Ice Wine

As the light withdraws, I concentrate
on summer, other days, warm memories,
distilling them into clusters of grapes
glistening with frost, like those dark globes,
intentionally left unharvested,

still clinging to the vines. I wonder if
it might be time to let the cold be cold,
and let that sweetness fill my heart also.
I’m no expert in hearts, but I feel
winter might work its magic on me, too.

A Haunted House

A skull’s an awful place to find yourself

alone: it’s dark, and damp, and cramped, a-crawl

with thoughts, like insects, busy all the time.

The only time light gets inside is when

the bone is cracked: say, by an accident,

or surgery, or violent attack.

There is this strange impression created by

the eyes—a world outside the cranium.

But this is background noise, the buzz of flies:

a cloud of doubts rubbing hairy hands

together, looking forward to a meal

more substantial than your mind. More real.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Poor Fool

“Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and thou no breath at all?”

—King Lear

 

Heaven was just the place for him to go.

He never understood this world. You know,

We would discuss it over marmalade—

Those violent forces—how the world was made.

He would take soldiers—strips of buttered toast—

And dip them in his egg, completely lost.

Most considered him a child—a half-wit.

Like any parent, my poor heart was split.

 

His gags were creaky as an outhouse door,

And yet I loved him—loved him to the core.

He turned the girls to jelly. In his eye,

There twinkled something wild in black tie

Which frightened my officials, children, and dogs.

He painted funny faces in the fogs

Which rolled in like thunder from the sea

Those nights we kept each other company.

 

He tested my love constantly. He’d twist

My heart right into knots—without a sweat—

One drop of effort. For some reason I

Don’t fully comprehend, he teased me, “Why

Are you so melancholy, Lord—so blue?”

He pinged me with a pebble from his shoe,

His face a mask of innocence. Of course,

I think he knew he would wind up a corpse.

 

I hanged the lad in public to remind

The peoples of the Earth that God had died.

They stared at him like vegetables. The few

Who cried for Mercy I hanged twice. Like you,

I wished his last remarks had shown more flair,

A little bravery. Jerked in the air,

He gargled, “Jesus,” and choked. His final joke,

One word, dissovling in the sky, like smoke.

 

My Semester Abroad

Do you mind if I steal a fry?

I can’t believe you hated France.

Marie was a monster, I know, but I

Met Marcel there at a dance.

The lad was clad in the cutest suit

Created by God—pure Gaultier.

Nothing naughty, you know, or rude,

Just a smile and black beret.

He called me his ‘little cabbage head,’

Although I was dressed as a sailor.

It was electric when we kissed,

Sur la Tour Eiffel—the elevator.

I was a student in Paris that spring,

Seeing how love and champagne

Affected American students.

My roommate threw up in the Seine,

Much to the merriment of Marcel.

“Americans are all the same:

So serious about your work.”

Marcel imagined life was a game.

The touch of his tongue felt like a dream,

So I said I was going to stay.

I would cable my mom for the money,

In Manhattan, the following day.

The war was in its infancy

Then. The news from everywhere grim.

We listened to the BBC

And watched the City of Lights grow dim.

The elevator halted. We

Poked our noses through the cage:

Not even night was visible.

Nothing. Rien. This ghostly image

Pleaded with me to spend a week

Together on the Côte d’Azur,

Sipping sangria, and skipping classes.

He knew a Hôtel, very secure—

The Mirage, I think. It was pink—

About a stone’s throw from the beach—

Across the street—the Rue de la Paix,

Or la Rue. Perhaps the porch was peach…

Well, all I recall is that Tower,

And Marcel moaning in my embrace.

When Hitler restored the power, I

Wiped his lipstick off my face.

