Remembering Jack

I can still hear Jack, his voice
resting comfortably in the back
of my head. He is gentle, often
with a subtle slice of sharp wit,
and if he cannot help, at least
he tries never to do any harm.

He agrees with me on waking
up; how that can be harder
on certain days than on others.
But up, we must. What choice
do we have but to do our best
effort and let go of the results?

I have his books, photographs
of the both of us, and enough
memories that I fear to lose
if I do not write them down
in time. Because time is all
I have in place of him now.

So, I nod, corrected, his child
& student; both really. I go
to a meeting; let go of grief
a little. Jack you didn't live
to see me sober. But I try to be
gentle with myself, even so.

... Or As Needed

I take eight different medications
on a daily basis, with another three
in case of emergencies of muscle
or bone; two pills to keep my blood
pressure numbers closest to human
as possible; two for all the sorrows
that still live and feed beyond me

or my ability to cope normally; plus
a pill for how anxious I feel because
of the number of pills I have to take
everyday. Lastly, three miracle powders
I have to inhale to keep the billowing
sails of my lungs full and open to air.
I am as defined by the cures I've tried

as I am by the chronic ills they targeted.
I'm a war waging under my skin; found
by following prescription paper trails
appointment calls, medical records, and
medical records and medical records...
"Chronic, incurable, slow. Treatments,
but no cure so far so far as we know."

The God of the Forgotten Gods

Prompt: You are an attendee at the annual Convention of the Lesser Gods.  You meet a deity whose last worshiper died this last year. Share the conversation you have.

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When entities have been forgotten, become lost
and unfriended, they come to me. In the Days
Before, this was something of a certainty; now
I find myself unsurprised in whole new ways.

If you are going to choose only one belief
about Gods, choose this: not a single human
knows anything. No one has ever begotten
an accurate description. They get it wrong.

Always, some fabric-unraveling inconsistency,
rises and their well-rounded, enriched religion
is revealed for what it is: a child's drawing
of the indescribable. Usually Super Heroes

of some kind who are better and kinder, or not.
Some are just bigger and all children know this:
the biggers can push around the small of them,
because they can. Of course they worship that.

Gods and Heavens don't exist unless they do,
that's as accurate as any anthology or liturgy
gets. What happens to discarded Works of Men?
Where do Old Gods go to die of quiet isolation?

They come to Me. Preservetus, the God
of the Forgotten Gods. They come because
I remember their names when names die,
remember their High Holy Days, remember

the things they like sacrificed, the essence
that a litany of voices is crucial to maintain.
I mean, I bring them meals and sing songs
only they and I still remember the words to,

for as long as they can yet hold their shape.
Afterwards I put them to sleep in grounds
beyond the reach of dream or supplication;
a place where the Gods are safe from men.

...throw a prayer into the air,
see is someone's listening there.
count to one starting at ten,
see if anyone's listening then...

My Celebrity Death Hoax Hoax

My death came as a surprise to no one, a shock
to some and no doubt, a relief to others (be fair:
in Life, not everybody is going to like you, let alone
love you; everybody has always got to hate some-

one without reason, or logic. And I'm not special).
But mostly it fills up television air time on a day
where the news is dead slow, if moving at all. First,
will be an tsunami-level outpouring of loud grief;

a great and mighty, "Aw, God damn it! Not another
one!" except it won't be in 2016, but later. Clearly
my sense of timing is/was as bad as ever. But that
is just the kind of rogueish detail that'll blossom

as an endearing part of "Portrait of the Artist" lie
that death seems to invoke for us. Folks fall over
themselves in a rush to sanctify or else throw mud
clumps at others' grief  in the sudden sharp impact

death owns. I hope my death will be no different.
Let there be equal mouths selling sweet stories
of golden heart and a wisdom never appreciated
when it was still paired with  breath; and also

someone not even close to me to start the autopsy
of my every short-coming. Talk about all the drugs
and drinking and bad behavior. Do not forget
the mental problems; these all make great fodder

for arguing my legacy, one way or another. Be sure
to mention sobriety, in passing, maybe shaded too
little, too late. That's not a bad title for the movie
now that I think on it. Especially, re-read my poems

in the editing light of "It's all he left behind for us."
Please- take a line here or there and make a meme,
a t-shirt; I want to trend in the afterlife. Al Pacino
(if he is still alive) for the bio pic, although miracles

happen all the time with CGI, so anyone could be me.
That's another great title. See how, even dead, I write
my own story in a way I never could, alive? And please,
please, please, make up a story of how I kicked a puppy.

