Your light penetrates the window of my apartment
where I feel so safe, so impenetrable and you shed your rays like a search light back and forth, cleansing the perimeter, making yourself known.
Devastated by the thought police and relentless dictation of what is,
what is to come, what could have been and what clearly never happened. You ask so much of me when I don't even have a clue.
 

I stood before you like a child who could not comprehend your pain,
your desperation, your plea for release.
Who wouldn't understand your inability to let go, to concede,
to accept the doctor's hardly indirect question that you are ready
for the netherworld, that negative space, that parallel universe
we'll never know but are destined for?

How could you? No one is prepared for that. But your eyes pleading
while your heart could not let go were convincing enough for that
indelible signature when for a split second we wondered if we were ready, knew we weren't, knew we never would be.

Goodbye dear mother. How can it be a year to the day tomorrow?
How can it be that long that we haven't spoken, haven't argued, got
pissed off about politics or the state of the world?

I am in your likeness you and then again me
and I feel one layer less, that vacancy, that minor to the major.
But I promise in the days ahead,
the weeks, months and years,
I will try to release you.

All my love.

Yes, success. So much, what to do with it.
Flaunt it, give it a flavor, become it or drown.
Dennis Hopper died. Why am I so affected by it? Why can't I stop
thinking about him? A man of not so dubious distinction in an
era of self sacrifice, a great actor. While thousands of innocents may or may not live in the Helmand Province, Mexico, the Gulf, Haiti, the Congo, Korea, Palestine or right here in these so-called United States. The list too long on account of, because of the dime.

the hat?
it seems ridiculous.
to love your head impossible.
what's a torso but a stand to hang your hat on?
what's a stand but a cause that is ignored?
what's a hat when you can hang yourself?
what's a head when there is not a thought?

I walk in the valley of the shadow of life
and when I trespass death I look back,
look beyond and wonder how I got here
so young, unexpectedly, without prompting
from the other side. Late at night I hear them
calling, not my name, never giving instructions,
nothing specific like that, just the sound of their voices
which echo when I turn my head, all together now
in harmonic convergence
as if all those I have lost and all those I am
about to lose have come together from this day forth
until death do us come together.

i've been thinking about you. how can i not?
think, think, think, always in the middle of the night when sleep is so 
hard to come by. i've been seeing the past as recent history, the one
i would like to forget, the one that is so familiar.
some day i will remember to forget.

The hand, maybe a little bit  too close

The plastic bag inside the plastic bag just right.

I love you, Mom and do you know Dad just died?

No, I don’t think you’re stupid. I don’t think if I can help it. I don’t think if I’m allowed not to think at this moment just now.

Your hand feels warm, feels right. Don’t say you don’t hold hands with girls. Not now.

Don’t say it, please?

for the love of a new world,

ensemble.

we impart nothing,

understand less,

thirst for more

and in the twilight, retreat.

 

where are we?

wondering or not,

wandering in pursuit of happiness.

nothing’s changed

so why does it feel different?

 

this place

a space unrecognizable.

familiar enough to get used to it.

this place

no place you or I belong

but for the sake of it, we accept.

 

eternity an every day thing to navigate

and then the abyss of total recognition.

how we swim to keep up.

how we hope to swim

with or without,

defenseless.

with or without a compass,

with or without

and then….

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                MM

            11/20/09

 

 

 

 

a name
a place
a perspective so familiar
why give it up?
even if we are here only to be here
that is destiny, my love

This life a series of breaths,
always short of
long
or otherwise disproportionate to
the actual experience. Why is the
life force so compelling to control?
Or why is it so elusive?