Sheer Living Philosophest

The cactus trail leads up the hill
Beside the path the deer prefer
And where, sometimes, a road runner
Or fox will abruptly appear.

From here, they look like green applause,
A string of hands poised for clapping,
Like fans lining up on the route
Of a stage of the Tour de France.

Here come deer now. The prickly pear
Are ready with their paddle palms.
Let the wind stir the juniper.

A mind can play at philosophe
And strain to move by metaphor,
But wordless is philosopher.

But Incomprehensibly Uplifting

Pleasantly odd, the oddly pleasant
Minor moments of a minor life—
The way morning light across the way,

Ordinary light, ordinary
Morning, not flamboyant cloud morning,
Can catch your eye so you catch your breath,

And you don’t know why, you only know
There’s a small surge of joy, a small surge
Of lowly satisfaction. Lowly

Unoriginal Sin

It keeps happening—often
Enough to merit study
And more comment than it gets—

Those indisputably harmed,
Even to the point of death,
Victims of rape and torture,

Prolonged discrimination,
Caste systems, war, genocide,
Bravely mange to survive,

Become exemplars of faith,
Perseverance, and the best
Of human courageousness.

Then, somehow, sometimes
In a few generations,
Sometimes in a few decades,

Those very same survivors
Or their direct descendants,
Turn to become oppressors,

And prove themselves capable
Of atrocities that stun
Not only for the evil

But for who’s embracing it—
Protesters turned storm troopers,
Peace activists turned tyrants,

The decimated remnant
Of a people becoming
Architects of apartheids—

Never again, people say,
As means of justifying
Starting it over again.

Doesn’t even have to be
Vengeance. Sensed entitlement
Seems to be enough and is

Always near to hand, always
Close to the surface, desired.
Can we look this in the face?

It doesn’t seem like we can.
No amount of suffering
Can permanently render

Persons or populations
Incapable of harming
Persons and populations,

And the last measure of pain
Is suffering as excuse
To cause suffering again.

Moses Drives up the Mesa to Collect the Latest Checklist

Up the mountains look for ways
Immoral’s illogical—
Lying’s nine-tenths of the law.

The sound of engines running
Is the sound of your own thefts.
Pause a moment while reading—

No seriously—pause now
And review your life for crimes.
Can you feel the tragedy?

The real tragedy being
That there’s no way you can share,
No way everyone can share,

Simultaneously, all
Their personal lists of sins.

Relentless Rhythm Shapes All This

Points on Earth back into day,
And day rises over them
Until they’re backing away

Back into evening and night.
Everything starts in the east,
And the west is for goodbyes,

As far as Earth is concerned.
Of course, some species can rush
Back and forth, some fast enough

To outrun the day or night,
For a short while, a few hours,
But most of the time, most time,

In fact, most of what time is
Amounts to time backing up.

Why Wouldn’t You Want Readers?

Well you would, if you could pick them,
Hand-select them from the masses,

And, shamefully, not for the best,
Most insightful, elite readers,

Just for those most likely to like
Whatever this is that you do.

Are you really that thin-skinned? Yes.
Maybe. You’d love community,

To share your own minority
Nature of your preferences.

You have the feeling you exist
In more than one iteration,

That there, are have been, and will be
Always small numbers of readers

With interests and preferences
Largely overlapping with yours,

And something under your ribs warms
At the thought of being welcomed

As a writer for your people,
If only your people could be

Located, assembled, distilled
Out of the vast demographics

Of a world unlikely to like
Whatever this is that you do.

Relief

You dream yourself trapped
By minor horrors,

Bad debts, pet vomits,
Fraught obligations,

The general sense
Of unpleasant things

Needing attention
Immediately.

Life, the same old life,
Sisyphean pulse

Against entropy,
An endless series

Of minor panics.
But then you wake up

And recall you are
Dying, and promised

By doctors to be
Dead soon, and you sigh

An enormous sigh
Of relief.

Nothing in the Forecast

Life’s about to get
Very different,
Says rumination,

Right at the instant
Of your transition
From dreams to waking,

An invitation
In a predawn room
To start composing.

Anticipation
Makes you more aware
Of the deep quiet,

Thoughts just boats bobbing
Ahead of the storm.

Worm-Eaten Prejudices

Prejudices, worm-eaten prejudices, as our old companions, are hard to be parted with.

People do a little better

When acknowledging the better

In us is weaker than the worst.

The worst won’t magically vanish.

Appeals to divine salvation

Or to loftier behavior

End up by providing cover

For the worser to re-emerge,

Which in turn invites in the worst.

The best we’ll draw out of ourselves

Will be cynical sets of rules

The worst resent but can’t escape,

Assuming our prejudices,

Including those of those who wrote

The rules, will never desert us.

