I said I didn’t understand
so God told me again—
growing old happens instantly.
But it felt so much longer,
like forever, I begged.
Of course it did to you, my boy,
he chuckled, sneered,
of course it did to you…

1.
I am at the beach again
despite the doctor’s warnings
to stay out of sun
because of my condition.
I was here near this water
—this salty world-womb—
the last time something in life couldn’t fit,
when nothing but waves and sand
made any sense.

Before that, and before I left home,
I came to this beach when I was
still young, if being young is the inability
to comprehend the end of a Summer,
the inability to doubt that a throw of the dice
will always win an invite to a party,
a weed connect, or an easy lay…

And here time is water and water time
as it carves and traces its ridges in
beach rock like the lines around my eyes;
it clumps and dents the smooth sand
like the wrinkles that mottle the back of my hand…

2.
I have seen the seaside tribes approach, recede:
young military men, college co-eds, young
college men, middle aged barflies
munching tacos from that hole-in-the-wall
just two blocks down from the boardwalk;
even the old woman who walks her
two pugs each morning at seven
remains somehow mysterious
against the horizon of ocean…

So I drifted down the pier
until the gulls in the air
and the bite of salt on my tongue
muted the humming waves beneath my feet.
I saw a gull with just one leg
and wondered what desperate adventure
had claimed his wholeness; yet
the image I caught on my cellphone
has no pity, just pride—
as if he knows he can still stand in the wind,
still dive into the same ocean, intrepid,
as if a throw of the dice could never
cost him the rest of his body.

3.
But I myself grow more timid
over just the high sun at noon
again because of my condition;
it could be any condition, I guess
it doesn’t matter, as often
being old is just being able to remember
a Summer where I couldn’t imagine being
too sick to do a simple thing.

The doctor told me that my body
is attacking itself; I should be very ill,
according to my blood-work, but apparently
I am lucky, only wounded just-barely;
so anyway it couldn’t hurt
to lose a little weight,
to go the gym sometimes, and above all
to stay out of the sunlight—UV—
as that somehow roils
the demon in my blood.

And after the fit of nervous laughter
in the clinic parking lot,
after I realize the algebra of my illness
equals two or three toxic little pills,
poisons that choke off my blood’s royal guard
and soothe the screams beneath my skin,
after all that I feel
a bit of pity, but mostly pride—
because I know I can still dive
deep into waves sliding beneath me,
because I can still feel
dice, hard and warm, in my hand…

[NOTE: This is a new edit of the poem found here.]

They say there was an ancient
Kung Fu Master who, as he grew older,
developed a secret technique to compensate
for his waning strength. Then, they say, one day
during a fight, he discovered perfection:
in one punch he transmuted into pure force—
his body dissolved into air…

1.
I wanted to write a poem about being alive,
what it is, the stuff it’s made from. To begin,
windows and mirrors are the obvious choices—
cliches, kind of, except for windows at night;
then, light plays its game against surfaces:
shadow-ghost mirror reflections project
over the scene behind the window.
So maybe being alive is that—not a mirror, not
a clear window—but a gradient of being there
that bleeds into the world beyond yourself.

2.
So there. Do I have my perfect poem?
A half-transparent window; it seems too simple, so
I must be forgetting something…
Somehow the window feels like it’s moving…
Ah yes; I forgot about time.

I’ll gaze out from a dashboard window;
that rounded slanted rectangle that is the
constant unceasing, the ever-changing,
ever-living (at least until rust,
I guess).

Then—
being alive is the road as it rises to meet you;
it’s an eternal dusk where the angle of sunlight reveals
maybe your face, maybe the dash, in a faint echo
against the hum of the headlights’ glow,
as the light clangs against the approaching night.

3.
How like a turtle shell, like a glove
is a car! Its owner’s approach to life
—timid or reckless or serious or drunk—
imprints itself upon the very engine,
the chrome poem of motion that dances
across its destinations…

Rilke told me what remains after death
is the pure impression of life
stamped against leathery time—
no glove, no hand, just impression…

So I pray to the patron saint
of the impression, the saint of the moment just passed,
of prayers murmured alone at midnight,
of the ghostly ledger of memory.

4.
I am not alone in praying.
I am not even the most desperate.
The very same saint also attends
the mother who outlives her son,
the soldier as he dies
somewhere across the ocean,
and—yes, Rilke, I know—
the love of lovers unfulfilled,
love wasted like a swan song sung
out to an empty lake at dawn.
And maybe that is what life is, that song;
yet, somehow that melody sounds the most,
most beautiful from within the boundaries
of the mind alone. Even then, we can’t even know
the beauty of its notes as they pass, we being too busy
to feel the glove yielding.

