THE GREAT FAREWELL
I've waved to people port side.
as their cruise ship pulled away from dock,
a seven day round trip,
but a journey to the ends of the earth
in my overripe mind.
And I've seen them run down the beach,
splash in the water,
until they're weary of salt on the tongue,
in their eyes,
but I have them slipping below the surface,
moving into a great underground city
and living out their lives there.
Every airplane goodbye is a rocket trip to Mars.
I hang up the phone
and the person on the other end
time travels fifty years into the past.
The number of people I will never see again
is staggering.
Every conversation is with
another's jet stream. Or their gravestone.
It's a strange world.
All its spinning, its orbiting,
invested in my solitude.
People live on it
just to say they used to know me.
CHANGED
I
took a thousand different forms.
Sometimes
at the flick of a hand.
But
mostly with a thought
or
a phrase
in
the right ear – my own.
There
were moments
I
was as deep as I have ever been.
Other
times, I was content
to
merely bristle on the surface.
I
departed from the norm.
I
stepped outside the circle.
I
even treated reality
to
a taste of its own realism.
Some
of the shapes I assumed were splendid.
Others
looked down-at-heel.
There
were muddled ones
and
muddied ones,
clear
and precise
or
as bewildering as a two-headed dog.
Or
a two-headed me,
I
took a stab at a little nobility
and
bled for my troubles.
I
was nothing but emotions.
I
was as hard as brick.
I
had such faith in simplicity
until
tangled webs seemed a better fit.
How
often I cut against the grain
just
so, a minute later,
I
could go with the flow.
I
thought enough of myself
to
sing my own praises.
But
then I took my pride
down
more notches
than
there are on a gunslinger’s
rifle
barrel.
There
were my subtle days,
my
polished nights,
to
go with sparklingly obvious
and
rough and raw
as
a sailor on the grog.
Yes,
I was so different
from
when I was different the last time
that
I never knew how different
I’d
be next.
BEING
THE NICE GUY THAT I AM
With
thin uneasy hands
I
sought an analogy
between
contours that defined
a
woman physically
and
the conversation
in
which she opened up
about
being teased in school
for
wearing braces
and
having an unhealthy
regard
for Twizzlers.
I
sought the seam
where
lateral and vertical definition
joined
with content,
self-respect
and overall goodness.
I
found instead a scar
from
a stomach operation.
She
didn’t share the details.
AT
SPARROW LEVEL
I
don’t know how I angered so many neighbors,
just
because I fed the sparrow from my hand.
To
them it’s like some kind of miscegenation
when
that small warm weight nibbles from my palm.
There’s
this distinct anti-John-Grey mood.
Its
symbol is a tiny songbird in a circle with a line drawn through.
Its
secret sign is an ugly look from a kitchen window.
Meanwhile,
my little brown bird is appreciative,
delights
in its sweet music, unaware of
a
back jagged with daggers, so many scorching stares.
He
feeds. He trills his quiet contentment.
A
flutter of feather. The cock of a grateful eye.
I
alone know where beauty gets it from.
Lovely celebration of our connection with nature.
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