Category — Final Poems

Because everything I know about women
I learned from you
Who treated me as a lover
You spurned
Because you had none
A scapegoat for your husband, my father, whom you despised
Who abused you
And made you his slave
Who ranted and raged like a wounded beast
A petulant prince who had lost his mind.
How did I survive this?
Why was this my destiny?
And why am I now the one person
Who protects you and keeps you safe
Even though you cannot stop hurting me?

From unlearning everything we thought we knew
was coalesced a wondrous rectitude with all things
and all beings, and in this space from each of us
we put a plait of tattered strings as a reminder
that our pasts had no futures until we gave them hope,
and though we measure everything by our own standards
and are as different as right from left, we stand together
bound by love which knows no end and has no purpose,
and in deference to our resolve the willer of the world
has lent us time to play our parts, and so
with grace and natural dignity, we cherish
our few moments and are gone.

It will end
As a sacriledge
With no one having a clue
What I’m doing or why
Me staring at blue blinds
Shaking uncontrollably
Repairing the breach in my ground of being
That death created
An actor reinventing himself
For the very last time.

He dragged one leg,
Our piano tuner,
Because he’d had several strokes
After contacting a disease from a bite
That consumed his heart,
Or so he said,
But he could still tune pianos.
Hearing him work
I found myself in a Zen garden
Listening to syncopated chimes
And the soft cries of insects
Burrowing into hard wood,
And I thought
How absurdly strong
The human spirit.

That first cautious kiss
Ending in a cul de sac of my own making
Though once oriented
I explored every angle and crevice of your body
Because you willed it, not because I did.
How strange to be a man in reference to woman
More opposite than night
More impenetrable than mist rising from fields at dawn
Features suddenly made perfect
Endless longing, bright desire, a brief glimpse of home
With you anticipating every move.

That time in the evening
When the windows are open
And leaves rustle beyond the eves
When a wind chime jangles two houses over
Mingling with the sounds of traffic,
And you come to me
As a presence
As a living thing
As the very essence of all that lives
And I know that you are god.

In a long, slow arc
Traversing the lawn
And through the skylights
The bulletin board in front of me,
Marking time
Like a burgher
With his collar turned up,
Focusing his attention on a spot between
An ancient caliper attached by a pin
Someone’s quick sketch of an ice cream cone
A postcard of the lamb of God
Dried flowers
A child’s skeleton hanging from a string
And an old note from my mother
Saying her head was better now
That made me cry.

A wasp’s nest made of paper
Enclosing a menagerie
Of stained glass figures
My mother assembled
From the shards and pieces of her life.

A dreamworld
Where you sleep, eat, and take your pills
A home that is no home
Two beds, a bathroom, and two closets,
A window, a picture on the wall
Wheelchairs and a walker
A telephone that never rings
A cheap, overpriced hotel
Where you are expected to die.

The whistling will not stop
Though no one is whistling
And rain pounds on the grass
Though it is not raining
And birds call from the attic,
And when I tell him he is wrong
He believes me
But says someone is whistling
And the birds are driving him crazy.
He complains about his ears
That he can’t hear a thing
And the strange voices in his head
Though he is as sane as I am
Perhaps more sane
For he never lies about what he sees
And never pretends
For his mind won’t let him.