Partygoers

unwilling, unable to defy death, if someone

would only remind us all, the sequence of events

from transmission at the microscopic scale

to onset, development, denouement at macroscopic

perhaps these flouters would believe, or perhaps

they don’t care to know, want to squander, are willing

to lose all, numbly, whenever death says go

new hampshire plates read live free or die

change or to and, we casually mock death 

again & again — eat, drink, drug, drive, dare

leave it to private & public service teams 

to shoulder in after the binge, shovel the victims

choking & blind, into the siren-bleating vans

we’ve lost the art & the truth of dying alone

Caesura

one finger poem would be cool five am air

hot tea cum sweetness, three small brick-red pills

what sights a cat must see out a window into dark

rush of paws across back deck, brush of fur

against damp paint on aging boards, what if we

had a rhythm in our voice as a Greek singer did

not Greek but of this or that city state, X of father Y

when in some other universe it would have been S of

mother T, an epic of reed weaving & small boat

making & lullaby song, of sheep wool dyeing & weaving

instead of ram sacrifice & shield hammering

here the sung rhythm, da da da da da [spondees

followed by the first beat of a dactyl], or 

da duh duh da duh duh da [two & a third dactyls]

even da duh duh da duh duh da duh [two & two thirds]

then the pause, in breath or no breath, the five

or seven or eight followed by what one day

would be punctuation — τρεις δ' 'οι αλλοι εσαν . . .

Ζευς αγαθον τελεσειεν . . . for this scholars invented 

the placing of accents in order to learn to sing

like Homer, the long line of singers before him

was it a visiting Sumerian who wrote it down?

Overnight

— with a nod to Vladimir Mayakovsky & Denis Johnson

midnight, or eleven pm, or four am

times I wake & wait & turn over the phone

to see how long until the hour I’ll rise

the cat prowls on & off the bed, purrs

or sleeps, rattles a drawer handle, sprawls

at an open window to peer into the dark

not dark, it’s never dark enough for more

than six or seven stars, spotlights on poles

in neighboring backyards, not dark nor

quiet, the mantra chants inside my head

synchronizes my breath, takes me away

to the land I inhabit with all my lost

once children, once lovers, daytime

acquaintances, nighttime friends, & strangers

intimate adventurers in this livelier world

of challenge & touch, elaborated living space

voyages under & over water, sky, & ground

with & without luggage, crises of misplaced

beings, inoperable devices, bound feet

clandestine, urgent, sweat, wounds, fear

without constraint, a musty hole, a bare field

mystery, stark emotion, heartbreak

the great blue heron coughs, songbirds

twitter, tree frogs whistle, cicadas scrape