1. Materia
The pace of hell is rust
its adjective is inexorable
lonely is eternal night
and only is the midnight sun
Heavy with its pollen of corruption
the fly lifts off scat most unholy
to settle, black chopper,
on your wholesome lunch
Did the hinged thigh’s flash
or rising musk of human heat
reel me back down
from my platonic perch
to endure the metronomic
flesh that measures me
now in units of joint pain,
subdivisions of heartache?
We are counseled only to ask:
though today you are given a fish
it’s the stone tomorrow
materia—oh mama.
2. The Good News
The Good News is that they are waiting
for you in
Yet know that when you get there
you will find that they’ve been stripped
of all the idiosyncratic
lusts, foibles, flaws and duplicities,
and all those manifold alluring traits
that fired your appetite for them
back down in
time.
In the place of all those things
Is only Light:
Simple Joy.
If you seek those who
have gone before you
will find them in Him.
3. Seventh Decade, Third Year
The year of growing seriously bald
Infantilized still by the slow persistence
Of that generation which swallows its pills
And watches its trans fats as fat mice
Watch the cat
Halting survivors who smile and nod
At the portraits framed
And fading in the light
Of the lamp atop the dresser, content
That such a record has been kept
Now banished to the basement
Like a bad dog that gnawed
Shoes or peed on the family
Carpet, I lurk
The temperature drops
Failure is worn like a blanket
On the lap
Here beneath the images
Of a camera’s eye
The boxed days on their nail
hang void of all
but one more number
Every digit a unit without heft
No point in scanning the previews
Or preening the molted ego
In preparation of
Some hopeful excursion
Poverty and loneliness sit parked
At the end of the walk
Just across the road
Watching the door
4. Iggy Pop
Recently
I saw him self-described
as an elderly man
of means
I remember him
as a ninth-grader
with a big dick
and matching soft eyes
in the boy’s locker room
helping a weeping classmate
untie a tough knot
in the chin strap
of his scuffed leather football helmet
And I remember him
in khakis and cardigan wool
reciting his poem
about hedgehogs
in AP English class
I remember him next
like me arrived early,
waiting in the lobby of
the undergraduate library
for the doors to open:
Just back from
his summer invested
in the blues,
He wore western boots and
His hair was long:
So what do you call yourself now --
I asked -- a hippie?
Still kind, he
quietly untied the square knot
In my question:
I’m hip --
he said -- but I’m not a hippie.
5. Self-Remembering
I was working in a place
called Saline
in a vast infernal mill bequeathed
by Mr. Ford
I’d been reading Ouspensky
on my breaks
coached by Gurdjieff
to stay awake--to always
remember myself, so
I directed my attention
(this is me now, forever)
to the dying rectangle of light
in the window atop the factory wall
to the pull chain that set it a-jar
conscious, vowing to remember
More than forty years later
as you see, I have
Yet she who taught me the name
Gurdjieff does not
remember me
6. Solo
All flights are a bore
for those not afraid to die.
Returning “home” for the holidays,
alone following the failure to thrive
of yet another future,
I rose and stumbled over
the feet of others,
perhaps to pee or maybe just to pace
the softly purring aisle
as a spur to passing time,
When there he sat
in lately chastened gray tweed
beard and matching jacket:
Allen Ginsberg.
Head bent to book, perhaps in prayer
His moist red lips moved perceptively
Though his goggled eyes seemed still
As standing stone.
No one with whom to share
this prodigy, I wandered back
to my numbered seat,
a lesson learned:
Poets fly coach.