Before Deadline

tasks define hours define day
sunny after rain light change
meals the clock Paris weather
start finish to be continuous
this follows before deadline
after everything else is done
fills with meaning I missed
until I made the token effort
so it goes again as if always
the same as it never really is

Pitch In

reading I am somewhere someone else
events transcend my efforts to just live
I need to pitch in with the garden get
this place together before it's too late
if it isn't already no don't think that

it's hours earlier than it feels 10:22
do I dare go to bed anything is O.K.
nobody watching momentary local
peace we all deserve encourages free
improvisation of appropriate acts

Open Wide

barely existing beyond the body
let the world go on by passing
I'm not missing anything mind
already open wide fully worked
that's all there is as far as it goes

time stops and may not restart
I wouldn't mind if it didn't no
kicks or pricks if you don't tell
on me I'll never know whether
weather the mood determinant

Creeping Up

a short break from myself refreshes
freely blossoming manifest friends
displaying their usual personalities

if I had gone I would be submerged
instead I have to entertain myself
after the others went home alone

less of a problem than one imagined
having finished "Travesties" played
Beethoven creeping up on bedtime

High Wheat

happy dad squirming with energy
pulses echo exertion in the wet
forest none but us and one giant
footprint in the slippery mud

doing as a vehicle for being in
the car exploring high wheat soft
green flowing through the day
confident in each other's love

Personal Space

I thought I had said something
something on my mind someone
coming over for some reason I
wouldn't even try to construe it
don't matter he said but it must
have meant more than that so I
insisted but it was nothing more
than another misunderstanding

this the story I intended to tell
parsing it swiftly as the words
led forward revealing everything
I wanted to say original intention
the last person I expected to see
told it to me to freely repeat or
reproduce like house flies ready
to rudely violate personal space

What Happens

one minute I'm talking to Jerome Robbins
telling him how much I love his work
and the next well you know what happens
he doesn't remember who I am and he should
we shared a boyfriend for a little while
but famous people have more to remember
everybody wanting something from them
while hardly anybody wants anything from me

Where We Are

we were never young I was old
at nine perfect at seventeen fell
apart at eighteen and twenty am
only now who I was becoming

npr is seriously middle-brow and
puts me in my place Jonas Mekas
quite right "the middle is always
boring" and this is where we are

High Time

good the general war is revoked
can we have fun again be young
and fools again thanks I'll pass

still I'm glad and high time for it
too many years of wrong footing
not who we ought to want to be

can we at least return to normal
natural disasters bad enough no
need to make trouble will come

Perfect Moment

no one to balance against
perfect moment to realize
continuity one assumes is
impermanent does go on
then you lose everything

you don't have it has you
defined repetition groovy
if you think of it eternity
passing renewed in other
segments the same span

What Now

I don't have to decide anything I'm
programmed self-motivated disciplined
how true but what a joke and what now
when half the system is out of town
ten days like forever in advance what
changes nothing everything adapted
perfectly my habits shaped to presence
turn on more lights keep on existing

Go There

sleep when sleep
not stalled half
deciding whether
digging in deep

go there quickly
or slowly just go
you will dream
awake refreshed

wake when wake
new to this day
feeling this moment
making it good

Without Regret

Mozart finishes the moment without regret
nor I but how can I share his sense of fun
if this isn't frivolous I don't know what is
and yet the highest art a pinnacle of serious

what do we truly care about but our children
not even each other mortal even ourselves
developed countries declining toward collapse
if we don't get there first we will be sorry

not for ourselves or Mozart but the fun we had
playing when we remembered not to work
too much or all the time do a little something
every day and the great monuments are made

Way Out

no further plans is this
an alarming vacuum my
theatre craving flagged
read watch movies play
music ping-pong when
someone to play with

supreme commander
of myself crazed with
indecision aren't we
all blundering badly
stuck no good way
out of Afghanistan

Sweet Scent

pleasure in part of the body not to be
mentioned and others too numerous
fingers through keyboards ears hear
bird song eyes flowers reading art
mind as well involved in all these
skin in water muscles movement it
does go on sweet scent of the baby
proves natural best of all experience

More Real

"I don't want anything to change. I want everything to be this way and for nothing more to happen." —Michael McClure, "The Adept"

forgotten dreams linger as empty
memories voids where something
should be but isn't despite wakeful
"hours" rehearsing composing a
narrative embodied with feelings
not to be denied more real than
history every day more bad news
I prefer them to be lucid with me
figuring out what's really going on

Easy Eating

more feeling than memory a bird
calling from the topmost branch
a voice from a crowded stage hid
behind bright ideas in forbidden
dream utterance speak to no one
unless called then rise occasions
report our less admirable results
limit understanding further war
supposed intentions declassified
too late alarms identify new day
old errors coded for easy eating

Too Fat

what's happening one brown chicken
limping the other falling over on her
face feathers ragged let me pick her up

to Falstaff a chicken is cooked juicy
he's been mocked he's getting too fat
but still has his whole sense of fun

Fresh Viewers

throngs of children multiply screams is anything
wrong in this picture I am silent and withdrawn

irises grouped by color invite inspection picking
for different rooms where fresh viewers are few

opera elaborate as any project to make changes
budget rehearsal schedule all must be perfected

then who knows how well things go if you care
I will be there thinking how to do better always

Hot Water

cottonwoods' fluffy catkins describe air's
eddies make visible unevenness fluidity

floating in the last horizontal sunlight
enrapt dramatically slow like seasons

my feet in hot water not a metaphor
soothing no one wants scraggy nails

Now Then

fragmentary memory Taylor Mead
Lanford Wilson whom do we know
how we figure in each other's lives
now then what might have a future
or could have happened but didn't

Toooooo Boring

I only want to feel O.K.
is that toooooo boring
am I missing something
critical thinking seized
up from disuse but I was
largely faking it even then

dizziness dementedness
swooning onto the floor
ecstatically Mahlerized
is all beyond me now I'd
rather be calmly active
doing what I do in peace

Immoral and Illegal

solitary confinement is torture
torture is immoral and illegal

detention is stealing a life
Guantanamo shames us all

end solitary confinement
free all political prisoners

Inevitable Cheese

"no one I know has ever been
cremated" inevitable cheese
no curtain at Carnegie Hall
no page-turner at recitals
no fortissimo in J. S. Bach

even what we know seldom
correct despite experience
usually trimmed to fit un-
knowing alterations make
any good story unreliable

Old Bach

listen to this you will understand
everything comes from the heart

can you do it probably not no one
else can Michelangeli still rules

he is in my ears inside my skull
old Bach transformed immediate

Pressing Tasks

revelry pointless I know it's spring
crowd into rooms all talk at once

good time walking down the road
admire day say hello to neighbors

home comfort chickens watering
cats flowers dishes pressing tasks

Too Real

nothing to offer but personal truth
too light weighed against the world

too real to bear lightly illuminated
losing everything including myself

thought can't trump feeling arises
defiant sinking without new goals

running slower heavy news past
imagine what I believed possible

Bad Nights

bed dread inexorable gravity
arise at five-five too thinking
dad bad nights semiparalytic
last refuge let him down hard

cheery in the early light stew
rhubarb though old goodness
avails less anticipated flavors
making eating highlight days

morning comes eventually to
think imagine mother asleep
comfort illusion erase time's
arrow creeping toward release

Don't Ask

don't ask if you
want to know tell
everything no one
cares anymore