Untitled

Struggling for my Se1f

Life and Death in battle,

not even caring.

or knowing,

that it’s me they’re after.

      Image #4

Look at me and linger there.

You see I’m not as young

nor older than you thought.

It’s the physical impression

your retina mistakes

for a spirit wandering,

timeless, thoughtfully joyous,

     Cut Glass Vas

I lay on the table

chewing the fat

while he cut away

all of my lean.

But give it a few

days and you’ll be,

he said, good as new,

well, almost the same.

Except for your lack

of business machines

spiraling now not

through the tubes,

they were cut

and are crimped

and crippled,

but

what,

a relief,

isn’t it?

      Image #3

I am an ancient striving for youth

that I may finish before I am gone.

I am a baby full of sucking

still unfulfilled.

I am poetry readable

if you don’t read aloud.

I am pieces almost assembled.

I am justification

if you’ll accept imperfection.

I am illegible scribbling

until I am read.

I am lions and tigers

and chameleons.

I am two colors, green and brown,

or is that three?

I am a sad song in a comedy.

I am a bowl full of popcorn

and no old maids.

I am coffee and sex, and some booze,

but no cigarettes.

I am a bookend

envious of my books.

I am petrified arrogance flying.

     Me and Poughkeepsie

A personal note

and only that,

a bridge I am

and care to be.

To span the gaps

of age and space,

generations,

and geography.

To gently ease

across the gulf,

a bridge I am

and care to be.

To become a draw,

if need, and lower

to hie my charges o’er.

To stand and stay,

and more than that,

a bridge I am

and care to be.

            Which way is up?

In sight of my end

 (not uncomfortable, and it’s not that awkward a position)

and not at all at odds with my beginnings,

I sit here in the middle of it all pondering the way to up.

In spite of very heavy measures already taken,

and having found the way in, and around, and under, and through,

and even down and out,

I still can’t see my way clear to up.

               Image #5

A small guy, not a tall guy by any means,

  the colossal thud when he realizes,

    after all these years of viewing himself through tiny mirrors,

that he’s just a small guy,

not a tall guy at all.

               Coffee Break #2

What of the half-assed, green-eyed dribbler of nonsense forms

now that he’s gone so far away from us?

Is his repressed solitude any more unreal than our thing?

Do his words make any less sense because we haven’t read them?

Why did he leave in the first place?

We have a pretty good old world here in spite of the thick

layer of brown crap that covers it most of the time.

Who does he think he is, anyway, taking off like that?

What does he think he’ll find out there, peace?

               My Gift

My poet’s license does decree

  that I give myself to you. Of me

to you I must bequeath

  what’s from the depths, from way beneath

the shell that’s known to most.

  It‘s that within that earns the toast

to longer life and even far beyond

  the force behind the ripples in the pond.

For if in sonnet long or terse,

  I cannot from the heart converse

with you, dear friend, to whom I speak,

  then I must needs be drawn one week

and quartered yet the next.

           Eight Days In

The doctor’s full of shit!  He says I’m dying.

The nurse won’t admit it,  but I know they’re lying.

The doctor’s full of shit!  And I’m not buying.

He says I’ve had It, but I know he’s lying.

That doctor’s full of shit!  Why am I crying?  I am not dying.

               Alone Outside the Computer

The usual cafeteria table hunt shatters an already punctured self-image

with imagined fingers pointing and voices whispering,

“Yes, that’s him.  He’s the one who screwed up and lost that data file. 

Yes, it’s him, the one with that crown on one of his teeth

that looks like it was bought at a discount store.”

And then the barely endurable meal alone because

his clouded vision can’t discern a friendly face among the diners.

And his anticipation of the ritual ostracizing at the minds of his peers

that will not subside until his next triumph

that will be twice loudly crowed to compensate. 

      From Albert Lea to Minneapolis, Nov. 1984

A milk truck is dusting the middle ground a half mile off the freeway.

An almost freezing, dozeable rain, and WCCO are keeping me southern Minnesota company.

I’m on my way again, away from the first, and toward the likely, final stop.

          Sketches

Penciled images sneering irrelevantly with protestations of jealousy, envy, fear,

“lecherous screwer of somebody else’s wife, or their son, or maybe even the dog”,

even before the first rough outline.

               Footnote

Feel free to wander through the multicolored valleys that I’ve mostly hidden from your view.

The sun is mostly shining, but the hills are full of song on rainy days as well.

There’s a softness there to linger on if you like, or you can take the blacktop--