Who Decides?

 

January 1, 2010  (I was 65)

 

         Who Decides?

I sit next to her wheelchair at lunch.

I feed her.  She eats everything.

She drinks juice milk water then coffee,

coffee with her cake.  I make sure

the pieces are small.  She looks at me.

She likes to hold my hand.

I stroke her cheek and her hair.

She looks at me as if she knows me.

A caretaker comes by, says, “Hello Rose.”

She looks at him and points at me.

“You have a visitor today, how nice.”

She looks at him and points at me,

“My father,” she says and looks at me.

The caretaker moves to the next table.

She looks at me, You look younger,” she says.

I smile at her, “So do you.  You look younger.”

I take her hand again.  I remember the coma.

I remember the pneumonia, the conference

regarding extreme measures.  My wishes

my instructions, her comfort, her quality of life.

Now she finishes her lunch and looks at me

puzzled.  Her forehead wrinkles in thought.

Her lips move soundlessly.  She looks at me

and squeezes my hand.  “Who decided?”

She glances around then looks at me,

“Who decides?”  Instead of answering

I squeeze her hand.  This Christmas

my family gives me things I need,

they are sure, a different car,

a computer with much more memory,

a subscription to a movie service.

I protest, I don’t need all this.

They say I deserve it.  I look at them

and wonder who decides?

Heroes write in second person

 

December 20, 2010  (I was 65)

 

Heroes write in second person

so you can imagine you are they

and they can imagine they are humble

 

It also allows a little fudge on the truth

If there’s a bit of hyperbole here

and some ameliorating there

 

it was you who thought it

and you going through this who did it

I wrote it exactly as you said

 

it’s up to you to decide

whether it’s undeclared biography

or personification of the fictive truth

 

I know people are afraid to speak

 

from this week in 2010  (I was 66)

 

I know people are afraid to speak

about the unspeakable and unmentionable

knowing it will put them on a list

that will impede or even restrict travel

To question makes them sympathizers

to associate makes them guilty

vulnerable to detachment

and government claims that they are one of them

or at least complicit dupes

Even to research or inquire rouses suspicion

It’s McCarthyism without a name

Categories of lists intersect electronically

I know people who won’t vote

afraid to mention suspected impropriety

places them on another list waiting to be counted

The government is only Little Brother

Secret Agencies Corporate Entities

International Banking Privatized Armies

Mythical Job Markets employing from lists

buy educated employees with pennies and threats

A class kept in poverty as a buffer

from the starving class they will be required to eradicate

While those whose job it is to deflect taxes

Wiki-leak their open admiration

for the Smartest Men In The Enron Room

whose only mistake was getting on a list

 

My good friend was eaten by an allegory

 

from this week in 2010  (I was 66)

 

My good friend was eaten by an allegory

I don’t put animals into fables

I do not construct allegories around them

I’d never characterize a person as an animal

unless to insult them

Neither do I humanize beasts

unless to insult them

I’d rather not invite another specie across my doorstep

 

Though I am a citizen and I live here

 

November 30, 2010  (I was 66)

 

Though I am a citizen and I live here

this is not my country

No matter that I always vote

and campaign for those who speak my voice

Our arrogant governance in the world

humiliates me

the autocratic savior complex

I am told and I know

what we do maintains the lifestyle I enjoy

But there are many lifestyles I can love

and the enjoyment of what I have

is relative to how many others have it too

and what we did to get it

So this is not my country yet

 

If it was a test

 

from this week in November, 2010  (I was 66)

 

If it was a test

I tried to do my best

just like all the rest

but if I had to guess of it

I’d say I made a mess of it

 

I always saw the jest

that gave tears their zest

When the bird left the nest

I took flight and headed west with it

where I guess I made a mess of it

 

Indistinct dreams are lost

when the pair of dice is tossed

Got symbols and signals crossed

and slogged through the cess of it

after I made a mess of it

I know people are afraid to speak

 

from this week in 2010  (I was 66)