Imagist Poetry

Sticky mannequins at the bottom

Of the lake. Your daughter contemplates,

Trying to conjure the scariest

Combination of things that she hates—

Sticky things, mannequins, things that lie

Down in dark moss under clear water.

It’s an old game, good for long car drives,

Including variants combining

Your three happiest things, three weirdest,

The menu for your ideal dinner,

Anything you can banter about

As a daylong drive rolls up the miles.

You laugh. Imagine those mannequins’

Staring from half-closed, sticky eyelids.

Dayless

Local light reclaimed the world.
You have to dig in your heels
To feel days end and begin.

The sun and shadow curtains
Are continuous, of course,
And only by not moving

Smoothly with them can you feel
The days arrived, suns risen.
You don’t mean to be stubborn.

You’re just too small to keep up.
But imagine life tracking—
Geosynchronous orbits,

Faster even than on planes—
To hold continuous night
Or save continuous day.

What could you possibly count?
Your first unit could be years.
They’re actually out there now,

Just too well-attuned to see,
Local aliens as clouds,
Part of local light they flee.

Mort’s Place

Here’s the immortality you get—
Fixed identification with death.

Causation’s a fiction, but there are
The necessary antecedents—

That is, this will never come again
Unless this or that comes before it.

Death is just such an antecedent
For actual immortality—

Whatever lives on of you, your self,
Traces of your unique awareness,

Can’t emerge until after you die.
Any immortality that’s left

Will inhabit an indefinite
Span of fragmentating existence—

Bardo, Limbo, post-mortem taverns
Where the dead are allowed to mingle,

Will welcome you with open echoes
Of all the other calm immortals.

Outside, it’s flat desert or open
Ocean to the horizon, but here

Crowds of ancient personalities
Mingle with the newest revenants

All just beginning to realize
They’ve been visiting here all their lives.

Writing under the Waves

You turn your head,
Open your eyes,
And everything
Solid is gone.

You were dreaming
Upright again.
You’re dreaming now
As you struggle

To string these words
In short phrases
While attention
Sinks in the waves.

Don’t you dare blink.
You’ll leave again.
Someone’s talking,
But no one’s here.

The Burial Plot

The core story’s bare
As a western set
In a stark ghost town

Built on location
In remote desert
And then abandoned

As a real ghost town
After the story
Was strip-mined and struck.

A squatter moves in,
Content with shelter,
Windmill well water,

And a hidden cache
Of canned, packaged foods
The cast left behind

Inside the entrance
To a phony mine.
In short, the core

Story’s all phony—
A dream projected
On blank, dusty ground.

To crank up the tale
And get it creaking
Along in the wind,

You need a second
Character to turn
Up making trouble

For your first squatter.
Now you have social
Tension and conflict,

Basic two-hander,
Stripped-down theater.
You see it, don’t you?

Any core story’s
Built on the ruins
Of an earlier

Story’s construction.
Any core story
Is implausible

To really live in,
Severs connections
To outer contexts,

And requires persons,
Plural, to detail
The toll of being

Social, to draw out
Human characters,
To scrutinize them.

For now, this ghost town
Sits empty between
Core phony stories,

No inhabitants,
No interactions,
Only the lizards,

Spiders, jack-rabbits,
Quiet scorpions,
And rustling dry wind.

Weeding Small Delusions

In all sorts of frightening
And comforting ways, you can
Forget that you’re not alone.

The scratching in the dark hall
In the middle of the night
Can whisper wild animal

Until you recall you have
Been babysitting a cat
That sleeps in the spare bedroom.

The warmth from your sheets at dawn,
When your brain’s still half adrift,
Can let you dream of gone years

When you used to share your bed.
Confusions intensify,
Of course, with illness and age,

And strong pain medications,
And epistemology
Becomes, as you practice it

Now in ordinary hours,
More a rudimentary
Checking of the sensory

Against shuffled memory
To come to an agreement.
This is what truth is these days—

Reminding yourself you are
The source of most of your own
Uncertain experience,

And you should probably check
Shadows so you don’t expect
Too much from their existence.

The Canvas at Twilight

Once it’s official, dying
Feels very like a fresh start,
Which it shouldn’t, but it does.

You’re on a new adventure.
You’re fortunate enough to know.
You’ve been granted the foresight

That narrows the aperture,
No longer open-ended,
And yet not already closed.

You know that once the hot breath
Is on you, you’ll be dismayed.
You know you may get less life

Than even now’s expected,
That you might not be able
To prepare all things fully,

But now that’s the adventure
That you’ve begun to create—
You’re no longer bewildered

By all the ways you could die,
What you should do to survive.
You’re not going to survive

Much longer, no matter what,
And all kinds of death but one
Have been shunted to the side.

