Poem

1

In my mind he is always half the age
I am now as he stands on a green shelf
of Razorback mountain. I will wait
for him forever in the backseat of a car,
my chin numbing on the window ledge ...

Awake
I am beholding clouds
beholding dreams
and
… beholding the hands of a woman
… she has taken a fragment of me with her
Exactly like the force of a fork
carving out a piece of cake

Nothing seems real     yet I’m willing
to play ‘the real’ game for ones I love
and when I’m sick I go get pills
but more and more hovering above it I’m

June 22

And many happy returns of the day to Cyndi Lauper, 65,
once said to ‘dress funny’ and her voice likened to ‘rat’ (or ‘rat’s’),

You wouldn’t think to look twice: no high fence
crowned with broken glass, no security guard
heavy with boredom and a lanyard of keys.

Watching others love
        is something
many do, I guess –
not so much a pastime
        as a mode

He seldom spoke, even when well, and when he did it was misterioso, brief,
a gnomic shorthand, often only a grunt,
but his musicians got it, Nellie, Boo-Boo, and Sphere III too.
Nowadays next to nothing comes out his mouth, nothing at all.