 

I know people are afraid to speak

about the unspeakable and unmentionable

knowing it will put them on a list

that will impede or even restrict travel

To question makes them sympathizers

to associate makes them guilty

vulnerable to detachment

and government claims that they are one of them

or at least complicit dupes

Even to research or inquire rouses suspicion

It’s McCarthyism without a name

Categories of lists intersect electronically

I know people who won’t vote

afraid to mention suspected impropriety

places them on another list waiting to be counted

The government is only Little Brother

Secret Agencies Corporate Entities

International Banking Privatized Armies

Mythical Job Markets employing from lists

buy educated employees with pennies and threats

A class kept in poverty as a buffer

from the starving class they will be required to eradicate

While those whose job it is to deflect taxes

Wiki-leak their open admiration

for the Smartest Men In The Enron Room

whose only mistake was getting on a list

 

When did the first identity I might recognize

 

from this week in October, 2010  (I was 65)

 

When did the first identity I might recognize

patch from an ancestor unknown

even a single generation ago

part of its soul into me

If they knew no one talked

If they wrote no one kept the script

If they sang no song was ever heard

I have not any art from them

 

All the knowledge known and expressed

 

October 22, 2010  (I was 65)

 

All the knowledge known and expressed

cannot equal the known but unexpressed

So much written but never read

pictured or sculpted and never seen

composed arranged and unheard

fabrics woven never felt

fragrant esters inhaled but once

tastes of numbers and notions

found and forgotten a thousand times

images thought by disembodied mind

thoughts imaged by unmindful hand

Master work in the bottom drawer

of a cabinet in grandfather’s basement

If we find but one piece

we search forever for another

Mutual Mute-tation

 

October 16, 2010  (I was 65)

 

         Mutual Mute-tation

When you reach an age

they stop letting you change

Suggestions are treated with silent suspicion

Ideas encounter silence

and rebound through the mind

that no longer exists in any changeable way

You know they are thinking more

of what they will do

when they no longer have to be silent

So act alone on the changes you suggest

and learn to suggest them silently

My generation gave the country away

 

September 13, 2010  (I was 65)

 

My generation gave the country away

We sent the work to India and Brazil

at handsome profit for some

Expecting what?

All our kids to be off shore managers?

We put our parents’ bombs in the basement

and only used the littler ones

Allowed deception to be our business

and took greed as our birthright

Allowed myths to be our faith

Though there is but one god

we each have our own

Slow erosion has a polishing effect

 

September 12, 2010  (I was 65)

 

Slow erosion has a polishing effect

flowing water sliding snow and ice

tumbling stones wind blown dust

scraping branch of adjacent tree

metal sliding across metal

bones in dirt

Friction smooths the differences

when there is no consciousness of time

no desperation of a single passing life

Getting even can take centuries

mountain to molehill

glacial stare to tepid contentment

retribution of ancestral wrongs

Wise pearls begin in irritation

swimming in gall

most often never recognized

nor appreciated by the carrier

Another crusty evening

 

from this week in August, 2010  (I was 65)

 

Another crusty evening

old black and white movie of yesterday’s fools

Nothing changes in five hundred years

of yin and yang transactions

promise of future redemption

in exchange for present drunkenness

a ridiculously perfect rational rejection

of the soul sold to the devil myth

Not pleasure now for a future forsaken

but a numb shadow in the night

in exchange for the promise

tomorrow I will be Jesus

That man didn’t take a jet

 

August 18, 2010  (I was 65)

 

That man didn’t take a jet

     nor any slower vehicle of flight

He didn’t board a cruise ship

     or any thing else that floats

He didn’t ride the rails nor any kind of road

     never dreamed of leaving

     couldn’t read a map

     wouldn’t believe the traveler’s tale

     any more than he believed the wind

He cared not where the ground sank

     not where the mountain rose

     stopped drinking before the well went dry

     didn’t want a piece of the pie

I planned for summer nights in a tent

 

