If I was in Russia I
would have no problem
finding a title for this poem
for it would be The Last.
I would write that I mourn
the children, men, and women
sacrificed to assuage his
warped need for domination.
I would write that I detest
his disregard of truth,
supplanting it with his lies
to justify his megalomania.
I would write that I stand
with the people of Ukraine
and for that I would pay with
my words, and perhaps my life.
He was fond of saying
that men need to toughen up,
show more fortitude, take
time for serious male bonding.
He would prattle on about
how so many men were
not true men anymore,
warped by modern society.
I tried my best to avoid him,
to quickly end our encounters and
when I could not, for he would
inevitably complain of loneliness.
Still, I would much rather be
in the kitchen, knives in hand
preparing a fine meal beside
the woman I so deeply love.
In the farthest reaches
of the afterlife, the old men
gather each day, although
day and night are meaningless
to them, just assigned
for purposes of the writer.
The Buddha recites sutras
hoping the others will
be in the moment with him,
while Hillel smiles, stands
on one foot and dreams
of a lean pastrami on rye
with a slice of half sour.
Christ muses on when
mankind might be ready
for his return visit,
and Hillel says “good luck
with that, it’s been downhill
with them for two millenia.
Shroedinger sits off
to the side staring intently
at the box, wondering
if there is a cat inside.
The wisest of men,
when asked at what time
it is best to pursue the Way,
will answer when a thousand stars
have made their presence known.
The wisest student will say
when cleaning myself
by bathing in the mud.
This will become clear
when the frog
consumes the dragon.
A reflection on Case 35 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans (True Dharma Eye)
I realize now just
how old I have gotten,
no laughing any longer
at the old men always
tucking pills into a sorter
neatly marked by day and time,
for I now do my own
weekly, the number of pills
seeming to propogate by month.
I suppose it is time
to begin working in earnest
on the playlist for my funeral.
I’ll be damned if I
will have an organist
and somber melodies
although I may be
damned regardless, but
that is something beyond me.
It will be a long list,
but you can suffer for a bit,
and you know that I will conclude
with my favorite songs
in their full jam band version
by the Grateful Dead.
It is growing more common for men
of a certain age, one I have attained,
to grow beards, and that was before
the pandemic made them ubiquitous
among those of the male gender.
I noted this aloud and a young child
smiled at me and said, “of course,
you have to have a beard because
the hair inside your head has to go
somewhere other than your bald head.”
Platform shoes, velour
Nehru jackets, what the hell
were we thinking, and pink
velour, seriously, for men.
At least it was Hendrix, Byrds,
and not Pat Boone and Andy
Williams, almost the death
of music as we know it.
Reefers were evil, told us so,
and when we figured out it was
pot, we begged to differ, frequently
between hits on the bong,
after all joints required a certain
amount of dexterity in the rolling
and tjat progressively slipped away
with the afternoon sun.
Now it’s chardonnay and pinot
and a good reposado or anejo,
or a blanco if company appears
and triple sec then, never Cointreau.
As we walked slowly through the Forum
the Coliseum receding into the late
afternoon, the Virgins stood patiently
as befits a priestess trained to avoid
the stares of passing men, even tourists
such as we were, the columns staring
down reminding us of our youth
despite the birthdays that we celebrated
with the joy of togetherness, and
the nagging knowledge that we were
another year closer to that moment
we refuse to acknowledge, aware
always of its growing proximity.
We stare back at the Coliseum,
as the sun slides behind its walls,
and as the vendors selling all manner
of items the buyer will regret
in mid-flight home pack up for the day,
I imagine Caesar pausing in thought
then, sneering, turning his thumb down.
A woman’s purse is inviolable territory
she tells me, and no man dare look within
unless invited and that is as unlikey to happen
as a man is to fully understand a woman.
What she doesn’t say, but what time has
demonstrated to me repeatedly, is that
within that small space is the solution
to most of life’s pressing problems, a balm
for small emergencies, and a truth, the release
of which would loose upon those proximate
the sort of shock that Pandora only promised,
and I have more than enough problems of my own.
She asks what I keep in my over-fatted wallet
and I tell her it is not money, but thoughts
that haven’t come to fruition, and dreams
unrealized because they defy reality.
So, she says, your wallet is full of the stuff
that gets you through a day, that give you
hope for the next, and that marks your
ever present failure of irrational dreams.
She says every woman
should own a little black dress,
and during the time she tries them on
I am thinking what she meant was
every man should be married to
and in love with a woman
who wears a little black dress
as well as she does, but I say
It looks really nice on you,
You should buy it, and
I think, I will
find events to which you
can where it frequently, because
it looks so good on you, and you
in that little black dress
make me look so good
standing next to you, and men,
although they will never admit it,
are all so often about reflected glory.
an old writer and his words 