict more pain
than stimulates growth. Both of them are students
of each other, the periodic table and the civil war.
Other than that, expect to forget and be forgotten.

To his friends who are merely friendly: lonely
inexorably, working hard and playing hard without self-pity
severe about the law and believing in the death penalty
they're the men you'll want in your foxhole warriors at the gate.

To himself by which I mean mind or something hidden, intestate:
a quiet place and time to think deeply or simply
but not too easily to quiet the questions, to know
his bones and the particles of sunlight they stilled and slowed.

blueberries gasoline and prostate gland
breast cancer Wonderbread and pacifier

controlled experiment space travel and honey
peanuts inductive reasoning and electricity

tornadoes torture chamber and biscuits
copyright car radio cantaloupe

golden eagle lunch break tomato
Romanian songbook rhubarb and barbed wire

always hungry nevermind meat loaf
goosefoot mango juice Ipad

mosquito bite city street and broccoli
Chinese cabbage female *** drive water sport

pure contralto goat yogurt new year
black death white light and green tea

The four fundamental forces:
Zeus, Aphrodite, Ares (or Mars), and Adam and Eve.

                            <<0>>                                          >> 0 <<

             Electric field induced by             Electric field induced by
            a positive electric charge            a negative electric charge

"Deutsch thinks that such 'jumps to universality' must occur not only in the capacity to calculate things, but also in the capacity to understand things, and in the closely related capacity to make things happen. And he thinks that it was precisely such a threshold that was crossed with the invention of the scientific method. There were plenty of things we humans could do, of course, prior to the invention of that method: agriculture, or the domestication of animals, or the design of sundials, or the construction of pyramids. But all of a sudden, with the introduction of that particular method of concocting and evaluating new hypotheses, there was a sense in which we could do anything. The capacities of a community that has mastered that method to survive, to learn, and to remake the world according to its inclinations are (in the long run) literally, mathematically, infinite. And Deutsch is convinced that the tendency of the world to give rise to such communities, more than, say, the force of gravitation, or the second law of thermodynamics, or even the phenomenon of death, is what ultimately gives the world its shape, and what constitutes the genuine essence of nature. 'In all cases,' he writes, 'the class of transformations that could happen spontaneously--in the absence of knowledge--is negligibly small compared with the class that could be effected artificially by intelligent beings who wanted those transformations to happen. So the explanations of almost all physically possible phenomena are about how knowledge would be applied to bring those phenomena about.' And there is a beautiful and almost mystical irony in all this: that it was precisely by means of the Scientific Revolution, it was precisely by means of accepting that we are not the center of the universe, that we became the center of the universe."

Danger comes from the root bad brakes and bald tires. Chain saws
      and wildfires. Poisonous
ideologies, housecleaning chemicals and toiletries. Powerful
      industrialists, alcoholic fathers.
Invasive species, illegal immigrants. Concentration camps, attention
      deficit disorder.
Performance phobia, identity enhancements. Pleasure, applause.
      Quiet moments, walking and
talking war buddies. Electoral politics, marriage and divorce. Pest
      exterminator, Yeats seminar.
Love affair, pencil sharpener. Whatever, matter. Ionic and covalent
      bonds, republican hairstyle.
Events in their mere chronology.

"What is a typical place in the universe like? Let me assume that you are reading this on Earth. In your mind's eye travel straight upwards a few hundred kilometers. Now you are in the slightly more typical environment of space. But you are still being heated and illuminated by the sun, and half your field of view is still taken up by the solids, liquids and **** of the Earth. A typical location has none of those features. So, travel a few trillion kilometers further in the same direction. You are now so far away that the sun looks like other stars. You are at a much colder, darker and emptier place, with no **** in sight. But it is not yet typical: you are still inside the Milky Way galaxy, and most places in the universe are not in any galaxy. Continue until you are clear outside the galaxy--say, a hundred thousand light years from Earth. At this distance you could not glimpse the Earth even if you used the most powerful telescope that humans have yet built. But the Milky Way still fills much of your sky. To get to a typical place in the universe, you have to imagine yourself at least a thousand times as far out as that, deep in intergalactic space. What is it like there? Imagine the whole of space notionally divided into cubes the size of our solar system. If you were observing from a typical one of them, the sky would be pitch black. The nearest star would be so far away that if it were to explode as a supernova, and you were staring directly at it when its light reached you, you would not even see a glimmer. That is how big and dark the universe is. And it is cold: it is at that background temperature of 217 Kelvin, which is cold enough to freeze every known substance except helium. And it is empty: the density of atoms out there is below one per cubic meter. That is a million times sparser than atoms in the space between the stars, and those atoms are themselves sparser than in the best vacuum that human technology has yet achieved. Almost all the atoms in intergalactic space are hydrogen or helium, so there is no chemistry. No life could have evolved there, nor any intelligence. Nothing changes there. Nothing happens. The same is true of the next cube and the next, and if you were to examine a million consecutive cubes in any direction the story would be the same."

