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

Poem

she gave less as we went on
both afraid to have our gifts
rejected or barely noticed I
didn't lead she didn't follow
or want to go anywhere it's
not her fault or mine but
there you are now it's over
not to be revised or clearly
grasp what I might have
done to make it better

Myself

We are doomed to act our self out in the physical world at all times and especially when alone. Other people will readily project some existing meme onto you, which you are free to inhabit and interpret without adding any particular content of your own. It is easy to make this comfortable bargain, hard and risky to break out of it, although we all have selves distinct from this sociability, if we haven't denied, distorted, neglected, or forgotten them. The dining room is full of memes at tables of four. You watch yourself from the inside while maintaining a suitable outside, in company and by yourself, beside yourself. You project perhaps an idiosyncratic idea of the prototype but not an entirely separate existence. One other person can make you feel objective. It may be counterfactual, but solitude feels like being more authentically yourself, more "real," existing in time alone. That isn't the whole story though. With luck you are also othered, part of a larger reality, connected on the soul level with in a circle of love, if you have sensibly made yourself lovable and given others the love and attention we all need

Revision

 such a special private pleasure
changing one word to another
slightly better more particular exact
meaning elusively in flight
 
anything is game you win
or lose the knotted thread
balks at the needle stuck
with what you started with
 
becoming alien diversity
yourself in lieu of anyone
other actually present
in the all-white dining room
 
the poem never ends you
wander into another dream
where no words rule or care
what you wanted to intend

The Chair

powerful gravity in this ugly chair
bought in Santa Barbara decades ago
for a play I produced at the Lobero
I finally escaped from happiness into this funky

void it must be adding several stone 
I wish my penis was interested in masturbation
idly fondled between my thinning thighs
it lengthens in my fond familiar other hand
I slide loose skin up and down the shaft
how long has it been a week at least
on a day like this  what else is there to do
it feels good if I let it and why should I not
no love sex left so I'm on my own

sultry air smoky sky no one here I'm so bored I
almost fall asleep dick shriveling in my hand
what little lust remains has waned

the chair still holds me in its vinyl grip 

gravity never sleeps
 
8/20/23 4:30 p.m. (revised) 

 

 

Do Something

how he feels in the
in-between time when
nothing is happening
causes him some alarm
is it enough to remember
or anticipate something
interesting when he was
more alive less formed
for the last time weak
with age and completion
is anything wrong
do something he thinks
anything better than this
creeping homegrown
inertia and remorse

still there and so is he

A Reminder

 (for Julian)
 
though sounds like snow
not like cow which is thou
and plough and bough
or off as in cough
or puff as in rough and tough
and enough
though is like dough
and so is although

Nothing Changed

a huge fire on the other side of the mountains
smoke looms like a giant cloud
we go on living well
presuming to be happy
wind blowing the other way
nothing changed
not burned up yet

Not Writing

writing about not writing
not being the good man
accomplishing more
laughing loving sharing wise
instead of not writing
not knowing how
or who I am

Going Abroad

how's what going abroad again
old stonemasons built what we
could never imagine doing
 
that going requires less years
ago I tried to be obscure how can
you not grasp what I'm thinking
 
clarity first faces against light
can't be unseen by switching off
you need key strip for action
 
honey what's going on about now
threatened arrival expires date
of death is always a surprise
 
like candles on a cake whose
birthday this time remembered
in time for a virtual exchange

Morning Nap

 "their wings rag out with age"
could be a poem in itself a line
ringing with profound renown
 
I have to look it up again to
spell it right for our little time
where no one knows anymore
 
my wings fold for a morning
nap what else are shoulder
blades made to cut but time
 
a crow in the corner of my
eye refers to memories of
honeyed pleasure climes
 
flies away beyond the 
momentary frame green
with the rain so it be
 
the words give the wit you
give the falling full length
on the sofa of your youth

What We Do

 I summon her to dinner when it is on the table.
I throw out the empty milk containers she leaves on the counter.
I wash, dry, and fold our laundry and put it away.
I put the new roll of toilet paper on the spindle before she runs out.
I take out the trash and recycling.
I close the curtains in the evening and open them in the morning.
I converse.
I pay bills, manage the help, and keep it all going.
We do jigsaw puzzles together.
I buy more puzzles online.
I join her in the bedroom to read for a while before she goes to sleep.
I make the bed in the morning.
I cut our hair.
I put down the seat and the lid of the toilet.
I close the powder room door.
I turn off the light in her office when she isn't there.
I call the plumber.
I get things fixed.
I am ready on time. 
I wipe the kitchen and bathroom counters after use.
I wipe the table.
I make the shopping lists and try not to run out of anything.
I coil the hoses.
I sweep the porch.
I kiss her good night and we share a tender moment.
I say I love you.

Too Old

 they are boring him to death
how has it come to this
how can he possibly stand it
he is leaking away
this time will not be regained
 
can this revenge be just
could he be that bad
forget about being president
he's been famous
take his word for it it sucks
 
sit here in this ugly room

all day doing nothing
he can't even stand up and leave
"haggard and rumpled"
too old for any of this now

Wide Open

 a rainbow in the rear-view mirror
is better than none at all or ever
to remember or look at it again
you did it once at least repeatedly
chased sexy Edenic satisfactions
to prepare you for the final act
when nothing works or matters
as much or in the same old way
it's raining again the sun comes out
there it is arcing across the meadow
before my failing wide open eyes

Time for Lunch

 time's linearity is real
and so is imagined timelessness
the permanence of this moment
dissolved in the naming
 
degeneration not only macular
I can barely see enough to think
 
this is a bonus hour
Julian reading u postponed
allowing me an extra nap
extra window to absorb ideas
 
David Cole quotes Dostoevsky
I open a new document in Word
everything is proper or branded
i.e. seared into flesh forever
letters jump together into words
like iron filings over a magnet
just before it's time for lunch
 
time lurches on in ticks
and dashes for the toilet
we come together on a higher plane

What's Left

everything is resolved
then what
what's left to think about
or do
I'm happy
satisfied
worried about the world
but nothing I can do about that
except vote
which is not much
personally I'm done
reading the last books I can see
with waves of pleasure
loving my family and friends
gladly sharing our luck
while we can
one tiny infinite life
cosmic multiplicity

New Idea

 I want to be sincere
without being sappy
is that too much to ask
save the irony for later
or bid it fond goodbye
say what I say clearly
ambiguity is OK but
obscurity just lazy
trouble to speak truth
that's the new idea
a reason to revise