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...

And Now I Embark

I am alive to this

New way

I am allowing for bliss

the one thing I missed

when my aim was weak and gray

A thought arose as I ran city roads

That I had it backwards, that I had it wrong

That I was the shaped

But I was the shaper all along.

I showed her

Leaving the court house, I held the door open for a man behind me. He was tall, bulky, and looked mean. He thanked me and said:

"Good News!"

I said "Really?" and he said:

"I just found out my wife has to pay for half of the bullet I'm going to put in my head. I showed her, that fucking cunt!"

See, it pays to open doors for people.

Stuck In Your Ghost

I sat quiet, stuck in your ghost

Fading, feeling insubstantial

Back some days I loved you the most

You were a life I couldn't handle

You would understand

*

And I heard they offered you up

To the granite belly of the sea

And anyway, you'd had enough

You had better places to be

I would understand

*

You know we have the same sized soul

Oh, it's hard to let go

But a rusty dream doesn't mean

Our doors are closed

Easy On

Yesterday I came,

I don't know how I came to be

Fell off a branch sleeping in the lap of a multi-hued sea

And if I don't give it my blood and give it my wings

I'll return to the life of safer things


It's not easier when you try


Yesterday I fell,

I don't know how I did fall

Laughing at the soft injustice of it all

And if I don't go where I know she wants me to go

I will walk along paths I once crawled


And I think I'll never die, there's something holy in her eyes

*


We were tired, I drove slow

Words were forming wet in our throats

So say it, say it, say what you know

You're a sweet one, that you are

Strange and pretty and kept apart

So tell me, tell me, tell me who you are

My father

I spoke with my father, but there is always something unspoken. Never mind, that is how it is between fathers and sons. He said:

"I read something in the paper about the Patriots and how they've gone south. The columnist wrote that watching their decline is like watching your parents, day by day, become old and frail and there's nothing you can do to stop it."

He was impressed with the analogy. I was disturbed. Maybe he was, too, but gallows humor has its place. I laughed. Was he telling me to get my act together soon because he and my mother wouldn't be around much longer? Was he recalling his own experience of watching his parents fade from this world? Was there even an angle?

I doubt I'll ever know. I don't plan on finding out.

That is just the way of it.

A

You are gone from my life. Once, not long ago, but maybe so, I stayed on the phone with you for six hours. I had fallen in love with you before that, but when something monumental like this happens, surely, then, it's meant to be.

Enchantment. That is what it was, and that is what it is when you occupy my thoughts. You exist as residue, a diaphanous cooing in my ear, voiced sweetly while I regret.

I fend you off.

But you'll reemerge. In pockets here and there. You always do. Someone will have your eyes, someone will have your laugh. And it will twist my gut. It always does.

Fallen Angels

Fallen angels took a ride

Lost in their compass

Feeling grievous

That they knew not the specks in the sky


So they tried to talk about the fuck at the fairground

Who claimed he was

Born somewhere around 1882

He said he'd pony up and ride to the ends of his eyes

And he'd pray for us.


At the guardhouse near the shore

Joe was defeated, a goat de-bleated

Silent like when you knew him before

And we knew he'd quit the ride

He was responding to the world's despondence

And gave in to the Great Divide


So we played it on hope, we slept and awoke

And we merged into the ways

Of the heft and the grunt

Of the filthy ol' mutts

And stopped trying to find our way

Aw, Fuck

Aw, fuck, it's overwhelming but you're going to get through -- you're going to get through -- you're going to get through -- you're going to get through....

And she'll be there, to prove there is love for you in the soft pleats of night and every day that you live, she will be there to drop your defenses and take you within her warmth, her breath, her life.

Aw, fuck, it's overwhelming and it sucks all the way through -- you're going to get through -- you're going to get through -- you're going to get through

And comfort will find your life, there will be joy, and you will say, looking backwards, you will say, I have gotten through.

E V H

Boiled strings, Sinner's Swing

Your brown sound

still rattles my ribs

like it did in another life

when I sat with Fair Warning

alone in my forming

I play because of you.

Your Dark Regard

Look ahead, something is in the way,

Never see anyone out here this time of day

Pull over, pull over, there are people by the road

They'll get your help or you're not going home

(Do you forget how it was?)

I don't trust they'll be what they say they are

If it's all the same to you I'll just pass the car

I trust so little these days it'll make you sad to hear

I've no mercy for their souls

(And I forget how it was)

I will be held in your dark regard

I will find the way outside is barred

My voice a sawdust croak, brittle winter bones

Call out, call out to the people by the road

Do you forget how it was?

O

Right now oblivion

Is all I want

Through that door

Is all I want

A sad shake of the fates

Grew this day

Through potted clay

A baby in my lap

I wept to my mother

She won't turn me away

And before you, God, I sat puzzled

and frightened of this life

Right now oblivion

Is all I want