The 5 colors of sadness:
disappointed, didn't get what was wanted
confused, don't know what to do next, where to go
lonely, no one to love or be loved by
sorry, unable to help or change what happened
depressed, can't get out of bed, want to **** self

"Unless a society is expecting its own future choices to be better than its present ones, it will strive to make its present policies and institutions as immutable as possible. Therefore Popper's criterion can be met only by societies that expect their knowledge to grow -- and to grow unpredictably. And, further, they are expecting that if it did grow, that would help. This expectation is what I call optimism, and I can state it, in its most general form, thus: The Principle of Optimism -- All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge. Optimism is, in the first instance, a way of explaining failure, not prophesying success. It says that there is no fundamental barrier, no law of nature or supernatural decree, preventing progress. Whenever we try to improve things and fail, it is not because the spiteful (or unfathomably benevolent) gods are thwarting us or punishing us for trying, or because we have reached a limit on the capacity of reason to make improvements, or because it is best that we fail, but always because we did not know enough, in time. But optimism is also a stance towards the future, because nearly all failures, and nearly all successes, are yet to come.

As I think of things to do I do them.
Thing by thing I get things done.
That's how my father and his father did things.
I guess my mother and her mother did things that way too.

Sometimes I'm driving and I think how my father and his father drove
      too.
There was weather and they had problems. There is weather and I
      have problems.
Time exists only in the human mind. But if the mind exists, time exists.
Joy everywhere. Joy at birth. Joy at death. All joy, all times.

**** Burton examining Liz Taylor's ****** sphincter for blood.
      That's love.
            ****** love. Pornographic, anthropological, primate love.

                           --------------------------------------

Newton wrote the Principia
      So only serious mathematicians would comprehend.
            "I've been faking my way through life," he lied.

                           --------------------------------------

They say the white pine whispers
      What the wind can't say.
            In the blowdown there's a slow ballet.

                           --------------------------------------

I am a citizen of the empire.
      Moonlight & heartbeat.
            Zach's feet stink.

                           --------------------------------------

One hawk.
      Flying low, scaring crows.
            No snow.

                           --------------------------------------

Watres pipyng hoot.
      First, entertain. Then expectorate (spit).
            Lapdancer, spiderweb.

                           --------------------------------------

Summer morning, rabbit in my garden.
      Let it be or send a warning.
            Let the rabbit eat my peas.

                           --------------------------------------

Avoid the I,
      Avoid yourself, and enter the void?
            I think not.

To presume to write to someone about courage
and not complaining, don't importune or make dying people cry.
I've always said Leave me alone with autumn.
Don't stand around my bed, I won't be in it.

Over 7 years after he died, I finally looked
through my father's papers. Couple of unclaimed insurance policies,
savings bonds, our genealogy and on graph paper in an engineer's
block lettering quotations from The Seat of the Soul.

Reincarnation and karma are the chicken soup of the soul,
the after life is the reward for our colossal imperfections.
Along with banking instructions, he'd underlined
this: Your soul is immortal. It exists

outside of time. It has no beginning and no end.
Every time you ask for guidance you receive it.
If we are not at home in the world, contributing purpose,
we lose our desire to stay here -- and we die.

The physical world is an unaccountable given in which we
      unaccountably
find ourselves and which we strive to dominate to survive
or it is a learning environment created jointly by the souls that share it
and everything that occurs within it serves our learning.

Sin is activity directed toward self rather than toward service
to others. Sickness is sin. Almost any condition can be corrected.
You are part of God, therefore, think in a godly manner.
If you cannot accept this, forget it all. Do not even begin.

The first act of free will: How do I wish to learn?
If we participate in the cause, it is impossible not to participate in the
      effect.
We shall come to honor all of life sooner or later.
Until you become aware of the effects of your anger, you will
      continue to be an angry person.

Walking is the most commonly suggested exercise. Also, breathing.
"Thy will be done." Concentrate on that!
These expressions of certainty, conjectures and guesses
were inscribed by him in block letters on graph paper.

You'll soon lose interest in walking
and talking and wearing the cap
of a fool. You'll.
            Words: walk, talk, wear, cap, fool, you, soon, lose.

Idea!: Four word poems, ten
syllables per line, six
lines per paragraph. Graph.
            Words: idea, word, poem, syllable, line, paragraph, per, graph.

The night I wrecked my father's car
necking with my date after the dance
inching forward into traffic
foot tapping the brake like an *******.
            Words: night, car, father, wreck, date, dance, neck, traffic, inch,
            foot, tap, brake.

