I’m old and I want to feel things.

Apology in a Complex Mirror

I’m sorry to have to say it
that way. “Daily accumulation
of face” aging. What did I
not say. Relative depth

of waiting, angle of
having waited having said.
Of force. Roar of crowd at
particularly lucky shot.

So we wait beneath
our faces, sorry for
having to say what we
couldn’t not say, aging.


Song of the Has-Been

I’m old and I want to feel things.

To say what I want to say using whatever I’m able to find.

There was an example, but I lost it.

In words to feel what I never felt.

My mouth a butterfly flying.

Wanted to say “rubbed.”

Forlornness of dish suds.

No evidence of time receding.

“Objects are already sorted in the womb.”

Moral dilemma of whether to use “a” or “the.”


The Procrastinations

1)    Reaching behind something to feel some warm soft thing.

2)    At the supermarket, a woman smiling, obviously smitten. At the end of the health food aisle and then later coming around the corner of the aisle with soft drinks and bottled water. Walking a little behind, smiling with her eyes.

3)    Some titles: Bare Ruined Choirs, The Root & The Bough, The Jew in American Sports, The Dictionary of Angels, Granite on Fire, Am I a Murderer? – Bowing, The Liturgy Doctrines, Dhima Swarga, Dictionaire de la Betise, The Contemporary Parallel Bible; Virtue, Success, Pleasure, & Liberation

4)    The moment before sleep and what comes after, which is not sleep and does not “come.”












Running Diaries


i.
Think of the pills I forgot to take,
on the sink in the kitchen. How
one says “on,” means “beside” or
“in back of,” at any rate fixed

there, but that’s no help.
I’m trying to place them as
one might a face but in this heat
the houses all shut, quiet.

Some men asleep in their bodies,
empties around them on grass.
Hamstrings sore, I run through
my own thoughts and lose

interest in them, my mind goes 
right off the edge of the page


ii.
Usually about here I get hungry,
unless I forget. What about that.
In the middle of thought, no thought.
A simple line that I follow like

any dog till it turns, a whiff of
barbecue cooking. The excitement
of one who in Shakespeare’s day
would’ve run into rooms breaking

news: Marlowe’s dead, etc.
It occurs to me what would go down
real smooth here is a mimosa.
Take that cloud.


iii.
Take that cloud. One could think it
away. Running’s the motion of reaching
into the body. This field of

dry grass. A good time to break
with myself. The mind widening
to encompass manzanita and ash,
dragonfly, lots of things. The word

“things.” Blaze of gravel and faces
run through. Not this face.
I wouldn’t wish it on a dog.
Not “losing face” but the extreme

lack of faith one faces. Wouldn’t
wish it on my worst enemy.