my winter becomes
the warmer of me
when i walk beyond
the ice and crust
of broken life-dreams
and i visit them
the silky ones
who fell between
my grasping means
weakling fingers

i confess my secret;
it is me and not they
who haunt the day

i am their purgatory
wishing, thinking,
a belief in now

I haunt the ghosts
and they fear me!

:: 10-04-2014 ::

In the morning, the screen said, it had all been an ache for me.
The Doctor’s needle had passed through my invisible line, I thought: No injury is
yet the result of a mislaid tooth or touch of pneumonia.

In the distance, the great oaks stretched for autumn leaves.

On the ground, the mice hurried from one clearing to the next,
the second mouth to feed.

I wondered, was there any kind of meal for the bodies
of the flowers, or any kind of death more horrible than this?

And it did not matter.

And I thought of all the other soldiers, too to die.

‘Eat breakfast, man, let’s go. It’s raining’

and ‘Go for a bath’
and ‘Got to shave,’
and ‘Be off to work,’
and ‘Drive to the railway
station.’

The truth was that every little death was to be mine,
the tiny ducks that went in the lake and never came out,
the featherless ravens, the sheep that would live on a plain
of loneliness, the bread that did not turn out from the bakery,
and the broken-off rose, the moon that was too late,
the spilled glass of the window, the horseshoe that broke on the floor,
the broken tail of the dog, the lost hoe.

‘Eat breakfast, man, let’s go.’

The truth was every little death was to be mine,
and the dead flower, the nest of the violet, the old wooden swing,
the long lost bird, the fish gone out from the mouth of the
jade stream.

‘Eat breakfast, man, let’s go.’
And the next day: the smiling cat
that dug up the gardens, the dog who went and sat in
the sun-drenched field, the bumblebee that starved in the honeycomb
of forgotten being.

:: 02.28.2022 ::

(the Catcher in the Rye): Dear Doctor Thomas Jacob
I saw my Psychiatrist this morning. he told me I am not crazy.
I guess not crazy like you say, but emotionally deranged.

(The Great Gatsby): Jaques I couldn’t stand. In my dreams i had a different life
a rich home, and fine clothes, handsome men at my beck and call.
– but in my real life that life was but a nightmare.

And now I am in an asylum for madmen, waiting to be either put away
or turned into another of your dreary photographs of society’s desperate
– Moaning my one complaint as they passed by as sad creatures
passed by, wherever they have gone I don’t want to be seen by
any human being ever again.

They passed by (Eating Raoul’s Chicken Dinner):
Was it something I said? Could it be it?
That what I’m doing now is merely a sequence of scenes from my latest movie?
Did I pass my exams in this life on account of my ability to put
the good word “Valentino” in every sentence I uttered, and every image I created in my mind?
(Flower Moon): What do you mean, crazy? I had just lost my head, and everything I had believed in
had flown out the window, (Rising Sun): But I was crazy.
When I read the story of Mowgli’s lost tribe, I was so moved I picked up my spear,
and chased the beast into the jungle. (The Great Gatsby): It was, I have often thought, the highest form of flattery,to be told one is mad by a madman. And to go home to one’s self, after such praise,
and believe one is mad as well, and that one is really just a hunter-gatherer, a plant eater, a mother who has eaten a boy. That is what made me become a hunter-gatherer, and carry the name of a one-footed old man. I see no difference between the man I am and those I read about.

I am a madman.

(The Catcher in the Rye): Where the slant of light has fallen across the room tho’ it is darker than I have ever seen it, I see in the mirror how scarcely a sliver of a blade of light is stained across my eyes.

Not a single drop of brightness shall ever overtake this pain.
Not a single mirror-speck.

– To Sleep, Perchance to Dream : Oh, but your own scars are blood,
your brother’s anger-stained sword and from the smoothness of your skin
your mother’s tired face.

They say that all those who are born and survive that war-zone, have only the vaguest
imagination of what it really was like (The Great Gatsby): And there you were
almost wounded, so unwounded that you had your curiosity burning bright, burning to know something,
of all things, about yourself.

And then this fateful rain sparked a wild fire, which it seems, you were the one to conjure
when you opened your arms wide, Your wild fires lit the world.

(Germain’s Rondo):

She never left my side
during the year
she died
and I always slept like a fool.

Her candle, always warm,
was the only light I had.

My only one.

That is what I remember, that’s what I remember most
of her.

I, Have Quoted Jaques:

I had no tears for my father.

(The Great Gatsby):

She told the six, and they did not move
or speak a word.

I guessed at their thoughts. – and I knew I was the one
on whom the act was done.

And I was not proud.

– To Sleep, Perchance to Dream :

I had no tears for my father.

– To Sleep, Perchance to Dream :

I had no tears for my father.

:: 02.28.2022 ::