Diarist A29 (“Lafe”) recorded a video diary. View it here.
Diarist A29
October 1, 2019
A Record of the Day in Verse
OCTOBER SUITE
ALARM COCK
A dream a dream
Get up, go out to kitchen
Jot it down
Trundle back to bed
Sleep stays by the stove
Stars the coffee
Cook crows in coop
Wakey wakey
sleepy world
Stupid bird
Who made you
God of getting up
And when
DING DING DING
Empty upside-down blue
Prescription bottles
Cartwheel beside
Coffee cup, alarm, teapot
Triple reminder
Take you medicine
First thing this morning
Yesterday I forgot
I think-not sure
How many adventures
In aging a body
Swallows in one day
ILLUMINATION
Up before
Alarm spouse sun
Tiptoe to kitchen
Motion-light ablaze
In backyard
Peer through screen
Sans spectacles
Who’s out there
Deer racoon cat
What will I see
What will I see
When I look
Inside today
CREATOR
Do you believe in God
Ms. St. Vincent Millay?
If not, why
Title your poem
“God’s World”?
If so, why
Sing only of
Gaunt crags
Crushing blows
Black bluffs?
Some deity
You worship-
If we make
God in our own image
Is this a snapshot
Of your soul?
TO TELL THE TRUTH
This morning
Our cuckoo calls
The half hour
Not once but twice
All is not right
With this world
He says and
Says again
He delivers additional
Commentary
In similar vein
At twenty one o’ clock
AT ASCULUM
“…the choice of this era
is to be destroyed or
to morally compromise
ourselves in order to
be functional” says Jia
Tolentino, quoted in
The New York Review of
October 10. She nails the
Tattered morals I hoist each
Day o’er the ramparts of my
Office cubicle. I am not yet
Destroyed. I remain functional.
Victory is ours, Pyrrhus.
ON EMPTY
If I act like I don’t
Care about this
Place anymore
Says Her5
It’s because
I don’t do you
Know how much
That hurts
My heart to
Say those words
Out loud?
MOSTLY
A remarkable
Day at work
Mostly
For being
Unremarkable
Mostly
Understanding
Clients get
Apologies rather
Than product
Nobody
Gets fired
Voices modulate
Mostly
Little whining even
Less of a sh*t show
Than yesterday
Says Him2
PAYDAY
Day of awareness
I call this experience of
Watching listening
Writing recording
Paying attention
This unpaid effort
Offers it own
Recompense
BROKEN ENGLISH
You get the award for
International diplomacy
Him2 will say as I hang up
From a customer who
Wants our services
But wants them
In Spanish instead
Gets apologies in English
I want to say I’m sorry
“lo siento mucho”
But my mind offers only
“estoy cansado”
I’m tired
And I know that’s not
Right even if it’s true
So I speak slowly
Worn out excuses
We have nothing
Nobody here for you
Adios/goodbye
ANOTHER STRAW PLEASE
Jon Kabot -Zinn writes of
Meditation vs. cancer.
A friend suggests I look
Him up and I do and order
Full Catastrophe Living,
Also Gerald White’s Three Months
to Life: how mind power
countered terminal cancer
and a short life expectancy, and
I join smartpatients.com for
Its cancer message boards
And discussion threads.
Cancer patients will try any
Thing, I hear. I get this. I see
My doctor Tuesday at 9:30.
But I can’t find the little slip
That tells me when is
My appointment with death.
MASS OBSERVATION
Even a tired brain
Is faster than
A slow computer
WHAT’S EATING ME
Angry
This month’s gay men’s
Support group is cancelled
Last second due to
Longstanding illness
Angry
My husband
Didn’t work out details of
If/when grandson will visit
Now interrupts already laid plans
Prevents making new ones
Angry
He talks tonight to grandson’s
Mom doesn’t tell me what
They said/what the plan is
How am I supposed to know
Without asking reading minds
Angry
My body aches on the day three
Of a seven day fast
After day two it’s supposed
To be a breeze instead
It’s a knife in my rib cage
Your symptoms
Scream gall bladder
A doctor will say
Three weeks hence
Today I put it down to
My being out of sorts
Not luck
MASTER AND COMMANDER
Slam wham oof ugh ack
This movie layers one
Fight scene atop another
Lets them dangle from
A narrow narrative thread
(I Freudian type “threat”
a narrow narrative threat
perhaps I should leave it) I do
Leave it- the movie -when
Too much blood guts gore
Violence gets to me
I walk out into the dark
Kitchen, peer into the abyss
Ponder the human condition
Existence is one long struggle
Followed by several short ones
Life always hangs in the balance
Doesn’t it, sways on a slender
String of nonsense oof ugh
I keep coming back.
SHADOW ANIMALS
A hard-knock life, this
Of a feral cat. Mother Blind
In one eye, daughter skittish
As she is long-haired lustrous
After a year’s coaxing they
Take moist cat food from
The far end of a plastic fork.
Mother nibbles, daughter wolfs.
At the least movement or sudden
Noise they’re gone. Two crow
Black shadows swallowed
By a hard knock night.
RESOLVE
If not sense, they have staying power,
These two would-be mothers set on
Hatching clicks under an October sky
They won’t listen to reason. I prate
Of coming cold, short days, promise
Of snow. Never mind. They puff up,
Lay future plans, exact a blood price
When I take eggs out from under them, dot
With fresh wounds the back of my hand.
What am I willing to fight for, protect
So fiercely, foolishly?
HAPPY AS THE HEART IS LONG
“Oh, I have made myself a tribe
Out of my true affections,” says
Stanley Kunitz . I salute the poet as
I sit on an old stump, two pet geese
At knee level nuzzling close fists
For the kernel corn I carry. Two
Flat orange breaks probe, insistent,
Each goose greedy to get her share and more
Besides. I and my appetite feel at home here.
Prince of gooselings, I am honored among geese,
Blessed by their constant t devotion, camaraderie.