Making the Most

of the Notion

That at Any Moment

I May Drop Down Dead

When I was young I loved

pretending I was about to die.

Nothing appealed more

to my sense of adventure.

I would practice falling

down the stairs

when company came over.

If I found myself

fortunate enough

to be out in a storm,

I would trudge

against the wind

shielding my eyes

from the stinging snow

as though my life

were in utmost danger.

When I got sick

with a mild cold,

I became a veritable

damsel in distress,

(despite being a boy).

And did I tell you?

I’d have given

anything for

a broken leg.

Just imagine learning

to walk again,

struggling up from the wheelchair

in a sand blasted beach house

by the sea.

Now, in mid-life,

the thought of suddenly dying

arouses

a wish to work on myself.

Mind you, its not a thought

I think with my brain,

I simply receive it

as from a distance,

as if I were letting myself

agree to go on

being invented.

With no need

to cling to furniture

to hold this moment 

in place,

I manage to inhabit

more than my body

with absolute authority.

After all, so much of us

exists in a state

of frozen amputation;

upside-down

icebergs

afloat in an

all-consuming

 sky.

Who else has ever

wondered whether

there were too many stars

for our own good?

How better to get

to the bottom 

of myself than

by disintegrating

every night

in order to move 

more freely?

Now that time

resides inside me,

I reserve the right

to consider my life

an entire world

in itself.

But if true, 

it may

prove imperative 

to accept everything

that has happened

(or will happen)

as integral to

one’s own particular

nature. 

As for me,

the mark of

a great adventure

has always been

a matter of life 

and certain death.

7/7/21

 

Please God,

Don't Give Up 

On Me

God is not judgmental,

but his rules have filtered down.

Those of us who have sinned

want a God who understands,

who has lived,

who has loved,

who has suffered,

and doesn't judge.

Please God, 

do not judge me

like a fifties movie.

I’m not an archetype,

I’m a man who weeps

for the beauty born

from a walk in the woods.

A man who no longer hikes

a perfect forest.

A man who remembers

how to love

gift by 

green gift.

7/5/21

 

My Skivvies

Lay like a discarded Dear John letter from an x-con determined to start a new life,

a squashed white rabbit on a Carolina backroad rolled by a speeding Buick,

a page torn from the diary of a lonely depressive wishing to remain anonymous,

a seagull blown so far off course that it holds no hope of returning to the sea,

an envelope stamped with the lingering smells that identify a day’s hard work,

a damp map of the moon flaccid as beach litter after a dense morning fog,

a snow drift sullied by a lost dog who’ll trace his way home by a series of leaks,

an albino snake skin shed like a bridal veil at the foot of an empty marriage bed,

a used handkerchief dropped by a cleric on his way to inspire a congregation,

an abandoned white lily kicked to the curb by mourners at a funeral procession,

the love letter of a pained man who felt he should have said these things instead.

~from Poems I Mustn’t Show Others