Tick

There's little left to do
Except for sit and wait.
The weather moves on through
It may precipitate
But even if does
I will ignore the rain
And walk in it because
It cannot bring me pain.
I am alone enough
Despite all fortune's dares
To be of toughened stuff
And wait away my cares
Time will bring to me
The calm of entropy.

13

Today I am a fountain pen
So goes the tired Jewish joke
That turns the day of joining men
In taking up the common yoke
Into the symbol of the day
The gift so often given out.
And yet the joke, though bland, yet may
Express a certain inner doubt
Am I a man? I'm but thirteen
And barely that to tell the truth;
What can this day, then, really mean
If I remain the same old youth?
I do not feel so different. Still
They all say so. Maybe I will?

Overwrite

The mind rejects what it cannot conceive
So how am I to think of what went on?
I have my reason, so I must believe,
But underneath that everything is gone.
I look at facts, and know they must be true,
But nothing that I see can sink in deep.
It enters in my eyes and goes right through;
There's nothing given to me I can keep.
I know my mind still functions since I'm here
And able to construct these lines of verse
But everything I've heard has been wiped clear
For fear of hearing something somehow worse.
The ROM of me is sure it cannot be
Despite the RAM insisting that it see.

Sight Unseen

I didn't know how much I needed this
Until I had it. Being so alone
So far from those who miss the ones I miss,
Whose hearts and minds are mirrors of my own,
I walled the weariness and grief away,
Put them aside as something known but kept
Knowingly apart until the day
When I could let it loose and wake what slept.
Before I was OK and I could function
But now I feel myself again, almost
As if the force of this needed conjunction
Had brought the life back to my solid ghost.
I was a wraith, and now, despite grief's hold,
I feel myself return out of the cold.

Familias

There's nothing like a family, whether one
You make yourself, out of component parts,
Or one provided for you as a son
Or daughter, just as long as all your hearts
Beat with a constant rhythm, and you know
Whatever you may do, wherever go
They will be with you in your absence, tied
Into your soul, and never far no matter
How distant they may be. Today I cried
Half sorrow and half joy. And why the latter?
Because my family were still together;
Though congregated for a mournful reason
Our love defies the chill, inconstant weather
And keeps perpetual the balmy season.

Faretheewell

It's always hard to say goodbye
But easier with company
Then if you have to stop and sigh
There's someone there to stop and see
If you're OK. Without that, who
Will be there with concern and trust
To make more definite that you
Will be OK? And is it just
To ask for sympathy from those
Who do not know the situation?
No, it is better to enclose
Yourself in loving saturation
Filled with loved ones, so you all
Can say goodbye and bear the pall.

Circling

I wonder my movement is a way
To keep myself completely in control
And all the demons totally at bay.
Is there a deformation of the soul
When bodies never stop to let the mind
Concentrate? Or is it somehow free,
This motion, without consequence or bind
To bring regret or break utility?
I cannot hope for that, nor can I think
This constant motion is sustainable;
And should it be, it's motion still to sink
And such a motion is ingrainable
By never stopping, and so learning how
To drop fast as your mass and weight allow.

Confer

It's hard to tell
If being told
It all went well
And they are sold
Is really good
When none of them
Is one that could
Knowing, condemn.
That isn't, now,
To say I feel
Their words somehow
Are made less real
But they mean less.
I mean that, yes.

Mindful

The moment that the breath has left the lungs
Is not important. What is that to me?
I know it is the last of Nature's rungs
Running between death and vitality
But I must tell you in all honesty
A living vegetable is not a man.
It is the mind that makes the man that we
Now miss, and I can only count his span
From when the moment was when he began
To think, to when it ended and he fell.
The mind is life. If it no longer can,
And never will again, you cannot tell
Me he was there. Death is the moment when
A mind can't think, and never will again.

Running On

I have no more to say than "I am sad"
My tongue and fingers both are useless now.
The apparatus that I thought I had
For processing are failing me - and how.
With every line I try to write, each word
Feels so inadequate, and cannot make
A satisfying whole. I can't be heard
When I am silent, but my voice will break
If I speak out. Besides I cannot speak
Have nothing that can be sufficient, or
Failing that, be anything but weak
Half-formed, unprocessed, merely partial, poor.
I'm sorry, and I'm emptied by the sorrow
Maybe I'll find something to say tomorrow.