This is an edited version of an earlier poem.
The Trouble with Losing Old Poets…
They are starting to go now,
Like the rockstars;
A bunch checked out early,
Not exactly a poets’ 27 Club
But a spike on the graph, for sure.
And now, we are starting to drop.
Turds from an elephant’s ass
Is the only metaphor that comes to me.
This week, another one.
Last week too.
It doesn’t seem to matter,
The fire and the ice both end.
Wind has forgotten how to blow
In Chicago and everywhere.
I wonder at next.
I look at the actuary’s lists.
I know I’m on there somewhere.
Probably pretty soon.
I love who is still in this tent
With me.
Let me say that deliberately.
But the sense of this era
seems to be a growing choice
Between mourning
Or being mourned.
If you are reading this
And you are a poet,
Let it serve as a cautionary tale.
If you are reading this
And you are not a poet,
I take this moment to bid you a conscious adieu.
Maybe read this poem again in a few years
Or next week.
Book of the Dead 12
All I have learned of death,
I learned from a dog
When I was 14.
His name was Nic
Like St. Nicolas
Since he came to us on Christmas.
He was either a runaway
Or a drop off.
Skinny, frostbitten ears
But polite and smart.
It took a year to learn him,
His tricks,
His ways.
He loved winter
And hunting rabbits.
If it is really true all dogs go to heaven,
He’s certainly hunting rabbits
As I write this.
(I don’t know what that says for Rabbit Heaven.)
It was snowing,
I had been given new snow-shoveling duties
Near the highway.
Nic saw me shoulder the shovel
And head out the driveway.
I can’t really blame him for thinking
About rabbits.
But the guy who was driving that
Low Pontiac,
And who didn’t stop
When I chased Nic,
Sliding on his back down the highway,
Him I still blame.
I got to Nic and picked him up in my arms
To bring him back into the house,
But it hurt him too bad.
He mouthed my hand
But did not bite me in his pain.
And so I lay him in the snow
Where he finished.
I kept the flakes from falling on his face.
It was the only thing I could do.
I learned from a dog
When I was 14.
His name was Nic
Like St. Nicolas
Since he came to us on Christmas.
He was either a runaway
Or a drop off.
Skinny, frostbitten ears
But polite and smart.
It took a year to learn him,
His tricks,
His ways.
He loved winter
And hunting rabbits.
If it is really true all dogs go to heaven,
He’s certainly hunting rabbits
As I write this.
(I don’t know what that says for Rabbit Heaven.)
It was snowing,
I had been given new snow-shoveling duties
Near the highway.
Nic saw me shoulder the shovel
And head out the driveway.
I can’t really blame him for thinking
About rabbits.
But the guy who was driving that
Low Pontiac,
And who didn’t stop
When I chased Nic,
Sliding on his back down the highway,
Him I still blame.
I got to Nic and picked him up in my arms
To bring him back into the house,
But it hurt him too bad.
He mouthed my hand
But did not bite me in his pain.
And so I lay him in the snow
Where he finished.
I kept the flakes from falling on his face.
It was the only thing I could do.
Book of the Dead 11
The Dream of Heaven
I dozed in front of the boob tube.
Best sleep I get anymore.
I’d been watching a documentary
About wrangling, fighting and war.
I dreamed I was on my deathbed
And my lapsed Catholic wife
Prayed that the Catholic God
Would forgive my non-Catholic life.
In a twinkling it was over
And I was in the sky
with Jesus and Mary and a million saints
But I could not figure why.
And there were the Pearly Gates
Where no one stood alert.
But everyone was speaking Latin
And wearing long black skirts.
“There has to be an error,”
I offered to those around
But Hitler’s Pope, Pius Twelve said
“You were lost but now you’re found.”
“I don’t want to be found, sir.
I’m not a Catholic, you see.”
“It happens sometimes,” he said with a shrug.
“Administrative error,” said he.
But I’m not of the laity.
And I never knew a deacon.
Only one Priest in all my life.
Why I’m a Catholic cretin!
No bishops or archbishops.
I have no clue about their miters.
And Cardinals all dressed in red
Are only birds, not holy fighters.
No matter, said the evil Pope.
If I get in, so do you.
Just consider it affirmative action.
Now take your seat in the pew.
But I don’t know the songs!
Or when to stand or kneel.
I don’t know how to pray and
I don’t know how to feel.
I don’t know why there’s incense
And I don’t know why there’s gold
I don’t know why I can’t talk to God
Instead of a priest through that little hole.
And guilt over killing Christ…
I didn’t do the deed.
Call and response makes no sense
In a time when we all can read.
