Regret Not
Rooms overflowing with books I may never read.
Life is a skate park after all and I'm a klutz.
Sometimes I want to bag it all up, the papers,
the souvenirs of other people's vacations,
the clothing saved for special occasions
that never arise, send it all to Goodwill
where these castoffs have a chance to make
another happy.What does it take to live without making new regrets?
Walking the dogs, staring at the stars,
listening to sea song and to jazz and to each other.
What constitutes a life worth eulogizing?
She was quiet and polite or
she annoyed the shit out of everyone?
I'd rather resemble the latter but know I'm more
dreary than fog, more atmospheric river
than brilliant shine.So how should I spend my remaining time?
Eat a sweet now and then? Smile at postmen?
Write letters to lonely podiatrists?
No, I want to tear the covers off my life,
be a manuscript that can't be bound,
or categorized or shelved by any librarian.
I want to juggle eggs and powder kegs,
surprise the face in the mirror
even if it's only by sticking out my tongue.
Theory of Half-Things
after Dana Wall
In the space between memory and forgetfulness
the sink overflows, the pan burns on the stove,
ice cream melts in the trunk of a car.
These are just objects, betraying our ability
to control them, but worse, far worse,
are the names that dissolve like sugar
in scalding water, the name of your first
love, a boy with acne and an overbite,
the librarian who allowed you to borrow
more than the allotted five books at a time rule,
the professor who let you cry in his arms
when your grandmother died and gave you
extra time to hand in your assignment.
Dementia is a catch-all phrase, a set of conditions
with numerous possible etiologies.
I wonder what happens to the people we forget,
do they truly stop existing?
It's an absurd notion, I know, but isn't love
only fully alive as long as the lover
carries all its names on her tongue?
Or does there exist some half-life,
a kind of purgatory, where forgotten
people live on, no matter what?
Is forgetfulness heaven
or merely the nature of God?
I walk through a graveyard
with tombstones hundreds of years old,
whole generations eroded away.
When the words of this page
disintegrate, crumble back into the earth,
Earth will make something
green and lovely that doesn't call up
my name in the mind of anyone who sees it.
