A Sentence

There are times when you are
under the influence of whatever
might be influencing you
and you have just finished saying
to yourself whatever it was
you were saying and you know
if you say it again you will hear
your own voice in your head
speaking to the audience
in your heart and you figure
you have just lightly touched the sky.

Lives In Progress

When So-and-so met her
she was already Much-the-much.

Lucky first is sweet and
So-and-so and Much-the-much
felt smiled upon and loved.

The thing got good.
Got better still.
Near peaked.
The best seemed a handhold away,
but not luck, nor will
nor providence gave boost
and So-and-so and Much-the-much
passed all the signposts going down.

But this had yet to unfold,
preceded, as it were,
by the years when
Clear-headed and Hard-nosed
stalked fresh and deep and
sperm-spewing into the yielding
valley of the Great Green River
and the path to boys and girls was
blazed. Blazed.

And this was cause for celebration
without biblical precedent.
So here we are
10,000 years later,
give or take an Ice Age or
some geological wink, still celebrating.

Clearly this one is a party
whose guests have rooted deep
long after So-and-so and Much-the-much
have forgotten that they were and who.

For their survivors,
coming after lights-out:

Begin anew you Eve,
you Adam. It’s Friday,
and the party starts now, if you will.

But it would not hurt to keep in mind
that how you begin has much, quite much,
to do with how all this concludes.

And We Do Not Cry Out

Lingering,
without the gift of quick.
In this dark,
a crowd slumbers by.

In this silence, sounds and
echoes come to quit.
Whom do we grieve,
one by one, and many,

in our bereavement?
In time’s draining away,
we no longer wish to say,
for the naming comes too late.

Take What You Can Get

This day, this hour,
this minute, maybe this time, only,
there seems no outlet for the power
he briefly possesses.

He wonders
that, and if,
this could be true.
Answering big questions,

he wishes himself
to center stage,
a great console of buttons
to direct, discharge,

otherwise control the surge
of his own humanity.
Wonders if this be
his sole immortal moment.

Ecstasy

In this moment,
the world around is a perfect space.
The hot point inside you
and the cold point there
balanced with the hot and cold points
the universe around.

As this happens,
you rip and run naked down streets and alleys.
This you do stretching toe and heel,
transforming asphalt with your foot fall,
splashing through sea foam stroking your soul.

You stride this way,
whip arms swinging,
shoulders like easy oil,
greasing, flinging you through damp and distance.

The darkness divides for you,
wayfarer,
stampeding by,
bearing new secrets.

Like racehorses and hound dogs,
your nostrils throb and grasp
every scent,
your own, the moist surround,
all the exuberant plants of the night.

You are hailed,
you are summoned,
you are called
to this exquisite place.