I feel myself at the
Edge of this great
Desperate
Chasm
Where the pebbles
Beside by my toes
Break away to
Hurl themselves
Into this fearful unknown

Four books at this bedside

It's not yet eight o'clock

But I cannot bring myself to
Crack any of them
Right now
To escape this weight
Another restless night

I am overwhelmed
This flood of reminiscence
And desperation
Pressing down and drawing out
The last air of these
Over-worn lungs

I can count names on
Catalogued fingertips
I can see faces, somehow,
In faltering memory



I hurl impatient prayers
At the ceiling of
This dark room
In hopes the Lord still
Seeks out sinners

Even those foul as me

September has
Slipped in
Almost unnoticed

Soon the leaves
Will redden and dry

Let go their
Summer home

And play upon the
Fore-winds of winter

I'm a child in the warmth of your laugh

And as aged as the pillars of the earth

I'm at every point I've ever been
     and never been

I'm coming together
     completely undone

You've altered the course of my story

I will never again breathe normally



You're every chance I have to take

I remember
sometimes

her voice would quiver

like paper lanterns
dancing in some
foreign nighttime glow

I fancy
sometimes

I knew that sweet tremble

at a tea ceremony table
beneath Chinese skies
many years before

it first caressed my ear

Gracious,

I've hardbound copies of

Tasting Paris

and

Koreatown

side by side.



No

I don't want some

"delightfully delicate" fusion

of these

opposite ends of the earth.



In equal measure

I am torn in two

and thus

it seems

my name

holds true.



All this world's time

is not enough.

An unsettled life
Yet pens with such

Veracity

A sort of way,
          perhaps, we

All

Might hope to trek
Through these
Long and quickened years

How much joy
Can the desperate heart endure?
Weighed down with
Bittersweet
Longing
Gouged in to the soul

And no words
Can suffice

And great hope
Cannot seem
To weather this ache

Saw a comment
In this age of interwoven everything
Incensed that Bourdain's death
Receive more attention than those
Of many lost veterans

(My father a veteran
With yet a glint of hope
To live out his years
To their natural end

And my grandfather
A serviceman long ago
Carrying light betrayals
Of this said great nation

Great men both, and)
Great those who give their all
Yet what gave us Bourdain?

Just as much
In equal measure

A life
Hard lived
Worn and weary and truthfully
Desperate

All peoples feel
The terrible weight of their sins
Even,
At days end,
Those who profess no belief

Bourdain gave art
Bought with sweat and blood and
Costly time
(For all of us
Time is valuable beyond gold)

Art
And food
And good cheer
Spent in the late evenings
And long mornings
Surrounded by all manner of
Gripping yarn

A double life?
Not unlikely
A wounded wanderer?
Most assuredly
A value immeasurable?
Beyond doubt

And what would we all do?
Should we write, or read, or sing, or paint, or eat, or travel, or labor, or rest, or weep, or laugh, or cook, or question, or answer, or defend, or break?

Love,
And live.
Veterans of this warring world
Cooks of worthy creations