"It could be worse for you",

he said. "Why, there are
stick children in Africa
being inspected
by vultures, as if they
were lobsters in a
seafood restaurant
aquarium.
There are people
praying to be released
from the agony of their last
withered hours.
Right now, two parents
are holding their lifeless
ragdoll daughter,
and there is an old man
forgotten and rotting
in a sunless corner of
an infested nursing home.

Cheer up."

It unfolds around us

in a sinuous way,
washing through our
heads in a wave of
rapidly erupting,
rapidly extinguished
flickers of energy,
its contours glimpsed
for an agonizing moment
and then, with impish
brazenness,
pulled away from our
helpless view,
leaving us bereft
and entranced
in the same
instant.

He looks at himself

looking at himself
and he tries to step
outside of
the infinity of mirrors
but the door is locked
and his image just keeps
reverberating
in an endless
identical
row, no matter
how bizarre a face
or rude a gesture
he makes,
and he shuts his eyes
and tries to take
a furtive peek
but the mirror is never
fooled,
not even for a microsecond,
and there's no way
to look behind it.

He looks so doggone nice

doesn't he?
Why, he just
radiates waves of
sweet, down-home,
country-style,
biscuits 'n' gravy love.
Only his diary knows
that his fondest wish
is to see the entire world
holding hands
in the sweet
brotherhood
of universal
rigor mortis.
He could finally
relax then.
It would finally stop
following him.
And he wouldn't have
to sing himself
to sleep
any more.

Everything returned one day.

No one had ever seen the like of it.
Skate keys from 1938 showed up,
all shiny and ready for fun.
That jacket the blonde headed guy
left in the theater was there, and it had been
dry cleaned and everything.
Armies of proud washing machines
rolled down the street
cheered by excited throngs,
ready for happy and productive
chores.
All the murder weapons came
back, too, serial numbers fully
legible again.
And people who hadn't been seen
for a while
made unexpected visits
at unexpected hours.

They are unseen

but omnipresent.
They are silent,
yet their words are
heard constantly.
They are ignored
but they run
the world.
They have disappeared
but their hands
still hold the reigns.
No one knows their names
but the future is theirs.
They are dead
yet they will outlive
us all.

For some of them

it will never be over,
at least not until the
final bridge has been crossed.
They will always live
in that steel day,
always see the beloved friend
turned into a spray
of raw hamburger,
always know the
ghastly exhilaration
of running through mad storms of
whistling death,
always hold the buddy from
boot camp as he breathes his last.
No day that followed
has ever meant as much to these
men, and never having been there,
I cannot know what that
particular screwdriver driven into
the brain feels like.
But I will always respect the
boundaries of the darkened room
where those memories reside,
and I will never casually urge
other men to find out
where the door to their own room
is.