Rx

It never ends. There's no way to stop it. All you can do is ignore it hope for the best and try to live your life as if as if as if

Explanation

An old man's thoughts
if publicly revealed
would provide evidence for
a dark comic core
at the foundation of
human experience.

This is why old men
prefer to shut up
and instead mumble
to themselves with
private jokes that
crack them up.

This is why old men
are dangerous.

New book

  Round Bend Press will publish A Majority of One: Poems 2012-3 on October 26, which is my 74th birthday. Also alma mater v. alma mater on the grid iron, UCLA (BA) v. Oregon (MFA).

Magic Wand

If I had a magic wand I'd wave it once and all religions would disappear. No churches, no sects, no priests, no sacred texts. But there would be reverence and awe for the universe, a mystery so profound that life was driven by respect for it. If I had a magic wand I'd wave it twice and sex would change humans would reproduce with a mating cycle. Out of the cycle sexual energy would be diminished reduced to a handshake, a hug casual contact that did not inspire armies or create jealousies and revenge. If I had a magic wand I'd wave it thrice and couples would mate for life as friends infidelity a betrayal of friendship and rare because friends cannot be replaced with casual relationships friends are soul mates to be treasured as part of the mystery of existence. If I had a magic wand I'd wave it four times and progress would become a dirty word because it is linear and growth is cyclical. Change happens in a context of mystery, not something to be figured out but celebrated in song and poetry in behavior and making love in gratitude and awe. If I had a magic wand I'd wave it again and again.

A Metaphor For My Life

Each morning before sunrise
I move through the dark house
in small, careful steps
trying not to bump into anything
trying not to knock over anything
and gaining no confidence whatever
from the hundreds and hundreds of times
I've done this before

End Game Anxiety

How much more pleasant my present would be if my future were not filled with such possibility for stress and conflict and alienation. Maybe the gods will intervene and once again give me gifts I don't deserve, in this case my own Get Out Of Jail Free card a quick clean painless passing but probably not. Instead I'll get some eventually terminal disease that my doctor will combat with all the latest wonders and the prognosis will be good and bad and good again in this medical dance that has become the American way of death, which I'm expected to embrace, of course in this age of medical miracles. Stop the presses! I ain't dancing. Once the music begins, once the ending is clear, I'm leaving the party - and leaving really pissed because I'm not getting the party I deserve the party we all deserve. Death should be institutionalized as a celebration of life. Throw me a farewell wake, make me the guest of honor as we celebrate my deeds and my family and friends my joys and my blessings, celebration and gratitude so my passing gets put in proper perspective. Then let medical supervision make sure I pass just as a gift of the gods would have it. But no, if I leave the party, the American way of death, I leave alone, like some feared rodent, some killer of precious ideologies, some crazy man who must retreat into an isolated corner to take care of business as best I can without support, without good wishes, bang bang, and what should have been a celebration becomes an ugly mess that somebody has to clean up. Lew Welch was right. e. e. cummings was right. Lord Byron was right. D. H. Lawrence was right. And I'm right, too.

Morning and Night

I love the mornings and I hate the nights.

I rise before the solar light

has reached the sky, before the race

to cut a deal has turned the grace

of silence into noise, the horns,

the brakes, the angry shouts of scorn.

I rise as all my neighbors sleep.

I don't know what it is that keeps

me thinking of the past, a time

when poverty was not a crime

(since buying now defines the man

and life is an installment plan).

I know this longing has no use,

this melancholy no excuse.

Who thought the blessing of old age

would be to miss a future page

on which is written terrible news

of suffering and paying dues?

You couldn't pay me to be young.

The race is run. The songs are sung.

I love the mornings, and I hate the nights.

The Writing Life II: Tentative suspicions

The Writing Life II: Tentative suspicions:

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In my present mindset

In my present mindset I can't remember much about those distant days when I laughed so much more than I laugh today. I never paid attention to the news or events in the world my universe was very close at hand my friends the actors who performed whatever mattered. My friends are dead. The news ignored them but took their place with nothing to laugh at.

Untitled

 Thinking about death
 is running in place
 in the marathon of life

The Horrors of Self-Promotion | The Passive Voice

The Horrors of Self-Promotion | The Passive Voice | Writers, Writing, Self-Publishing, Disruptive Innovation and the Universe:

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Hard To Believe

I find it hard to believe that this world
has always been as screwed up as it is
today and it's the media alone that make
everything so visible to us now.

I find it hard to believe that the entire
history of mankind is one of ignorance,
arrogance, cruelty, greed and gullibility,
which is what the media tell us endlessly,
24/7, ad nauseam, "and now the news."

I find it hard to believe that you and I
can't sit down and have a civil conversation
despite whatever differences in politics,
religion and life-philosophy we may have.

I find it hard to believe that I am writing this
with considerable doubt and wishful thinking
but I am.