i like to dress for an imaginary girl
(we will meet each other soon)   by putting on
a silk tie with subtle Chinese birds
sewn in.
she may be picturing me in her mirror
as she applies exactly the necessary line
of mascara to lengthen her lashes and darken
her eyes.
whatever begins as a mystery ends as a blind,
the nuances so well known
that birds chirp violently at their mirror images
but the pools
as they are revealed in the sunlight of
every accidental nod of the eyes remain
calm as a mirror in which there is no
image ever seen.

To the gods, the individual won't matter.
But we've said No to that. Here, you count.

Perhaps the gods, their tornadoes and weapons of mass terror
Are stronger than us. But we can read and count

And our music is more ethereal and real
Than theirs. They must divide to conquer us

But we have realized division is a form of multiplication
And have multiplied. Now there are too many

Of us to count. But we have learned there are
More planets in the universe than people on the planet.

A planet for each one. But we would rather stay
Together, continue to discover what we're living for.

Every human, and every animal, will count. And then
We'll invite back even the gods themselves.

I prefer to sleep and dream than face
this solitary room. No pity, I go on
without a drink and look with gay eyes on
my future in a forest or a city, someplace.

It's very amusing, what a middle class boy
like me came to, isolated in the northwest
corner of this island, caught in the deepest
loneliness and yet in my heart all this joy.

Surrounded by buildings I am not at peace
yet strangely I am, not like a zen
master but as a man in the wind who when
most despairing and oppressed is most released.

Old records, old unloved books. Sara's cheek
is a source of pleasure, but she has a friend
with whom to share it and can depend
on him for companionship throughout the week.

So I ride the subway home. I look at faces
and they look at mine, mute, animated spirits.
A crazy woman pushes aboard and exhibits
herself. To her, the passengers' glances are caresses.

Two people cannot see the same way but they can teach
One another their ways. One gives up body and soul
To follow the flow of the historical woman until
He can close his eyes and glide through mountains effortlessly.
He gives up earth and he gives up air, he gives up being touched
But he forgets to give up desiring to be touched. Then
One day the sun is hot or the moon is full, he desires
Uncontrollably to be touched and he flies smack
Into the mountain and never comes out the other side.

You live to prepare yourself to die. You leave behind
A wreck of strewn projects or a few icy pearls.
Incredibly you leave your voice behind saying
Over and over again the same words. You leave
Memories of yourself behind as pictures in the heads
Of people who wish you weren't dead or hadn't been alive.
They wash the pictorial body, shave it, comb your hair
The way they liked it best, cut a little here, add a little there,
Then easily, easily and kindly forget you.

Two hundred years later the wall crumbled and burned.
The ashes were spread logically across the plain,
A mathematical formula could describe the distribution.
The ashes were like seeds and from them
A thousand higher walls were made. It was lovely
To see those walls breathing imperceptibly
Shifting their glances so slowly as to go unnoticed
Behaving as if they were dead.

If I breathe, they breathe. If they are ash, so am I.
Having tried to separate myself and failed
I donate my body to science. The wall needs me
To breathe and hear. It gets my ears and lungs.
Trees need me to cast their night spells.
Are they asleep or are they dancing
A primitive fertility dance in the forest?
I choose trees because they can watch everything
From the distance of longevity.
To them I donate my soul.

Everything should be made of earth.
Earthen walls, earthen homes, earthen bodies, earthen ***.
Nothing should be made of air. Earth should inhale
And exhale air. Air should whip and caress earth.
Air should dry it out and crumble it. Earth.
Water should wet it and dissolve it. Earth.
What is the function of fire? Fire makes earth permanent
And then fire makes earth into air. Water
Makes earth into mud. Mud makes earth into homes.
Homes make earth into walls. Walls make the earth breathe.
Breathing makes the earth crumble. Crumbling
Makes the earth seed.

