WHAT'S LEFT NOW

you used to look
like some
come-hither
spectre,

washing his car
in your bikini

only one
block from me;
I kept
driving past
too fast
to see
intentionally.

what's left now
is the ghost
of desire dragged through
the suds of what never was.

A WARNING

follow this
connected age
to the ends
of your acquaintances
and you will
really discover
how dreadfully
alone
we are together.

AND WHAT IF IT DID

all this
seeking
something transcendent

reveals nothing

transcends.

WHAT CAN NEVER FADE

your father's memory
is not what
it was.

you drove him to
the alzheimer's
specialist.

"your father has
the wrong day,"
the doctor says.

"maybe you have
the wrong day,"
you say.

you must
really
love your father.

FALSE BRAVADO

You wear Detroit
like old clothes,
broken in.

SO SORRY

friends age and grow
farther apart, always
moving,
either by truck
or through life
events.

landing somewhere on
business the question
becomes
to call or not to call,
a form of what do we have
in common, with the answer
a resounding I do
not know.

should we
know we are suffering
the same thing
at the same time
we might
meet to be sure
how far apart
we are.

to say:
i am

not like you.

AN EXPERIMENT

I took one of my poems below, "CHASE," and used iMovie to try and make something interesting. You be the judge if I succeeded. (The music is the Postmarks' "Let Go.)"

Someday I'll actually figure out how to make the music fade out a bit more subtly...

REPEAT AFTER ME

what's worth-
less is living
like there is no
tomorrow.

then
even when
tomorrow comes
it's one more day
to waste away.

SLUMMING

it's 1983 and
she has a mohawk.

you have no business
downtown; you live
in the suburbs,
and black
eye-liner can't
change that.

it's 1983 and
she's a bartender
in a punk club,
working class, and
she can see
through your fake ID
suburban
bullshit.

"what do you want,
honey?"

you could tell her,
but you don't know how
to say it

yet.

WHAT A GREAT TRICK

what a great trick
if somebody sick
wrote a book
"how to stay alive"
and actually survived.

it might ease my dread
if somebody dead
called on the phone
to describe their new home.

DADDY

i am so much
like my sons:

they flail
around the basement floor
moving blocks around,
saying, "daddy,
look at me! look
what I made."

PLACEBO

say you're right
in the middle of dying

when

your long lost love
calls to make amends.

do you continue your keeling
over act, or

do you try to

retract
that heart attack?

IN THE COMPANY OF POETS

these days
they say
nobody pays
for poetry.

i say it all
depends
on what your friends
use as currency.

NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO SWEAT

oh, you are going
to be dead
and maybe soon
and for a long time.

funny --
thinking of
eternal rest
renders me
sleepless.

SALES HAS TWO SYLLABLES

the secret
to sales --
say less.

THE RULES

growing older everything
becomes more urgent
and less important
in every moment.

you learn
it's grasping
at sand to try
to slow time.

and you learn
it's useful
to pretend everything
is worthwhile.

ALAN WATTS

nobody cleared
my cloud-head
like alan watts did.

nothing made my fear
feel better
than knowing it was never
mine anyway.

there's wisdom, he said
in insecurity, there is
nothing that's dead
in eternity.

I'M A GOOD CROWD

how is it something
so throwaway
as poetry

can bring my heart
back home to me?

come to
think of it
i never knew
it went away.

it's zen when
no one
writing
and no one
reading
can have me
feeling
so much less
alone.

STARBUCKS

head tilted
at some unknowable
angle, eyes
unfocused

staring at nothing,
headphones in
with no music

playing; always

one small step
from myself,
one giant
leap from mankind.

MODERATION

Teetering between
depression and
delight,

finding the middle happily
reflecting reality
and surviving

at the ends
is only for the young
and the reckless.

COURTING

what i said:
i am so
tired, too far
out to meet you
today.

what you said:
so be it,
i don't know
how i feel about you
anyway.

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.