Charon's Complaint

Let’s look at today’s numbers: 155
thousand across, out of a potential
6 billion customers. Plus one roundtrip.
That’s you. That’s pocket change,
proportionally speaking. See,
business isn’t what it used to be.
Nothing compared to what
I used to earn back in the good old days
of smallpox, plague, diphtheria,
puerperal fever, septicemia—when
spears and swords were all the rage.
The Bronze Age. Homer was quite kind to me.
His doctors never washed their hands,
or bloody instruments, but moved
from gut wound to gut wound like the Fates,
up to their elbows in intestines,
endlessly stitching things
shut. A hush surrounded death
back then. Customs were respected.
A coin deposited beneath
the tongue, or two coins covering the eyes,
these little gestures meant something. That’s
how Alexander came to me, and Caesar, and
countless others I could name.
I never forget a courteous face.
These were the decencies the family
attempted to observe even if
no money could be found. For me,
the thought always counts. I’m not greedy.
I’m not unsympathetic. But
I do have a staff to support. Liability
insurance. Lawyers. Poets
and children under twelve pay half.
Pregnant women and infants
ride free. They always will. But
at least Homer and friends made
the effort. You expect charity. Look.
Don’t take my hand. Just look
at these hideous blisters. See.
I worked my fingers to the bone
during the twentieth century:
The Somme, Verdun, Passchendaele,
The Influenza Epidemic,
Invasion of Manchuria,
Guernica, Nanking, The Blitz,
Buchenwald, Dresden, D-Day,
Hiroshima, Korea, the killing fields
of Cambodia, Rwanda. AIDS. The list
goes on. I don’t do charity work.
I’m not in business for my health,
you know. I slipped a disk
schlepping those mystified millions
across the River Styx. For free.
Nobody expected that, but I did.
I did my bit at Dunkirk. Look.
All of that beautiful bullion
wasted on bulldozers and gasoline
to burn and bury bodies when
the slaughter organizers might
have left everything out in the rain
to rot; or invested in a few clean
shovels, and passed them around,
give everyone a few corpses to cover—
to be recycled, so to speak. Well,
there were a few incidents like that
during the Second World War.
In glades of evergreens. It was good for
trees in Russia, perhaps. It was
a great idea that never took off.
Most everything went into weapons
research: H-Bombs and ICBMs.
A dollar here and there for a vaccine.
For polio. A drop in the bucket, maybe,
for you. But not for me. It seems
a waste of time and money. Look
at the twentieth century. With all of those
poor people scheduled to die
anyway, H-Bombs sort of make sense.
Can you explain to me what was
the point of a polio vaccine?

Fish Eyes

Laid out neatly for sale—beneath a scale
turning in the breeze—Spanish mackerel
float nowhere on a bed of Styrofoam
in Chinatown, kept fresh with cubes of ice.
A strange light shimmers in their golden

eyes. These mackerel don’t seem to care
if anybody buys them, fries them, or enjoys them
later with a glass of chardonnay, or if
they’re destined to be carted off with unsold
smelts to fertilize a landfill in Ohio—

miles away from anything familiar—
decent theater, or the sea. Such peace
of mind, I envy. I have never seen
the dead appear so lovely. I might not
see anything more beautiful today.

Water

Nothing in our house leaks except for me.

Even these occasional effusions are only improvisations. I only admit to leakage publicly because there are actual photographs of me leaking and I feel that it is best to get these things all out in the open so as to forestall any scandal.

In one pornographic sequence of stills—safely sealed behind a sticky plastic sheet in the otherwise innocent pages of our family album—my mother catches me smiling. She sneaks up on me while she is holding a thin silver Kodak 110 instamatic with a flashcube situated on the top of a rotating black pillar like a lamp on a lighthouse.

I am a ship in distress. I am in a corner of the dining room trying not to make a nuisance of myself, as is my habit even today at parties. I stand in front of a long-necked orange glass vase that I desperately hope will be voluminous enough to contain the bubbly contents of my bursting bladder.

We are having another in that endless series of birthday celebrations for Kyle, it seems. The upstairs and downstairs bathrooms are both occupied by elderly relatives—who shall remain nameless, if not blameless.

These are the thoughts swimming through my head as I lie on our old olive carpet with my mouth turned toward the common wall, conversing with my grandmother on the other side.

My body trails down the stairs toward an oak and glass door, through its 12 panes, down a step, across the pink and maroon brick pattern linoleum lining the foyer, past an identical oak door in the open position, through a flimsy white aluminum nothing with a screen, down two cement stairs, past a penny on the walk, out the gate, and on into Eternity: the trunk of a golden Chevy Chevelle where my father is presently stowing 3 blue suitcases that ordinarily nest inside each other like a family of matryoshka dolls.

We are about to take an exciting trip to Letourneau Christian Camp on Canandaigua Lake—where I will almost drown.

My grandmother kneels in her dungarees dusting the baseboards with a chamois that I glimpse as a swirling shadow as it passes across her vent.

“Have you packed your bathing suit?”

“Yes.”

Hiss.

Burst of lemons.

“Did you pack Dolly?”

“No.”

Dolly will not be coming. Dolly is a small red monstrosity with an indestructible duck bill smile. She pretends she loves Spaghetti Os. I suspect she secretly shares mom’s belief that they smell like puke, but she is too polite to complain.

