Eulogy for an Undrowned Man
I. Parking Lot Sequence
Evening stroll
and what feels
like Magic
on Wilshire. Eclipse
& the homeless whispering
Aramaic in alleys.
Picking up and taking with me.
Smell of a lived in coverlet,
nuclear codes…
What is going on around
is to be enjoyed.
Substitutions–
Bluebirds instead of crows,
on the powerlines.
Free concert.
I walk, a little fattier now.
Not as fleet, still with resolve,
like reasoning with
the Sockeye, after the stint.
You don’t, and they will die
trying.
But let’s hope they laugh.
Buses and rivers will go on forever,
my schedule, like islands of plastic milk.
Make fun of the motor.
Say “Who is John Galt?”
to the stiff Maitre D.’
Embrace him. Kiss him.
“Say T__. “You people are losers
and you’ll always be that way.”
How I must do
something embarrassing
this evening!
To document this April.
Once when
I was alive…
Ok. Stopping at Bundy, to what sounds like
a freight train of crickets
That rush,
beyond the beatitude skyline.
Take the Crayola
and draw a bridge. Get there.
Finding out what is seen & un___
I want to know
what the corner won’t say.
Some three truck drivers
dismantling a tire
in the shot sun.
Bypass, and the intellectual bistro
with laughable valet parking
for a 2×4.
Higher now & up against pole.
The confines of my phone.
Lower back supported.
This poem, starting out Magic,
but feeling the eulogy coming on
& I’m the one not giving.
II. Someplace Else
To finish “Sockeye Instinct.”
No longer in parking lot
Conduct in a river
in turbulence, we poles unaffected,
by the dense forest
rushing past.
All of us there,
Each occupying a slipped stone
for mythologized on the river.
Provisions of laughter,
slips, into Satori.
In turn insert image of ___
what brought us here. Non-obvious,
just that this is the hour
to heave lines
for the wine nostalgic
or return
to a raspberry linger.
Happening & drink up, for night
will soon crackle
in total seclusion.
Bears stalk the periphery
not for our blood.
Again, what we pine for.
Cue the camp fire. And the limbs
sprawled out over each other,
drying.
No way to ever get back. After the inaugural voyage.
Waking up in a stupor of space,
slight headache almost pleasurable
from scotch or a sip from the river.
From the mouth of a lover,
disappears years off your life…
What will we remember?
After betting on this age,
a “for” appears. Summoning
beams coming in, through the trees, next to each other.
We will know what to elide,
in some time.
Some will hitch
to never before seen towns
or settle back
to odd jobs. Call me once in a while.
I’ll show you how the roofs of steeples
bask, in far away France.
They say he fell
into a quandary after
the breakup.
That he recovered.
Moved away. Paris,
to travel advisories.
Once in a while, the fishermen, women
that Sockeye day,
would receive tattered parcels.
“New Work,” was all it said.
Or something esoteric
like “What’s up Beauregard Maldonaldo?”
They knew, and the rest,
would estimate. How many Thursdays
before you make a move?
Having severed professions
that no longer served him.
Having switched off the light switch
with a hammer to the wailing receiver,
rhododendrons, up in the Canyon, planning
on running for metals….
Where’s Eric?
He’s watching
this handsome spring evening
burn like a whisky prewar
Going down vital
from a Vons parking lot.
This now, a ghost
I can almost put my finger on,
already a long, long time ago–
