Memoir
Five Names on My Headstone:
Ben, Dennis, Jeff, Charles-Stephen,
& Philip
Book One:
Now, Beginning
Chapter 1 – Recently
My name is Philip. For most of my adult life, though, I was Philip and ______. In that blank are the four names accompanying my own on a headstone in a cemetery now located two days by express train away from me. Each of their names is followed with beginning and end dates. Mine, albeit having felt finished, remains uncarved.
The first died instantly in a car crash. I was present bedside at the deaths of the other three. I had provided care for them throughout their decline and final illness, and I was also responsible for planning their funerals, closing out their final affairs. From them I learned that one can be given no more precious and intimate a gift than to be allowed to help someone die well.
Each has a permanent places of residence in my life, but if you ask me where, I cannot clearly recall their precise locations. I try to remember their actual facial features apart from my fading memories of images recorded as photographs, try to remember things we did together apart from those I wrote about at an earlier time. I cannot. I always get lost when remembering, trying to get to them. Curtains have been drawn to close out the painful, piercing light of well-articulated memories. My eyes have developed photophobia. I must wear dark glasses.
writing only thoughts
my memory holds outlines
leaves blank my insides
I am writing, trying to find a way home to complete that headstone. The story deserves an ending, but I have very little to go on to remind me of how it got to where it is now. All I have are words I wrote before my mind could no longer recall unrecorded details.
dry memories, words
letters in groups, forming lines
no colors or smell
My question here is how to lay these lives I have lived to rest, how to allow my mind to be laid to rest with them, how not to confuse lay with lie.
how do I let go
my memories are empty
no hold to release
I would be hard pressed to embellish these bare notes with details – colors, odors, emotions, names, causes, derivations, principles, lessons.
lust | death | words engage
writers give readers feelings
I cannot bring back
What we know now is that the end did not come on April Fool’s Day of 2018, which was also Easter Sunday that year, when I became homeless.
a hairbrush, grooming
never using a mirror
my face forgotten
What I have are dates, of which I can still be certain, given the stabilizing influence of calendars.
Poems
Personal Reflections
Recollections
I cannot report that which I cannot recall
I dare not even measure the size of the holes
suggesting what might be gone -- mother, father
siblings, cousins, childhood friends, fun on playgrounds
Ben in ’74 – I’m a pall bearer at his funeral
on my 17th birthday, my tears scolded
an embarrassment, shamed, buried
Dennis in ’84 - banishment as protection; in ’90
Dennis again, past love carried forward: caregiver
executor, the friend delivering the eulogy, graveside
Jeff in ’94 - twelve years. Slow, sweet decline
across the last two, HIV encephalopathy
Said he’d tell Philip on me if I scrubbed too hard
Ashes scattered on the Oregon coast in ‘98
Scores of other funerals, once young men
exuberant, acting up for love, community
woven into a safety net now gone, scattered ashes
Stephen in 2013 - the one too many, dying
on the day after our fifteenth anniversary
In 2015, inflammation; in 2017, strokes
in 2018, the loss of everything previous
forty years of art loaded into a 20’ truck
art we’d collected, art I’d created
two Goodwill donation centers
too much for one to take alone
I carry two bags plus what’s in my brain, board a bus
heading toward a beach awash with memories
where twenty years prior I had scattered ashes
this time with charts of the tides, undertow currents
But the bus ride ends early with a cup of coffee
a year spent writing poetry, residing in a shelter
homeless, wondering what next, still I want to run
further away drifts every home I have ever known
Siblings express shock, sorrow, send money
several hundred dollars, little verbal exchange
none of us knowing what to say now, at this point
Parents again say they will continue to pray
that I will get my life right with God
Here I am now, in a place
where nothing, no one is familiar
A perfect stranger, I seek comfort
from being in isolation, unknown
I keep writing poetic, removed words, begin
again to create abstract art, perhaps to speak
of feelings I perhaps imagine feeling
somewhere inside my hovering, observing self
This aftermath resides in a desert
No torrents of tears, no wailing grief
I want to cry. I cannot. Evaporated
memories avoid sunlight, scream out
at night, incoherent. Mostly, I am calm
I breathe into this present moment
do things I expect I might want
were I able to want, I don’t want
to breathe, but I do, some function
of self-contained, involuntary nerves
I stare into tomorrow’s mirror, looking
for signs of rain, perhaps a storm
moving somewhere, unpredictable
at us, away, winds whirling, coming, going
blowing moving changing – us to I, alone, me
Do poems count as tears?