Dolly’s stomach was originally stuffed with shredded rags by a pair of small hands in South Korea. She has recently received a transfusion of synthetic cotton from my mother’s sewing basket. A triangular iron-on medical plaster (patch) covers her chest.

Dolly—like Vladimir Nabokov’s little heroine—has a few holes in her, where love has rubbed her raw. She would sink instantaneously if she tried to swim in Lake Canandaigua. She would be completely useless at a Christian Camp as a lifeguard. She is staying at home to guard the house.

My grandmother dissolves into her favorite hymn (‘We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the...’) when she moves off to scrub and disinfect the commode.

As much as I enjoy art and music for their own sake, if they do not attempt to communicate something beyond the walls of a concert hall or a museum, I see no point in the continued existence either one. Even at 5, I am sure that I felt the same way about writers.

I turn away from the vent, listening to her fading refrain.

Evidently she has closed the bathroom door.

I can barely make out ‘We shall come rejoicing…’ let alone the misty whisk of her toilet brush. I study the blankness of our ceiling for a moment, as if it were the Sistine Chapel redone with a fluffy peach colored roller soaked in mid-20th century gloom by Mark Rothko.

Luckily, I am disturbed in my contemplative reverie by the cheerful sound of a distinctly muted but full-throated flush. The door is opened. The singing resumes. Though at a greater distance than ever.

She must be in the bedroom, checking on Kyle.

With nobody to talk to, I refuse to defy gravity any longer and I slide down the stairs—bumpety-bumpety-bumpety, bump—stand up—and jump into a pair of my father’s favorite church shoes—white loafers—with little ornamental brass buckles set off to one side.

Is he still out there, I wonder?

Clomp, clomp, clomp.

Yes.

He seems to be finished packing the car.

Slam.

Clomp, clomp, clomp.

“Fine, a penny: stick it up.”

When I squat for that lost coin, I eclipse an ant war that is bleeding into the grass.

A million soldiers look up. The insects cannot help but notice I am wearing a pair of cut off jeans—hot pants, really—with a happy Choo-Choo chugging to the right across the left cheek of my caboose.

The Generals shake their antenna and conclude that I am an ant, too, but I am out of uniform and I am too big to be shot. I will only get bigger, too. It is best not to make an enemy of one so young.

Fighting resumes when I stand and the sun returns to the sky.

At the curb, dad extracts a steel, vinyl and foam cage designed for the use of children by a committee of concerned sadists.

“Why are you taking out the car seat?”

“Your brother isn’t coming to camp with us, babe. He’s too little.”

“I get the whole back to myself?”

Visions of oriental luxury. The Nile. Camels crawling along the distant ridge of a dune. Pillows stuffed with flamingo eiderdown. I step back and look at our Chevelle again. Cleopatra’s barge.

“No. You have to share the back seat.”

A German torpedo strikes the Lusitania.

“Who with?”

Tense violins.

“The new lifeguard. Brad.”

Brad, it turns out, is the man who saves me from drowning. He goes to another church, dad says. Lutheran. He is not a Baptist. He is a dirty blond.

Brad grabs my ankle. He throws his long arm around my chest, lifting me out of the lake. I am coughing and choking. The smooth stones I had been collecting with care all afternoon pour out of my pockets.

I had been so absorbed in looking for more purplish ones—the granite ones that turn chalky red when dry—I had walked out too far and fallen off a submerged ledge—into a sort of ditch—like the poet Dante.

Dante is dead, I am afraid. He may be in Heaven. He may be in Hell. I do not care where he is. There is no salvation for me or for anyone in Dante. Dante is useless as Dolly in these situations. The difference between Dante and Dolly is that she knows this—she knows her limitations. That is why I set her up with a shotgun to guard the house.

So much for poetry. So much for art.

What do we have left?

Well, Brad is here, certainly. And I am glad my dad is here, shaking a bit, paler than Brad, who seems to be a man made of ageless bronze. The water is a little shallower where my father shivers, but it is still deep enough to swim in. Dad couldn’t quite make it. Brad hands me over to him.

Mom is also here—somewhere.

She seems to be playing hide-and-seek along the horizon, behind all of those faces.

I am getting closer to her though.

I can hear her cry.

How Heavy

How heavy must a heart become
to measure beats in bits of lead?
How awful must the walls of home
appear to add some shotgun red?

