i'll meet him someday when he's old with silver hair
he walks with a cane and puffs a pipe and it's a day
when he coughs softly into worn and wrinkled hands
on that day perhaps i will, in that moment, wrap my arms
around him or trace the lines of his aged face with my
right index finger to find myself in the edges and curves
but i may also just think of the children with sesame street
umbrellas, yellow duck rain boots fixed on their small
feet, bidding ado to their mothers on front yards cut neat
or i'll take him back home on an icy night in the fall
to the lawn of the schoolyard where i made my breath
stink of cigarettes and beer and spit and love
and we'll lay on our backs and look backwards upside
down so that the earth is the sky and the sky is the
land and the stars point us to the cosmopolitan
we will talk of what it felt like for him, the
holding of her shaky hands while standing in an
ivy covered church when bells and cheers rang
the lighting of sparklers at the apple festival
and the dipping of hot legs in cool river water
with a straw hat on top of full black hair
i'll make him answer all the infinite questions like
why it is so hard to love even oneself? and what are
we to make of all this stuff of life?
i'll make him answer
there is no doubt that
i'll make him
ALWAYS WATCH THE CLOCK
there is not much better than midnight drives in the country among abandoned sheds and coyotes and fields of wheat with windows down and the air swirling around, the cigarette smoke and heat dancing in a waltz, with one arm poking out wide from the side of the car like a toothpick in the twilight breezes, or on a walk on the first day of spring noticing all the life in the burgeoning scene, on a perfectly sunny day, when the lyrics god must have carved the clouds into animal shapes is tested and proved to be tried and true, and to lay on an afternoon grass, later, seeping its steamy air out into the immediate atmosphere, where a woman whose eyes are of such exquisite and perplexing beauty one just simply cannot stop looking into them, as she talks about the stars and outer-space, how the sun is made out of the same stuff as we are and you should think that and believe it and know it is true.
there is not much better than writing down a passing thought. a passing thought which is written when my body is in the exact right physical position, and the words are written without knowing how it was written, and each moment is given meaning which somehow, makes sense: hands in a comfortable hover over the keys, legs crossed, like the look a bald professor with a handlebar mustache smoking a pipe in the middle of the sixty-eighth iteration of an impassioned lecture on the meaning of tragedy, tragedy like the loss of his wife due to a seatbelt malfunction, or tragedy like the day he received a call from the school's principal notifying him that his son was harassed and beaten up at school for being gay, or tragedy like the time he lost his hamster and found it dead in the air vent when he was eight, and his parents didn't buy him a new one -- like that image of a wise old man speaking in a calm and docile manner would give, i sit and type and write and i am awakened.
nothing better than knowing that every moment that passes by instantaneously is full of meaning, splendid meaning ... and so much of it. that here we are, stuck in a body on a planet in this universe already enlightened with the knowledge that everything exists when it exists, and is what it is, and just is. but the crazy thing, the 'nothing better' part of it all, that we can write and make the meaning, make what we want of this crazy, hysterically genius life.
there is not much better than writing down a passing thought. a passing thought which is written when my body is in the exact right physical position, and the words are written without knowing how it was written, and each moment is given meaning which somehow, makes sense: hands in a comfortable hover over the keys, legs crossed, like the look a bald professor with a handlebar mustache smoking a pipe in the middle of the sixty-eighth iteration of an impassioned lecture on the meaning of tragedy, tragedy like the loss of his wife due to a seatbelt malfunction, or tragedy like the day he received a call from the school's principal notifying him that his son was harassed and beaten up at school for being gay, or tragedy like the time he lost his hamster and found it dead in the air vent when he was eight, and his parents didn't buy him a new one -- like that image of a wise old man speaking in a calm and docile manner would give, i sit and type and write and i am awakened.
nothing better than knowing that every moment that passes by instantaneously is full of meaning, splendid meaning ... and so much of it. that here we are, stuck in a body on a planet in this universe already enlightened with the knowledge that everything exists when it exists, and is what it is, and just is. but the crazy thing, the 'nothing better' part of it all, that we can write and make the meaning, make what we want of this crazy, hysterically genius life.
SO HARD TO TAKE IT EASY
its nice to listen to current favorite song at the earliest point in time one can say ah what a beautiful morning without being wrong, when a spring sky bleeds pink and orange all over the horizon, and trails of planes at various heights in that painted canvas don't dissipate, and just stay hanging in the air, and the sound of construction hums and bums mining dumpsters for aluminum cans and scraps for snacks startles a lone cardinal perched at the tip of a branch on a magnolia tree in the middle of the university oval--to just contemplate life through puffs and drags of a cigarette without any intention of resolving the infinite contradictions life presents, as a warm breeze executes its serenity all over me.
it's very easy to stay up throughout a night, to stay up all through it until sunrise, to find yourself on a porch smoking a cigarette frantically, when something is missed, or someone, for that matter.
it's also easy to forget who you are, where you are, what you are, when you are, how you are, during the listening of an amazing song. easy to become absent, or nothing, in the reading of an epic poem, or in the certain recognition that some man or woman has been able to express with near perfect language all the thoughts and feelings which inhabit your own mind and soul and spirit. also, easy to become nothing when watching the sunrise, smoking a cigarette.
but, on the other hand, it's hard to listen to an amazing song and forget who you are when staying up late at night missing something, or especially, someone.
but change is constant and happens instantaneously. so it makes it hard to focus less on the past and less on the future, to get to the stuffs which really matters: that immediate present when hard or easy isn't a question yet, life is just lived.
because all these atoms which are directly in front of us and around us are atoms of the rolling thundering waves of a distant waterfall in South America, of the sprawling desert sands in Africa, of stars exploding in the heavens, light years away, atoms which never stay still, are never the same, are always changing, transforming, becoming something more beautiful, hopefully.
we need to remember that is why life is so complicated, because all the things we think are solid and structured and stay the same (especially the people we love), absolutely do not do that. absolutely nothing stays the same; haven't we learned that already?
look at me, now. already, i'm different, i've changed.
go on ... be different; change, too.
it's very easy to stay up throughout a night, to stay up all through it until sunrise, to find yourself on a porch smoking a cigarette frantically, when something is missed, or someone, for that matter.
it's also easy to forget who you are, where you are, what you are, when you are, how you are, during the listening of an amazing song. easy to become absent, or nothing, in the reading of an epic poem, or in the certain recognition that some man or woman has been able to express with near perfect language all the thoughts and feelings which inhabit your own mind and soul and spirit. also, easy to become nothing when watching the sunrise, smoking a cigarette.
but, on the other hand, it's hard to listen to an amazing song and forget who you are when staying up late at night missing something, or especially, someone.
but change is constant and happens instantaneously. so it makes it hard to focus less on the past and less on the future, to get to the stuffs which really matters: that immediate present when hard or easy isn't a question yet, life is just lived.
because all these atoms which are directly in front of us and around us are atoms of the rolling thundering waves of a distant waterfall in South America, of the sprawling desert sands in Africa, of stars exploding in the heavens, light years away, atoms which never stay still, are never the same, are always changing, transforming, becoming something more beautiful, hopefully.
we need to remember that is why life is so complicated, because all the things we think are solid and structured and stay the same (especially the people we love), absolutely do not do that. absolutely nothing stays the same; haven't we learned that already?
look at me, now. already, i'm different, i've changed.
go on ... be different; change, too.
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