I

Microbiologizing love, despair, Delight, bountiful dregs, the pulse can stick On its heirloom heartbeat. The wear and tear

Inherited by who-we-are, echoic Molecular chronology, begins At birth. Congenital, genetic,

Against know-nothing, careless inclinations, Death starts with prophecies half-heard in dreams' Instinctive narratives. A life's toxins -

Psycho-pollution, maverick spiremes - Gather like gut-data in the underjoyed Body's puddles, sponges, muscles, pumps, and streams.

All sorts of nastiness lead to the void On wheels of rotten luck or bad habits, Cirrhosis, hepatitis B, typhoid,

Mournful -omas, murder's vast whodunits; Or what we do, or what is done to us, Those little treacheries, the scolds and frets

Being alive receives from generous Distributors of selfishness. Over And over, these can really do for us

As much as age. Competitive disfavor Churns in the psycho-clock's vascular closet, Timing private sickness, undercover

Birthday chronometers, almost illicit, They are so personal; and they contain Everything, seasons, sky, and the explicit

Derivatives of love, delight, fear, pain, Betrayals, disappointments. Hereafter Looks like sacred vision; but it's profane -

God's salesmanship, then His religious laughter.

IIII

The dead can't talk, or appear on your doorstep, Or be discovered turning to you from Beautiful landscapes, wearing smiles of courtship,

Perusals of what you've written about them. Only in life's interior extra sense Are they glimpsed, tending a geranium

While gathered strangely into a presence Reality shudders at, holding off Memory's insult to the intelligence.

Walking out of the light, a breeze's puff By a window, you might think, where blue Silvers on glass; and that could be enough

By itself, but someone's looking at you, Real and unreal, inside you and outside, A figment of the dead, the past, but true,

No matter dithering agnostic pride Saying, "What-is most certainly is-not, But, if you must, it might be clarified

"By that misplaced and found-again snapshot, That placemark concert ticket, old days Remembered by a pleasure that you bought

"Together in another time, always Enslaved by the sudden, and overthrown By unbecoming rediscoveries."

I can make contact through the gramophone Via Duke Ellington. So, am I mad? Or, as the man says, am I merely prone

To accidental confabs with the dead On the ghost-line, splicing the mainbrace With brimful goblets of Burgundy red

While breathy missives wing through inner space? "Don't bug me, friend. I've got a rendezvous To keep with the transfigured commonplace."

"It's then we think we see God. Which isn't true. Or when you see your past objectified." "If anything, it's when God looks at you,

"Or who-you-were is walking by your side, Half-meaningful, half-meaningless, but clear, Past self and present matching stride for stride."

A window dribbles with a double tear.

III
....