it is my birthday.
but the world has long disowned me.
honestly--I ask--why do I bother?
as there must be something there for me--out in the viscera.
for I, am still here.

it is my birthday.
but the public has long shunned me.
faces thick as bedrock and eyes as dull as mint wrappers.
and they use sound to blind them.

it is my birthday.
and no one seems to help.
for it is not always happy to know,
you're one day closer into the arms of the cease-r.

it is my birthday.
and words rule no meaning.
for no one listens to me.
and no one hears what I'm hearing.

it is my birthday.
and my marrow weakens as I breath.
but bones sleep with welded lips 'neath the coat of earth.
and--with shame--I shall, too, be nothing but empty research.

it is my birthday.
and I force myself to nature.
O sand, is it true they pick you up and throw you in the wind?
O sea, is it true you get stuck in the mouths and stomachs of the young?
O hair, is it true you scream when the air beats you?
but I don't hear--and I know many.

it is my birthday.
and I breath false air.
is it true the ones that speak ill are on their death bed?
is it wrong I wish for them to speed up time?
is it wrong I point the reaper in their direction?
so I needn't worry of their illness spreading to mine.

it is my birthday.
and we are all gathered for tea.
the masochists sit by the sadists; that's the rule,
so the sadist may draw that ball-point pen deep along their slate skin--and whisper the names of forgotten authors,
so they may both moan with delicious harmony together--for two presents in one.

it is my birthday.
and the masochists ask me to join.
they write each other's eulogies
and revise--revise--'til there are none.

it is my birthday.
for now you know not,
of what I wish, but what I need,
a master.

for I am not one.

it is my birthday.
and not all wishes deem true,
for it seems no one cares of my words--my work--my blood--my tears--
a hymn to whomever it may concern--have you no mercy?

it is my birthday.
and I have not found them.
I have not found the right.
for only airless voices with no mouths, eyes that wish for many more, and souls that have lost time have found me.

and I am one of them.

and 'neath my heart,

I always will be.

for it is my birthday,

and wishes don't come true.

Science can't save you, neither can religion,
at least Popper and Niebuhr, philosophers and poets,
are entertainers, which is why actors and athletes
are paid so much. Thanks for the summaries.
I was teaching Shakespeare's 92nd ridiculous sonnet
to my student who lays blacktop in the off season
Shakespeare bellyaching about dying without her love
a feeling foreign to a modern adolescent sensibility
although many teens are pretty far gone searching
for their mothers or fathers in their dazed lovers' eyes.
Which is why we call it "the wound that never heals."
Or the lesion that's always lengthening. And bleeding.

Muslim fundamentalists and their Christian counterparts
are a mystery to me. Pews and prayer rugs, the airless
indoor environment of religious worship, reading
scriptures, hypnotized by hymns and fainting from staring
at candles through stained glass windows, almost certain
the preacher is faking his certainty about the afterlife.
It's not my problem. A more immediate concern:
receding gums and tooth extractions, swollen joints,
poor lubrication and circulation, wave after wave
of viral infection, the occasional antibiotic-resistant
bacterial attack, usually urinary, and who knows
what internal organs are dividing and conquering
without mercy or cease, i.e. the wound that never heals.

It is wise not to overvalue your continued existence,
good not to be innumerate, unable to compare
a mere 80 years with say 6.0 x 109 or all of time
(to date) times the multiverse. Conversely,
it is interesting all of space and most of history is contained
in your mind (realizing of course it's just a map
of the cosmos not the cosmos itself, or is it?). I'm
unable to wrestle free, tongue in that cavity
and locked in my memories, so separate and disparate
from the biomass in the crosswalks, even my spouse.
Alone, so alone, even your doctor can only devote
limited thought to your situational mortality through
the redress of poetry - also a wound that never heals.

Snow for eternity, that's what this February's been.
All to the good, for someone it's the final February
so enjoy it to the extent you can. By that I mean joy.
Joy at birth. Joy at death. All joy. All times. Anyway,
that was Shakespeare's message: even tragedies are comedies.
May, a Buddhist, chants each morning.
Her husband, Marc, who's Jewish, plays league tennis.
Their son, Aaron, will soon make Eagle scout.
How does that relate to your wound that never heals?
Luck runs out. For D.H. Lawrence in New Mexico
or Ulysses S. Grant in Ohio or Yasujiro Ozu in
Tokyo or Satyajit Ray in Bombay or Rabindranath
Tagore in Bangalore or at the Battle of the Atlantic in the Azores.

The night is a poultice, winter or summer solstice.
My anonymity will not affect the anomie ghettoside
seeing for myself how season by season
vacations and accomplishments accumulate, late in life
and early on, sunrise over mountains or moonrise over Bronx.
Masturbator, prisoner of war. Hospice of the Holy Roman Empire.
Numerous blue notes: the 3 flat, 7 flat, 5 flat,
the 6 flat and the 2 flat too. I don't get
what Wallace Stevens means by imagination.
When groundhog shows up as a totem, there is opportunity
to explore the mystery of death without dying.
This then is the purpose of purposelessness (and of eating less)!
Now what about that wound that never heals.

The Skeptical Observer column in Scientific American
was somewhat alarming when he accepted a paranormal
explanation for how his wife's grandfather's inoperable
transistor radio played music from its hiding spot
in his sock drawer on, and only on, their wedding day.
Now I'll have to believe my father (or mother!) is watching me
perform private ****** acts with (or without) partners
or that they could even know my thoughts. Or aliens
are attending our committee meetings and making
perfectly reasonable decisions given the available information
and the world is rotating just fine without humans.
These possibilities - angels, ghosts, aliens - are better
than holocaust and genocide. In this way,
and only in this way, does doom become endurable.
The wound that never heals in the end is all you'll feel.