This poem is ridiculous
in its intent
It presumes too much
as it dances around the truth
It doesn’t address
the source of it
It sings of its intent
without meaning a word of it
It deals in syllables and meter
without decision as to why
those matter
Shifts them from my hand
to your hands
And again doesn’t matter
in the slightest
Except for the truth
in its very marrow
That you need
to sort through
to get to
the back of the bone
This poem is ridiculous
except for all the others
I have written
that tried to do the same
and failed
like a butcher who failed to cut meat
like a child who forgot how to cry
like a man who looked at his hands
decried them as having failed
in their intent
in what he intended for them
to do
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

( for Deb B)

First thing I do every morning
is cover my head in the bed
so Miesha doesn’t come up
and lick my hair,
bathe me awake.

Next things: I piss, wash,
weigh my body, go back to my room
and measure my blood against norms
while Miesha screams bloody murder
for her treats.

After that cat is fed I go, pick up
this computer — and of course, I write.
Sometimes it’s good,
sometimes it’s shit, but either way
it gets done.

Then I sit still for a long,
long time. This is the way
my day begins: every day
the same with the exception
of the marvelous I try to create

on screen, on a paper, in the head
of a reader; in his chest, her chest,
anywhere between the shoulders
and the mountains or the sea
or the moons I can’t see but can feel.

Future is as future does —
can’t you see me now, unshaven, dressed
in ratty pants and rigor, sweating
the details on a mess of words? I’ll
be at this tomorrow unless I die

before then. A woman I know
will puzzle over some of them
before she goes to work the next day.
She will find them suddenly in their intended
ports, right between the chakras.

Future is as future does and that’s all
I can ask of it — that in the future
this poem, like a dart, will meet its mark.
I’ll likely be gone by then, somewhere
down a well-lit road. She will remain

with this ember, this needy glowing spark
of me and my escape from a cage
which she will likely think of now and then
in a different way entirely. Maybe with a cat
in her lap; purring and yawning, bored and content.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

It is the type of thing
where there is fire in treetops
nests are burning
child birds are burnt as old ideas
shades come back as ashes only
eggs pop as
old fireworks in question as to whether
they will sizzle and pop or
thud softly as rain on dirt

It is the type of thing
where your mind slips softly off of mine
and I stand alone without it
where you are my mistake unforgiven
you cease existing
as soon as I speak
dissolving in a rain like the last one on dirt
but this time it is raw and undaunted
and burns through like magma
and now I don’t know if it is real or
what it means if anything

It is the type of thing
where I wish we’d gotten to Mars
or Venus or anywhere not here
where we would have set at once into
making beautiful industrial land
into some Himalayan factory
smoothing impossible mountains
into a roadside sign for what is made
by turning rock fire and liquid smoke into a plan
for future rotten games

It is the type of thing
where I will look into someone’s eyes
and ask all these questions
where I will look into your eyes
for some certainty as to a windfall
from this swarm of binding blinding insects
where I will look past your face into
an incipient world on a verge of coming forth
hoping for this against all hope
the type of thing
that does not come to us often
or ever at all in fact
but we may still hope
God knows
we will still hope

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T