No Air

little moments of stall
I'm not moving so my wings
lose lift
as if time stopped
I do not in fact spin out
but pause hunched over
mind blank
before pushing myself erect
and going on

moving to another chair
everything is too much trouble now
how did this happen
just reaching to close the blind
means getting up turning around
kneeling painfully on the velvet seat
the reverse no easier
in my lap an overflowing sink
wings useless with no air

What Passes

discovered sleeping slumping at his screen the
poet finds his mind had wandered from what
he was reading in the East Coast liberal press
blurring into swimming letters refusing to cohere
as words and sentences and mean what they mean
to him, that he still can see enough to read and grasp
relevant revelatory formulations for his terminal time
goes on without him still wanting to make sense of it
the poet floats among possible insights into being
what he cannot cease to be alive or dead alert or what
passes for cognition amid general decline and falling
we continue to love and stay open to the great reveal

Context

nothing tomorrow except the usual
situation I think of giving it all up
again before it's too late again
why do I have to write my stories
even if people like them who cares
that we had lives they'll never know
context was all that made it matter

and that's I'mpossible to explain

Last Days

maybe I can wake up if I
try harder and drink more
water in the form of what
you will fail to identify
wars go on for years 
now like falling cards
as if chance cared less
than stupid governments
putting us back to bed
to sleep to dream last
days of open hearts
wondering what to do
to make us all feel better

The Doing

things that happen are not all
the things I do modeling self
as I see it emerge transformed
this is not Rimbaud speaking of
waking up smelly still stoned
this is the body conscious of gain
and loss that was never there
something else will not save me
from real made to order fantasy 
like a merciful anesthetic again
opening up heaven's overflow
sun pours in celestial clockwork
grinding away from inside out
ecstatic if understood right
as it happens I am the doing