Laid now on his smooth bed
For the last time, watching dully
Through heavy eyelids the day's colour
Widow the sky, what can he say
Worthy of record, the books all open,
Pens ready, the faces, sad,
Waiting gravely for the tired lips
To move once -- what can he say?

His tongue wrestles to force one word
Past the thick phlegm; no speech, no phrases
For the day's news, just the one word ‘sorry';
Sorry for the lies, for the long failure
In the poet's war; that he preferred
The easier rhythms of the heart
To the mind's scansion; that now he dies
Intestate, having nothing to leave
But a few songs, cold as stones
In the thin hands that asked for bread.

Will died intestate,  
which mattered little because
he had even less

a lake house
the county said wasn't worth
back taxes or a bulldozer's
brutish time

but they razed it
confiscated his truck
which was older than time when
I said I couldn't pay
his final debt

the pine box and small plot
came to two weeks' wages,
a headstone maybe three

they left his boat,
a tinny vessel painted with rust
but I knew I could trust it was hole free,
buoyed to his dead pier, the day
he passed

I took it to his
favorite cove, where bass
would hop into
his lap

for half a day, maybe more,
I fished but came back to shore
without anything
for my hours

save a solitary
memory of a time Will told me
ALL he had would one day be mine,
except his way with fine fishes
that eluded my drifting line
and hapless hook

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.

my cell phone, my Kindle, my desktop
if I die intestate?

what will willfully addresses the solemn secrets of silicon?

(and woe be to me if my last call is a wrong number, my last Facebook entry an unanswered political jab)

will anybody bother to delete my files
after I am deleted?

or is that the new immortality--for apoptosis does not apply to photons,
electrons and "lol"s

I bet when limbo, heaven and hell were conceived, not a soul would have believed, a hard drive in the sky would one day keep us all alive, indefinitely...

I thought vulnerability was for the weak.
Even when I let you inside my thoughts
I've had both hands on your steering wheel.
I swerve hard left turns on the difficult memories,
dodging the on coming traffic of blatant truths.
My minds is a pile up on intestate 98
but I have you on the detour route
to Mr. Nice Guy lane on the road of "life is okay".
The next stop is "I am happy" street on the corner
of "you will be all right" avenue and "I don't care" lane.
But these fabricated roads are painted over signs
that trick you into believing that I am truly "fine".
But all the cars have crashed and burned
and now you know the truth.

poise zen dystopian rant

This prognosticator doth predict
potential based at current rate
sinister debacle that will
instantaneously annihilate,
United States storied republic,
which alarming horror
points to instantaneous annihilation
of America the beautiful;
(ohm my dog) turbulent
endemic chaotic spate

within human race poised to strike
doom and generate
shock tummy once
amp pull goldenlocks,
now revealing a shiny baldpate
erratic behavior attendant prescient
intimations presage apocalyptic fate
while current commander in chief
didst unwittingly generate,
and sow the seeds of anarchy sparking

global conflagration that will create
instantaneous prime evil
total mortal kombat,
cuz "FAKE" mandate
issued, when Trump went ballistic
loose sing rockets red glare,
when pressing hot button to demonstrate
thermonuclear supremacy,
(albeit a moot point),
would render superfluous need to late

to draft intestate
last (or perchance first, second,
third...) will and testament, tete a tete
perhaps minuscule (nee infinitesimal) bomb
turns out a dud (Amazon, Toys "R" Us
Walmart, or  store
of choice reject) aye narrate
finding Don irate
(blaming "crooked Hillary," democrats,
gumby...yours truly...)

the list goes on, thus no need to iterate,
thus a sudden religious fervor gripped
the wide webbed world
attributing why weapons did not actuate
which found pontiff in high demand
in an attempt to accommodate
frenzied zeal attributing aborted blitzkrieg
to divine intervention with bajillion
talking heads airing where to dedicate
material trappings to indigent, great

full not dead, plus those petty
criminals rightly or wrongly,
the strong arm of
lanced law did incarcerate
bowed down on daily and nightly basis
exploding huzzahs every
human did *******
"not prematurely," where
all walks of life did integrate,
a spontaneous international

utopian revelation awoke
with linkedin diversity to promulgate
protecting the planet took precedence
yea right Matthew Scott - dear mate
only in the context of
this poem I did create
on December twenty third
two thousand eighteen,
and now hemming and hawing
CANNOT wait,

thus conscientious, fractious, and incautious,
members of the electorate
must not shirk their role
as arbiters of life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness
obliging themselves obeisance
to the fifteenth amendment
of the United States Constitution,
which prohibits the federal government
and each state from denying

or abridging a citizen's right to vote
"on account of race, color,
or previous condition of servitude,"
when said legal resolution
ratified on February 3, 1870,
as the third and last
of the Reconstruction Amendments
cuz the wise ghost of Abraham Lincoln
did not procrastinate.