The USFS issued paper sleeping bags
like tissues during forest fires and fed us
steak and pop. All you could eat.
            Words: paper, bag, sleep, tissue, fire, steak, pop, eat, food,
            forest, us.

Things hurt. Pain is a message
to shut up and slow down.
Breathe deep, take care. Wait and see.
            Words: hurt, pain, shut, slow, breathe, care, wait, see, deep,
            message.

Just as the war
in the Iliad goes back
and forth according to Hector's
fortunes, so does marriage and a truck in mud.
            Words: just, war, back, forth, fortune, marriage, truck, mud.

Fear destroys the last free assessment of life.
But what is there to fear. Death
is most of all like sleep. Death
is but a dream missed.
            Words: fear, free, assess, destroy, life, death, sleep, dream, like,
            but, miss.

If a poem or essay can end with a conclusion or its opposite, either one,
Can it be of any use to anyone?

Do the discrepancies and disparities, dualities and densities, reflect only
      the dementia
Of the bearer of the pencil?

First entertain, then enlighten if you can. One stretches truth in order
      to pretend,
Another leavens with levity one's inevitable end.

Most days it's not possible to bring your life into an expressible state.
Disparate hopes, arduous chores, word choices. And, of course, the  
      state of the state.

Driven by ideas rather than rhymes, for it is not metres, but a
      metre-making argument,
That makes a poem. Convenience store or university English
      department

The day's disputes, down to the meaning of the weather, leave you
      indisposed
To share your heart of zero and your inner rose.

It is the strong force, the energy of the loved ones combined with
      cooperation for good or war.
Dad's years in New Guinea fighting ****, he said, were his best by far.

The best that can be said or done is Be where you are. Love the one
      you're with
Not necessarily an adult of the opposite ***, perhaps just a kid who
      hates math

And school, dresses goth, reads rarely but learns a lot from movies
      and YouTube,
Has the presence of mind to say I am who I am, deal with it. That's
      who I want to be

And have always been. Today clean the house, again. Woke up this
      morning to two thoughts:
How sweet to be alive! Life is tough.

Electron herders,
that's us. It began
earnestly late 20th century.
The first organic computers
using polymerase and ADP
came later. Weaponry
via numbers, words
magically appearing,
telepathy. Measurements
in which the last significant digit
is the Other. However
immediately depleted
our resources were,
antibiotics were always at the ready.
Forgetting what we knew,
reverting to austerity
because in times of prosperity
we forgot to be austere.
It's the uncertainty principle
taken to the nth degree
where the bad god resides,
Zeus, passionate, confused, obtuse.
Yes, we are electron herders
matter gatherers and shapers
of our time. Cancerous
cysts, irrational exuberance,
collective experience, experiments
gone well or wrong,
we were trying all along
to last forever. Flood and fire
saw to that.
Prospero was our answer
who threw his book
into the sea and wanted to be
mortal, meditative.
Find himself. We found
the world without the self
cornus to oxalis
orbitals and calculus
waves and particles
equally likely to be
within us as without us.

Supermarket celebration
shoppers are cytoplasm searching
for cellulose, muscle, photosynthesis.

Oils, petrochemical and vegetable
love: faith and trust
for instance, the Food and Drug Administration.

In America, the custom is
to avoid meeting the other shoppers' eyes. We graze
like cows or wander as zombies to the oldies played over the aisles.

I've always liked it here.
Cornucopia, yes. Also
a place to be alone and depressed, or cool off.

Water and bone
and the known ingredients. Neurons
for remembering, calculating, touching stuff.

I have a favorite bagger
who has the smile of a lover,
wouldn't rather be elsewhere.

Like glamour stars in bikinis
(but unlike tomatoes and bananas)
cashiers and clerks are admired from afar.

Joe says What's not to like? Ice cream, yogurt,
profit, tofu.
To eat your fill is a blasphemy against God.

At dinner, Zach asks
about our nation's history, wars.
I say We're taking on everyone, one at a time.

First Britain, then Britain again: "He was the surly English pluck, and
      there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be."
Next Mexico: "Death is indifferent to what hide he tans; life crushes
      men like flies."
The War Between the States: "Well done, Mr. Cromartie. Time now
      for rest."

Most of Latin America: "Not only humans longed for liberation. All
      ecology groaned for it too. The revolution is also one of lakes,
      rivers, trees, animals."
Then Southeast Asia: "The slight bump the mortars make as they kiss
      the tube goodbye. Then the furious rain, a fist driving home the
      message: Boy, you don't belong here."
Now the Middle East: "A land to be admired like all lands. Harsh
      mountains and deserts, indigenous plants and people, adapted
      ungulates, carnivorous mammals."

