Emily Dickinson before The Day
Saw Susie Gilbert everywhere:
“I have but one thought, Susie,
This afternoon of June,
And that is of you,
One wish, only, dear Susie,
And that is for you
That you and I in hand
As we e’en do in heart,
Might ramble away as children
Among the woods and fields
And forget these many years
These sorrowing cares
And each become a boy again!”
O Emily, love, my prophet
Centuries on the march
I’m thinking just the same myself
Your Susie is my Patrick
Twice blessed we are
Despite ourselves
Neither we weird out.

You as you
Is you to me
I see no need
To make you Zeus
Preferring myths
That I can see
And answer back
When spoken to
And if you’re nice
And warm to me
I’ll rank you highest
Of the Greeks
Perchance to make
A myth our own
And love survive
Our Politics.

I say Death
And see death all around
Like that barbershop
I went to as a boy
With mirrored facing walls
I’d gape into as if
A tunnel into time
Smaller, smaller, smaller
Then fractal to no end
Trapped into a distance
Almost disappeared.
Quite a competition
They had going,
Those damn mirrors,
For my nothingness
Dissolution into
Time.
Quite a terror too
Quite a terror ‘til
I say Life
And see life all around.

Cleaning up a room for love
Is not at all dissimilar
To cleaning it for death,
Each fastidious censor
To our dearest audience.

Perception is the clearest
For follies of the past
A simple word in shallows
Sounded at its depth
Perfection, criticism
Every desperate try.

I’ve tossed a thousand volumes
Preparing for them both
Re-shelved my mind
To just the line
Of a letter
That was left.

But love at last
Cleared out the most
And wrote a million more
Babe, when you stood me up again
I went and hugged a tree.

So nice to see a fellow child survive
The range of impish grins that I recall
Now ruck necked, fleshy, bellied
Bristly gray, their handsome sons and daughters
Grand-babes seize my eye.  The sermon
Has a quality of place, a place that System
Unrelenting mocks—from quaint, to cult,
To butt of jests elite:  “Subvert those
Rubes to 50 Shades of Gray!”
In the decades since
I preached there as a teen (many  say
The best youth sermon they recall)
The calling never lessened to repair
And release my inner Savonarola
To the task, to chivvy more than platitudes
For war, and wreak the lesson System
So deserved.   But for that, alas, the preacher
Disagreed, “Vengeance is the opposite of grace.”
Said he:  “Pray for Harvey Weinstein.”
Or so forth and so on and so
I sloughed my cowl for secular attire,
And made a Trojan voice to infiltrate
To give as good, or better, than I got
And inflict a verse effective with surprise:
“Beauty,” I proclaimed, “is all–
Now burn you motherfucker to the ground!”

a sharper
edge to wall and barren
tree

strewn
again my leaves along a
hope

green
again in memories of the
loss

regret
again that green was just
enough

“You’re go for landing, Eagle.”
“Houston, roger that
Imagination realized
With German at my back
The laws of physics working great
A short 3 days from earth
Oberth, von Braun, Rilke
Thank you very much.”
“Repeat that, Eagle.  ‘Ricky’?”
“Houston, R-I-L-K-E.
Or how I know
I’ll live again
In the multiverse.”
“Reading you loud and clear, Eagle, uh
But be advised to permutate
One moon at a time.”