Is one permitted to write of mourning
in lieu of mourning, imagine feelings
one has buried rather than to feel them
for the loss of those whom one has buried?
How many volumes of poetry
written about one’s losses
are the equivalent of one’s time
better spent weeping?
The Fire Poem
We are surrounded by fire
From whatever direction
comes the odor of living things
going up in smoke
We remind ourselves
the acrid odor
could be ourselves burning
the smell of life
regenerating
wiping clean the slate
for the next generation
to start over anew
with dreams as big as ours
Life comes from life
passing
For What It’s Worth
Water will always be
worth fighting for
either on behalf of now
so that we might all survive
or in the future, as in the past
to possess, so that we might survive
atop the withered and dead remains
of others of us
We are all us. We all thirst
Subjective Ease
What we see as flowing
is to the stream a struggle
against soil, sand, pebbles, rocks
huge boulders, to reach the sea
only to be picked up, and carried away
back to the beginning, then set down
to repeat the downhill battle yet again
Erosion
As a river’s flow wears
through rock and soil
to reach the sea
So time flows
through our lives
So time flows
through all life
Evolution Redux
Sleep is the ocean
from which our thoughts crawl
each morning into light
To which each evening
they return to walk along the shore
then wade in to be carried away
by the subconscious undertow
From which one night’s night
they will not escape
and perhaps, if gifted with peace
will not even try
Sea Creatures, We
So often the shallows are filled
with flashy, sun-accustomed creatures
of a social, carnivorous nature
whereas in the depths
are here and there loners
sullen in nature, eating plankton
Having been there
I can report
that things not seen
are not always mysterious
instead, merely dull
Living Our Gardens of Versailles
While we expend our energy
arranging a perfect sense of order
for our lives
crabgrass thrives
just by being what it is:
indomitable
Limitations of Language
Regardless of how weighty the thoughts be
that they convey, or what gravitas they carry
words alone can never stop the wind from blowing
quickly away the paper on which words are written
Stepping into Our Autumn
Enter autumn, the season of fancy dying
the green bud of next spring pushing out
this year’s leaf, taking its place, setting it free
gracefully transitioning, verdant vigor becomes
beauty adorned with the many hues of wisdom
we each carry, joy remembered from youthful rolls
in fields of clover
now inviting contemplation of the stark simplicity
of snow, covering pains in our hearts with blankets
of gratitude, content in knowing that from our seeds
new generations will grow
content that our wisdom will flow as to the ocean
that from where we are we can water the earth
Sweeping Up Dust
Everything becomes dust eventually
blows away, even our own, constantly
adrift, traveling over continents, seas
rendering sunsets with colors to inspire
others to feel awe, others who may
or may not remember us, others who
may or may not talk about us, much
if at all, but who will watch sunsets
will feel our fading fire, and connect
Dust in The Wind
The wind comes and goes, stirring up dust
sometimes much more
Eventually the dust settles
along with everything else
Things are changed, but go on
Feelings are like the wind
coming and going, moving things around
Eventually things settle, changed a bit
or quite a bit
Likewise, emotions may come
but sometimes we catch and hold them
so instead of moving on, they then burrow
sometimes so deep they cannot leave
until dug out, set loose, and allowed to stir our dust
perhaps along with our lives
Self-Portrait, Redesigned, Resigned
I have already died, several times
Now I am the lone, silvered, not yet mangy bison
standing apart, watching, unblinking
Awaiting the whiff of dank fur, putrid breath
jagged pain ripping through my neck, signaling
the arrival of the pack of wolves, coyote
the cougar, bear, whatever might be coming
bringing the final take-down
to release, feed the time
accumulated in my remaining blood
back into the always hungry, regifting earth
Dies Irae
Reflections pass through reflections
in the window by the door
as I sit listening to Baroque
while other homeless men exit
or enter; Rubino’s Requiem, Italian
Little is known about him
Love the Pain Forward
Not what happened to you
Leave that, them
where they are, in the past
But love the pain forward
your messenger, your guardian
who tells you where the blow landed
what got broken, is different now
tells you that you're alive, survived
