AROUND THE BUSH

if time is running
out, and don't you
feel your heart dying
a little bit
with each beat --

if time is lost
to each memory
how the hell can we --

what i intend
what i need
what i am trying

to express --

breathing in
breathing out

cue laughter.
tread water.
we are all
placeholders.

BECAUSE

why so
small?

there is
no why

so

why
bother big?

or even
at all...

CHASE

oh god you were
so perfect.

oh wait
that was me.

i was trying to project
you, and you
were trying to see
through me.

just the very
shape of you,
oh god you were
so very.

and you are only
you because i
never caught you,
perfect because
i only thought you.

ACCEPTING

at first crying
at funerals
is equal parts
wonder and fear.

you stand in
awe, afraid
for your life
and what you learn of
how it works.

next you
might feel sad
for the departed and all
he will miss.

older, you
try on sadness
for those left
behind, nowhere
to put their left-
over love.

and finally you
begin to empty out,
feeling that long
enough is long
enough. and so you
feel good-

bye. you
really do.

REALLY CLUMSY STAB AT DETERMINISM AND DEPRAVITY

so sad
such a pity
so shitty

of course --

he smoked
drank
stank

derided God
invited Death
and so he left

why not

invoke fate
and celebrate?

DEPENDENT

at some point you wake up
if you are

lucky?

awake. a kind of
birth, really, as
you realize
you have been

lucky, yes
lucky

to live long enough
to see yourself
as a child
of children,

to become a father

lucky, yes
lucky

to feel
a part of something
whole and yet made up
of so many
dependent parts.

RETICENCE

times when you want to
just say it
only life
and her rules make you
hold back.

days when you try to
confront it
only fate
and her fools take you
elsewhere.

here's wishing
the scepter of doom
crashes down soon
off the mark.

here's hoping
the angel of death
shows up late
with the check.

MARRIED

you wake right
up, vaulting
from the bed with purpose.

i fall awake
slowly, rolling myself
back from sleep.

how do two sides
of the same bed
hold us in
such different ways?

UNCONSCIOUS

you are young,
you fall
in love with out-
laws, stay out
late and get up
later, never stop
to think of con-
sequences, only
of what comes
next
and with whom.

headaches come
and go. but
life lasts
long as you can
stay alive to
look back on it.

and when you can't
it's like woody allen
wrote: what is that
your business?

OLDER

when your young
idols have aged
into faded
hoarse players
and your own look
is mistook by many
as chicanery --
what are you
to do?

plug the head-
phones deeper
into your ears,
the better not
to hear.

RECKONING

thoughts are not real. yet
how you feel
is made of thinking
and more
thinking.

why does not real
make you feel?

there's a real cost
to your invisible
thoughts.

ALL OF US

(Poet's Note: Soundtrack: Satie's "Trois Gymnopedies: I," perfectly simple, heard in headphones...)

the dying's life
work should be
giving hope and comfort
to the living.

the living's dying
wish should be
that they loved
and were loved.

we are all of us
dying.

AND PROFILIN'

Poet's Note: Geez-o-Pete, I need something super-lite to counteract all the hand-wringing poems below. So:

Rolling old-school
inna big black Benz
with big black music
leaking from the speakers,
Sugar Hill and high-
top sneakers under
snazzy jeans
funkiest-ass forty-year-old
you ever seen.

ANTIDOTE

he who can
hold the darkness
best

may be

he who is
filled with levity
and zest.

RELAX

so easy to be
easy
about mortality

until the moment
you realize it is
reality.

PANIC

i can't
breathe
but i can
suffer
which means i can
breathe
which means all
this noise
is thinking
which is not
living.

LAMENT

you meant
torment
nights spent
sleepless
you went
aimless
misspent
shameless.

SCARY

the difference between
my body hurts
and is recovering
and my body hurts
and is dying
is the real pain.

my body hurts
is what is.
reality.
my body is dying
is what could be.
possibility.

SOLACE

as time runs
out there is
no rest --
no time
for stillness
and yet no
life without

pause.

as life fades
out there is
no meaning
coming --
just stillness
without need

or cause.

NEVER

maybe
if only
almost
sort of
nearly
possibly
someday...

no way.

GOING

why is it
only when I am speeding
above the earth,
my life,
the land,

passing
between places
that I can
slow down
well enough
to hear my heart
beating to feel my
being moving

to no
destination no
place no
where?

TILTING

hear it,
the sound of
your body living
and dying
in every moment.

life is a labor --

to breathe,
to pull in
and push out
grasping
and releasing
in order to be
whole and yet
tilting
toward nothing.

HEY BIG BLUE

when there is a dude
in the school
considered cool
name of dicky hardin
all the rules
are out the window.

how do i know?

hamilton, ohio.

TAKE 'ER EASY POETRY

say you lived
somewhere south --
say ohio
you know?

fly away.
do it today.
silver bird
gonna
take you away.

that was poetry.

HE PUT THEM ALL BEHIND

somewhere rafferty remembers
the way he said:
"woo-man, right down the line."

for all time.

and when he's dreaming
stories heaven-sent
he knows just what he meant
with that accent.

FORGET

in the car
in the driveway
leaning over
after holiday
shopping
heart hopping

i will never...

forever.

MAX EIDER

his heart so
laden
voice so
plaintive
guitar so
quavery

totally
for me.

WHICH IS TO SAY NOTHING

alcohol
is all
about making
your brain small
enough to see
what the world is
made of.

WINCE AND GRIN

i am
most whole
in the company of souls
who are heart-

broken all
the time, folks
with lips
pulled back

between
wince and grin,
balancing
honor with sin.

THAT FEELING IN YOUR STOMACH

you start dying
the day you're born

if you're lucky
enough to be
born at all.

the day you arrive
you're not landing
you're starting
your fall.

BECAUSE WHY

i love to be

alone in restaurants
shrouded by crowds
buried in books
and thinking out loud

shaking down vivid
distilling the stirred
shrinking my poetry
packing down words.

YOUR FRIEND GOD

imagine your friend god
threw a great big party,

plenty

of food, wine, folks --

and everything
running out.

what
did you expect?

"you don't have to
go home
but you can't stay
here..."

MARFA

judd took a town
and made it look
like how
things are
meant to be
(according to he).

which is what
we all are
trying only

some of us don't
have towns to take
or make.

ROBERT CREELEY

nobody knows anything
about robt. creeley
even though
they think
they do.

which is how he is
a lot like life.

REALLY

if everything were revealed
to be
really nothing
after all --

how would you
live right now?

would you run through
the streets with your hair
on fire

or

would you stay in
your bed with eyes
full of nothing?

oh really.

NEVER. MORE.

maybe we were never
meant to...

you know.

all appearances
to the contrary,
i'm not still

thinking about us.

(i'd call you
trouble
if I cared to
call you
at all.)

what I might have
said:

"do you think
we are cats who
even after falling
eight times
on our backs,

still

get one more
chance?”

but it's like that raven said.