November is sweet, sunshine through bare trees, dry brown
      and fungus-free leaves companionably visiting among the
      dead
as I did yesterday our town's small graveyard military dads
      who recently died lie under polished stones embossed
      with actual photos of themselves and their wives
      flowers and plastic totems within a miniature picket fence
      overflowing with the emotions love and grieving of the
      living
beside or not far from simple wafer-thin old moss-covered
      stones on which I could not read the names.
Such peace I realized which may be found around any rock or
      tree has escaped me while I pursue my particular
      happiness and our particular war,
and such a blessing awaits me, too.

The moon gazes
through April’s silver maple.

To work, to drive,
to drive to work.

Earth's half-in, half-out
of the sun’s habitable zone.

The rushing stream topples old trees;
the peaceful father, mother.

Powerful with eternity,
blinding with intensity.

Zazen position,
necking in the front seat.

Lazy, happy,
mirror, desert.

Moderation, persuasion, elections.
Way stations, stopgaps, safe havens.

Cheap jewelry can be ****;
stop fixing things with duct tape!

Humor is the only remedy
not to hate those in authority.

And ritual is remedy,
a death song.

Nothing but matter matters,
chipmunk, groundhog, skunk.

Do not provoke
an angry baboon.

Why care about the future,
the dead don’t live to see it.

I’ve come to see
if this is true.

While waiting but not watching for the sun to set, perhaps the bullfrogs are creating the shadows with their croaks, my friend screams out because he has been bitten by a fly. He is not quiet enough so the flies obtain special pleasure from teasing him. Meanwhile bluebirds skirt the lake surface like the most perfectly designed fighter planes in twos or threes and argue rising up on their tails into the air. While insects prey upon and tease the bare flesh and blood of we humans, they fear the silent violence, the sudden huge presences of these family birds.

            A larva with a leaf tip for a cocoon descends a white birch by a long thread. We free ourselves from our writings to observe phenomenon. Then thinking about dinner. The flight of J. Krishnamurti, the eagle guru says even artists (after physicists and mathematicians) may penetrate the unknown if not too absorbed in their own emotions and imaginations. We common people too who loving our wives can love everyone.

            What eyesight the bluebirds have to swoop the lake from shore for a flying insect or descend from fifty feet on a thin straw grass and return to chew absent-mindedly! Just fun having song sung among men. As for the syntax, a daisy could swing it unthinking and coast. Along the beehive rocks ants crawl on connecting interlacing instructions. All around us and inside too as if stars were unseen but present it's true. So a man desires breakfast with his lady; could it be more amusing, material or smell?

            As the eyesun descends below spun clouds, spirit or the eagle or the drum? Round. The dialectic obscure couldn't be more better said. So round and serious. To love everyone with clearer vision than a bluebird or a lake is to transcend the innocence of insect and take flight action and feed the babies of fate. Phew! Dinner outside the cocoon. I brought myself a student upon the hill or mountain and said to myself I said Obo rebop in summer sweater and what less overweight can carry test uphill so slow? Presently, reformed, informed by the bluebird's eagle spirit, clear cleanhead, I return coagulating mightily ideas the bites of insects ow! to breakfast home and everywhere unknown. Hearing bird with clear conscience echo make.

Whereas last night the full moon made the night resemble a cold day
Today clouds give the night its old shrouded, crowding demeanor.
Ghosts stalk the forest gleaming (at me) from just beyond the circle
      of light thrown by the fire.
You, old night, I wish to make my peace with.
Eventually I know even I (I think, I'm told) must enter naked, a cold
      north wind in winter or a gentle September breeze instructing my
      sole spirit . . . .

There exist powers overwhelming for the human body and mind.
The aborigine's untold night of meditation on the mountain, coming
      away with his life-long totem and power.
The mountains tonight are alive with benevolence that could (for one
      lacking humility and respect or the hunter's perspicacity) flame up
      into insane malevolence.
You, old complete night, I wish to make my peace with
Being utterly a creature of the water and the light.

