tom taylor - at seventy

at seventy

enough silence for this mountain. there’s more besides
mountain on mountain, and more silence besides, just waiting
not much has changed, surely not for the better
only changed for change itself, as advertised

nor resignation, nor similitude, only itself,
is the lesson, lessen… you’d plod and stammer
yet skill the fortress within immensity itself told
nor unattend yet cull the proud finale of its tune

who writes these clichés of age, surely not the young
yet the owners of those platitudes deny their face
carrying a same nose and eyes forward into the gloom
like a song or a destiny surely not something imagined

it’s a relief to see the same. not a lie nor a bend but a
traverse a willing tone a surf ride a schematic a dose
your own kestrel a favor nor a plume yet undecided
in this score of louts unremitting crowds the screen attend

the bong cries empty leafage is its only fume and clamor
a sharp skin across the forehead stretched into a flatter
pline and skim your focus light red pealing into now
against the numen hoses airfields and assassinated mentors

left alone against the dark, your dog scratching wildly again
no patter in the schoon but folded arms and sighs are here
the light the light and yet more unintended hours call home
for sale for tune ate the day a crab cake going out for dinner

no cremations underdone yet paid for installment plan
celine’s brain on the well beside you a reminder how it is
chaotic unrestraint a dolor on the plane of spoken doubt
as if as if you’d care enough to spin the rest and then reside

dipstick unintended yet palls your hair beside you, read this
read this and enumerate your own reply to someone next
in line the hours are numbered only by the dead calling out
for give ness slimes the polar spin your only recourse in time

you’ll die somewhere grandpa went plunk into the soup
at a meeting of the veterans of the veterans of the far right
i do not mourn his empty longing and his spitting lungers
into his pocket like a randy dude in disguise as a general

they all marched into the silent mountain unattended at last
and made their piece a flagon and a disregard for the rest
we toiled in the orange groves for youth and identity and
found the war an emptying time for the end of our lives

but that’s my history not yours which does not matter
except to you and to me as we know each other now
and call history a lie by the winners and a foam in the
mouth of the rest of us struggling for air in the moonlight

the pain is less yes but not unimagined yet present yet
the same but different yet now yet unassigned nor atuned
a flimflam scores the resonant recall of sex dreams does
not cease nor fine relief another dead end in the same time

as if you’d outer or flow the pools their own hair and foam
like reasoning with death over the disposition of your means
a futile task like all the others yet still you remind and alter
to float the passed and the fond from their astute moment

Jan 19, 2008