Layers, Decades and Slow Curves

Layers, Decades and Slow Curves

The wardrobe I rode in and out of town
I changed for the eyes that would see me
entering from dinner and a movie or
exiting to the hospital 70 miles east.

I could switch so fast then, wake when asked then,
that the wrinkles hardly had time to mark the angle
of my sitting.

Widows at home; white hair, doilies and tea;
the table set for her son’s birthday impromptu with
cake and Down’s Syndrome grins.
A drunk friend alone; doorbell, phone calls and pleas;
the table riddled with half-empty cans, flies and cats
and I sit with my the gentle again.

Day was early, sometimes fog and frost painted the trees
until noon at least.
But still mid-September the sun could manage a feast near
late afternoon; hours before the first full moon asked
us all to watch north past midnight; crashing breakers
in the air,
green and ghost-hued dances while men talked outside
the North Segment Hall
about the approach of deer season; sighting rifles
and walking razorbacks.

I kept up with committees and new friends,
uninvited popups with questions, phone calls with impressions
(maybe I quivered a bit back then)
and smile and wish they might call me again.

Waking now is a slow refrain, long chords held a full measure,
vamped and waiting the lifting of my head. And, there is a place
I hide

Every single tear

That I am no longer the same man,
no longer ready and aimed,
no longer brain-bursting with another idea to try.

I beg an answer while I dream, and all that seems to answer
is a white screen with soundtrack synched like bad jazz.