August 23,2010  (I was 65)

 

I planned for summer nights in a tent

set up in the back yard

from where we could control the dark

and rule the infinite stars

until we died in a sleep from a fatigue

we thought we’d defeat until we could not

Stupid guilt for nonexistent crimes

stripped and robbed me of the times

left only rich when they could have been opulent

I do not know why we didn’t enact these schemes

that might have fulfilled our dearest dreams

now split into aged wonderings

how we could have lost such sacred plunderings

If your father is already dead when you are young

 

August 9, 2010 (I was 65)

 

If your father is already dead when you are young

you lack the advantage of knowing his fuck-ups

It’s too easy to believe the appraisal of other men

in premature evaluation of his or your own talents

Those with titles are most presumptuous

uncle priest coach teacher fire chief policeman

all so dismissive in their ignorance

and so believable in their imperialism

Youth gives credence to their baseless judgments

 

Before they earn your disrespect you’ve become adult

It takes that many years

You have moved away from those individuals

but not from the idiot types they represent

In their expressions of authoritative certainty

they never realized the damage they propagated

never faced the critical regard of peer review

Now as an undead father I think I am more sensibly obvious

in my metaphorical expression of hypocrisies and failures

I’ve been give credit

 

from this week in August, 2010  (I was 65)

 

 

I’ve been give credit

for the memory of joy

I gave to someone’s son

in a classroom thirty years ago

At one time there must have been

something actual and tangible

that was the object of that joy

I don’t know what it was

and neither does the boy

It has the same value

as a miss-remembered dream

 

I’ve helped my kids be miserable

by talking about a world and life

I could never deliver

I promised we would make it better

I said their efforts would be rewarded

that they would see justice grow from goodness

that co-operation would replace competition

that radiant beauty would be recognized as truth

Though I myself had known none of that

and should have said so long ago

Dumping on Kailua

 

July 11, 2010  (I was 65)

 

                           Dumping on Kailua

         A sign on the path I’ve walked daily says, LITTERING, but the red

circle and the slash mark have weathered away, so now people take it

literally.  The next stretch of ground along the mountain is a garbage

heap, one hundred yards of indigenous Big Island crap:  lawn chairs,

broken toys, clothes and shoes, furniture, a Chinese decorated box, two shattered toilets, and a dead goat disintegrating under a split bag of lye,

lots of dirty blue junk with hibiscus flower designs, a mattress, tires -you

name the size.

         So, in the last two days since I decided I had to note this aspect

of Hawaiian life, across the gulch from the goat, someone has deposited

the carcass, or at least the rib cage of another bloody beast without the

courtesy of the bag of lye.  Anyway, this one’s covered with a half dozen gnawing mongoose.  Brings to mind Melville’s Redburn.  And added just

today, a 6’ satellite dish, the base and mooring, replete with dangling

cables.  Apparently, there’s just not enough good TV out here in paradise. 

In an evolutionary manner

 

April 28, 2010  (I was 65)

 

In an evolutionary manner

something misplaced becomes lost

 

like a favorite bowl for cereal

   or a pocket magnifying glass

      a sweater worn every winter

         an important poem friend

the perfect size and curved to serve the spoon

   precision crafted life enlarger

      warm wrap of retention

         layered revelations a shared complexity

 

What at first is simply not at hand

 

a disengagement from routine encounters

   adjusted agenda, procedural shift

      a temporary displacement

         officially missing as soon as questions are asked

 

Inquiry into the habitual haunts

turns up nothing

 

      empty washers and crowded cabinets

   whatever it is shrunk out of sight

powdered to ceramic dust

     frayed to wind-born lint

         forgotten words of forgotten promises     

Sport without spectators

 

February 20, 2010  (I was 65)

 

Sport without spectators

other than those who play

with rules made up that day

 

and one team only

split to fit the game

among whoever came

 

Athletes without memories

of yesterday’s win

and cheating was a sin

 

It’s a wonder how

so far from here

we were young every year