In the of October Octave -The Days are Sneaking by you

October Pages

In a forest of

missing moments

where silence

sticks slicing time

detains the daily drain

to whisper just before

the feet of Fall

one chilly scarlet

morning kiss

bestows upon the tall lush

green to infect with

gray invades the scalp.

The dead give away of seasons

yet in transition

but for you for the first time

truly yourself now diminishing

there everyday in the flesh.

The expiration date expressed

as clearly in numerical terms

as on any common calendar page

Then only the wishful thinking

of speculation in the power of faith

implies eternal reward in lieu

of the chilling possibility

the prospect of being

no more

Total extinguishment

of self

beyond perhaps mortal comprehension

You are gone.

Not enduring

Not returning

merely over

Gone.

And if the concept of infinity

endows the faithful with such endurance

then the Cannon of the common

is where the mortality of fate

and all its earthly symbols of meaning go to die

mocking the concept of eternal reward

while left to swing

on a shadowy exit gate.                                                     10/1/09

Seen

When you have seen that light

escape to gush from the center

of her eyes

will there ever be any memory

to endure deeper or longer

ever again.

Where nights have been lush

in lingerings limited

to those speechless dreams

wordless recall

dawning much like her light

came gradually alone

in the very heart of the seasons transitions

alive with soft gentle air

Funnels of Sound

pulsate in pronounced rhythms

gyrate wind corkscrews

cutting cones in you that burrow permanently

See time before the dance of past tense

in a single elucidated thought

promising release

but more insuring you will

never forget the incarceration

of her eyes

awaking and gaining light

like the morning dawn.

                                                                                           10/09

The Days are Sneaking by you

Pull in the soften light

as October nears past

a new moon across the sky

in the next street over

hear where your absence

passes aspiration in a blur

of newer older days where

Fall emerges fresh

in still born green leaves

patches of watercolor encroach

like your temples gray

Turning away from the truth

the days are sneaking years by you

diminishing the sight

stiffening the limb

Time winding you down

ebbing your energy

singing in the empty driveway

the vehicle of your flesh

is late

and growing later all the while

so I still strain to hear the sounds

I need to

while resisting the same I’m forced

to endure

the terrible ticking of the now

in my ears

A sound I find

I cannot refuse or resist.

                                                                                               10/09

This Other wheel

This other wheel

is the turning light now

as shadows speak

better for me than my voice

strictly left in the past tense

where all the rockets of

your selfish recklessness

have been launched

year after year

till now here there are

just empty burnt rings

powdering the ground

yes.

The beer is still as cold

as the late great over

would decree

but let the record show

or play with surface noise

and crackling scratches

this tune they didn’t hear coming

You did escape this

and your son as well

and moved on just enough

to be on the very lip

of the periphery of memory

so that when they remember

to ask

Hey what every happen to Whatizname?

You know.

But they don’t.

                                                                                                        10/09

The Glow over the Bone Yard

October Bone Yard Moon

hangs tonight

bright with a wide white smile

glowing in the black and blue

all about your dreams

all about the sleepy steps of you

Like a dance chart

on the floor of the kitchen

at 5 AM.

October Nocturne

Where am I in this gauze wrap of October Twilight

immured immersed in a rolling concussion

of industrial cycles and systems

reveling up to roar like the ocean

feed into a pipe

a wire funnel

where you submit to sound waves

washing through you

leaving only these words here

vague impressions

passing glances

snatches of conversation fragments

leaving a profound sense of wearing down

leaving laughter to collect in

your wake

and fall away

All Day I capture nothing

treadmill the commonplace

am at constant war

with the lack of awareness

that seems to threaten to drown me

in them

where everything just eludes and escapes

without recognition, celebration

or even eulogy

only this

Did you practice your violin ?

Remember to bring back your trumpet ?

and separate your dirty laundry ?

                                                                             10/09

Goodbye Mr. Rosewater

(For K.V.)               

Much like Billy Pilgrim

I too have become “unstuck in time”,

I bounce around to different points

in my past life, visiting distant planets

and worlds that no longer exist

while finding my own place

in the Terrible Now both strangely

tenuous and curiously deadly certain.

But it is little mystery why I find that I

finally really understand

Kilgore Trout so much better these days.

The Science Fiction writer of your creation

who could only get his work published in cheap

Porn magazine pages placed next to graphically obscene

illustrations of perversion and depravity

that had nothing to do with the story

he had written.

Now it can be told was re-titled with graphic labeled Mouth Crazy

I looked in my closet last night

and was hardly surprised to discover

Unk’s yellow one piece jumpsuit

with the blue question marks printed

all over it still hanging in the dry cleaner

plastic behind a bunch of old sweaters.

And I was getting the idea

it was only going to be a matter of time

before it was my turn to try

that costume back on again.

Even after all these years it still

looking like it would fit just fine.

It had been awhile since I had

ridden in a space ship to lead

a bogus alien invasion designed

to fail to help galvanize patriotism

in a conflicted culture.

Yes, it’s true.

 I did time in the Monkey House

w/ the Handicapper General

Diana Moon Gampers

finding her methods of mandatory equality,

her leveling of life’s playing field obstacles

even more tedious than debilitating and terrible now defining

Cancel culture

Live at the next Witch trials

Political Correctness old school

Meets the American Idol for Aspiring Psychos

For the naked and afraid

But most all I will miss the man

who cheated death once

sixty years ago during WWII

as a POV in a meat locker under  an incinerated Dresden

in Slaughter House-5.

Even that unlikely escape

was as miraculous

as it was merely the blind chance

in the lucky draw of random survival

rather than tens of thousands

who were fricasseed to a crisp

over his head while the streets

melted to the smooth glass

creators of the moon as it all cooled.

And he never could forget about that.

Kurt, old boy-

This world, much like yours then,

has managed to survive somehow-

Swinging in nuclear nooses  Dangling Swords of Damocles

Coated w/ the virus de jour

Still you managed to just strolled through it all after

Boozing smoking while

writing, growing older everyday & passing so qiuetly

in this insane asylum post-modern world

that eventually rivaled in day to day surreal hyper-reality

any of the plots of  your wildest stories.

As you observed once about a freshly fricasseed Dresden 

Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like “Poo–tee-weet?”KV

VQ – Cyberstein