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

 

Sometimes a Poem is No More

than the Diary of a Beautiful Idiot

Left Open on the Lawn

“Our times are still not safe and sane enough

for faces to show ordinary sorrow.”

                               ~Wistawa Szymborska

My dreams tell me I’ve been hiding

my outlandishness just to get along.

If anything, psyches favor travesty.

See how a broken heart goes on 

banging its drum

beneath a camouflage of cloth

like some beautiful idiot 

meant for sacrifice.

I have to remind myself

that what I’m writing is 

not a flagrant diary

filled with dichotomies

too unwieldy for memory to hold,

each line easily devolving

into a way to see

where the next line will take me.

For instance:

Last night I shat myself

on my way to visit my mother.

I could tell she could smell me.

Wrapping myself in a peacoat

like a fetid blue cocoon,

I woke convinced 

I could not be loved.

So I keep trying to be ordinary.

Not realizing what makes me different

is what could make me great.

Still, I embrace my vulnerabilities,

my wounded intelligence,

my historical youth

crowned in mid-age by

a heart full of stents;

 a tarot card

wounding me

for the better

with it’s swords.

6/2921

 

So Much World All at Once

So much world all at once,

it barely requires a self

to be a part of it.

Granted we’re slow 

to comprehend,

so slow that many

are the caterpillars

who’ve out-crawled us

only to find 

no finish line. 

That said,

there’s no leaving

anything behind, 

only a chronic begetting.

No need to crave adventure

as small experiences

and less of them 

are what the world is

really made of.

We can’t stop ourselves

from happening 

even if we leapt

into the void

we’d not impede the flow

between A and B;

un-dissolvable stones 

licked smooth

by misplaced hunger.

Our memories can’t recede,

not really,

instead they’re kept 

safe and sound

in the custody of a 

covetous giant God

who’s one disability

lies in refusing 

to consider

anyone of us 

as clutter.

6/27/21

 

Photo by Ellen Martin

Word to the Whys

At night they set sail

in bodies

made of salt,

in a sea

where nothing

can be understood

but surrender.

They dare not

look back 

at the fool lying

full of questions,

confusing as they do

the forests

for the trees,

these slumbering 

lumbermen

so ill at ease.

If someone

were to ask them

 what it all means

(and they will),

they never tell

as they’re

literally discontented

not being

under a spell.

Though they build 

their integrity

during the day

only to be fortified

in their malaise,

they can never

give up the ship

nor stop

needing answers,

never realising

poetry

a remedy

for paralysis. 

Some things

take shape

only in silence

like a soul.

For instance,

would you take

the weather

personally if you'd

no propensity 

for control? 

Only then

can a storm

be a thing of 

terrible beauty,

like some angel

sans its wings

or one memory

for eternity.

For those who

always ask why, 

consider this

prayer for

assuaging the sting:

“With all I’ve seen

and all I’ve done,

please grant me

the hope

of the

unexpected

thing.”

6/25/21

 

The Loss 

that Makes Us

Whole Again

Wholeness has a hole in it from the start.

The day we lose something, its absence 

draws in new air like an iron lung

filling us up again with restorative silence. 

Ill prepared for the privilege of living,

there’s nothing more debauched than thinking,

but a loss can make us whole again;

the unforeseen realization that the negative

is merely the diary of our own shadow.

6/12/21