OTHERWISE OCCUPIED
You think I am not listening
but I am just not listening to you
I am trained to keep listening
I am trained for the war on eternity
with death hanging off my back
like a trained monkey
trained
never to give me
a moment’s peace
POET OF THE REVOLUTION
In your last delirium,
you orchestrate
gravelly totem sounds
for your funeral,
conducting everything
to the last,
handing around parts
for a bouquet of friends
to memorise black folioles.
It is understandable,
everyone wants
to go out in style.
A ceremony of ending
to make up for
messy beginnings
and what you sense
will be the suffocating silence
of an unmarked grave.
WHAT I HAVE SEEN, OR
SOMETHING AFTER DEATH
At a certain point you may be privy to a perspective beyond all others. It’s as if you have climbed through narrow passes and across difficult ridges and then finally up the steepest cliffs of a mountain. And while you are catching your breath at the summit, you find yourself compelled to look back down over what you have scaled to the vast plain below. It’s a vista from which even the greatest passions and highest pinnacles of achievement seem very small. It is the perspective of your death.
There is a dolefulness to this dying young,
to this dying before you are dead,
but also, if you can survive
the long, slow trudge of mourning,
back down the slopes to your life,
a kind of liberation.
A kind of bliss.
Like the tale of
the
sage
who has gone blind
but now spends
his whole day
staring at the sun.
THE WOOD
The only thing I’ll miss are the trees.
STAYIN’ WARM
I sleep with two hot water bottles
when you are away
One for your heart
and one for your head
But nothing for your soul
which I have here with me
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The Kamikaze Mind by Richard James Allen
