I am a tree in Fall.
I stand still and watch my memories change
Color in the cool weather.

I feel them
Growing weaker
And weaker.

I begin to forget them
As they shrivel up,
Detach and are whisked away by the wind.

Their fate lies crushed under thick boots, once
Dancing like frogs in the luminous headlights
Across the ancient highway.

Forgotten.
No longer pestiferous in their existence,
floating on like abandoned enigmas.

Odious infernal vagabonds, tramps  
Camping outside the windows of my mind
Parading pitiful parasites.

Praying away they are swept
Like a room unkempt
At least lock the door so to forget.

The wind remembers.

Carrying their corpses to the world unknown
Ambiguity in promised eternal rest
Frondescent purgatory.

The wind, leaning in close
To hear their last words
Icy dread bequeathing an autumn chill.

She laid them down morosely,
Kissing their forehead,
Quickly turning on its way.

The leaves struggled to follow their stricken vessel,
Tossing and turning in its wake
But they were already forgotten.

By the boots, the wind,
the lights, the highway,
And I.

I look forward to the days of frozen landscapes,
Anonymity in the wake of omitted identity
Superseding a fragile existence.

Closing my eyes I shudder
As the wind seeks to rectify me
Into the uninterrupted blank slate.

A prepared cringe, a response
To impending sobbing at my feet,
Antiquities now quite bothersome.

Like a lost child,
They beg to be cooed and nurtured,
Loved and cherished.

I continue to look ahead,
Ignoring their presence like vexing strangers.
I hear their souls cry out in anguish

As they are tossed by the unwary wind
Bashed into rancorous rocks
Drowned in the rapacious rivers

Crunched under bellicose boots
Burned with their brothers and sisters
Stabbed, scattered,

Chewed and vilely spit out
By the grating teeth of a ravenous
And frightening creature,

Held on a wooden leash by a pair of coarse hands
That float above the thick boots;
They sift between its sharpened fangs.

The days grow colder.
Histories are soon forgotten,
As time begins to slow.

Shedding any remaining sense of self
I am at peace with my surroundings
I close my eyes and take deeper breaths.

The wind's frigid breath fills my lungs
My chest, my stomach;
It resonates through my body

Down to my feet so entrenched in the earth
And up through my outstretched arms
To the tips of my icy fingers.

As I begin to freeze over
I feel that I am about to take
My last breath.

I draw in the cool air around me;
It fills me.
I hold it in.

I am growing still.
There is nothing to hold me back
No past to regret.

There is no present to seek
No journey or quest
No first step or new chapter.

There is no future
For the moment
For time is standing still.

With my eyes closed,
With my last breath held,
The wind and time envelop me.

In their arctic clutch
I succumb to the vast white emptiness
With joy and peace

In my heart.
Time has stood still
And I am asleep.

Lift above. Lift carefully.
What is under may come undone
if your hands are unsteady.
Sure to become gone wisps, a pungent spoor
for whipping your head around
but never a surprise when it returns
in a subway conversation with your friend
all drunkenness and perception
before coming home to die on your bed
throwing up hell from inside you
acid and convulsions
remembering what animal you are
that something can subside and something else
can emerge
thoughtless
truer than your certainty.

For isn’t true now
the clammy skin you’ve questioned?
True now the ribs of your throat
writhing like Amazon leaves?
Truer still
your biology abstract? You?
Animal living by nature?
Which means not without you, means just
relinquishing
everything to what is
before having become or going to be.

Such as the time of day
the sky knows it’s dying.
Fountains an orange-red frondescence
that won’t last at all, half-hour at most,
yet which, in that pale existence,
manages as if to turn itself inside-out
as if younger, as if expressing repressed
ecstasy
in the being unknown
before upheaval—the saturation
of openness by color becoming
a moment in blandness worthwhile.

A pause to hear
your legs dangling over nothing.

And a phoenix sky, falling
this very Sunday
when not doing much
became so much
and now
somebody’s lit the sky again, the dusk
feeling a blooming
washing the streets and rooftops
in a new canary dawning

new light              also darkening
but only                as if only

a veil spun of bird wings
is lifting above
and carefully over
what is dying.

Everything on this gelid morning speaks only dead languages.
Change your mind. Consider it a beguilingly blank canvas.
Slather it with the random pigments of your imagination.
Go for a stroll and practice random acts of sadistic charity.
Inhale the exquisite frondescence of naked branches.
Focus your neurons on everything you have forgotten.
******* incessantly to Mozart's Requiem. Honor his memory.
Unleash your nukes. Annihilate Canada. Destroy winter for good.
Make your lover a garland of cassowary feathers. Impress her.
Concentrate on growing horrifically profuse ***** hair.
Study the nonexistent texts of forgotten Uzbecki ascetics.
Raise fearsome armies of rabid Chinese lawn gnomes. Attack.
Try to knit String Theory while contemplating theoretical macramé.
Drink cider vinegar to defuse the carcinogenic dangers of politics.
Attempt to complete a peace treaty with gravity. Concede nothing.
Build a launch pad. Hurl rusting Ramblers into low earth orbit.
Collect ingredients. Home brew ******, absinthe and aphrodisiacs.
Test drive a luxury submarine in your neighbor's swimming pool.
Smash the endless contemporary Conga Line of Dumb. Think about it.
Surrender to uncommon sense for a change. Avoid the ordinary.
Give peace a chance. Endless war has left it lonely and depressed.
Admit that everyone is well and truly ******. Relax. Breathe.
Proclaim the advent of the poetry of the apocalypse,
but take care not to write any of it down yet. Go slowly.
Tomorrow is another day to be filled. Keep some options open.

Exampli gratia:

Here, in the sun, looking straight forward over the green lawn onto the bacciferous frondescence
The space between the building where psychopathology was taught and the building where our intelligence was tested
– buildings made unsafe and marred and subjected to presence –
Here, I just am; there is no absence
As far as my eyes can see, the “where” is here and the “when” is now and I am alone, listening in to today

A bee flies by and draws my eye to the peripheral timescape
Inside the dark window to the left we sit in silence and wait for a pre-school class to walk past so we can continue a lesson that ended a year ago
Behind me looms the auditorium where we partook in curiosity
Beyond this greenth, you own the space
But on this bench, there is no absence
Here, I can breathe, lone as I am