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.
Category Archives: Poetry
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 3
Book of the Dead 3
As time erodes,
The past fades.
All our deeds fade.
Memory goes gauzey.
Even morning is translucent by eve.
And by death,
We are making no new fading tapestries.
The image,
The tone,
The scent,
The taste,
The feel
Of fading dust
Is left but shortly.
The dead fade too.
Their countenance,
Their deeds.
Swept away like detritus:
A tie clasp,
A collar button,
A porcelain thimble.
By midnight they can barely be seen at all.
Valentine 2024
This old body has lost its equilibrium.
I stumble around here,
Heel rolling over the toe,
Like an old drunk
When I’m sober as a pastor…
MORE sober than that one pastor.
There are only a couple of things it could be.
My body doesn’t function like a well-trained athlete any longer, or
I’m hopelessly in love with you
and my brain is blindly following my heart to be near/toward/around you.
I’m going with number 2.
I’m not waiting for Door Number 3.
Come stagger with me, my love.
Food & Sex
(From a glossy mag quiz re: food and sex)
At my age do I have a comment about food and sex?
Does a fat old man have the right?
Am I still relevant in the final, um…quarter of my life?
What of audience for my say about food and sex?
After all, I remember the summer of love first hand, so to speak.
(Speaking of love)
I have had sex without love.
I have had love without sex.
And I have had no love without sex.
No love without sex is boring.
Love without sex is boring,
What could be worse in America?
But sex without love is like
(Speaking of food)
Steak without the sizzle–
Steak devoid of fat–
Tofu-based ground meat product–
Not even good enough to make a decent chili.
It doesn’t matter how hot you make it.
Add garlic and chilis and cayenne,
Add salsa and white pepper, black pepper, red pepper,
Add mustards, white, black, yellow,
Even oysters and a tiny bit of chocolate,
It’s still just soy
Dressed up in crotchless panties and a garter belt.
Sex without love is nice,
Nice like low-cal sherbet made from skimmed milk and xylitol,
Nice like soda with aspartame,
Nice like left-handed sugar,
Nice like microwave popcorn with shake-on artificial butter flavored salt substitute.
Fucking your way to love
Is like eating your way to thin,
Or praying your way to heaven
Because in an hour,
Or after a shower,
You just need more.
The itch remains unscratched.
The void remains unfilled.
And eventually you get some disease
Or you figure out that some things aren’t good for you:
That some sex is goofy;
That some sex is a little crazy;
It’s all fun and games
Until you break your dick.
So you lay off and try to heal,
Sitting on the couch
(Speaking of food)
Eating pop tarts,
Tater tots, fish sticks, fruit by the yard,
Wonder bread, Lucky Charms, Fritos,
Ubiquitous bean dip, candy bars,
Cup cakes, Twinkies, smokey links,
Propyl gallate, butylated hydroxyanisole
Or butylated hydorxytoluene,
Potassium bromate, monosodium glutamate,
Ascesulfame K, Olestra, sodium nitrate,
And always, always,
hydrogenated vegetable oil with
Blue 1, Blue 3,
Red 3, Yellow 6.
It’s all in there,
Like good pornography.
And eventually there you are again,
Staring at your reflection in the pool
And wondering why that erection won’t go away,
Understanding the meaning of priapism.
And clitorism,
Or why your panties won’t dry
In the middle of the swirling snow squall.
Trying to come in from the storm,
Trying to come in to the table
Trying to come in
Trying.
You Can’t Kill Love (No Matter How Hard You Try)
Dedicated to you. If you think it’s you, it is.
I tried to kill my love for you.
I shot it full of holes—
Stabbing, choking, poison—
In a battle for my soul.
I tampered with its brake lines.
I stretched it on the rack.
I surgically removed my heart,
But it kept coming back.
FEMALE CHORUS
Love SAYS, “I didn’t vote for
This fate for you, my friend.
But I’ll be here, year after year,
Until the very end.
Until the stars wink out at night
And the sun turns cold and stark.
‘Til Entropy rules splendidly
In a last act cold and dark.
I tried to drown it in the bath.
I held it down for hours.
I tried to bury love for you
Beneath the yellow flowers.
