During A Lucid Interval

During a moment that I realized much later had simply been wasted

I caught a glimpse of the endless futility in all of my efforts

During an instant when I saw a fleeting outline of what might have mattered

There appeared the lasting realization of my own eternal worthlessness

During the war I lost my bearings but still kept on obeying every order

I saw myself from afar committing those endless acts of horror

During an interval in which life forced me to stop and think

Besides you, I found but little that I could truly count on

During that time when I might as well have been underwater

I saw the surface from below, and it was bright with hazy detail

During the flash I was not sure if I saw at last or had just been blinded

Then came the worry that I had never really known the difference

During an era where I crawled from the baking mud to the steaming swamp

I often looked back with fondness upon the clear blue sea

During a meeting through which I sat as if in deepest torpor

I saw myself actually permitting them to bleed my short time away

During my recovery I realized just how often I had almost died

So I tried on other futures in front of that newly illuminated mirror

During a sunrise in which I found that I was tired through and through

It seemed an eternity to yet another evening without rest

During the long trip, all of my normal routines were broken

And slowly I realized how little else was left there, inside of me

During the springtime as I became older

There came the knowledge that I grew more slowly every year

During a dream I convinced myself to no longer be so sure..

Of all those things I was seeing when I thought I was awake

During my illness I finally had the opportunity to ponder

At last I was cured, but my time to act had come and gone

During my short trip there was so much new to see

Arriving back home my eyes quickly closed up, once again

During the morning a birdsong captured my attention

I was quite aware for a moment then fell back into dull normalcy

During a lifetime spent always looking forward to now-forgotten non-events

Abruptly came the instant that would have to last me forever

During my trial I made up no new lies

But parroted the adopted truth of others as an armor of my own

During the time that the sun grew ever hotter

The sandbanks grew too warm to shelter my clutch of eggs

During the snowstorm things were perfectly clear

Then came the next day and once again I was no longer very sure at all

In the light before the dawn it seemed as if things could actually make sense

Then slowly everything dissolved back into that dusty chaos beneath the hot sun

During the stage where I was forced into thinking, I could not sleep

Mercifully it was decreed that I should not have to be so alive forever

During the executive speeches I felt an alienation tinged with anomie

Returning to my cubicle I re-donned a simple but protective cynicism

During the excitement I saw the expression of the pitchmen

After the sale, both parties were drained as if by hot sex

During the future things always seem to go faster than before

Luckily the past is not exactly what it once used to be, anymore

During this moment I tried hard merely to pause

I had planned so long for this instant and it was gone in a flash

During these thoughts both our minds wandered off

Now you stray farther taking some part of me with you

During the entire period of my personal devolution

I helped emit photons which must travel on forever thru space

During a particularly comatose and vegetative recreational interlude

I felt I was partially restored by emitting CO2 to make manly noise

During my blindness my hearing became quite acute

I heard you smiling as we lay in each other’s arms, quiet and still

During hibernation from critical thinking I slept-walked with all the others

Like most, I was never called upon to actually awaken

During the war only simple thoughts of our home could sustain us

Meanwhile we strove to exterminate just those same things of our enemies

During an epoch in which I browsed the floating plants of the ponds

There came the notion that things might not be what they seemed

During a commercial I merely glanced at the time and then went quite blank

Later in hospital I wished I might have thought of something better to do

During any form of beat down there was no ambiguity

Then came the might-haves, would-haves, should-haves and could-haves

During that instant as I flew through the air

I thought perhaps there awaited a transcendent moment

During the full moon many things moved around

At that time it was easy for me to happily scuttle about, quite unnoticed

During the celebration of that final great victory over our satanic enemies

I was struck by surprise at how little we actually knew of them

During a briefing I noted the officials appeared quite cheerful and optimistic

Up tempo despite the obvious and unstated facts quite to the contrary

During the monsoon as I sat watching everything washing away

I saw at last the wisdom in this new way of life

During years of study I realized how much smaller my knowledge appeared

