staying til close

I hate to be that guy

but I need refuge here

at Erie Island Coffee Co.

will be staying til close

baristas, pushing to go home

Neil Young singing, "Because I'm

still in love with you..."

Beck, "Baby, I'm a lost cause...:"

and the generators in my head

have blown, any peace I have known

I am soothed by your house roast

your raisin and oat energy bar

your nearly empty store

the quiet barista 

with the surplus of heart

for the fear of death

Ram Dass took acid

before his mother's funeral

saw her flying overhead

no longer frightened

by her predicament

death, he noted

was a subject the doctors in her ICU

never talked about

even when a patient was so close

they could see it

a red balloon in its hand

huzzah for the reunion

the sound of crickets

there are many kinds of tinnitus

a rumbling sea for instance

a sustained high pitched tone

the sound of crickets

well, mine is the latter type

3 months of it, on and off

this mysterious sound

stick my fingers in my ears

it's just as loud

maybe that's why I missed the crickets

on a walk through the neighborhood tonight

acclimated to the malady

the possibility of real chirping

seemed so unreal

but there they were

the forest through the trees, so to speak

what welcome friends

my eyes moist with gratitude

for a dead fly

 p

oh poor sod of a fly

dead on the window sill

I pick you up, disturb your slumber

incorrigible me, I go now to wash my hands

why? I will be dead one day, too

you lived your life, stamping in the dirtiest places

yet I am full of the filth you have touched

"a bag of shit and piss" Zipruanna used to say

 

I share with you a wish

may your time in insect afterlife

be joyous, full of dust and mud and mucus and crap

may you return soon, to find your next rebirth

an improvement on the last - a squirrel, a salmon, a bluejay

 

but promise me, you will not come back as one of us

such a mess, such an awful wretched mistake

we have inflicted on this sacred world