I’m having trouble losing myself in
anything at all – books, music, sex, crime,
drugs and dreams are of no use, I remain
some thing slung about my neck, a presence

like an albatross, more faithful even
than my shadow for I stay with me when
there is no light, I hug through all the days
and all the nights, I have nothing to say

There’s nothing rare in this extremity,
I can’t help imagining it’s common
even if most don’t choose to notice it,
how we keep ourselves clinging company

It’s New Year’s Eve and the old show rolls on
I’m found, this that collars me is no con

Let me explain what evolution shows:
lack of curiosity killed the cat -
the hunter must always keep on hunting,
pry under each rock, never trust, disdain

the obvious, overcome all smugness
with sheer restless energy that’s mental
and physical both; the cat that survives
must endure appearing foolish not just

to others but to himself – let them laugh
all they want, living’s no laughing matter
and when this cat sleeps his dreams do not rest
but sort follies in other dimensions

cat that’s not curious is goner cat
this is exactly the place that we’re at

Free You

How will I free you
from tedious city life?
Read Basho’s poems

Grapes

When the grapes are ripe,
I miss you, dead grandfather -
then the first snow comes

Marsh

By the tidal marsh
the wind whispers words of salt –
crabs hide in the ooze

Lustrous

Sky like a bottle
what grapes can match autumn’s light
in lustrous sorrow?

Whisper

Like the sweet whisper
of last year’s cherry blossoms –
this fog on the sea

Chuckle

Morning is cloudy
not yet does heaven’s black bull
chuckle with thunder

First Leaves

First leaves of autumn
drifting like boats of burnt earth
on a sea of green

1972-1973

A poet lost his mind
still he persevered in writing poems

When his mind returned
he did not notice it

specificity of twisted metal,
shattered slabs of concrete,
what once were floors, now
become the weight of death
in a huge savage funeral pyre
still smoking months after
with the flesh of thousands

those two tall slim volumes
reaching up to touch the sky
were destroyed from the sky,
stricken out of powder blue sky,
so they collapsed like books
unable to hold worlds, words
which fragmented to letters

which shattered to shards
so sharp that even thinking
of them cuts, drawing blood
from our foreheads, so we
bleed without understanding,
just the same way we breed,
birth being death’s beginning

thousands died and could
receive no decent burial,
smoked as the heap smoked,
sometimes sent its stench
out to sea, sometimes north
into the city, news more
elemental than a newspaper