So I grew more and more wary of all those who prattled on so very glibly

During the night I was awakened by some terrible unknown inaction

I lay for hours uneasy and then came a merciful unconsciousness

During my so-called career I was silenced by pretexts of professionalism

Yet no voices were raised against the many useless, backbiting, lazy suckups

During the end of anesthesia I remember swimming ever upward

I was trying very hard to hold my breath to the surface, far above

During the time when the icicles grew longer by the day

We worried about the pale sun as it kept coming later and leaving earlier

During early June we knew things would always keep getting better

I was convinced I was never meant to grow old like my father

During my last years I tried to remember what I had always wanted

Finally it seemed I was merely waiting for the last thing I would recall

During the epidemic I helped gather children’s bodies

Soon they began to wave to me from all their grotesque positions

During my first prison sentence I learned from the real masters of crime

Back on the street I vowed never to be apprehended again

During some party function the vodka finally got the best of me

Three days later I began that long train ride east in a cattle car

During her flight from the conflict she often slept in untended barns

To get a bath she might well have to bargain her wretched self

During his trial the old women hissed and spat

Fatherless children looked to the court for some explanation

During the bombings we huddled and the blood came from our ears

Later we saw that our only drinking well had been totally destroyed

During the long march they lost all contact with their homes

Thusly, was it easier for them to burn distant villages to the ground

During his lifetime our great leader always pointed out the proper way

Without his strict guidance we quickly fell into a savage ethnic cleansing

During the fire it grew dark and the smoke tinged all of our thoughts

Reports from far away hinted of a vast destruction

During my pregnancy I was raped and then kicked by the partisans

Later they returned and left me toothless but with child once again

During the hottest part of the day I could find no hope as I toiled

Still, when the merciful clouds brought gentle breezes I felt spiritually uplifted

During my lifetime I always tried to imagine those billions of years

But in the end, my 3 score and 10 still seemed like the larger part of forever

During my father’s slow passing we stood carefully, forehead to forehead

As if after long head butting we might at least part in peace

The Bag Man’s Tale

        An ode to the necessary medical removal of human dignity

Shuffling so very slowly down the street with your head cast sadly down

Carefully, so very carefully, one foot painfully, and barely, after another

Each step awaiting agony, with every tiny bump a shooting pain

Yet, that last one was not that bad, maybe just one more might be all right

How can you really help yourself when you walk so stiffly and so slowly?

Perhaps you should have just remained drugged and on your back in bed

So tired now after a tortured quarter-mile covered in just under 20 minutes

Young children sense fearfully the malignancy that controls your painful gait

Even small dogs, emboldened by your weakness, approach to run you off

There is no point in even looking at the young men passing by

And the women really do not see your faint shadow from their shiny cars

But the old people nod in recognition, remembering well, at the sight of you

Creeping along not lifting your feet or ever even bending your knees

Bag man with that disgusting mystery no one ought to see

Practicing the humility with which debasement has replaced your dignity

When they say that things could be worse they often point at you

Bag man, gray face sculpted by chronic pain into a wickedly grinning skull

Trying very desperately to walk so smoothly that he won’t feel a thing

Toenails grown long and yellow, white stubble and hairy earlobes

What made you scuttle into the light In those funny, wrinkled bedclothes?

Your sparse hair is sticking out in all directions and you don’t know or care

You’re too thin and the children see the yellow bruises from all of your injections

The muscles in your long thin neck distend as you grit your teeth with every step

Onlookers long to scream, just straighten up your back and walk upright like a man

The shabby slippers that you are wearing look so very wrong out on the street

Your weak presence both a lesson and an affront to the busy lives of others

Mr. Bagman shuffle back home now and fumble through all your medications

You’ve become all those things you never thought you could possibly grow up to be

Your pallor is unnerving and there is a redness about the whites of your eyes

You try to avoid their glances and answer in strained monosyllables

Your life reduced to merest painful basics, not unlike those great oriental Zen masters

Finding vast relief in the simple stillness following the great suffering of your trek

How Did I Get Here?

