Last Gasp of the Monkey Mind: Even More Poems and Chance Discoveries Read online

Last Gasp of the Monkey Mind:

  Even More Poems and Chance Discoveries

  by

  Rob O'Keefe

  Copyright 2016 Rob O'Keefe

  Thank you for downloading this book. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage others to download their own copy from an authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  "Another Day" originally appeared in The Bitchin Kitsch,

  October, 2015.

  “Tattle Tale” was created using WordItOut.

  For Dianne

  INTRODUCTION

  It's been said that you should write what you know. Since I don't presume to know too much, this collection is focused on writing what is felt, believed, or imagined – an approach applied for the entire Monkey Mind poetry series. That, and an effort to avoid affectation, which when written down, still sounds like posturing. Oh, well.

  This is the last of the Monkey Mind series, a disappointment to a few, a relief to some, and a complete nonevent to most. Self-awareness is overrated.

  I hope you find something of interest among these pages.

  Poems

  Forecasting

  Quantum states

  Feed the dog

  Killing time

  At a loss

  Black cloud dance

  A guide for the anxious

  Economical haiku

  Do the math

  Cuba libre

  Birthday cards

  Eternal

  Tattle tale

  Route 108

  Below the surface

  On being somewhere else

  How shall I pray

  The great white wall

  My angel wings

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  Beyond the veil

  Rated R

  A man of letters

  Another day

  Forecasting

  the jet stream dips into the deep south

  where memories linger at the highest altitudes

  the combination of heat and humidity

  makes it hard for stories to evaporate

  the recollections of the past are swept up

  mingling with the legends of others

  until it becomes impossible to tell

  who they belong to or when they began

  the atmosphere becomes saturated with moisture

  the memories descend as dreams

  mixing with the tears of the gods

  to set off outbreaks of prophecy

  the sidewalk psychics

  shed their charlatan pasts

  formidable in their portents and second sight

  loosing the dreamers, fouling the cleansed

  until the dew point plummets

  and the premonitions fade

  leaving only the chastened –

  and a remembrance of unclouded skies

  Quantum states

  I am here in Lhasa

  to study at the feet of the Lama

  he will teach me how to be present

  while he is somewhere else

  I am here in New Orleans

  to feed on the prayers of a trumpet

  sweet psalms and quarter notes

  heard through an empty shot glass

  I am here in Jerusalem

  to be buried by sand and time

  my marker will stand glorious

  crushed by the feet of ancient pilgrims

  I am here on Easter Island

  to celebrate all the world's triumphs

  even the ones I do not believe

  the ones that sway below toppled shadows

  I am here but not observed

  cloaked in flux

  absent of here and there

  and the weighty ambitions of place

  Feed the dog

  I must go feed the dog

  She doesn't like dinner to be late

  Making her displeasure known

  Across multiple dimensions

  Then I have to bend space and time

  So I end up feeding her punctually

  Usually biscuits soaked in remorse

  Washed down with tears of shame

  She begs for a bowl of hubris

  But it makes her bloated

  Yellowing her teeth already stained

  With the sins of the righteous

  Of course I am not really feeding a dog

  I am nurturing a metaphor

  Albeit one that barks all night

  And likes to pee on the floor

  That's the problem with symbolic dogs

  They'll slobber your face with kisses

  And then tear your throat out

  While you're busy looking for meaning

  Killing time

  There's a cuckoo clock in the sunroom,

  a redundancy I cannot abide,

  I stop the perpetual swing of its pendulum,

  and in that instant,

  all the futures of the world quietly vanish.

  The noise of the neighborhood continues,

  but the lawns being mowed,

  the bicycles being ridden,

  the conversations transpiring,

  all take place outside of time.

  It is a confluence of the current,

  centrifugal and constant,

  there is no lengthening of afternoon shadows,

  there is no shortening of summer,

  there is no destiny.

  We are a collection of frozen forevers,

  an unceasing, unapologetic now,

  a presence I cannot abide,

  I coax the clock into motion –

  the cuckoo announces the hour.