Mickey Mouse in Black 'n' White

There were dogs, and then there were dogs, I guess,
I don't know. Back then I didn't think about it
that much. Goofy was my friend, Pluto was my dog.
It was just how the world was. It was the 1930s.

America was in the toilet of the Great Depression,
and you were grateful if you were lucky enough
to be working. There were a lot of things back then
we never questioned. I wore pants. Donald didn't.

Minnie had a full dress with panties and shoes;
and Daisy made do with the feathers God gave her.
Goofy lived in a house, and Pluto was chained
outside. I want to say I knew something was wrong

in my cartoon heart, but I didn't ever have words
for it, even when the Talkies came. We didn't
stop to think, didn't consider the implications
of Donald carving the Thanksgiving bird, or why

everybody was drawn in such broad, narrow strokes.
I'm sure Walt meant "Song of the South" as a compliment
to the Colored, like "Hey! The Reconstruction, right?
Not so bad, and wow! Do you have magical stories!

And, oh those singing voices!" Of course Walt was racist.
Everyone was back then, just Walt was worse than most.
We Toons were hungry for success. The only tune we heard
was what put food on the table. I just drove the steamboat,

I didn't want to rock it. But in my dreams, I ask Walt,
"If you wanted us to live in a brightly- colored world,
why wouldn't you hire Black people? But the only color
I worried about back then was the green of the money,

and how best to keep clean my white, white hands.

The Only Place to Go is Here

This world is lost,
but the last thing it needs
is a sense of direction.
We can't trust maps anymore,
not when we put them and the table
and they just lie... there.
It's time to think outside:

pretend you could fly--
if you flew east as hard as you could, far enough
to circle the world, would you ever come home again?
Yes. But from the West.
If you go North enough, over the pole, and you are
heading South, until you fly over the pole,
and you're heading North again. You're spinning in circles

because this world is bipolar
and maps are part of the problem.
It's not that they don't lead us places,
but there are things we think maps are telling us,
like, here is better than there, so
we must be better than them. So we have wars
of North against South, and East vs West,
as if Right and Wrong were just
"location, location, location..."

Maps trick us into believing
we don't belong to the land,
that the land belongs to our territory.
We've forgotten our hearts know what home looks like.
We keep fighting over real estate.

And we're just as confused about "Up"...
we mistake plans to conquer space for spiritual ascension;
think if there's a perfect place
we'll only find it in our Heaven,
but then we will find it, map it and it will be ours.

But if someone else, even
from a culture I'm told is my enemy,
sought their own Heaven,
following different cartography;
even if they took off from the other side
of the world from us, guess what?
They'd still be heading "up".
So it won't matter who wins this race.
Once we're out there in space
the only place left to go is "farther away".
If we humans can't agree,
not on where we came from, but why...
the only perfect place we could have reached
will be lost.

This is how maps lead us
off-course, and their promises of a home
we can call our own, will only trick us
into losing our way if they get us to forget this:
That person on the other side of my world
is just like me: another human being, just trying
to find their way home.

It's time we think bigger than maps
and treat the words like Us and Them,
Me and You...
as gradations, not absolutes.
We'd see the differences between us
are false illusions, like the borderlines
on a map or a globe: they're not really there

unless we choose to see them,
and treat them as more important
than the maps we carry here. In our hearts,
we are already home
where "X: marks the spot
because you are here. Now,
where ever else you go in life,
here is where you begin.

If the world can discover this someday,
it won't be maps that save us.
What will matter is that, if we follow one,
we treat it as a guide
not another Bible God gave us.
What matters if the people who believe,
even if we don't know where we're going  yet,
we can all get their, together, if we all try.
Crazy right? Crazy like people who believe
that people could fly.

I Wrote a Letter to Myself at 17, It Came Back Returned to Sender

By the time I receive this letter,
it will be years before I start,
because time-travel is a lie.
Writing to one's younger self
probably won't change anything
that made me want to write this
exercise in begging my own past

to forgive me, in the first place.
Forget the usual time travel tropes;
assume nothing I do to the past
is going to radically alter anything.
Never mind re-written futures;
never mind fractal parallels;
There's plenty I can screw up

in the time period where I live.
I warn 17-year old me, "Avoid
romantic anythings with women
named Amy or Ann or Jennifer."
But I'd likely make very similar
sad story mistakes, just different
names carved on my soft inner-skin.

I worry 17 year-old me, receiving
this time-traveled letter, and surging
with youthful sureness, might re-write
me as a paladin of romance , doomed
and too beautiful. I worry he'd worship
that. Better he shred the letter, "Forget
you old man! I'm gonna be an astronaut."