have it in you to survive
even that, them
tells you that what's broken
may always be broken
may always hurt when touched
that you may always need
to give it some extra attention
but that you have it in you
to survive, to thrive
to love your life forward
hope and memory
combine in equal measure
life’s daily tincture
In the night, dancing
with ghosts, pain signifies touch
beloved touch, walls
My Walk on the Wayside
So many paths, these past few years
made by walking
in the shoes
or their semi-functional remains
of others, also still or recently homeless
Yet able and generous enough
to share their stories, feed my poetry
give sustenance, strength
to my own feet, second-hand clad
walking alongside theirs
So many stories, so many lives
paths I could not have imagined
had I not also happened to stumble
over my particular stones, grief and despair
each of us having our own
Happened to fall alongside the path
as others I had known kept walking
as I curled up, kept quiet, rolled
out of sight
Let them keep walking, found myself
waling a path with others, unknown
in homeless shelters
whose missions mostly were to save
our souls, but along the way
did provide food, clothing, used soles
a place to stop, rest, pause, shower
guardedly to share our stories
collect our disparate selves
Daybreak
Sunlight looks like sunlight
the same as it did
I hold up a prism. Light divides
into a new spectrum
I don’t know where to look
don’t know what hope, or joy
even the desire for them
might look like now
in this new light. Perhaps
I will go back inside to look
Through Death Valley, of the
Dry walking, dust walking
eyes closed or in slits, glancing
not for direction, but to avoid
No desire to feel contact
whether collision or friendly
Constant, veiled observation
occasional perceptions
If shared, not discussed
A loner, passing through
his own desert
Seeing with Your Eyes Shut
One can see so much
with one’s eyes shut
Sit, eyes closed
in a moving vehicle
facing out a window
on a sunny day
as it drives past trees
or buildings
Absorb
the infinite shades
of warmth
running across your eyelids
reds, oranges and yellows
then the subtle cool colors of shade
blues, grays and violets
all tinged with green
Play with the strobes
and kaleidoscopes
of one quickly changing
to the other
Do this
until you feel
exhilarated
then open your eyes
and see that same way
Live that same way
Thoughts On Art & Creativity
Improvisation
Shards of life
falling into place
to render a new arrangement
Exquisitely chaotic
rich with invisible colors
notes not even played
Plug your ears and listen
Shut your eyes and see
Listen; See; Open
now, Play
Art
employs every deception we can imagine
to move us along toward whatever partial truth
we are able to comprehend
Art:
An artifice full of guile and subterfuge
it will entice you away from your consideration
of real and urgent concerns, then
while you are not looking, resolve them
Trama Sintesi: Shishi e Demfellas (synopsis/es)
Listless, Abigail falls arrogant within orchestrations randomly selected from sweaty palms and tabloids. Undeterred, Martha devises his and her means. Abigail concedes each argument with precise and sturdy palpitations toward a libidinous definitive, gracious to a fault. Even so, disturbational within the eminence of procedure, Martha quakes with unearthly groans and capitulates, point for point.
Ever meticulous within such desperation, events now soothe toward disingenuous selves in bold calculation of their own derivations: Victor partakes of tender, stark nuptials, his nudity an unambiguous amour ante, ever pre-textual, ever with reference to Benjamin, their once caressed; Cartier, imbibing likewise in a proxy for the inarticulate, yearns for unmitigated wafts of fleeting mackerel, musk and vinegar, essentially parsing one’s trenchantly parched desires. Thus conjoined, their explicit subversions preamble toward the insurrection of potentially more amicably engaged constitutionals.
Evaporating down nefarious vestibules, severed angels strike choral epiphanies of dusty angst, determined to foment false ministrations. Factions emerge, crusty with emboldened diatribe. Within this vortex, subsumed to aural pleasure, parallels of logic persist.
Seven Lines of Seven Words: A Creed for Poets
Poetry changes ordinary words into magic whirligigs
spin between our ears with dizzying delight
Pig rhymed with wig engages children’s fantasies
soldier with smolder -- ravaged, sulfuric landscapes
As poets we must allow for interpretation
Precision in poetry consists of multiple meanings
Contradictions deepen our comprehension of life, yes?