Night on the mountain, the human animal alone, without cohorts,
      speech and music inane without other ears to listen
Yet blasting, blasting against the night
Even after fire dies, its skin still the halo beacon to nothing in nothing,
Mind pouring on the electricity, outward to friends back in the cities
Receiving in return only strange sounds.

The ear must differentiate and protect.
Just as fluids within keep the body balanced so must the ear when
      the eyes are blinded by night
Balance the mind. Eyes, heroes of the day, enjoying orgiastically
      autumnal delights
Are now slaves to every primeval passion of the mind.
But the ears: it is a sound they have heard before and can identify.

Night, old strange night (were we once acquainted?), I wish to be at
      peace with you by becoming knowledgeable.
Fear like fire clings to its fuel.
I wish to dampen passionate fears by attuning the five senses to all
      that is normal dark and day.
To know the habits and cycles of everything I live beside
And my inner spirit become a silent tide attuned to nature's lunacy.

Five days of steady rain. A hurricane approaches the city. The streets are flooding but the wildlife is thriving. Every person wears a raincoat or carries an umbrella. Indoors is cozy. Movie theaters are crowded in the early afternoon. We who live alone are more isolated; those who live together are more aggravated. The heavens are having a fine time belting it out.

            A fly is swept from a windowpane in early August but men's machines are almost oblivious to the storm. Except the wires in Mr. Glyckman's Volvo are wet. People's dreams begin to take place in the water. When they awake their thoughts are floating in the puddle of night.

            Raindrops slap the leaves and splash the ground. Travel is not advised, wherever you are it seems like home. Next month dirt on the shingles of the house will remind the painter of the great rain. Even the rain no longer makes an impression on the earth, only a ripple in the rain. If there are mountains or the sea they seem more like brother and sister than father and mother these days. Summer feels like winter.

            Children are less visible and mothers are women who were once girls. Nightclubs are full and the listeners listen more seriously. Music continues but the rain muse has her say. Lovers are less joyous and more happy. The full moon's influence is muted by clouds, the blood between people is thicker. The Himalayas come to the Rockies and the Rockies reach for the Alps. The imagination comes to the market.

            The roads leading down to the river are empty and wet and the bright painted houses along them are quiet. A dog and a cat under a porch patient and unperturbed. A love-gnarled man with a brown beard and walking stick walks in the middle of the street. If a curtain moves, a woman wonders how many days he's been out in the rain like a child. But only the water winding back to the sea, a mad naked saint at the Last Judgement, welcomes him home.

New York City is where people who are
disappearing go. It is very quiet
here, silent. A man and woman
made love below me. I could hear
the bedsprings ringing and the
woman singing in sensual pain.
My thoughts sped up as they ******
faster. Everything is dead in my room
except me and my plants. If I keep
on identifying my feelings with the
feelings of things, I too will be dead.
They are talking and laughing now. His deep
voice vibrates the air. Her laugh
is like water.

1

            Waves could wash away certain blue memories but they're too blue. Today I've sat in two places, my heart full of you and how in the night under a half man in the moon too soon, too soon, did love die? Today I've sat in two watery places but the rhythms will never wash away the face and smell and voice of you. Thus, I stand in the sun, like that, the breeze gently tears my beard and life becomes death.

            No, no, not that. A boat being repaired in a boatyard. And think of it! people on the planet earth! And nothing, but nothing, not even tao, is permanent. Whereas for us my dear this is a disadvantage, since I wished to be permanently a member of your arms, for me the individual I do not disappear as long as there is change. Life is like all things that are forever changing but will always remain the same. Love is one of those things.

            From hitch-hiking, as the sun descends I proclaim this, the mystery more powerful than the handshake. Thus, even unto children I have kept my silence, and even unto you I will. The white birch bending over the river fell in. It carried downstream and in one tidal sweep became a great white fish. When the sea dried up this unlucky fish grew wings anyway and became the great bird. The heavens were too small and it shattered into bits like you and I.

