Omen or not

The bird had been moved. Out of the grass and beside my car. Driver's side. Bad omen, I thought. Maybe. Perhaps it was just left there by a cat who had been startled. Or an omen. I vary between superstition and rationality in my life. I root for the latter, but can't let go of the former. There may be something to it- superstition, that is. Who am I to say for sure?

Anyway, it was morning when I saw the bird and the accompanying flies. Did it mean my death, or a death, or that some bad mojo was coming down the pipeline? Maybe, maybe, maybe. All I know is that was the day I got sick, more than I had been in a long time. And then there was news of my cousin and the word he awaited that could be devastating. And then word of the suicide that fell just inside the rim of my social sphere.

That bird. Sometimes, especially lately, I don't see how I can get through this life. I am lonelier than I've ever been. Life is grimmer as I go. How can I handle it? I have not advanced as a person in a timely manner. Nature spits out its rejects.

But there is hope and there is defiance. To live, to look through the murk to the clarity, to walk through fear. The bird was gone when I came home later in the day. I couldn't help but notice.

Mandy

I saw you in my sleep, little girl

The light of All back-lit your fur

I would like to see you again

Don't leave my sleep, little girl

Bridget

I knew you before I knew you tonight. I saw you perform, admired your humor, your singing. We sat together, two goyim fresh to sader, united outcasts with common eyes.

I drove you home. You're pretty in a different way tonight; the tomboy put aside for the feminine. We laugh about our night, how like children we were among the Passover mavens. You offered up a high five and said we should see each other again. In so many words of course, and maybe not in the way I suggest. But still...

I got back on to Broadway, through the rain listening to All Things Must Pass. I felt vivid, warmly, and more alert than I had all day.

I thought: "Will I ?".

Closer, closer

Have I changed? Have I learned? I don't want to fall back into old, easy patterns. It's a slippery thing. But I've seen, I've felt, the dis-ease of us all, and it cannot prosper, it cannot sustain. There is only one truth, whether I accept it or not. I believe it's about time I accept it.

A Fever Of Old Friends

I fell into whispers

Soft verbal blisters

Do you feel nothing

when the touch is poisoned and hot?


A fever of old friends

Became my bookends

On many a moon glare

I lost them one by one


So I am barren and confused

I fell victim to the faithful and misused

I can't conjoin all I once knew



I fell and I forget

The sound of their whispers

Do you feel nothing

when you're choking on purest thought?

Archive 34B

I kissed her in the cabin near the lake. She feigned sleep. I stopped. Half of me felt foolish and wanted to leave, the other half a dumb, mangy, hound sticking around the table long after the meal had been finished. I stayed. She was sweet with me when she told me the reasons it wouldn't work. I left. I listened to Elliot Smith down dark highways sadly, but I knew she was right. It wouldn't work.

It can be

Maybe, maybe, maybe....

Come on, come out, say yes....

To the idea, to me, to it, come on....

Show me, let me in, favor me, make it

a thing sprung from the belly of all happy lives

Sanctified, ordained

Do I give up on you? Do I quit?

Yes?

Patience, we will see.

Or not, but...

Let this be different than... just let this be different

It can be

Maybe, maybe, maybe...