A Brief Guide To Imagination

The old start to pack a suitcase

once the doctor gets quiet

and honest and takes his time

for once to explain the one thing.

Just try to get the shirt in right.

Mind the crease in the pants.

Add up what you need this trip.

And I've started doing that.

But my muse came and kissed me

Monday night in a dream about a professor

who was probably going to get fired.

Then, a white egret parked itself this morning

on my front lawn, before my radiation test.

And tonight, I saw my eyes roll out

8–10 inches from my cheeks

Like the wolf in dice gambler's threads

who yells 'hubba hubba," his face stuck

staight out of the front windshield,

and his eyes rolled out 8–10 inches

from their sockets (now empty pipes).

He thinks it's Betty Grable next

in a town's "M -Airy-EE Christmas" fest,

but it's just the balloon vendor,

moving slowly, from behind a bulding.

The mistake I lived for all my life.

Because it's sunrise, sure and sure!

For a brief moment of imagination,

there's Betty Grable! In the air!

What more do you want!
I shake the suitcase's contents out.

Untitled

One night you'll lay

the side of your head

against the couch pillow

and hear your mother's heartbeat.

Then, you'll know

it's time to go home.

The Not-So-Big Adios

(where does a man show up again
at  the end of his life
yet to be who he meant to be
who he is)

People want me to go out with a cowboy whoop,
and so do I. We'll see.
What should a universe sound like
when it says adios?

First, I guess, I should explain time.
Um, elastic. We all agree.
Some seconds just last for hours.
Others, not so much.

The baby's spittle eventually gives way
to firing speeches, and going our separate ways,
severance pay and COBRA,
and good luck you poor son of a bitch.

Clouds were cousins.
Horizon my third best friend.
Ocean a fairy tale beast.
Father Sun. Renfield Moon.

The asphalt of the Catholic school playground
was never set, waving, sinking, swooning to temperature.
But I got knocked over playing kickball, and there's asphalt
hard enough to put me out, waking up to a circle of my friends' heads.

Yes, pavement holds penalties, in several ways.
Don't ever sleep there. Or fall. Or give up and sit down
right where you're at because that place is important.
There's a lot of pavement. Just don't act scared.

To boil it all down,
you must step off the planet.
(This is a way of talking,
not true, but true. Right?)

Know

what i didn't know when i was born:

bow down.

so much of what i got taught:

bow down.

once, a universe in my head,

and now, instead, bowed down.

fraudulent to aspire to a true state of grace—

bowed down.

we believe too little—

bowed down.

threat of prison,

poverty,

loneliness—

bowed down, bowed down, bowed down.

just like those who came before,

bowed down.

Yet, I am the point where infinity begins in all directions.

And time hangs in me like a jacket in the closet.

We

Let the twilight come, wash down my car.

Moon rise up, and my favorite star.

Got dressed in dreams, down to my shoes.

I'm after you.

Today's horizon a snowglobe—

white mountains, sheet metal blue.

Air clean as the breath of a Nordic god.

I'll bring it to you.

Neither shaman nor ghost,

but a low magical beast. Still,

I offer my world in a loud caliope coat.

It's nothing. Doesn't exist. Yours.

After all of you. I'm sorry.

We can only go together.

Melody across your gut strings.

You know.

About Being Dead

"Everything decays.

So, why not me?

Because I am me!"

Ha!

37.2 trillion cells in the human body.

And you are me?

You are a world.

Me is big, plural.

Death too singular to be true.

Stairway

For whatever reason, people want to see you scared.

You say "petscan" and you say "cancer"

and they're watching you like you're a movie.

If you don't say you're scared,

they wonder why you didn't,

like maybe you can't,

because you're probably scared.

I don't know, but death seems a long ways away,

so I'm flip about it now,

and soon head to Sorrento and Capri,

our vacation four years back,

and walk all those steps again.

Every machine sorely inept,

my eyes closed shut to keep from getting claustrophobic,

a wet cotton swab stuck in me for the dry mouth.

And then I saw a stairway,

each planet named on the steps.

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Saturn...

And I didn't know if it was the life I led,

or what lay ahead.