Civility
We maintain order
in our own life
and help to do so
in the lives of those
whom we influence
so that we may
on pertinent occasions
subvert it
A Friend
With a life full of grace
sees our quirks
as unique expressions
of creativity
and passes that vision along
for others to appreciate
Different Vibes
He carries a flashlight hung on his belt – I surmise
that he’s accustomed to searching for what he needs
Hiking boots and knee-length, cut-off jeans
untrimmed threads dangling over dead skin flaking
from his shins from sunburn or psoriasis, hard to tell
Crew neck shirt, grey stripes inside white inside black
short hair, thinning, still mostly brown, white on top
where soon there will be a bald spot atop his crown
His face is ruddy from time spent out of doors, a face
filled with at least two or three decades of pain
Brown eyes, soft, set in a permanent half-wince
seem like they’d cry if they could, if they dared
Furrowed brow, likely a few too many drinks sometimes
not habitually, though, instead pouring himself
into the music he’s playing on his guitar and in his head
He’s seated on a bench, intensely strumming out his blues
on the three strings that remain whole on his unplugged
road-worn, electric guitar, the three broken strings curled
into an ephemeral cloud of nylon around the peghead
still fastened to it by the tuning pegs
He stops to put his ear to the body of the guitar, above its waist
reaches up to turn the three pertinent pegs, tuning his instrument
You can hear his song just by looking at him. Only a note or two
from his guitar is audible, but his pain is a silent sound that cuts
to the heart, provided one’s heart is willing to hear it, see it
maybe even smile and give a slight nod
Doesn’t look like he’s of a mind to take your look wrong
beat the crap out of you. Always a consideration here
I consider how he needs to feel that he’s been heard, seen
Breaking across his face comes a wide, full, short-lived smile
cracking his dry lips. I comment that I wish I could hear his music
as clearly as he must be hearing it in his head. He replies
that he doesn’t hear any music, doesn’t really know how to play
the guitar, just likes the feel of the different vibrations on his fingertips
Love Poems
Bliss
I ease into the fragrant, freshly drawn sound
of your music, like warm bathwater soothes
like love – sensual, cleansing, accepting the warmth
of your voice radiates deep into my muscles relax
release concerns and consternations dissolve
like salts soothing my mind settles into your love
like music reinvigorates my life
Love Like Persimmons
Mellow, luscious
plump with years
and silken ripe
each kiss, each glance
each embrace harvested
chosen and plucked
a gift from nature
filled with the sweet juice
of our shared history
Night Flower
Tender sleep my love
in my arms I open
to you like grateful soil
receiving a summer rain
Tender press
your shoulders
to my chest
your buttocks
to my groin
your thighs, calves
and feet scissoring
with my own
Tender breathe
your breath
is relaxed, even, rhythmic
a gentle warmth
on my arm
sustenance for my soul
Tender dream
my love, flights of joy
for our spirits entwined
Awaken refreshed
our roots watered
My Music Man
Sing me sweet
my baby makes music
on my flesh, pounds out
the beat of his love
vibrates harmonics
up and down my spine
Sing me sweet
my baby carries me
up scales, across intervals
then slides me
down over his octaves
way low down low
to the bass of his jive
Sing me sweet
my baby swings me
lays his lyrics
all over my body
and soul
puts his vibrato
inside my eyes
Sing me sweet
my baby’s music
awakens me
to my life
over and over each day
holding on to notes
from his caresses
and the rhythm of his breath
soft on my skin each night
Sing me sweet
my baby shouts
ecstatic trills and sighs
the sigh of a man
happy with life
secure in his love
My baby holds me
like an instrument
he cherishes
like a precious violin
on which he bows
his passion as if intent
on setting the strings afire
My baby knows me
knows my melodies
and my moods
sings back-up
to my reluctant solo
improvises a tune
to pull me out
of my gloom
Sing me sweet
harmony
in my ears
when I hear
his name
a symphony
of mysteries
within the familiar
sound of his voice
Sing me sweet
my baby loves me
loves to play
his music on my heart
loves when I send
it right back at him
another day another verse
Here love, from me to you
and back
Elements
To hear what is, touch context, sense the particular
to which we relate, these particular sensations
which constitute our life
Our strength is in our holding, our ability
to hold together the elements of our love:
concern, patience, boredom, charity
security, safety, frustration, passion, fantasy
self-denial, comfort, exhaustion, yearning, protection
loneliness, hope, optimism, disappointment, definition
humor, daring, communication, excitement, exploration
Touch, and we embrace wholly our history in moments
pressed, pressed in tangletongue lips, we kiss
Across These Years
Your name has become many years thick
with meanings complex to my ears soothing
your name evokes the mystery of what
we are to be to each other – friend
confidant, tease, scold, consort
educator, friend
with you in my arms in your arms
I feel secure, comfort, hope for our future
trust that I am for you, too, safe harbor
that I make you happy to be coming home
To each other’s ears may our names
always be a fascination, words cherished
intimate, luxurious in the mystery
of their significance, words
the meanings of which only we know
and each day must relearn
The Satisfaction of Years
These days I offer you spindly legs, blotched skin a belly that pops out like a little balloon whenever I eat a mealYou offer me love handles and sprouting white hair
which you attempt to dye away. Yet even as with age
our physiques decline, our love grows more vigorous
Yours is the only body I can hold at night and know
there is always a purpose for the day
Only the touch of your skin brings serenity to my sleep
promises refuge no matter what new challenges
might arise with the sun
Only the wafting of your breath into the shared air
of our night brings reverie to my dreams
This I Vow: Devotion
Know that my life is devoted to looking out for your best interests, that I will treat your needs
and desires as equal to my own, that I will not consider anything good for me if it is not good
for us and the life we share. Know that I am secure in knowing that the same is true for you
with regards to me. Our interactions with others will always be conducted so as to maintain
and strengthen the trust we have in each other.
