Just yesterday we walked down Highland Avenue wondering if we'd ever get there but not really caring. Those languid summer nights when the future was left to the imagination. Knowing we walked down that street together and smelled those magnolia blossoms and ran our hands across your bald head, feeling the soft courseness of new growth. That's all, dad. The love, the need, the possibility. The eternal walk. Down the street that matters.

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.

We move through that universe of ours,
that hiding place as if we will not be discovered.
We approach like a marauder
stealthy, oblivious.
We are each other, the minor and the major,
the oppressed and the abused.
We are the reflection circumspect,
the reject and the flame that will not expire. 

At what point does the clock turn back,
reverse course, spin faster than usual,
that buzzing sound that use to go tick, tick, tick
now hums with annoying persistence, the hands
always moving, tracing an arc that has already been drawn
and quartered?

Mother, where are you?

This time, I didn’t get lost in the department store.

This time, I’m not wondering when you will get home from work.

This time, I’m not eating fried chicken from Wishbone up the street

or missing my brothers and sisters who moved out.

This time, I’m not waiting for daddy because he is long gone.

This time, I am alone and it feels like an eternity.

i don't want your dna
or your hair color
or your ambulance chasing thoughts
i don't want your random phone calls
your insincere inquiries
your baseless doubts.

where were you
when she was lonely?
what did you say? with no reserve...
no imagination...no moment in time
that meant enough.

and now you wonder where she is
you can't reach her
not because you have something to say,
not because you care,
not because you really love her
but because you think you must.

when I walked into the room, i knew i lived there
who brought the pictures?
you mean he came in
at night when I wasn't there?
the memory clinic?
two weeks?
no, noooooooooooo, not two weeks. impossible.
it's nice, it's nice here, yes.
know what to do for a man?
i'm going to wear my dress and show these
(she runs her fingers across the top of her breasts).
the line.
it's the first time she looked happy in awhile.

raw, the rancor of unbelieving
the powerlessness
into the last station
at the end of the line.

who are you to say what it feels like?
who are you? why am I here? in kindergarten,
the hospital, the nursing home, the memory clinic,
any fucking euphemism you want to call it so let's
get real...or not.

comb your hair! and while you're at it, my shoe size is 4 1/2
so don't bring me those clown shoes, don't throw me the gauntlet,
don't scare me with your ideas or tell me you love me when you don't.
i know who you are. don't worry, i know what you believe or think you believe and let's face it, it doesn't matter because this is my life. this is life. you'll see.

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?

out of the black hole
impossible, you say?
no escape from critical mass
frozen cortex
no synapses firing.
warning! warning! warning!
the no hair theorem
one thought indistinguishable from the next.
with four million solar masses, please tell me,
who the hell can think?
looks inert on the outside
the heat invisible, unbearable, insufferable from within,
that stretchy membrane oscillating before the collapse.
after the supernova explosions the clock slows
at the approach of the event horizon,
time is infinite, the light dim
the mind in gravitational redshift.
if it takes forever to get there then
it takes forever and a day to return.