How chilly must the bathroom tile
feel to find a razor your
last sympathetic friend? I will
not pretend I know. No more

chilly than the floor usually is.
Maybe no colder than this rain.
No heavier than a feather or a kiss.
There’s no good way to measure pain.

Hocus-Pocus

“Hocus-pocus, you’re a crocus!”
a sudden flash of purple said.
My thoughts must turn to Spring because
I carry dirt inside my head.

About Poets

Our words are nothing to live by:
You cannot drink a syllable,
Whatever your capacity.
We say that love will never die
Because the truth is terrible.
Time winks at our mendacity.

So, we tend to be soft-spoken.
We tell dirty jokes, we smile,
We see that no one cries alone.
For this, we may receive a token
For the Ferryman’s turnstile,
To pay for passage, when we’re gone.

Drama

Looked at from the street, Comedy and Tragedy are relatives, who—for reasons of economy—live together, side by side.

For now, all you really need to know about the characters depicted in the unfolding drama is that two families have been cast here by Fate. The set consists of a duplex dwelling that was converted from a carriage house early in the 20^th Century. Our family purchased their palace (It needs a little work. But you will love it.) in 1970, the year my brother was born. We live on the left, at number 139, my grandparents on the right, at 137.

On the right side, the audience will see a victory garden, less ambitious than the one tended by Mr. Crockett on PBS, perhaps, but full of treasures nevertheless: cucumbers, peppers, rhubarb, carrots, parsnips, tomatoes, onions, and chives. This is where I dug up a crusty dime minted in 1857.

Beside the garden, there is a pleasant patio full of potted plants sheltered by a large corrugated aluminum awning. Here, men with aquamarine anchors tattooed to their hairy forearms are invited to smoke—veterans of campaigns in the Pacific—exiting with a discrete cough through a side door.

They would never be left alone with their cigarettes, however. These men were always carefully attended by my grandfather. He would excuse himself from the living room like this:

“If all you gals are going to do is gossip, I’m going outside to smoke with Jim.”

“Francis, one of these days, I am going to hit you over the head,” my grandmother would hiss.

Francis was not a smoker himself, or a drinker, or a veteran anything, actually, except for my grandmother’s rolling pin, Chinese checkers and the vinyl chloride vapors of Goodyear. (Enlarged heart, flat feet, 4F. Sorry, son.) Still, he played the role of gracious host to perfection. He will succumb to cancer while I am holding his hand.

With that same hand, on a rickety wooden gardening table, beside the clean blade of a spade my grandmother used for transferring her plants to larger pots, he would habitually place a chipped ashtray decorated with tiny pink and purple pansies. On the reverse side, the glaze bore the legend, ‘Made In Occupied Japan.’

For some reason I could never fully fathom—maybe because he was more ornery than everyone else—the only visitor allowed to smoke in the house was my uncle John, a recently retired shoe salesman. When he insisted, nobody resisted.

When my grandmother tripped, running up the stairs, shouting, “Dad, Dad!” I smiled. When she was forced by grief to complete her journey by crawling on aching knees, bawling like a baby, I almost laughed. I had never seen my grandmother act like a child before. I thought my grandfather agreed. He stood—dentureless—in a pair of periwinkle pajama bottoms and a V-neck t-shirt on the second floor landing—trying to make sense of things.

He was getting ready for work. Third shift.

“Ma, Ma, what is it?”

He lifted her gently by her elbows from where she knelt. While I am sure it took only a few seconds, it seemed like an eternity had to pass before my grandmother could gather her wits together sufficiently to blurt out, “Oh, Francis, John is dead. He had a heart attack.” I had no idea what a heart attack was, but it sounded pretty serious to me, even worse than death.

Suddenly, I felt like crying, too.

In fact, I did cry. So did my brother. I think we were watching Jeopardy! when the phone rang. The tangy scent of fried liver and onions hung in the air. My grandmother was in the kitchen, singing something incomprehensibly lovely, as was her habit, when doing anything dull, like washing dishes.

We had no idea what was going on. Uncle John had never died before. Nobody in our family ever had died until that day—not to my knowledge. What are you supposed to do under such circumstances?

After my grandfather inserted his clean teeth—grimacing in the mirror, pressing a thumb against his upper plate, making sure it was sealed against his gums strongly enough to resist the forces of gravity and permit difficult conversations—he closed the door. I sat on the stairs. I heard a tap gushing into the sink. He emerged a few minutes later clad in a pair of dark slacks, a white shirt and a sea-gray acrylic sweater with a Greek meander design dancing up the sleeves. He smelled ever so faintly of Barbasol.