            To say I love you until the house falls down. Beyond the row of houses lit by street lamps and into the night I go, with and without you, both. How is it the powerful night attends you like a magician his queen? The way the sun would climb into a bottle to please me.

2

            Under a full night of black night stars, shooting and shining, turning a world of sun worlds, everything universe and cool wind, mountains of dark sound and a stream's breath song, I think often, until dawn, of your strong love. All of these true things becoming mine as a shore. And we inside as a breath baby. Listen, life darling long, four horses grazed nearby my head last night, like good luck. Struck thus I write: your love is greater than the real celestial globe.

            Something thicker and velvet than deep sea foam for you swirl lover. Something true to the events of our lives, the clear mountainous horizon of vision. Over the vast green earth O population of human and animal lovers to chewing very cud, our bond is fulfilled as a mother. A tremendous earthquake couldn't exist without us.

The clouds take a little blue from the sky
beyond, how beautiful the weather makes life
seem. The sky is where the soul goes when
the mind runs out of destinations. We love
the mountains because that's where the earth
meets the sky. If you just watch the sky
an hour each day, lie back in the grass,
you'll never be ill. When it rains your face
becomes a holy bowl. Once I was a beggar, no
cares, by railroad tracks. They too disappeared
into the sky. A small town you could hold in your fist
on the prairie. A big city easy to hold in your mind
when you're in the sky. The clouds take a little blue
from the sky. The sky takes a little blue from your soul. . .

Rather than put myself in the sky which is so
complete with blue and clouds, I make a space
in a line of people climbing a trail in the mountains.

All night I work on my thinking and waiting
until at dawn I see the iron clouds shift sunlight
and listen to the years changing my life with a laugh.

I say thank you to all the influences that a plant
like me goes on growing fearless as a daisy.
I need no robes, I wear baggy underpants in the morning.

By afternoon I am transformed by the light from my beard.
Some girls think I'm cute. At first I'm shy but soon
I take my wooden chair among a bench of kids from
      Lowell.

At night I fall in love with the first person to stop
his car. Because I am a well of love for my lady.
The drone of stars slowly changing places in the sky.

When I fall asleep by the river it is like I'm dead.
There it is. I use my coat for a pillow and lay my head
at the root of a tree. Shade my eyes from the sun, white
      waits.

Not enough heat. Snow. Cold. and now rain
on Tuesday morning. traffic sloshes to work.
it is cloudy for the second straight day. the snow
was magical only for an hour. businesses might
have closed. now it's melting in a cold rain.

is the city depressing me? i ride the subway
and the people no longer seem beautiful. the noise
is just noise, no longer the power of God. i sit
slumped, still at ease, but no longer playing
with the eyes of other passengers. glance at the ads
and then go to sleep with my eyes open.

it is winter, and it should have its effect. the
difficult, dangerous season when weak creatures die
and the strong barely survive. why expect
much heat to mitigate it and the happiness of Spring?
accept cold and discomfort and the bad sound made.
it is a poor city, the seasons touch us. there is
not enough heat. snow. cold. and now rain.

A man and a woman are living
in a jungle. The man has lived there
all his life but the woman is new
so she's scared. The jungle is full
of snapping turtles and they are hunting some.
The man knows how to hunt them
and he kills a huge one. They drag it home
and leave it on a wooden table
in a clearing overnight. He says to the woman
Tomorrow you will clean it and cook it
in a soup. This
will accustom her to turtles
and make her less afraid.

The next morning they wake up.
But when they go into the clearing
the turtle is gone
and there's a trail of blood
leading into the jungle.
The woman panics with terror
but the man is no longer
concerned with that: he grabs
his weapons and follows
the blood into the forest.

As a boy, I'd find my father
sitting in the pitch dark living room,
cigarette aglow, as I'd pass
from my bed to the bathroom.

Did the boy consider, at that late hour,
what plans or fears occupied the man?
Not at all, nor did the man share
with the passing boy what he thought.