Can't forget the Krauts & Nips: "Then I heard the bomber call me in:
      Little Friend, Little Friend, I got two engines on fire. Can you see
      me, Little Friend?"
Nor the Commies: "You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the
      beginning of a new one. I put this book here for you, who once
      lived, so that you should visit us no more."
The original indigenous people say: "In time we'll become prosperous,
      or else we'll become martyrs. The force that placed us here cannot
      be trusted."

           Your past, your romantic past, is a shadow. Like all towns, Port Angeles was a combination of rain and clouds, sun and mist, with a chamber of commerce, barrooms and boards of directors, the known and unknown. No one of course is completely unknown. I was known for my tragic love life. She had found another man, a backwoods man, living on the land but not above a night on the town, who according to her would wipe snot on his pants, a statement of poverty or thrift or anger against the niceties of society. All of us heated our hovels with wood but only the rich burned hardwoods, me and probably this guy were softwood gatherers.

            There were few aspects to my life. First, I can remember a nook in the kitchen of the house I shared with a beautiful faceless woman who wore a ring in her nose where I wrote and watched flocks of unidentified birds comb a tree for seeds. This particular day the sky was blue with clean pillowy cumulus clouds floating toward Puget Sound. I believe all the poems written in that nook have been forgotten by their author.

            Nights, for entertainment, I would wander the aisles of the supermarket, admiring everything and buying nothing. I had no money. The fluorescent lighting, clean straight neat shelving and floors, warmth and the fact I could identify nobody attracted me. I lived on cream cheese and honey sandwiches eating them leaning against the kitchen sink. Thinking go back to New York City which is what I ultimately did. Drove cross country nonstop three days and three nights seeing and feeling nothing.

           I populated P.A. during the Reagan recession inherited from Carter. I'm unclear how presidents affect your life but good or bad, democrat or whig, alive or dead you've got to get a job, which I did. I supervised the living arrangements of developmentally disabled adults in what I thought were humorous contexts that gave no offense. They were beautiful and incorrigible having regular *** without protection. Normally harmless they'd sometimes have altercations with their neighbors. I balanced the checkbooks, paid the bills. Supposedly teaching living skills, I had few of my own as evidenced by my sleeping on the floor, I had no bed. One mature woman colleague judged me a short-timer living a useless fantasy about big cities. Still lost in my own history, still didn't know the calculus.

            I had a dog, Shade, black lab, leftover from my near-marriage until she realized I had no economic prospects, no interest in further *** or her logger boyfriend, and a complete inability to translate or imagine nesting and gestation. My homework comes to me in daily disconnected increments. Shade lived in my gray van, a Dodge slant six, which I could never afford to fix. Once the driveshaft disconnected from the rear axle and I tied it on with rope. Drove 60 miles on a knot. Shade was hyper and sad, both. He smelled bad but was a good dog with a lonely heart. When my wife who wasn't a wife finally found a boyfriend who wouldn't wipe snot on his pant leg they took Shade to British Columbia where I believe he runs free on a vast estate by the sea. I once beat Shade like a slave because he attacked a small dog out of frustration and loneliness and until I had kids and started saying and doing things just as bad to humans it was the lowest meanest moment of my life. The farmer who saw it will never forget or forgive it.

            Having confessed all this there's just one last fact to tell. The mountains were cold, the waters clear, deep snow and shadows.

Between conjecture and classification there is
observation, experiment, data (collection and analysis),
statistics, calculus, and a good guess
about God's intentions -- probabilities, fractals, chaos and complexity.
This is the thunderous city.

The form of the poem, the rhyme.
Form cannot be first if you want to reach high artistic levels, since
      you are then bound by form, and that form is very often a
      betrayal of reality.
Yet I find I am attracted all the time
to philosophies in short skirts, jewels and eyes lined with kohl.
I love where her legs lead, to her very soul.

Three women hike by under an umbrella in a winter rain. Two men
      side by side run in rhythm.
An oil truck takes the hill in low steady gear.
My old Marine, 89, died last night without anxiety or fear.
May I overcome my pain enough to reach the place where the deer
      lay down their bones
and, like them, die alone.

When making an axe handle, the pattern is not far off.
The purpose of school is to introduce us to the world's innumerable
      wonders.
The periodic table, World Wars I and II, Huckleberry Finn and Jim.
      But soft,
what light through yonder window breaks?
It is a billion trillion nuclear detonations per second without which
      nothing can be done or faked.

The temple bell stops, but the sound still comes out of the
      flowers.
Forests and the composite species will be nameless. Genetic
      prowess,
receiving the sacrament, performing Lohengrin from the Great
      American Songbook,
the look of love in all the wrong places, facebook,
fakebooks, folios of old family photos on or in pianos.

How can I be both still and skilled?
When we took Pop-Pop off the ventilator, we put him in a refrigerator.
He stopped eating, he stopped breathing. Circle with a dot.
He had his dream, he'd rowed his boat.
No single line can completely explain -- or rhyme -- or untie this knot.