After making a few quick phone calls, my grandmother drifted off to her bedroom, sobbing again, selecting something suitable to wear to my Aunt’s. My grandfather tied my brother’s shoes while she took her turn in the bathroom.

He took us next door and explained the situation to my mother, before driving my grandmother to stay with her sister, Aunt Midge, and then on to work. He always kept an extra pair of work clothes in the trunk of his car.

As I had already eaten dinner, I rejected the trembling dish of goulash my hysterical mother offered to calm me down. My brother was not a liver fan, so he may have sampled some. That, I don’t remember.

You see, I was confused. I wanted an explanation. Unable to articulate my actual desires, I asked for a Windmill cookie instead. Only my grandfather ate those, of course, and he was backing down the driveway: we didn’t have any.

By way of a compromise, my mother peeled a Ho-Ho and placed it on a plate, still half-wrapped in tinfoil. I didn’t want a Ho-Ho. I was told to stop being a brat or go to bed. I opted for brattiness and went to bed. It was already after 8:00pm, anyway. I saw no reason to sit in the kitchen and sulk.

48 hours later, a prophylactic whisper in the funeral home foyer informed me that my favorite uncle had passed away quietly on his porch, napping beneath The North Tonawanda News, after eating fish and chips at Arthur Treacher’s.

I may not like liars, but I have always admired a lie told with élan. This is part of the appeal of fiction. My mother plucked a pen out of the air that seemed to be swinging rather too freely in space and time from a chain of brass BBs fixed to little a pulpit. She signed for all three of us: Kathleen, Eric and Kyle. She carefully laid the pen to rest in the shadowy valley between the pages of the Visitors Book before she led us to the casket.

My father was at work. He would be dropping by to sign the book and pay his respects to Reality later.

Ménage

Loneliness, insomnia and I—
The strangest bedfellows you’ll ever see—
Toss off our sheets together and we try
Our best to keep each other company.

We pick the blankets from the floor. We find
Some satisifaction studying the shade:
Bright diagonals dance up one blind
As Fred and Ginger danced across the stage.

Nothing calms our restless legs. We kick
Phantom spiders tickling prickly feet;
We rub our soles and wait; but we can’t trick
Our senses. These sticks generate no heat.

Or nothing like that warmth I remember
Reaching for—half-dreaming—fingers blue,
Frozen, teeth chattering, ribcage tender,
Where I received an elbow from you.

No Agenda

For Gavin

I’ve never asked for an agenda, dear,
only you—content to follow where
a moment leads: another moment, Mars,
an elephant tattoo, a rabbit hutch,
mosquitoes, Maui, mountains, sex,

love plain and simple. Still, I must confess,
each poem I compose for you, I die
a bit in writing—mingling my dust
with yours. There might be better ways to spend
my afternoons. But not eternity.

Strange Meeting

For Gavin

Would we have over-looked each other
in passing—pissing at a gym urinal,
or shopping for some carrots at the store?

What a stupid question. Here we are.
My dick is thicker, thanks to you. Just like
when I stood in Waterstone’s, pulled your book

off the shelf, ignoring all the others. Did
your orange cover catch my eye? Your spine?
Did something you say seize my scrotum, “You

had better take me home if you want these
back, boy.” I’ve no idea. I just paid
my money, took you home. A whim. That choice

has altered all of my tomorrows now.
Graying—about the age I am today—
I looked at your portrait twelve years ago—

new to me as an exotic newt. Cute.
I studied your expression and compared
dust jacket photo to the words inside—

looking for insight. Here’s what I learned:
your bartender is Trebor, you like Poles,
you shoot wild cats. You wrote an epitaph

that rhymes, just like John Gay. Yes, we might have
never met. We might have died a thousand ways
today. But here we are. Imagine that.