Now he's gone. Back from that ****
and many another, I can well imagine
the mystery I must be to my son.
Has much changed but the date and where the man fought?

Most men, most times, abide in peace,
leastwise not always angry or afraid
they cannot save their children from the gas
or the abyss about which God lied.

Yet, when the boy dreams through the room
in the movement of his body there's a sleepiness
to make the man weep for himself, his father
and the boy who comes to the darkness unafraid.

The one power that a man can have is in
the perfection of himself. He changes
with the weather but of this he's unaware.

A churlish man and his teacher are walking
along a road when he is suddenly instructed
to look down a side street. Spring trees in leaf.

I go in front of the mirror and observe
the changes to come in my face. I turn
my chair so I can see out all the windows.

What is right fits the time perfectly. It
is all out of my hands. In this the peace
is supreme. Yet my hands embrace the ***.

In the morning the air is cold and clear
at the river. Then clouds and the confusion
in people. At dusk the sky is clear again.

5 a.m. Souls ascend
from earth’s vale
of fears. Others wait
don’t give up yet.
Nothing I can do about that.

Not is my name known
but am I a good man.
That goes for John, too
a man of faith
who wants what God wants.

What about hate
in the streets. What do white
people want?
I see no need
to pull down statues of General Lee

instead put him side by side
and head to head
with Martin Luther King,
Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.
Also kids who cops shot dead.

Meanwhile on the macro
economic and political scale
leviathans (peoples, nations)
drift toward perpetual
armageddon or peaceful solutions.

We don’t know which
and John will be gone
before it matters
except to his children
and, of course, ours.

What I have done
to change man’s trajectory,
for better or worse, remains
anonymous. Every action
meets an equal and impassable mountain.

Passion
is its own predicament.
Cast a cold eye and guess.
The clouds go, nevertheless,
in their direction.

It was with almost joy
that I watched at my father's
deathbed. His struggle
to let go
of his body and thoughts
was like being at a birth.

But now I'm not so sure.
Now that I'm back
with my life.
Unlike Lear
who will never, never
see his daughter again

I feel the man's presence
in every third thought
as one who went before.
Twice that Spring he said
Rob, I'm dying
but I failed to ask my question

What is it like?
He wouldn't have been able
to say. Not
because he didn't know.
Because it's so
much like living.

Let us accept this pain
and some fear
it will heighten autumn colors
crack of clean air
black crows in blue sky
lake.

Rather than fight pain, falling
asleep in front of tv,
understand the full
import of its situation
in the body. Blessed
once, cursed now
only fear prevents
full knowledge of experience.

The gray sky brings
winter, no blame.
The poet writes a few last poems
or continues to live with his pain.
In itself pain does not oppose
life, and may enhance it
or build character, create
wisdom. But too much fear
chokes the throat and burns
the eyes. It
destroys the last free
assessment of life.

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

Now I am going to live in my body
as it is, almost fearlessly
running in pain, working
to abandon immortality
as a hope, conceiving
sunset after sunset
feeling what I feel.

On the streets I meet
many beautiful young women
curious to a certain extent
what makes a man older.
I can only say ten years
and the hand that reaches through
the cloud. I can say
only the knowledge of mortality
which makes us brothers and sisters
with the animals. And only
the acceptance which gives us wisdom
to couple often and lovingly.

How am I going to live every day
as my last, hoping happiness
outgrows fear by an ounce
or enough? By running, writing
and loving. By moving uphill
and downhill like a bear.
By committing my last words
to a powerful lord. How
do the clouds accept my dead
self? A rock thrown, a crow.

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

When I am old
young girls will not be frightened anymore.
I will invite them
to my seat and tell
about the women I knew.
I will tell about
the clothes they wore
and how they earned a living.
I will try to remember
what was important to them
and if they had a favorite color
or knew how to divine.