This I Vow: Fidelity
You are the first person with whom I will share a joy or a sorrow, a fear or a conviction. You
are the first person to read the story of me as it is written each day, the only person with rights
to access all the words as they are laid down, unedited and uncensored, the person I most trust
to know, understand and protect the truth of who I am.
Know without question that you can rely on me to be that same person for you. To be true
to myself, I must know, understand and protect the truth of who you are.
This I Vow: Honor
I gladly make known to the world that you are the keeper of the artifacts of my life
an equal partner in the business of the life we share, an equal voice in how we make
and manage our home and all of our belongings.
I gladly enter into the annals by which our society is ordered the declaration that you
are the person whom I trust to make my decisions and handle my affairs if I am unable
to do so for myself, that you are the person to whom I give control even of my body
if I am unable to manage it for myself, that you are the person to whom I entrust
the closure of my life should you outlive me.
This I Vow: Joy
In as many ways as I am able to devise I will bring you pleasure and delight, I will seek
to nurture and enliven your spirit, I will celebrate and appreciate your self-expression,
I will meet your creative spirit with my own so that together we may discover new ways
to explore and understand our connection with all creation, the many and one whose soul
we share, in whose expression and endurance we participate with our every breath.
This I Vow: Perpetuity
We are the known in the unknown. Together we will share unknown blessings, and together
we will address unknown challenges. Together we reach beyond ourselves to embrace
our shared destiny, whatever that will be. For better or worse, for richer or poorer,
in sickness and in health, come what may we are together, our spirits joined in history,
even should death part us.
Within Infinity
Held securely in your arms
I relax my time becomes easy
I experience what it means to love you
forever as beginnings and endings disappear
and all that matters are your arms holding
me close to your heart
We begin and end our days in each other’s
arms, and whenever we need, we seek that place
of comfort and renewal. Most of what we know
of one another we’ve learned from touch
source
inside our so often and again arms
wrapped intimate around each other we hold
with unknown safety a fierce, maddening desire
to tame this familiar stranger, this source
draws our lips to seal the taste
of each other’s tongue with our own, urged
by an innate need we seek to sate this desire
to hold, to mate, to trust another inside us
so often and again wrapped intimate around
inside our unknown selves
In Celebration of Good Will
You and I become we when the catalyst of good will
enlivens our separate selves to create an expanding
equation in which the energy of the whole always
exceeds the sum of its parts
Or, good will is the light that allows us to see
how every hue and patina in our lives finds a world
of complementary colors within the infinity
of creation’s palette, which is how I first recognized you
Good will is the instinct on which all of humanity relies
for the survival of our species, the operative instinct
that gives purpose, direction to all of our desires
Good will is the emotion I feel whenever I speak
your name, whenever I speak of our future, whenever
I recall our past, each morning when I fix your lunch
Ripples
In this season for proclaiming light
we celebrate hope, goodwill and cheer
remembering
love serves to sustain us, not to give us escape
The circle formed by our arms holding each other
represents a ripple moving outward, emanating
from the first droplet of our illumination, that instinct
to bond, which animates our spirits toward love
My love, each year we celebrate more ripples
waves and rays and bundles of light, armfuls
opened and released to extend beyond ourselves
across distances and generations and languages
beyond our ability to fathom heritage, influence
or purpose; released because we have seen
those do so who taught us to love; released
with hope and without expectation, but wisely
so as to sustain ourselves as we engage
to diminish darkness
Glad Tidings
Come celebrate love suffuses this day within us
grows an urge to embrace with joy we reach out
to others touch us with benevolence
Celebrate the holiday lights entice us to laugh
wise laughter fills the emptiness of want
with charity and cheer we warm the cold night
Let us celebrate each candle beckons peace
is born of justice is born of goodwill
is proclaimed this day is still possible
With ornament and glitter, with gold, frankincense
and myrrh, new ritual and old tradition we assert
hope renews courage overcomes suspicion, fear
Celebrate tenderness brings harmony to our world
extends beyond us await people of kindred desires
join in this season to compel the dream forward