But up it leaps from way down deep
And struts upon its stage.
It reads the saddest tale of all,
But never turns the page.
MALE CHORUS
I tried to drown it in a bottle
They made in old Bombay.
I persevered for 10 long years
And 27 days.
But love kept coming back
Like a cat with 7 lives,
With big sharp teeth, a screeching voice
And claws like switchblade knives.
I tried to hang it on my chest
Like a medal for the brave.
I tried to spank it publicly
In hopes it would behave.
But it acts just like a spoiled brat
With snot upon its nose
And so I beat it ceaselessly
With a stick and rubber hose.
FULL CHORUS
Brother-Man, Joe Troyer comes through again! This is an early run-through of the song in his best country/folk rendition. Thank you, Joe.
The Solstice and the Poet’s Metaphor
Winter Solstice is the Poet’s Holiday–
Maximum darkness
With flat gray skies
During a short, sunless day.
The chasm, at night,
Between dark and light,
Grows bottomless.
Accustomed to their night vision,
The Poets peek
Through the veil
At their glimpse of despair
(for Despair is the finest of poetic feelings)
And bear witness to
The false promise
Of the returning light’s respite.
Tomorrow is new.
We count the days.
Wrung Out
After all the diuretics and tears,
When I die
Throw me away
Like an old
Wrung out kitchen sponge.
[292]
The No Memory Song
I am 73 years old on this writing. No person of this age ignores the prospect of diminishing cognitive abilities. If it is inevitable, I have written this song and addressed my care-givers. If you laugh, it’s ok. If you cry, it’s ok. I’ve done both in writing this. What I haven’t done is have a miraculous recovery of my singing voice. The video will attest.
Here are the lyrics if you want to sing along:
The No Memory Song
Sung to tune of Ripple by Grateful Dead
If I lose my mind, will you still love me?
When my mem’ries fade, like the morning dawn,
If I see your face and I call the wrong name,
Would you still hold me? Is that fear forgone?
If I just forget to eat my breakfast.
Or worst of all, when I eat it at two,
Will you wave your hand and just forget it?
Because you know I’ll forget it too.
Silence speaks a language.
When there is no knowing thought,
Words do not flow.
If I call your phone when I get lost driving,
When I can’t make sense of the streets and roads?
Will you talk me through each turn and corner
And smile at my face when I get safely home?
If I get too sad but I can’t say why, Dear,
I feel there was something great before,
Will you hold my hand and sit beside me
Until the sun goes down and is no more?
Silence speaks a language.
When there is no knowing thought,
Words do not flow.
If I lose the words to sing this song, dear,
And I stumble and start and stop in pain,
Will you let me hum and call it singing
This song to you a few more times again,
This song to you over and over again,
This song to you again and again and again?
La da da da da La da da da da
La da da La da La da da da
La da da da da La da da da da
La da da da La da da da da
[290]
UPDATE: Friend, Joe Troyer, put this video together and I host it on my YouTube channel. Enjoy…he’s a much better singer than I.
My Heart is Heavy
The moment I woke today I said, “My heart is heavy,”
But I did not mean it.
Why do we say that?
The heart isn’t heavy, no matter how sad we may be.
A man’s heart weighs something like 10 or 11 ounces,
A woman’s is even less: 8 or 9.
If your heart is heavier than that,
It isn’t from sadness.
It has become enlarged from some medical condition and it may be treatable.
And even if you had a heavy heart,
Say five pounds or so,
It could sit in your lap with little difficulty,
Like a cat or a small dog.
A cow’s heart weighs about 5 pounds
And would not weigh me down much.
Even a horse’s heart is easily managed at 8 pounds.
I have had dogs in my lap bigger than a giraffe heart at 26 pounds.
An elephant heart is something like 60
But it would still fit in my lap.
It is not the heart that is heavy;
It is the world.
“The world is heavy,” is what we mean to say.
“I can no longer bear it in my lap.”
It is my heart’s job to weigh the world.
The weight of the world can crush a man’s heart to jelly
And his bones to powder.
That is what I meant to say this morning.
The world is heavy
And I am in danger of being crushed.
[269]
