Birthday

Happy Birthday
To me,
Happy Birthday
To me,
Happy Birthday –
I’m one year closer to death
so I’d best turn from the wayward
path leading me through the wasteland
of entangling briars, so base my desires,
and find my way to the one true path
that ends in authenticity, my own felicity,
only I can’t because I’m lost, no map,
and my compass fell into the bay
where my future stretches away,
tossing among the waves, though
perhaps my ship will come –
To me!

Hemingway

Today is
Hemingway’s birthday;
He would have been
110 years old.

Rain today, we are told.
Out the window,
The dry grass is gold
In the noontime heat.
Across the street,
A black man in shirt sleeves
Beneath a tree, standing,
Waiting.

A stray dog lopes along,
Sniffs, and moves along.
His coat is bright in the
Dappling light.

Out of sight, a cicada
Screeches and is silent.
Then another screech, slight.
Then the air is quiet.
It is hot and dry and
Waiting.
Everything waits.
But nothing comes.
No rain.

Sight and Sound

How can I make you see me,
Not you, but me?
You have fixed me with your stare –
My words in mid air –
And have trapped me in amber.

A practical paperweight, amber,
It can be hurled against windows,
And, finally, the cries of anguish
Can escape into air
With the pleas to reason;
Perhaps – to you – all rubbish.

And though the caged bird sings,
Still its song is not heard elsewhere.
Silent is the vast landscape
Where a new soul grows in the wooded grove
And the words fly to the trees, feeding, at night.

Oh, what a sight! The multitude that is me,
Cresting that moonlit hill,
Without a sound, they cannot fight.
They stand, waiting,
For your surrender of me.

Passenger

When I was a young man,
I was an old man,
Watching the world with wary eyes,
Though not yet capable of sighs.

Backstage I curled up in solace
With ancient tales of a golden chalice,
While the other dancers with silly stares
In laughing poses brandished their hair.

In summer sitting beneath a tree
My father explained divorce,
Returning home to my room to flee
Where I found my childhood corpse.

Years of tragedy sundering
Family, friends, like lightning a tree,
Over a cup of tea last week wondering:
What became of you? What became of me?

A ship on the horizon dwindling,
Headed God knows but I know not –
While I on the sand sit mingling
What I could have done with what I did not.

Wretched Summer

Any moment
Could, perhaps,
Be a wretched moment,
Like walking home alone
In sultry heat,
The moonlight on the street -
Indifferent the cobblestone -
The same moon shines on you
Wherever you are.

Martin and Hope

“Everything that is done in the world
is done by hope,” said Martin Luther
King, Jr.

Boy, I tell you,
This girl Hope, she is one busy gal.

Matter of fact,
Just the other day,
A fine morning,
I was walking to work.

And there was Hope!
All passed out, poor thing,
On that bench,
In a state of exquisite,
Senses-shattering,
World-saving,
Stinky exhaustion.

Come to find out,
That very night,
Sure as I breathed,
I was walking home.

And Hope was gone!
Sure enough moved on,
Her work is never done.
Poor thing, still pushing
That cart with everything,
And no time to settle down.

I wish she’d
Just one time slow down
To tell her about her friend Martin –
How he praised all around
Before he got shot.

Lincoln

Now here was a guy
Who was all things to all people:
Cruel and merciful;
Peace-lover yet fighter;
Protecting slavery and freeing slaves.

I, too, wish to be
All things to all people:
Alive yet dead;
Scoundrel and well-bred;
Kind of heart yet stubborn of head.

I wish to bring you close to me,
So close I taste your thoughts;
And I wish to flee so far from you,
Go somewhere among stars –
That little planet Pluto.

But Pluto is now a rock:
A planet no more – a victim for sure
Of the cruel narratives of history,
Of all things and all people . . .
Like Lincoln,
Like you,
Like me.

Living Alone

Alone in my home –
Stirring the soup and farting;
No need to chuckle.

(after an original Japanese senryu)

In Your Memory

Who are you
To believe
That I will go on forever?

You make me
Into God
When you leave me in the ether.

Suspending my existence
You forget me –
A quantum space that no one watches.

There I reside,
Gods and demons alongside
The stillborn visions of our future.

And so I - nonexistent - wait
For that day when
You escape your selfabsorbing kingdom.

You will think of me and
From the Timeless I will spring,
The angels flying to their frescoes.

Briefly while I live,
Narrow the window of Time,
Yet will I live and die
Before you again forget me.