Figuring Out Life While Aging
The dreams I don’t remember
disturb me:
my mother’s mink coat,
thrown on the floor,
over something.
That lover in the closet,
offering disinterested kindnesses.
The flowered skirt
I never wore.
All memories of failures
or escapes.
Perfume in a Pandemic
is pointless.
I watch, listen to your
simulacrums, your untouchable
screen ghosts.
I yearn
For smell and taste..
Perfume in a pandemic
is comforting, I shake
the tiny bottle, my finger as stopper.
I stroke my pulse points,
bathe in, breath in, grasp
the memory:
the clutching joy of
your embracing warmth
as we hugged.
Perfume in a pandemic is essential.
“Sea change or sea-change is an English idiomatic expression which denotes a substantial change in perspective, especially one which affects a group or society at large, on a particular issue.” Wikipedia
My heart stumbles
as our world’s clutch
misses,
and the gears judder
and jerk
stripped of their connections.
We don’t know
when or what
it foretells.
How do I decide
how to live
in this strange wilderness?
I lived in libraries and classrooms,
More solitary among the living,
More alive in pages turning,
Building my armour and bridges.
The silence at home covered
Flattened noise; obscured dreams and
muffled resentments, darkened mirrors
Seeking to display projected images.
O, Boccaccio,
Where are you now?
I need you to take me away from
graphs and maps and the tv’s heavy breathing.
I flee the city but yearn for
its pleasures:
smiles, touches, and fearless
encounters.
I need absorbing stories
and happy endings.
I see the world
through a scrim of
books.
I ride on words woven together,
carrying more freight than
just solitary singles, side by side.
Sentences and paragraphs,
pages and chapters.
books – tap feelings and understandings,
echoing the fingers that tapped letters, words, pages –
and built, shaped my mind.
You, with warp and weft of words, created
this floating, flowing, close-woven
jewelled net-lace I ride on and pull
through the ring of my mind,
accepting joyfully your gifts.
Homes are ceremonial,
ripe with obscure patterns
absentmindedly repeated.
The Dining Room
where eating
is an uncomfortably full altar;
The Living Room
where family mementos and the tv
sacrifice lives;
Even the Kitchen,
recipeless and hurried,
has ghosts,
although its necessary
Partner, (for defecating and self-presentation),
tries to be polite.
So the young
flee and refuse the rituals
that triggered their fears,
So the older
submit to the comfort
of their ceremonies.
I’m decluttering.
Whatever shall I do with your treasures?
They hide
in front of me,
whispering how they worked
to shape who you were.
They distort
who I want to be,
cluttering my hopes
with their commands,
demanding I become
subject to their shaping.
Forgive me: I have accepted
only some of your gifts.
for Anthony The words I can’t say Swallow me up, Choke me, As I try to spit them out. They are my truth That I close my eyes to And deny, throttling me. My teeth clamped, My breathing rapid, I gag, Then speak And almost say What I need to hear So i can know What I know.