where did all those young people go

when you did not see them for a while

where does this strange person come from

who now greets you in the mirror every day

why have all the dreams deflated

to lie fading, ripped, wet and dirty in the mud

why does sleep begin to fail us

at the time we need it most

when did swimming upstream

give way to treading water

when exactly does the search for meaning devolve

into a mindless quest for numbed out comfort

how did those eyes, once so bright and clear,

become so cloudy and so lifeless

how do our voices, once so rich,

morph into such pointless cackles

what has become, as time passed by unnoticed,

to those who now toil only in the past

what was that lesson, almost completed,

just before this long twilight fell

where did all those dancing footsteps go

we left behind us in the sand

where are those fads of yesterday

we found so real and so important

why are all the roads now closed down

except the one-way that you're driving on

why do all these others, around your age,

look so old and tired

when did that child get up

and simply slip away

when will the voice inside finally say

now it’s time to leave

how can all these things that happen

really make the world grow better every day

how easily can we forget

those that go away without us

what can we do to try

and make up for all the wasted years

what became of that load of worries

that drove us for all that time

where are the many things

that we used most every day

where is the grandma's voice

that soothed the little boy

why is it now such a real task

to simply do our grocery shopping

why do we find ourselves more at funerals

than at the weddings of our friends

when will the truth finally emerge

from this roil of confusion

when did the thoughtless night lights

first hide the Milky Way

how can we justify our inaction

to those that inherit its results

how can our thoughts still be clear and true

when our bodies are so wracked and frail

what tales can we tell each other

to ward off the approaching darkness

what difference did that smile make

in this vast sea of empty faces

where are those fantastic opportunities

presented so appealingly in the glossy media

where are the charismatic mega-fauna headed

as we hunt them down and burn them out

why do I look now to the marketers of heaven

except to try and purchase life insurance for my soul

why do my days seem to focus on some dark pinpoint

instead of towards a window, open to the sun

when does one stop and say at last

now this is the happily ever after

when will the heat stop increasing

in our living blue-green space capsule

how do impoverished babies of confused little girls

grow up to be fit and moral human beings

how much time still remains to do

those things we always knew must really matter

what further savage acts are called for

to spur us on to our duty

what other, higher emotions, must we quietly forsake

just to keep ourselves trudging duly forward

It Grows Inside Of Me

The tests all say that something alien grows inside of me

The signs all point to a vast and potent malignancy

Surgeons suggest I undergo a non-invasive operation

Radiologists recommended a course of ionizing radiation

They found a bunch of lesions and my numbers are all too high

Of course, at first, all that I could do was just keep on asking why

I sometimes feel like those who house a worm so large that it barely fits

But this stuff won’t ever be expelled just by the mere taking of a shit

Some oncologist offered up a regimen of targeted, toxic chemotherapy

Long ago the church would have condemned all their stuff as evil heresy

Perhaps it was my genes, diet, poor attitudes, stress or the stuff that’s in the air

Anyway, this is the end of my illusion of living forever, without a care

They said that it may be spreading further on out into my spleen

I’ve done some thinking and decided to try not to be quite so mean

Just now it’s starting to metastasize into my delicate pancreas

So I need not even tell that fat and lazy clerk that she can kiss my ass

It lives and grows inside of me, so I guess it must be part of me

Others shake their heads, glad they have not lived so wickedly

I think about the chronic pain, the growing weakness and the bed sores

They shake their heads and whisper…once they’re safe, outside my door

Even Now, I Never

even as I sit here, few of my atoms remain together

even now the tiny spark is gone, never noticed, in this vast fire

even as I start to speak, long ago my voice stopped even fading away

even now my life compresses infinitely, off into the past

even as I forget the bygone, the hand that writes erases

even now at this pace very little can remain

even as I am born here, I lay dying, just over there

even now this briefest interval has no size at all

even as I am formed from egg and sperm, I am already what I was before

even now my grave was on a planet whose history is forever lost

even as I leave here, all I knew I leave behind there

even now our voices are as some background chorus of insects

even as this is forgotten, surely it need never have existed

even now the emptiness answers only with our echoes

even as I am a descendant, all lines end in single points

even now we only follow short tangents to the infinite circle

even as I lose my bearings, I do not ever lose my place

even now I face the inscrutable future exactly as I did the unknown past

even as I see the light, it matters not if I see at all

even now my understanding is no longer part of any mind

even as I await my re-entry into the void, was I ever really here?

even now these words I write have completely disappeared

even as if I never existed, I sum to just as much

even now the things I see are dreams that disappear within me

even as I came to from nowhere, there I shall return

even now the interval I call myself vibrates briefly then fades away

even as we journey, we remain as close to the beginning as to the end

even now, through my joy and sadness, the darkness is unchanging

even as I try to pause and contemplate, it does not effect my pace

even now we are not forgotten but merely nothing to remember

even as our sun grows cold and dark, its light is new in other galaxies

even now the center is always everywhere, all at once

even as I found the truth, I simply need not have even looked

even now our suffering has all the meaning of the wind

even as our collective wisdom grows, it is gone without a trace

even now the gods we invented influence no more actions

even as we measure time, all the clocks have long since disappeared

even now it is far too late to change the words that have all gone away