It took almost three centuries
To sort the divine hullabaloo.
And just when the ordeal seemed hopeless
Some habited nun fixed the SNAFU.
I woke from my nap with a gasp.
A preacher was on the TV,
Asking me to send him money.
A downpayment on eternity.
Forgive me, sir, if I pass this chance
To give to the Creator of night and day,
‘Cuz I don’t want to go to Catholic heaven.
Just let me Requiescat in pace.
Book of the Dead 10
Book of the Dead 10
No person ever loved me more than my Grandmother.
And I don’t mean that as something that lifts me up.
I mean that as a testament to the goodness of Grandma.
The depth of my love of steamed eggs, or alternatively, custard pie
Are mere substitutions for the depth of my love for Grandma.
But Grandma died while I was in Marine Corps boot camp in 1969.
Her seventh heart attack did her in and it mattered not to the Corps
How much I loved my Grandmother or how much she loved me;
I was not permitted leave during boot camp for this or any reason.
After, Grandma came to me in boot camp, though she didn’t bring custard pie.
Something prohibited me from climbing the rope on the obstacle course.
Despite my intent and will, I could climb up only about ten feet and stall.
And there hung I, between Heaven and the drill instructor,
Who promised unpleasant consequences if I came down before I went up.
Long minutes hanging in limbo before succumbing to the DI’s promise.
Eventually, through a trick of faith and some personal instruction,
My feet and hands learned the trick. I became more of a man and more of a Marine.
But the truth of my heart was, I asked Grandma to help and she did.
Long after the Marine Corps, after the war, I fell asleep driving home alone one night.
Of course, I don’t know if I slept a moment or a minute, I was jolted
awake by a strike (more than a nudge, less than a slap) in the small of my back.
Awake, aimed exactly for a cement bridge abutment on the freeway,
Probably about a half-second before impact,
Grandma’s dusting powder scent filled the air in the car.
There is more to say here but I will leave it between Grandma and me.
No person ever loved me more than my Grandmother.
And I don’t mean that as something that lifts me up.
I mean that as a testament to the goodness of Grandma.
The depth of my love of steamed eggs, or alternatively, custard pie
Are mere substitutions for the depth of my love for Grandma.
But Grandma died while I was in Marine Corps boot camp in 1969.
Her seventh heart attack did her in and it mattered not to the Corps
How much I loved my Grandmother or how much she loved me;
I was not permitted leave during boot camp for this or any reason.
After, Grandma came to me in boot camp, though she didn’t bring custard pie.
Something prohibited me from climbing the rope on the obstacle course.
Despite my intent and will, I could climb up only about ten feet and stall.
And there hung I, between Heaven and the drill instructor,
Who promised unpleasant consequences if I came down before I went up.
Long minutes hanging in limbo before succumbing to the DI’s promise.
Eventually, through a trick of faith and some personal instruction,
My feet and hands learned the trick. I became more of a man and more of a Marine.
But the truth of my heart was, I asked Grandma to help and she did.
Long after the Marine Corps, after the war, I fell asleep driving home alone one night.
Of course, I don’t know if I slept a moment or a minute, I was jolted
awake by a strike (more than a nudge, less than a slap) in the small of my back.
Awake, aimed exactly for a cement bridge abutment on the freeway,
Probably about a half-second before impact,
Grandma’s dusting powder scent filled the air in the car.
There is more to say here but I will leave it between Grandma and me.
Book of the Dead 9
With age, things change:
Skin thins as if by evaporation.
Gums recede.
Color leaves the hair.
The skeleton shrinks
In size and density.
We are gradually less.
At the end, we cease,
As far as we know,
In this corporeal world.
We set aside our bodies,
Like last year’s model.
We set aside physical interaction.
But that is all obfuscation.
It is a trick of language to say
We did something
And then say We don’t do something.
For the dead, there is still so much to do.
There is the going away,
Likened to some journey that changes us.
And if we go away,
We must be going to some place.
Another place, not like this place.
For what good is an afterlife,
If it is merely another iteration of this life?
Why go to all the bother of aging and dying
Just to wake up in another here?
There are always tests to see if the dead are worthy.
Ancient Egyptians had Ma’at,
Simultaneously Justice and Truth,
And Goddess.
If the heart of the dead
Balanced on a scale against her feather,
The dead could pass to the afterlife.
If it did not, the dead received utter obliteration.
It was all about the state of the heart.
Hebrews, Christians and Muslims
all measure the good of the heart
And promise obliteration if there is not enough.
Today, as a cultural species, we don’t need religion
to practice the concept of obliteration.