The rough scenario’s set.
You’ve entered palliative care.
This adventure’s what you make

Of dying, what you can shape
Out of this amorphous clay,
The splendor the dimming takes.

Dawn in Hospice Care

In the quiet morning, you
Open your eyes and your thoughts
Acknowledge that this world,

Presenting in your brain
As so much awareness
Of nothing much, is still

Pretty much the same. Good.
Oh, and you’re not in pain.
Even better. So what

Will these waking hours bring
Before you sleep again?
You’ve got no miracles planned.

You haven’t bought any
Lottery tickets. Luck
Will have to operate

In a limited range.
Yet, feeling well, feeling
Well enough alone, yields

A kind of excitement.
When the body is free
From pain or exhaustion,

The most ordinary
Possibilities seem
Bright opportunity.

Some More Evening Mist for You

Whistler explained the appeal

Of painting grimy London

Industrial areas

At twilight in terms of haze

And blurry light at that hour

When the evening mist clothes the

Riverside with poetry

As with a veil. So one art

Invokes another, painting

Poetry. Curious role

Poetry is given, too—

Transformer of the ugly

And quotidian, a veil

That beautifies by dimming.

You can feel the poets squirm

At being assigned this role—

Poems as soft-focus filters,

Poetry as covering

Over grim reality

Like a fairy’s magic cloak,

Gentling, enchanting the scene,

What an archaic notion.

And yet, while you may object

To the assumption, you’ll note

How easily parsed Whistler’s

Deployment of the figure

Remains—a riverside clothed

In poetry—you get it.

You don’t imagine the scene

Papered in pages of poems.

To be clothed in poetry—

To be any kind of thing

Or person thus clothed, thus draped—

Is to be wrapped in beauty,

Grace, some higher elegance.

Ask yourself how you know this.

Intermission

You wake up rested,
Feeling pretty good,
And think, Really?

This is the body
That’s supposed to be
Dying?

Outside, clouds and moon,
Crickets chorusing
On a warm night breeze—

Pretty much the same
Pretty old nothing much
As ever,

And since you’re not
In pain right now,
Not hunched over

Sick on the toilet,
Not fetal in bed,
Not muzzy-headed

For the moment, it’s almost
Like you never were.
Admonish

Yourself to savor
The interlude,
The quiet pause

In the proceedings
That will resume soon—
Prolonged descent’s

A show in which
The intermission
Is the best part.

Aubade for the Self That Has to Go

You could love life too much,
Worsen the addiction
From which all lives suffer,

If you took sage advice
To savor each moment
And rejoice in each day.

This is speculative,
Obviously. Intense
Lovers of life don’t die

Extra-miserable deaths,
As far as you can see.
Maybe life rewards them.

Loving life is the first
Addiction, and maybe,
Of all cravings, the best.

You wake to fresh sunlight
And small, brightly lit clouds
Ornamenting rose skies

At your bedside window.
Your thoughts leap up, a flare
Of euphoric delight.

It feels good, and you know,
For that reason, you will
Want it again, want more.

The Life Is Always Richer Than the Record

It’s funny how the phrases often
Turn out darker than the day, how texts,

Shed like isinglass exoskeletons,
Have a sepia tint suggestive

Of more melancholy than you feel,
How the experience of dying,

Which flows gradually, like a river
Fanning out in a shallow delta,

All reflective surfaces and calm,
Mostly calm, even lovely often—

Even where the water grows brackish
With proximity to the ocean—

Contrasts with the detritus of poems
Deposited as future fossils,

Shells and driftwood, occasional trash
Left scattered along the delta’s shores.

For a Few Years Before You Got Sick

In the desert, your 3am
Used to be good for getting up
Going outside, looking at stars.

There were planets and pinprick streaks
Of shooting stars, occasional
Satellite trains, the running lights

Of a couple of red-eye flights.
You had caffeine and a blanket
Against the katabatic breeze—

Crickets often, some coyotes
Bursting with their high-pitched yipping
Here and there in the steep canyons.

One of the tourist restaurants
Might host a delivery truck.
Otherwise, there was no traffic,

Maybe some mule deer crossing town.
You chanted poems, your own mostly,
And then you listened quietly

Before heading inside to read news,
More poetry, do some writing,
Fix some breakfast, and it was day.

Demon Floaty Whistling in the Dark

It’s amazing how unterrifying
Spooky mental phenomena can be,
If you know what you’re experiencing,
And you know what others see.

Say you see a shadow in the corner
Of your vision, one that sort of flickers
Like a large, black floaty, but foreigner,
An eye drifter, but quicker.

You know it’s a feature of fresh disease,
A new bug in your visual system,
And you know it’s nothing others can see,
An eyespot not a demon.

You don’t worry about its agency,
About whether or not it’s stalking you.
It’s just your own failing machinery,
Nothing that wants to eat you.

