Forget About It

Look over me. Oh I feel dead,

Folded

Away in blankets for good, and

Forgotten.

My room is clammy and cold,

Moonhandled

And weird. The shivers

Wash over

Me, shaking my bones, my loose ends

Loosen,

And I lie with one eye open,

Hoping

That nothing, nothing will happen.

-Mark Strand

when alone simply

gaze into paint

the ceiling has

galaxies carved into

plaster gleaming

smudges of spirit

consistency cannot

hold spite

for the sky

Stolen/Lost////guilt.

That quality of the great boxers

to be able to stand there

and take shots,

gargle with firewater,

encounter intoxication

at sub- and supra-atomic levels,

to leave one's sandals at the

crater's lip

like Empedocles, and descend,

not say: I'll be back,

not think: fifty-fifty

to vacate molehills

when dwarves want space to grow,

to dine alone,

indivisible,

and able to renounce your victory

-

a hymn to that man

-- Gottfried Benn

--Translated Michael Hofmann

When everything is over,

there will still be sound.

I am done with

those paradoxes about

trees falling in the forest

and the ego.

I have accepted indifference.

There will still be sound;

the rattle of the table,

the buzz of old words,

the fairgrounds,

abandoned horse races,

lingering sound.

All these things get louder

buzzing quickly

forming mass.

I Left my Body Behind to Break the News

“The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably deal with.”
- Tony Robbins

They sat rocking

in their chairs

for a long time

appreciating the silence

as the sun disappeared.

Things Will Get Better, Eventually

I haven’t remembered anything, only the names

and that their dates have been replaced by fees

toted up out of mischief:

a whopping yellow sun, finesse swallowed hard,

a scrapbook of pantyhose dawdling beside some Shreveport-like expanse.

-Bill Berkson

My memory seems to be malfunctioning

images sparked from charged synapses'.

The seconds have all been paraphrased;

drenched in opacity, rotting

as only the half-forgotten can.

Was she wearing flannel or jean?

Did she return the squeeze?

Where were we and is it possible

that nothing happened at all?

That she walked past one day

on a subway or in a restaurant

and seeing her I disappeared

into my own skull?

Leaving that place for this.

Time deranged, comatosed daydream.

Will I return when she is gone?

Back to some world where she never

even slowed her stroll.

Hello Darling

Dalliance in the eyes of man.

everything is missing.