Maybe I live and maybe I don't.
The smoke is white or black.
The winds are bright or dark.
The coins are heads or tails.
What have I been afraid of?
Death is most of all like sleep.
We spend so long apart
after briefly knowing ourselves.
I need you to know myself
and without you all I know
is sun.

“There’s nothing you wish for that won’t be yours
        if you stay alive.”  --Beowulf

Winter has arrived and the wind cuts through
the parking lot under the el in the Bronx,
streets stretch out in their directions, events
in their mere chronology have no relation.
Old friends face certain dissolution
with perplexity, comity and humor,
look with gay eyes on their future
in a forest or a city, someplace.
Snow outside, despair inside. Homelessness.
Raccoon tracks cross the soul. Prostatectomy.
Winter mix. Don’t relax. The difficult
dangerous season when weak creatures die
and the strong barely survive. Leave me alone
with autumn, an autumn like last autumn.
Don’t stand around my bed, I won’t be in it.

Jack’s in jail. His panic attacks are like
an AI on automatic pilot
who wants to live, just like the rest of us
under the eye of eternity or
running in new snow, loving that feeling.
Some people go dancing in fishnet stockings.
Effortless mastery, success without practice.
Fractals without chemistry. Do the small
things first, clean the house and bless the guests.
Sick of Krshna, sick of salad, sick of self.
Sick of meditation. As I lay dying
the full moon’s rising. My existence
is indivisible from the wry Creator’s.
I like the old Rhymer, his smile resplendent.
It’s Death, not the Jewish king, in your rose garden.

I ply my arts all day alone. All I have
is all I do not know. The past isn’t dead
it never even happened. Learn the changes
then forget them. Keep on learning and re-
learning them. Down the steep and icy trail
through hail and storm. Take into eternity
my hail and farewell. We’re living in the
Anthropocene. Indestructible garbage.
Bulldozed landscape. Big Brother, dead father.
***** of the tiger.  Getting thought to twitch
the prosthetic. Mischievous, malevolent,
militant thistles. Or just plain polite
Americans, afraid to get shot.
Bump bump bump down the igneous rocks of life,
take the boulders two at a time down.

Old-timers bagging groceries, low social
security for the security guard.
Situps, pushups, fix yr brakes, fix yr leaks.
I know what’s gonna happen before it happens.
Polar bear mugs wino exhausted by that earlier,
irritating, constant need to survive.
Surrounded by history, neither seen nor heard
from again. And a deaf mute in a pear tree.
If it’s human, nothing’s wasted. Pasted
into a big wet kiss or posted
on the internet. Stolen from the pockets
of the dead, burgled from living memory.
Most art is dispensable, ***** and *****,
vaginal lubrication, prostate enlargement,
the unknown, anonymous man named me.

I’ve been wrong before and I may be wrong now.
Things fall apart. Or maybe not. Maybe
it’ll all hold together 10,000 years more
after all we’ve observed a galaxy born
13 billion years ago, a faint red blur,
and microbe partnerships on the ocean floor.
The good life’s all around us smiling
girls on bicycles, dogs on leashes,
equality is mandatory.
Sweet solitude and privacy, quiet
sitting spot, write a little, read a lot.
Tip generously, gratuitously,
like good luck. Haircut, cabride, dinnerout,
to eat a continent is not so strange.
Does Jack even exist? I doubt it but

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, aliens in the bleachers.
Japanese knotweed also known as kudzu.
The Chinese navy also known as t’ai chi.
Water shortages. War and wildfire.
What you’re scared of and what you love. Contracts
and deliverables. Hate speech, fate.
Humor or ardor, I can’t decide.
Dad’s steel-toed boots. Leaves, flowers, fruits.
Things are said, mistakes are made. I’m driving
pontificating on geopolitics
when an archangel flies into the windshield!

