Life Choices

In our house we live with Arlene. My little sister has a plan.
She has what they call a beginner’ s mind. She sees everything
from an un-given-up perspective. I’ m frightened; I know
Arlene better than anyone; she knows me better. Esme says
if I’ m scared we can’ t win. But I am scared. Arlene drags me
over to the window where the black mould has made
a map of Australia. Australia gives me trouble breathing,
it’ s so far away. Arlene points it out and I get the feeling
in my chest, my whole life in there twisted up like a snake.

There is no escaping the storm of roses
crisscrossed on the split-cracked wall
of a dead fountain arch.
There is no escaping their uterine balls,
expanding as a reminder of the children I never had.
If you listen carefully you can hear the vibrations,
the heart drone of their petal jaw-harps.
And there’ s no going back,
no indiscovery of Mars
or these red planets brooding before me,
light predators, sun-hatched
and bloodening like the fists of women
who have gone to war.

It appears that we’ re living (which isn’ t always the case), depending
on how one defines such things, in a “now you see it /
now you see it” kind of way. We can say we’ re working on our age,
as well, listening to Bob Dylan songs where people can age
in whatever direction supports the theme. “Too bad life doesn’ t
get themes,” Robin says, and yes, that’ s right, and then we can all go
do whatever it was we were going to do anyway. “It’ s either that,
or pay off the kidnapper,” as Neil Young had it, back in the mid-70s.

5 am. One-quarter past.
Distant chimes inform me this.

A bell peal knells the mist.
And sunlight’ s

not yet bludgeoning.
But some light gets blood going.

Last night it was snowing
and now

every path’ s a pall.
Though mine the only footfalls

at this hour of awe. Above
hangs a canopy of needle leaf.

Below, the season’ s
mean deceit —

that everything stays
white and clean.

It doesn’ t, of course,
but I wish it. My prayers

1

Because he, because she,
in so far as
she (in so far as he) exists

is on the way
to battle.

Not what is your name,
but what
the battle?

2

“Each one of us has come
here and changed” —

is the battle. Born
a loved one,
borne a loved one.

3

My father fought in this war, thus I can speak of it.
My mother fought in this, thus I can speak.
My friends, my lovers have fought, have worn
(like the tree) their several directions at once. And I,

After it came in like a dark bird
Out of the snow, barely whistling
The notes father, mother, child,
It was hard to say what made us happiest.

Seeing the branches where it had learned
To stir the air? The air that opened
Without fear? Just the branches
And us in a room of wild things?

Like a shapeless flame, it flew
A dozen times around the room.
And, in a wink, a dozen more.
Into the wall, the window, the door.

This isn’ t maths —
perhaps it is
a collapse
of certainties.

Perhaps it can’ t
configure planes,
yet it can cloud
our blue remains

so when we fall
as rain will do,
nothing fails
to carry through.

1-2-3 was the number he played but today the number came 3-2-1;
bought his Carbide at 30 and it went to 29; had the favorite at Bowie but the track was slow —

O, executive type, would you like to drive a floating power, knee-action, silk-upholstered six? Wed a Hollywood star? Shoot the course in 58? Draw to the ace, king, jack?
O, fellow with a will who won't take no, watch out for three cigarettes on the same, single match; O democratic voter born in August under Mars, beware of liquidated rails —

He was just some coked-out,
crazed King w/crooked teeth
& a teardrop forever falling,
fading from his left eye, peddling
crack to passengers or crackheads
passing as passengers on a train
chugging from Chicago to Cicero,
from the Loop through K-Town:
Kedzie, Kostner, Kildare.

I was just a brown boy in a brown shirt,
head shaven w/fuzz on my chin,
staring at treetops & rooftops
seated in a pair of beige shorts:
a badge of possibility — a Bunny

Two spiky-haired Russian cats hit kick flips
on a vert ramp. The camera pans to another

pocket of  the room where six kids rocking holey
T-shirts etch aerosol lines on warehouse walls

in words I cannot comprehend. All of this
happening in a time no older than your last

heartbeat. I’ ve been told the internet is
an unholy place — an endless intangible

stumbling ground of false deities
dogma and loneliness, sad as a pile of shit

in a world without flies. My loneliness exists
in every afterthought. Yesterday, I watched