Helen on Sleeping Pills

            ...a drug that stilled all pain...

            and brought forgetfulness of every ill

                             -Homer, Odyssey

All the song's fires have died

For good along the sea's far edge

She walks against like sunlight

Dazzles the wave tops

Of her tired eyes.

All her days have been swept aside

To little sandboxes where Love

A little boy tears down

Fragile castles with his wings.

About Paris, those afternoons

She can't say anything for sure

Except the Sirens by the swings.

Broken hearts cast jagged shadows.

But then the cool wind sometimes

Blew not quite continuously

Through the trees and through

Her hair. But not quite dis-

Continuously either.                                                                      printable

Old Heraclitus

          Finally he became a misanthrope, withdrew from the world,

          and lived in the mountains feeding on grass and plants

                                                               - Diogenes Laertius 9.3

We live the death of the Gods and they live ours

As in and out of tune some cosmic radio blares

From fiery bowls turning in the sky. Moon.

Sun. Our days are nights like life is music

Then suddenly noise you can never dance to.

So what if there's mold on the cheese. The cheese

Is mold. And vinegar and wine are the same

As lightning-bolts and war. In all the more scattered

Things I see these days I can't help but notice

Hints of unity in their contradictions. Put out a man's

Eyes at night and he lights lamps.  I wrote one night

By lamplight when men walk with the dead

Hand in hand, fires burning in their eyes. I said

So many things I wish didn't make sense to me

Anymore. Waking was really dreaming and

Sleeping and fire—fire was everything until it changed

And changing was everything instead. Who cares

Whatever river you step in next is never the same

River, or that it's not really you at all who's done

The stepping—I'm not now the man I was

Before either. (I just don't know who else to be.)

All things change except Old Heraclitus.

Every day the sun's fire is rekindled by mist

From the sea, but no-one ever listens to me any more

When I warn them they're the fertilizer and the grass.

I laugh and tell them they're all full of shit.

I eat their families by the handful. Tomorrow

I'll bury myself inside them and wait to die.                                    printable