We begin before physical death.
The soon-to-die begin to lose autonomy.
It happens as if by evaporation,
The value of a full person evaporates.
We take their positions.
We take their possessions.
We take their permissions.
Once they actually cease,
There is so little change in the world.
It’s like they were always a memory.
Book of the Dead 8
Death took my grandson
Two weeks before his birth.
I flail, seeking to understand,
Not loss,
For the poet knows all there is to know of loss
(if he’s paying attention).
Rather to understand
All that was given.
Is the mother of a dead child
Enriched by her new insight?
Is the father of a dead child
Prepared to comfort his wife
While pretending his own loss
Is smaller?
Is a sister or a brother,
Bludgeoned into silence,
Incapable of understanding?
Of doing anything that might heal?
All the women grieve their own losses.
And reconceive the trove of their losses in another’s.
It is the unfathomable lot of women
To bear the reminder
In the wonder of what might have been.
Book of the Dead 7
It is the duty of the old poet
To teach about living a life of poetry
To the young poets.
First, find a young poet.
There aren’t very many,
Although there are thousands
Who stand up on stages
And hurl swear words.
Some of it is actually poetic.
But a poet soon learns that rage
Is a shallow pool.
It feels great,
All fire and invective,
But those poems are largely disposable.
Hate, likewise, has its appeal.
And, likewise, often has a short shelf life.
But the lasting poems
Dig through the anger of a life
And the living.
It excavates all the hate
And drills down into the pain;
The despair.
There is lots of hate,
Probably more anger.
And those are fine stones
Upon which to whet your craft.
Poetry craves,
Not just the poetic utterance,
But the poetic silence as well.
Without the silence,
It is the clacking of the keyboard.
Without Death’s utter refusal
To answer the questions,
There is no need for poems.
Book of the Dead 6
Book of the Dead 6
In life, my mother said she longed to travel.
So when she died
Her children took on the task
Of delivering her ashes
to random and various locations,
Widespread as possible.
I traveled on an airplane
With some of Mother’s ashes
In a zip-lock plastic bag
In my hip pocket.
I was conscious of her presence
As I sat in that narrow seat.
And I set them free
In the shadow of Haystack Rock
At Cannon Beach.
She entered the sea
And turned it milky gray
On the first incoming wave,
Then drifted out a few feet
And returned wider on the next wave.
And then, like some kind of ethereal sea bass
Might flip its tail,
She splashed at me and was gone.
I won’t say she hasn’t been back.
In life, my mother said she longed to travel.
So when she died
Her children took on the task
Of delivering her ashes
to random and various locations,
Widespread as possible.
I traveled on an airplane
With some of Mother’s ashes
In a zip-lock plastic bag
In my hip pocket.
I was conscious of her presence
As I sat in that narrow seat.
And I set them free
In the shadow of Haystack Rock
At Cannon Beach.
She entered the sea
And turned it milky gray
On the first incoming wave,
Then drifted out a few feet
And returned wider on the next wave.
And then, like some kind of ethereal sea bass
Might flip its tail,
She splashed at me and was gone.
I won’t say she hasn’t been back.
Book of the Dead 5
Book of the Dead 5
The dead have always had more to say
To me than the living.
They do not stutter
Or say “um.”
They do not approach their subject
At an angle.
Or hide it in figures of speech.
Nor do they screw up facial expressions
To convey empathy.
The dead have no empathy.
They say,
“Death has no mercy.”
And
“The dead care less for the living
Than the living care for the dead.”
It is just like how we measure
All of the events of our life differently
Than those things which happened
Before we were born.
Before my day, there were only stories.
The dead have always had more to say
To me than the living.
They do not stutter
Or say “um.”
They do not approach their subject
At an angle.
Or hide it in figures of speech.
Nor do they screw up facial expressions
To convey empathy.
The dead have no empathy.
They say,
“Death has no mercy.”
And
“The dead care less for the living
Than the living care for the dead.”
It is just like how we measure
All of the events of our life differently
Than those things which happened
Before we were born.
Before my day, there were only stories.
Book of the Dead 4
Book of the Dead 4
Ghosts are only people
Confused by growing transparent.
I had a great-grandmother who didn’t know
She was a ghost for nearly a decade.
Her hair grew gray,
Then wirey-white,
Then transparent limp-gray again.
Her skin thinned
Until that which marked what was part of her
And what was the rest of the cosmos,
Became indistinct
And it barely mattered.
She lived in a time that had passed.
She spoke to other ghosts
And asked about the living.
She had lost track of her time.
When she finally died,
Mostly it was a relief.