  At a loss

  People say I should weep,

  cry until I have depleted my ration of salt,

  reaching the depths where caged apes

  and abandoned baby strollers are stacked

  against bouquets of violets and barbed wire,

  but that kind of commitment

  would require I knew why I was crying.

  Perhaps I cry for the demise of the multiverse

  and the elegance of string theory,

  or maybe the end of penny candy,

  the kind with the colorful dots laid out on paper

  like sugar-coated punch cards.

  Or maybe I'm not crying,

  just melting from the inside out,

  the water has to come from somewhere,

  why not through my eyes –

  the blurred vision keeps me from seeing.

  Absent sight I strip life down

  to fear –

  it sounds like laughter and feels like heat,

  and hope –

  it smells like cinnamon and tastes like salt,

  the salt I seem to have cried away.

  Black cloud dance

  [a flurry, a flock]

  issues from the north

  in descendant ballet

  a November tapestry

  of shadows and sharps

  [a fusion, a force]

  the ground disappears

  covered in living symphony

  the collective intelligence

  spreading, spreading

  [a frenzy, a freedom]

  they are lifted

  to be so lifted

  burdened and unburdened

  synchronized to eat the sky

  [a flutter, a feather]

  my arms extend

  fingers to flig
ht

  thus the spell is ended

  spent and spirited away

  A guide for the anxious

  Deep breath,

  everything is fine,

  (except for those mosquito-borne viruses)

  Deep breath,

  everything is fine,

  (not including the crumbling roads and bridges)

  Deep breath,

  everything is fine,

  (other than the rising oceans)

  Deep breath,

  everything is fine,

  (although there's the drought)

  Deep breath,

  everything is fine,

  (apart from the murder rate)

  Deep breath,

  everything is fine,

  (see, there's nothing to worry about)

  Economical haiku

  lackadaisical

  oversimplification –

  abominable

  Do the math

  I was taught that three is greater than two,

  that one numeral has more value than the other,

  there's even a set of symbols that show this is law:

  3 > 2

  But I do not accept

  the teaching,

  the symbols,

  or the law.

  If I were to believe that 2 > 3

  what would happen?

  Mathematicians would dismiss me as arithmetically ignorant,

  Teachers would seek to correct me so I could have a brighter future,

  Politicians would pronounce I am on a dangerous course,

  with my radical ideas about equality.

  So I present my manifesto:

  history
  corn > symbolism,

  heartache = joy.

  Cuba libre

  At first I would go anywhere –

  Cuba,

  New Zealand,

  Elkhart ...

  It wasn't that these places called to me,

  as much as it was unknown forces

  throwing me out of orbit,

  shifting my spot in the world,

  scolding my centricity.

  Later the universe relented,

  so that now my adventures are:

  going to the market for haddock,

  chasing after the dog,

  and checking the mail,

  where i still find the occasional postcard

  from Havana.

  Birthday cards

  There is a picture of us

  sitting in front of a cake,

  there were candles and presents –

  I think you were three.

  And then someone was gone,

  and then someone got mad,

  and then someone stopped calling –

  but not necessarily in that order.

  Apparently I made you a birthday card,

  small chubby fingers

  clumsy around a crayon,

  drawing a picture

  of ponies or trees or who knows what.

  You went to school in Paris,

  I went to the Sea of Japan,

  both following directions

  that would later seem preordained,

  but really never were.

  And then someone was old,

  and then someone was found,

  and then someone opened a letter,

  but not necessarily in that order.

  Chubby fingers turned arthritic,

  decades of birthday cards unmade,

  crayons in so many colors now,

  I don't know how to start.

  Eternal

  As shields, to guard the cratered manse,

  stunted sentinels bled from granite,

  forged with hunger

  on wretched talons.

  Their castle erupts from the earth,

  the tragic earth, torn and battered,

  walls built of carnage,

  heavy with the weight of permanence.

  As beasts, to sound their presence,

  pierced and penitent –

  where is the one,

  the one who feeds our enmity?

  Long gone from this lair –

  abandoned by earthly denizens,

  for earthly reasons,

  legacy vanquished and ragged.

  Sapped of stature, as lions, to implore:

  return to us – take up your spear,

  restore our eminence,

  return and set us free.

  Tattle tale