Lost my timepiece, lost my metronome.
Well, music is a manufactured crisis.
Caloric restrictions, control your addictions,
desire to be famous, propensity for violence.
The profusion of species contents me.
Wilderness comes back strong as cactuses,
chestnuts, coral. No more missile crises.
Eat less, an empty belly’s holy.
Horselum, bridelum, ridelum,
into the fray! World order—not my problem.
Only meditation can save your soul,
should there be such a thing. There are actual people
half woman half man running past me
and dream people in movies half language
half light. Or they lie under polished stones
embossed with actual photos of themselves.

Learning who you actually are is difficult
as sitting still 10 minutes w/o a thought or want.
To get lucky you gotta be careful first.
Knowledge of death without dying =
early retirement. Counting your blessings,
a healthy activity. No solution
to death’s finality, and such a blessing
awaits me, too. If you’re suicidal
they call the cops. The audience is full of glee.
Watres pypyng hoot. Chinese characters. Quantum guesses.
Most failures, and most successes, are in our future.
I embrace wild roots and run through streets
with arm around my girl. Inmate #427443.
Poetry and surgery—they go together
like a horse and buggy. Cheerful as a flock
of chickadees. Looking for a lost horse,
I hear Appalachian Spring!

Look one way, from another come the heart’s
missed beats. Much better to look slowly,
labor for the success and happiness
of others, even the old and frayed.
Look it up. There is no death, just perfect rest.
Look more closely. It will be gone in a few days!
First entertain, then enlighten if you can.
Is it stress? Yes. Tired of death? It’s what it is.
Let’s play sports, have ***, live a wonderful life,
give generously. 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, alone.
No body, no soul. No mirror, no black hole.
No mission, no hero. No applause, no noise.
No experience, no nonsense. If words can
be arranged in any order can they be
of any use in foreign policy?

Disappointed, didn’t get what was wanted.
Forget me not, is that all I want?
A catbird account, a mockingbird account
and an owl account. Then, and only then,
nothing’s missing and nothing’s left over.
Jail or zen mountain monastery
hiphop artist hypnotist bebop trumpeter
unknown soldier black bear bad bladder
ice cold beer poker player wry Creator.
If not one way, then another. Otherwise
give me your 5-10 best hiphop artists. Can
they take the sting out of life like bluegrass, jazz?
Mimics, woodpeckers, sing-songers, hawks,
chippers and trillers, whistlers, name-sayers,
thrushes, owls and a dove, high pitchers,
wood warblers and a word-warbling wren.
Unusual vocalizations.

We have hope that everyone alive is
essential, consequential. The commonplace
and everyday is sanctified. Nothing else
special need be done but stay alive.
Don’t lose passport, don’t be late to airport.
Insects are pollinators, insects are us.
Romance without finance is a nuisance.
November, however, is sweet, sunshine
through bare trees, dry brown leaves companionably
visiting among the dead. When middle school lets out
at the periapsis of Earth’s orbit
that’s the face of joy. Each leaf out and Jack
in his boxers. If you run over a chipmunk,
a groundhog or a skunk, say a short prayer.
One can’t help being here, queynt.

I live in a state so blue there’s nothing I can do
to change man’s trajectory and if I could
what angle of re-entry or ascent
would I choose? Grace is what we get
no matter what. Come the tired end of day
Jack thinks why not waste time watching tv
but the next day he has a hangover
like Ernest Hemingway or **** Jagger.
Your soul is immortal. It exists outside
of time. It has no beginning and no end.
If you cannot accept this, forget it all,
do not even begin. It all goes into
the same church service and comes out babbling
for God to appear. The shorter the service
the better, less passion, more resistance. Joy
may outlast the holocaust. Get it while it lasts.

The material world is reality, my friend.
Reality is not always what we’re after.
I like Jack’s confidence, that working the problem
will result in better outcomes than guessing.
Confidence is the feeling you have
before you understand the situation.
A hawk hunting or just floating waiting
for inspiration, a heron rowing east,
an owl’s quiet hoot even simpler than
the pentatonic bamboo flute.
What’s not to like? Ice cream, yogurt, profit, tofu.
Mosquitoes this summer are relentless,
heat and humidity, merciless.
Ice will ice those little *******.
Killing time before it kills me. Ha ha.