5.
Of course, we all actually know
just exactly what life is really like;
each of us noticed when very young
—probably just before realizing
that boys and girls are different—
noticed something so obvious
as to have long been forgotten,
abandoned with couch-cushion kingdoms
and closet-dwelling monsters.

We lost interest because it was obvious:
this moment, this moment, this moment…
like a heart beat—the same and yet always new;
we grow older without changing at all, and who we are
and who we will be
will always arise from who we were
because it must; it must until, at last, the beat ends,
or rather, ascends; then that impression upon time becomes
our unending moment of having-once-been…

Note: This is a new edit of the poem found here.

So a sine wave is a pure thing,
the perfect math of music, a tone that is
a wave function
—nothing more or less—
and within the last hundred years or so
we’ve fashioned musical instruments from this purity…
…I’d imagine aliens, too, would have synthesizers,
as opposed to the strings, stretched skins,
bent brass, and sculpted wood
that we on Earth have used.

Now that we have emerged
from the womb of the 20th Century,
the modern cocoon, as citizens of the future—
at once more powerful and more primitive
like the hum of an electrical sub station,
or the crispness of mercury-vapor lamps in a warehouse—
now we are left to make sense of it all,
our bodies, our brains, the arc of history
since the Greeks, or
something more simple:

Something found inside a record, a cassette, or mp3,
something like how rich a
series of pure mathematical tones sounds
during a Summer evening rainstorm,
how stark it sounds at first at 3 AM,
then faint as it fades into dreams,
how cold it sounds alone
during the simple joy of solitude.

And I saw God in a circuit
when I finally soldered in that wire
and hooked it up and made that tone and saw
what the circuit saw;
I finally knew my soul as it arose from my brain;
somewhere deep within the spongy flesh
inside my skull
something sparks like the metal guts
of the synthesizer,
something hears perfection and knows
perfection—transcendence—
I, the sacred dying animal,
who bears witness
to purity
harmony
and mystery.

So, if you read this blog (ha!), you’ll know of the problems I had submitting to the San Diego Writers Ink 2012 anthology.

Well, they’ve extended the submission deadline to August 10, 2012. That gave me more than enough time to write a new poem; one that would fit within their submission guidelines, even. Per their requirements, however, “Digital” cannot be previously published—not even online.

So, I guess if they accept the submission for the anthology, you’ll never see “Digital” posted up here. And, I guess, if one day you load this site up (again, ha!), and find the text of a poem titled “Digital” staring back at you, you’ll know the submission was rejected.

I’ll know by December 15th. Yeah, that part is kinda sucky…

ONE

I am from the bow that split the waves of the Atlantic
the force of human will beyond ancient Valhalla—
they pilgrimaged across those waves
for a new God, a new country.

And that note which preceded me,
that sea salt tone that faded, remains as harmony
to the sound of gravel alongside the desert freeway
—for that is where I truly come from:
the taste and smell of dust and tire rubber,
the powder of desert, like sun-bleached soot…
and I am from the faint scent
that draws the wolves
down from the mountain.

Also, I am from the note that rang out
when they struck that final spike, that golden spike
into the first transcontinental railroad track;
my mother described it so proudly at the
station museum, “they say it could have been
miles off, but it wasn’t—it met right on center,”
she beamed, with perfectly permed hair and
smelling of chemical roses.
American method.

And so, silently, I am also from
the camps of the Chinese rail workers,
the tendons as they strain
the fingernails as they claw
through the Sierras
—relentless, relentless—
the bones beneath the tracks
the bones that guide those rails to their perfect center…

Railways. Freeways.
And I am from the true natives here
in that I am an immigrant who has shed the skin of history;
my ancestry dries out on a desert rock while
a rattlesnake—reborn—slithers into the sand,
the sun-bleached dust of the current moment,
the caking dirt of now and California.

TWO

I am from the forgotten tune, half-remembered across silent lips

I am from the dread of an empty strip-mall at midnight

I am from a clean, well-lighted place

I am from hours spent in front of a screen, playing SimCity

I am from leather that flutters against brass—saxophone keypads

I am from the high-pitched staccato of a dot matrix printer

I am from graphite against smooth pulp, inside a Trapper Keeper

I am from the pack of stray dogs, the dogs who could find no other pack

I am from hashish daydreams that sprawl along the Pacific shoreline

I am from the motion of palm fronds that sway to the wind’s half forgotten song

But finally

Finally

I am from the Leviathan—the great beast
slouching across the Atlantic,
across the Mason-Dixon,
across the Louisiana Purchase,
across the lost Northern lands of Mexico,
here already
—already born.

Note: This is a revision of the poem found here.