Postponement

Distractions can sometimes
Help prevent emesis—

Sniff of cleaning fluid
Or an alcohol wipe,

A sudden bit of news,
Anything that’s startling—

Although sometimes nothing
Can stop the upheaval—

You’ve personally soiled
A doctor’s polished shoes,

The inside of a car,
Other unfortunate

Embarassments—one time
You threw up on the phone

Without dropping the call.
But distractions can help

And the fact that they can
Puzzles you a little—

Did your body really
Need to lose its lunch, then?

Is nausea mostly
Useful, if unpleasant,

Or a superfluous
Symptom? Could it at least

Be a good source domain
For metaphors of loss

That try to close the gap
Between true helplessness

And misery that could
Be postponed for a while.

First Afternoon Out of the Hospital

So the day goes—in context
Better, so far, than the most.

There was sleep. Problems resolved
Almost as if by themselves.

There were companions, laughter,
A patch of funny weather.

And now your child’s drawing pictures,,
Chatting while her music plays,

And you’re not really dying.
Skip your context for today.

One Last Check

A look around on the way out,
A snapshot to overexpose
And wash out before you black out—

Be sure to save some energy
For that among the final tasks.
What was the world at that moment?

You have a feeling it’s as good
As it’s going to be a while.
Criminal strong men are worshipped

As lawless demigods or saints.
That can’t end well. Militaries
Are all busy upgrading tech

And building bigger presences.
That won’t soothe things. In some countries
Citizens have stockpiled caches

And grown hostile to each other.
Will those tensions first burst or ease?
The species has grown powerful

And controls the world’s resources.
It’s a time of absolute wealth
But with no sense of shared purpose

Or common goals outside of sects,
Conspiratorial pockets,
The war of all groups against all.

Look around before you get out
And be glad you get to have now,
While the top-heavy world still sways,

The worst extremes stay in forecasts
Only beginning to arrive,
And there’s the probability

That there will be pockets of good—
Good acts, collective achievements,
Kindnesses, companionships, calm—

That will have happened, not only
In your small, dark adventure, but
Through the whole of the stumbling world.

Dying Just Right

Like any other phase,

It engenders its own

Mad examination—

What’s the best use of this

End of life existence?

Are you spending it well?

Are you squandering days?

Should you be wasting them

Differently? Shouldn’t you

Be dying at the Lake?

Doing something noble,

Finishing a novel,

Holding hands at sunset?

It just doesn’t matter.

Hospital is ok—

It’s no shame to live, now,

However you live now,

Needles or no needles,

Constantly dozing off,

Maybe content to drool

A little when you do—

Aha! Maybe content. . .

If you’re maybe content,

Then you’re doing this right.

Pascal’s Wager Reconsidered

Every after-life posited
For the supernatural soul
Comes with a caveat emptor—

Some other after-life belief,
Somewhere, carries in its fine print,
Sometimes even in its headlines,

The warning that souls holding faith
In slightly different systems
Will suffer eternal torture—

There is no faith safe to believe
Without fear of some other faith.
So why not wager on nothing?

No pain, no suffering, unless
One of the fiercer faiths is right,
And only one of them can be.

With the way they keep splintering,
Preaching death to one another,
What are the odds any faith’s right?

Fresh Candidate for Teacher’s Pet

It’s almost a first
Day of school feeling,
This being released

Into home hospice
Following a month
In the hospital.

Collect your supplies.
Prepare your notebooks.
Complete paperwork.

Worry you’ll do well
Enough to handle
The new challenges.

You won’t get to meet
Any new friends, true,
But you’re familiar

With the class bully
Already. Teacher
Death still needs a pet.

Ado About Nothing Much

All the people who are living
Can’t seem to stop themselves bustling,
One great seething stream of living,

Which becomes more astonishing
When you yourself are withdrawing—
Not that you would expect the world

To slow its quotidian flow,
To pause in its daily hustle
Just because one you is dying—

One and many yous are always
Dying, every moment somewhere—
But as you slow and brace yourself

For your gathering conclusion
The contrast becomes visible,
Vivid, between hurtling forward

And settling into quietude
Without so many distractions
Of the forever unfolding

Events and happenings that may
Or might not actually happen.
What was that all about, again?

Soft Power

There’s a force to peace arriving,
If it’s sudden enough, a whoomf
Of deceleration, horizons

Suddenly shuddering and then still.
Even if it’s noiseless, the world creaks
Like swings in an abandoned playground,

In a weedy part of quiet town
Where the trees stage their comebacks as if
They’d never been defoliated,

Something you feel more than see or hear.
Peace. Calm. The kind you experience.
You’ll be encountering another

Kind soon, the kindest, the kind you don’t
Experience, the peace without you.