Cashew Nuts

For Gavin

Cold feet? Not on this flight.
Just small horns and cloven hooves,
as behooves a ghoul like me:
poet, runner, Nabokov lover,
Olympic class badminton champion
according the tale I told Wendi—
a fan—a Facebook buddy—who
told me you were digging up
dirt on Eric Thomas Norris. I
fed her the false badmintion story.
You believed it. Hah! Now,
hold on to your testicles while I
bat them. Badminton. Honestly.
You’re still a little brother, eyes
gigantic, blossoming with wonder.
What will I do with you? Before
you answer that poetically,
curse me out for impudence, please
remember that I am at JFK
about to catch a plane. I’m starving,
surrounded by stale sandwiches,
globs of gray humus, sun-flower
seeds and other tasteless treats.
You probably had a nice breakfast:
SPAM and eggs, toasted pineapple,
washed down with some exotic tea
which only grows in Borneo.
I see you there, in Paradise,
purple dressing gown, buttering
a spelt muffin with a machete—
A touch of Noel Coward’s ennui.
See how Heaven favors you?
The Gods have punished me. I
accidentally bit into a cashew
concealed inside a packet of
mixed nuts. I am in trouble now,
practically erupting into hives.
The last time I ate cashews, I went
into anaphylactic shock, nearly
died, when my blood pressure
Collapsed. Calm down. Relax.
I took one bite this time. Enough
to almost kill me, just enough
to tighten up my throat—to give
my voice the necessary texture—
depth of tone—so you receive
a spectacular blow-job later.

The Dance of Shiva

Before this world was formed, I played a role
Hitherto reserved only for darkness:
I was the void in which you poured your soul.

I am the first, the last, the beautiful
Truth—Keats’s amphora—I shall outlast
All other vessels. Nothing, that’s my role

In the great cosmic drama. I’m the whole
Of time itself set spinning by your presence.
I was the void in which you poured your soul

So long ago—before a god could hold
A paltry thing like man and love him as
His equal. Let’s give warmth a larger role

In this new universe. Space was so cold,
So lifeless, dark and empty in the past.
I was the void in which you poured your soul—

The mouth, the Milky Way, the gloryhole—
Ten thousand other gods have used. But that’s
The past. I am nothing again: my role
Tonight is infinite. Come fill my soul.

Mata Hari

Mon cher—forgive me if I am a little vague on dates,
but by the time I lay back on my pillow, I was already welcoming our appointed hour:
the shabby shows of justice, the firing squads, disgrace—death—these tedious old fools
no longer concern me. I accept their flowers with grace, but their predictable, impotent, palsied advances I dismiss.

What is this music
Stuck in my head
And who is this beauty,
The lady in red?

Consider this, my dear, while you’re inspecting my—how delicately can I put this—my credentials.
Invite the doctors in. As witnesses. I am not the green, unsifted girl I used to be.
If the cold hand of science—the sight of pale thighs in a speculum—sent shivers down her spine,
be kind enough to note that this reflex belongs to the past, not to me.

Perhaps it’s the whiskey
Just gone to my head.
She looks like this girl
I once took to bed.

Come to my dressing room after the performance. I shall leave instructions.
All will be arranged: my hair, the divan, and luxurious sensations—like limitless power.
Come to the stage door and knock three times. The porter, Patrice, will admit you.
Marie will take your coat and hat. The nation is waiting, cherie. You have

but to knock,
and enter.
I shall be there.

Her lips were sweet as honey,
Her eyes looked more like lead:
As icy as Pluto, so
Distant, dark, and dead.

Family Reunion

For J.N.

My dad is going deaf. He always was
A little hard of hearing. A drillpress
Drilling through your ears, some hearing loss
Is normal. “Can I help?” “Sure, I guess.”

My father picks up my backpack. His hands,
Though just as large as I remember them,
Seem, somehow, different. Softer. He stands
Stooped. Semi-retired. Sixty-seven

Now. I’ve flown home for a funeral.
When I last saw him he was forty-five,
So untalkative, so uncomfortable
With what I said. Seeing him alive,

Trying so hard, leaves me wondering
How I can help him carry that huge thing.

Death

For you and I, it’s theoretical
Right now. I’m writing, you are reading this.
Unless I’m much mistaken. Possible—
But still—highly unlikely. I exist,

You exist, this ink exists, we are
A product of the squiggles on this page.
This is a Birth Certificate. Bizzare
As that sounds, there it is. Go and rage

Against me down at City Hall, go change
Your name, call in the army or police:
I tell the truth. If you find it strange,
Your opinion doesn’t matter in the least.

I might have written Death Certificate
Up there. I gave you life. Enjoy it.

When I Watch The Living Meet

Not much sleep last night. When I did manage to shut my eyes for a few minutes of agitated REM, I dreamt I was 20 again, and I was living inside A Shropshire Lad, by A.E. Housman.

This poem kept resounding in my head:


XII. When I watch the living meet


WHEN I watch the living meet,
And the moving pageant file
Warm and breathing through the street
Where I lodge a little while,

If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong,
Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.

In the nation that is not
Nothing stands that stood before;
There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;

Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.