A Conversation With Death
I’m conversing with Death tonight
I find he’s dropped in and kindly
Requested my time
Which is not as kindly as Kindness
Is since I cannot say no to a talk
With future’s specter
Instead, begrudgingly, I entertain
In the dark drawing room of my mind
Where kindly without kindness Death
Helps himself to tea and I oblige
For an unknown time
Until, somehow
He leaves.
Days of Days
In all the days of days
I hope this is not the end
But as much as I wish
For better things to come
I can’t see them on the horizon
For all the days of days
I’ve been trying to walk the road
The land gives way further to waste
I can’t accept this sight
That this is all there is
Why do I feel alone in my anger
That the world has fallen with ash
And buried all the dreams that were.
Why do I quell the rage within when I
Can only scream at rats and roaches
Who are unable to imagine better days
To come when they’ve found perfection.
I never thought
In all the days of days
That we’d return to a point
Where action based on hope
Was revolutionary action.
Dreaming Like a Parade
I dream like crawling over a parade
Passing by loud, blaring instruments
Getting sections of music and sound
I climb up the front of float-cars
And over the traveling wonderlands
To get snippets of performance taken
From my past day, ripped from my
Fantasies of what the future could be
Or my tragedies grotesquely displayed
In full, vivid, unavoidable technicolor
The voices are loud and everywhere
Repeating chants in a background roar
While the people in front of me scream
Words that are different every time
But come down to the simplistic queries:
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?!
YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG! WHY DON’T YOU LISTEN?!”
Yet when I try to get the meaning,
When I try to find my way off and escape
The parade is nothing but gibberish
I escape one vignette to crawl through
My regret and just climb onto another
Over and over again in repetition
I try to avoid the mistake of staying
But every time I try to go I end up back
In a different twist of the same screw
It never quits until I grow too tired to sleep
Upon which time I am far too tired to wake
I lie in bed staring at the sunlight squeezing
Past the blinds to mark up the ceiling and ask
“What am I doing here? What is there to listen to?”
The Untrusted Dark
March has chill nights to go out in
Enjoy the crisp, starlit spring air
At least if you can go out at night.
I used to cruise alongside the beach
No city stars but quiet ocean breezes
A way to focus before the lion’s share
Of work in light of tomorrow’s sun.
At least when I could go out at night
In the crisp, spring air of March.
Now in the foothills, barbed fences
And animals running loose all over.
Wild dogs and coyotes sniffing about
Out here in the wild, desert dark.
A crystal clear sky but no haven
In which to enjoy sparkling light
Nothing to do during the day either
Everyman’s choked of every dull cent
To lavish on unknown employees for
Oiling their business day with ease.
No room for the unknown in the day
Any bit of waste is a true loss today.
Nothing but pre-packaged guarantees
Only the right labels and warranties.
And where are we going in this nowhere
With people broken out of old packages
We are the unknown to these businesses,
The vast dark in which beasts lurk.
Maybe I will walk in the March dark
I’m a coyote in the light of this town
Lets walk in the starlit air tonight
Either way we’re desperate to survive
Lets play wild dogs in the sunlight
And bite the hands that abandoned us.
May I be true.
I thought about dying just now
Minutes ago while cooking noodles
Nearly impossible to focus on
There was this earth-shattering
Noise aside from the boiling water
Screaming in the back of my head
While I thought about dying
Moments ago while preparing food
Abruptly, to be sure, a spring
Off this mortal coil, no polite
Shuffle at my age, with my health
It would be untimely to others
But what to say about dying
Is the same as asking about living
The only reason the thought comes
…Would it be any better at all
Any easier than finishing off days,
Weeks, months, years, decades…
I mainly fear all that I will,
When it comes time for me to die,
Will look back as the end inevitable
Comes despite resistance or regret
And realize in all that living done
It was the same as dying years ago
I do not want my life, as I live it
To be a struggle to hold deluded
Reasons against Death.
