A script for birth - an new revival,
libelled breaks, swollen structure,
a cupboard full of accidentals,
daubs this paragon with stucco:

Glowsticks prance on leveled stair,
canvas origami pads Negeb:
Counterculture's been declared!
'Metropolis' left in riverbed.

A crypt where all is fairly loose;
—deepened, glottal, breathened, size—
Saddled with this torment, you!
—ugly glamour pangyrized—

There's a lot more to fashion,
and a lot more, to forge;
Nothing keeps me in *******,
that would be too awkward.

~

Today, a family friend marveled at how much I remind him of my father.
You must understand how much this scared me.
Nothing scares me more than addiction,
yet I perpetually submit myself to addictive behavior, substances, feelings.

These holes I've been digging cannot be dug forever.
There is a bottom and that is excommunication, prison, death.
No person will dig me out,
no person can.

The clock may move slower
after I use this,
and it may move quicker
after I use this.
It doesn't matter to me,
as long as moves in a way other than it does in sobriety.

The sun will rise and the sun will set,
all according to plan.
For hundreds of years into the future
astrologers have predicted at what time which stars
can be seen from certain locations on Earth.
Yet I do not know where I will be tomorrow.
I do not know who will be with me.
I do not know if my father will still love me,
or if we will still share a home, a family, blood.

Today is the first day I set foot on death beach.

I come cloaked in
Courage, honour and bravery.
A badge of promise red, blue and white,
Pinned to the dark stitching of my heart.

I hope to remember the faces at home

And I hope to forget the faces that lie here.

I feel I need to stand as one for my family and country,
Bound by the strong dark green cloth of armor

Protecting my body,

Hoping God,
Will let me live.

I shall fight.
Fight for today and fight for tomorrow.

Ikkyu dropped
his Grand Master’s teacup -
the cup broke into pieces
And Ikkyu’s jaws dropped
Would the Grand Master now break
a thing or two of Ikkyu’s body parts?


“O Master,” says Ikkyu
when the Grand Master arrives
“I am contemplating Death;
please enlighten me on Death”

“All things pass, O Ikkyu,”
answers the Grand Master
“Death is inevitable
And only the foolish mourn
or are swayed by emotion –
the wise know
Death is in the nature of all things”


“Indeed, O Wise Master,” replies Ikkyu
“It is no wonder then that your teacup
passed away today, as you can see here -
and you, O Grand Master,
have most wisely expounded on this grave matter”


The Grand Master loses his Grand look

The pain finally caught up to me today
I'd been running
Hiding in the arms and the minds of others
Sneaking through smoke-filled corridors
Diving into a lake of liquor
But I stopped running today
And, having no place else to hide,
It found me.
All because I met a man
And I asked him If he let himself feel the pain before he fought
Or if he started kicking and screaming immediately
"Run." Was all he said
So I did.

Touch me,
it doesn't matter where
and it doesnt matter how
I need to know I'm still alive
so someone touch me now
Shake my hand and say hello
or pat me on the back
kiss me on the cheek
that I may feel this sense I lack
slap my face and pull my hair
make me bleed I just don't care
dig your nails into my skin
so I can feed this need within
I've been numb for such a time
that even pain would be sublime
so touch me, touch me now
I don't care where, I don't care how

Is an old poem of mine that I tender to you to turn your mind away for just, even just, a few minutes from the sadness and the depression that I read about in poem after poem.  I am an old man whose sighs are recorded in the lines on his hands.  It will be better. You will be loved.
Be brave.


Lead to Gold, Philosopher to Poets

When the philosophers abandoned
castle turrets for ivory towers,
lost was the secret of
I and thou,
of turning lead to gold,
but these cagey, canny scholars in new residences,
who traded
perspicacity for pensions,
before they left,
they tasked to the poets,
a singular task,
cloaking them in a life long responsibility
charging them as follows:

Be the harpooners of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhaposdy,
exhort the loopy
to light candles of illusions,
canonize the nursing mothers to deliver us
the kinder Ishmael's who will revel,
lead us with warmth and apprehension,
with the strength of sinews
fixed and flexible,
we will believe and
they will teach the rest of us
that the first commandment
is to empathize.

**with clinical observation,
dense and demanding,
make us laugh at
the comedy of our situation,
the comedy of our conscience,
our free to see,
the peep show of us,
explicate and deconstruct
our unexamined lives,
help us to extend the boundaries,
record the voyages of our timepieces,
declare us all free and victors,
file away the chains of language
and declare us all poets