No one ever told me
a proper way to grieve,
so I sit with all the fun
we planned for some
future never realized.
My tears seem weak
recompense for losing
actions never taken.
I can recall
moments where
we challenged
one another,
laughed, sat silent
when friends
or family vanished
from life,
but what must I do
now, when pasts
ravage memory,
and a future
disappears?
Friday afternoon
9 January,
my cousin a Pacific Ocean,
waves a lazy wave,
like summer has arrived,
and my cousin tells me,
that distinctly flat
horizon decorated
with container ships
and crab boats is
a precious sight,
get it while you can.
Letting media
massage me,
lubricating
current events
attempt a
soothing touch for
aches and pains
down deep
where human
interest keeps
compounding
on a debt
ceiling far
over my head.
Media wet
massage fingers
dry and bony
from overwork
poke deep
hitting trigger
spots pointing
to hypnopompic,
or hypnogogic,
so I can’t recall
if I’m coming
from sleep or
wakefulness.
This piece was written more than a decade ago, and I'm not sure what I was thinking when I wrote it. Actually, I don't even recall writing it, so here it is.
Where the West lies
artifacts and relicts
apportioned along lines
of class and rarity
bought unseen from fortune’s
pocket are museumed
for mass martyrdom
we, dying for this lie
gaily decorate suburban
manses with miscolored
fakes we purchase to
prove our greatness
contains no rot.
My guru says:
watching the news
is an illusion
and (don’t talk
with your
mouth full?)
don’t leave
crumbs on
the table
because “they”
(the people who
make ballpoint pens?)
will think
you are
a sloppy eater.
My guru says:
life is an illusion
(and maybe just
for idiots)? but
illusion is
never precisely
defined by…
well …
my guru.
My guru says:
comfrey is
a great topical
for pain (just
not a great topic
for conversation?)
and pain is
an illusion,
but, it is
trying to tell
you something.
My guru says:
fear of death
is an illusion
(just like life
only slower?)
and those
who near death
are less afraid
of dying (except
for “those” who
aren’t?).
My guru says:
a lot of things
but he still
can’t clap with
one hand.
After querying
medical people,
a few that
wanted to help,
or spout pain
med knowledge,
or vegetables with
anti-inflammatory fame,
after hearing
drug names
ending in syllables
that sound like pain,
after those vegetables
who sound delicious, but
require energy to prep,
whether they’re
anti-anything
or not;
after visiting an ER twice,
MRI machines three times,
X-Ray machines twice,
and an ultra-sound machine,
while reclining
uncomfortably, watching
interested women hover,
and disinterested women
ask questions, how,
and what, and if, et cetera,
we and they tell jokes
to banish odd fears
about a mystery pain,
after physical therapies
that work magically
and then don’t,
after opinion and speculation,
definitions, and specialists’
equivocation, explanation,
after nurse sympathy
and the occasional
disinterest, I still see
metaphorical shrugs,
and puzzlement.
After all that,
it still hurts.
With your imagined hammer,
see bright bits
of imagined personality
blow weightless
in imagined breezes.
Imagined reflections,
against imagined blue pasts
floating down upon
an imagined field,
imagined dry and barren
save for an imagined stone,
imagined leaning
at an angle askew in grass
imagined uncut,
poorly carved by imagined
stonecutters to read
in imagined sunlight,
“Here lie dreams
told to a future
imagined universe,
poorly transcribed
by Honor Usurped
by Usurper Honored”
Imagined date missing.
