Yesterday morning I observed you
From my living room
Via my drone
Tee hee hee
You sat at the cafe table for two
With your eight year old son
And gazed lovingly into your smartphone
Tsk tsk tsk
I left my soft warm perch
Braved the cold stairway and sidewalk air
And beat you to death with my selfie stick
Tee hee hee
Your authenticity
Is so cliched
It makes me question
Your authenticity
hold me close
keep watch
and remind me always
of tonight
this ease and flow
in the warm breezes
desserts we share
with no calorieeses
I couldn’t love anything more than I love you now
in this moment
I couldn’t love life, god, you, me,
nor whatever god wants to be
more
I couldn’t love history and all its agony and disease
nor evolution nor the seven seas
no, I couldn’t love them more
my cells are not equipped
the butterflies have flipped
every move and perfect breath
another step from perfect death
keep this with me
never let me forget
because at times
too many, you bet
I fear upending
the up ending
is what life has in store
forever and ever
and evermore
don’t get lost along the way
or make us ask if you’re ok
do nothing that will disturb
and never leave the curb
please walk with feet of clay
Today, I encountered topacio althaus for the first time. She regularly sets up a small table and typewriter at our local farmers market, with a sign asking for a topic and a price, promising a poem at the end of the transaction.
My sister-in-law approached ms. althaus with a financial offering and a suggested topic of our young children: brother and sister and cousin, one of them a newborn, one three, one four. Here now is the poem that resulted:
I too took up the challenge of the topic and created the following on my phone:
I made no money.
A good day for poetry.
And berries:
Yes yes and please more yes
Tell me again how old I am
Whisper wrinkle free how irrelevant my culture has become
Yes yes and please more yes
Join me in this haze of conventional whiz dumb
And allow me to wring my worried hands over your imminent decline
Attending the ascendance of your lost generation
Yes yes and more please yes
Throw up any barriers you can young man
My convalescing mates will gladly dance that most removed of dances
And chant that invocation of phantom castes
Yes yes and more please yes
If you’re paying attention you will come to realize in fleeting seconds there is this ease to tapping the deep trenches of pain
In such a moment the moods can shift and the cool crisp happiness of a cloudless and hopeful Fall morning will chill further so that the bright disposition is revealed to mask a wet muddy sadness
Maybe not depression but certainly a deflation and a slowing
A drifting into subtle agony begging one to succumb further by the breath
Instinct – if I’m listening well – tells me not to run from this or coat it in a Teflon gloss
Instinct says stay here for a spell, the tilt is trying to tell you something
Well instinct I’m ready to receive whatever it is on this plate before me
But please let’s make it quick
I have a meeting I need to get to and in business there is nothing worse than a gloomy colleague and yes I’m hoping for a raise so I don’t want to be that guy, if you know what I mean, the late guy all depressed and weepy. Ug.
I’m waiting
I’m open
I’m in
How do those words feel falling from your mouth?
These ideas you’ve scoffed so long and now own?
How far removed from the orbit of your soul do you find yourself today?
Has the reality of the failure begun to set in?
Or have you just accepted this dry wrinkle your days have become?
Let the humorless warm bath of rigid frigidity soak in?
And is this all just okay?
You fuck.
You mother fuck.
Feeling good?
Proud of yourself and this language, these narrow thoughts in which you’ve jailed your imagination?
May you always remember the late night you gazed up from the earth and felt profound irrelevance and omnipotence all at once, the understanding you possessed in that instant.
May you never forget how you have forgotten that!
We have our schtick cold
Elevator pitches practiced in the car
Eloquent confidence fragrant and profound
Sly wisdom blasting for the mirror
Until we’re caught and cut
Off guard to dodge the newborn unexpected thrust
Sputter to parry
Spittle we’re buried
Done, lukewarm, and done
