Epitaph

Grace

In the undone sink of dishes. In
The full cat box.
In the telephone with no dial tone.
In the hurting of your loved one, or the
Total exhaustion of spirit.
That means you’ve been through something.
And there is grace in it.
There is exercise in the heavens.
There is not stillness—ever—there is no
Such thing as fear, doubt or false
Intentions.
There is grace in the single cricket facing death in an alleyway
As he sings you, city dweller, to sleep.
In the cold remnants of a great meal. In
The temperature dropping below freezing.

Every day it arrives. This
Sharpening
Of the soul.

Always

I am there in the bed
on
top of the covers
waiting for the thunder to start
so I can
go to the closet and
retrive an umbrella. Go down
and wait
to open it
for a
few seconds
while the rain lands on my head. There’s always
that. The cold rain.
There’s always anger and
being pissed off in the evenings too.
Screaming
silently at the wall, gesturing
at the dumb blank wall.
There’s always the cat in the morning
jumping onto bed and
I don’t want to touch her
though she hasn’t been touched in two or three days
so I’ll give in.
There’s always telephone numbers
and websites and the tunnels
between them that
people dig.
The RMV and City Hall.
Parking permits and broken
washing
machines and visits
from our parents.
There’s always the neighbor
watering her flowers
from a red can in a tanktop and shorts and
her lopsided hair, telling me about her
deceased dog and
psychics. And the men power
sanding
and sawing and making plans for buildings
and buildings that will be changed or
destroyed, and the wealthy
dogs
with their women and the poor crazy men
with bandaged fingers
waiting for change at the laundromat.

There’s always all of that.

And there’s me and then there’s
you and there’s
the both of us.

I don’t feel them though. I only feel
you in the bed, and the fan
blowing on me
and the quietness of the new apartment
we’ve moved
into together, and that
little sound under my ribs that’s
already
starting while it’s still dark.
That little sound of day
in me
that will
stand up when I stand up, and start to
boil
when I go outside and it will bubble
till I go to sleep with you, you
there you are,
and a few stars will still be in between leaves
and the cat will hop upon our bed.

There’s that every day.

What I'm Doing

Now is when it’s
most
important.
When it
seems useless, or
impossible.
Where the end of one
night
accordions forward
years, years
and looks
itself in the face
and
with
remorse, accepts
its fate.
When the mirror
turns
its back on you.
When you dream of swimming in tar with
the mammoths and
saber
tooth tigers.
This is when. This is it.
When time is no one
and
nothing worth loving. When
there
is but one of you.
One plum on the earth.

The Intimacy Of Time

You stare at the long-nosed

witch doctor.

It stares back.

Val

I liked Val because he
didn’t say anything. He just
asked me what I wanted done
and I’d respond in whatever fashion
I could muster; a little bit here, shorter
here etc. And then he’d go to work.
First, he’d fold my collar down
and wrap a length of gauze at my throat. Then
he’d pick up his shears and tap them a few
times against the comb.
Val worked fast, even around the ears. I knew
he wouldn’t cut me. He was a pro.
He had a few strange pictures of sickly
adolescents on his stand. One of a woman
I presumed to be his wife. A
cell phone. Cash tips. A magazine clipping
featuring the shop. I liked Val
because he didn’t say anything. Except, when
he was all done, he’d back away and lift his hands
and say: Now you are new again.

Following It

I go to the door, check the lock again.
Poke through the mail.
The city is quiet out there. It sleeps
under blankets of conflict and doubt.
Observe a faint rectangle of light
on the kitchen tile, follow it to its source.
End up this time at the window
watching the half-eaten moon.

The not knowing
of what’s coming is very present;
what can possibly be generated
out of this still air, this block of salt.
What areas can be encircled; what inventions
are even possible.

Dry Wood

Can it either open or close, or both? Does it have hands?
Can it be both large and small, like childhood?
I held it in my mouth like an acorn; the sameness of both sizes.
Hands on a gray rock, a fly, one strip of grass.
Can its waves cross the desk and touch me?
My father glued them in place.
In doing that, he opened it, and he closed it.
His hands occurred and then they died, while
the ocean indifferently watched.
Back to etiquette.
Bow to the forehead of time, seagull, swinging
through the snow like a block on a rope.
The beach turned and regarded its people.
They were invisible and sat cross-legged like monks.
Drank glasses of milk big as Stonehenge.
Why does the brain consent to something so outlandish?
It reiterates nonsense like facts, it kisses doom on the prick.
The forest on the outskirts stands steady as a priest.
Clues in the rainbows of skulls, the prism interred.

Animals

A colossal bird came down
to be
the feeder of the whale. Each
moment passing, some bit of him
breaking off.
Coming loose from my
loose descriptions.
Drawers of silver
spoons and knives.
The bloody composition of
the sun
cooking its own head.
Forbearance. With balloons
tugging at our wrists
like dead tethered
planets
haunting earth…

we
all have plans
to die.

Not just make it there
but
actually do it.

Celebrate with a small
gathering of wilted relatives,
plum pits, music and
the firing of a
pop gun.

Serves you right.

There must have been something
all this time
as life
coagulated at the joints.

As evil men walked through knee-high evil
with pickaxes on their shoulders, and
sunk them into
newly
finished graves, calling out for
their mothers.

Near and far. In a
flatland called Medea. Her name
stitched
on maps. Sirens all night.
And the deep, macabre woof
of a dog

I’ve never seen. He brings
something to me in my sleep. Is it

the bone of my aunt Marnie?
Is it the bone she lost
when
she tumbled off
her bicycle?

The spotted moon limps through
the rotted door.

Entangled and newborn out of the hair of the universe.

That aimless glow-eyed animal
that prowls

the courtyard.

Now It's Nothing

A window.
A Japanese Kimono closed against its
skin--white as apple flesh.
Nothing like a surgeon’s poison.
Nothing like a block of ice; like a salt-lick; like an undertaker’s dream.
Two nothings on top of one nothing.
I am nothing…
Now that’s a nocturnal idea. That idea has no teeth. That idea
is as complicated as a tarantula, with eight eyes
and as many legs, hairy as a dog.
That faint aroma of your mother’s perfume is very real
even though you’re six or seven states away. That’s nothing.
Nothing fleeing nothing.
Losing in a battle of zero.
A murderer’s eye with you in it, like the bloody seed of a tomato.
Your deceased cat come back to life, you swear it.
Your father’s urn crawling out of its grave.

These are characters who cry and we are addicted to their pain.
Their pain is a synonym for our own.

I am quiet as an ocean tonight.

Our brains consent to our deaths,

which is proof that they are indifferent to us.