Whatever forever. Poetry is plumbing
your unhappiness habit until you reach joy.
As I think of things to do I do them.
Thing by thing I get things done. I think
that’s how my father and his father did things, too.
“Away up high in the Sierry Petes
where the yeller pines grow tall, Ol’ Sandy Bob
an’ Buster Jig had a rodeer camp last fall.”
It is the older man’s responsibility
to protect, not as a hard-charging archangel,
Jack’s joints couldn’t stand it, or hero
but as a rational participant,
cool, caring and completely zeroed in.
Culture or religion is an answer to
the problem of what to do and why do it
when your cancer makes poetry from
losing the argument with yourself.

To die spiritually in the hot sun
and the body go on climbing, haunted,
hunted, nature’s intelligent partner.
People are the element I live in, or else.
Call for the elevator. Wait for the el.
Snow on the Sonoran, each saguaro
wearing a white yarmulke. Creosote
smell as snow melts, ocotillo buds out.
Man needs help from every creature born.
The blackbird contains death but it’s bigger than death.
It’s more like God but an ironical god.
Smaller and funnier than God, impossible
to regard directly, gotta look sideways,
aim binoculars left, right, up, down—
missing every time. There’s nothing you wish for
that won’t be yours if you stay alive.

I, too, dislike poems.
I’ve tried runes (and rampikes)
but that’s affected
rather than merely effete.
So I call them
figments.
When people query
What do you write?
at a barbecue or birthday party
I say soliloquies,

fractals,
fragments.
Self-similarities,
singulariti­es,
sculptures (scriptures), geometric shapes and series,
three dimensional triangles, spheres
and differential equations,
fractured fairy tales,
Rocky and Bullwinkle,
****** impactions.

On the other hand,
bits, bots, bytes
remnants, scrap, earth
gobs of phlegm in grains of sand,
shards of glass in a slice of hell,
hunks and clumps, curds and whey, sleet and pain, slap in the face
sub-atomic particles, cell organelles,
chunks of energy, cookie crumbs,
rusty trucks stuck in mud, dustings for ghosts,
just plain dumb luck, rocks, concrete, but not tweets.

I spoke with two people at the party Saturday.
A young police officer, short-haired, fit,
chiseled face who had two young children.
He felt constrained by the law, without discretion
to question mopes (perps) aggressively
or to let go those who were obviously no threat.
Even at a family function he seemed straight-backed, correct,
devoted to his role as our protector (and his children’s)
yet I thought perhaps too deeply in debt, indentured
to the rules and laws of legislators and destined
to be disappointed (or worse). I thought his courage
and devotion (to whom or what?) would surely
be poorly repaid and that this lesson
was necessary to ready him with wisdom
for death or further living. I worried like a brother
about the unpredictable dangers, even terrors,
he must daily face, and the pleasure he takes in facing them.
How will he return to the fragility of family,
of the soul alone, after wielding the force
of the state, the blind, combined will of us all?

Next a business exec, retired from a well known
global investment firm. At first we talked about
the lush beauty of the northeast compared to the arid west
(although he loves every inch of the west, too).
Then somehow we got beyond light conversation
when he complained about the perceived decline in values
for instance how the Ten Commandments can’t be publicly
displayed. He said we can all agree on God
but I said I have a mechanistic view of the universe
(although the unknowable always sits just out of reach
of the known). I told him my dad’s theory of reincarnation,
a good man and a corporate seeker of God also, whose shoes
I could never fill unless I swore belief in a supreme being.
No hard feelings. Then he told me the story
of his dying friend, an atheist, not even a deist
like the founding fathers, who opened his eyes for the last time
to correct the exec’s misperception that now he’d meet his maker.
Having exceeded the bounds of acceptable conversation
I went looking for my children. Nothing more to question.