Twilight

I.

When a day slips away
and you think yourself in another
you’re in trouble
I’ve been watching the season evolve
from buds to a pale green, deepening
intricate details in the intimate view
is it a fault forgetting the view of one day
shifting its details to another?
you’ve only failed a neurologist’s test.
Every day the same wind waves the same tree tops
the old days of working in Tic-Tok time long past.
I no longer wake myself with a day’s
scheduled assignments
I’m happy to have it slip away
for now I can happily watch
the grass wind wave in my mini-meadow
A new stage this, losing a day.

II

At some point there seems not much left of future
and the past come rushing in
filling the vacumn so to speak
as I found corresponding with an old friend
from Boy Scouts who’s in communion
with the ghosts of a wife and son
creating a future for him no doubt
hanging on wings somewhere in celestuality.

It’s not dementia to forget about what tomorrow
was supposed to be, its just clarity —
its not going to be much different from today
when you end in a nursing home or assisted living,
though they try – TV is always the same
you’ve read all the books, mysteries begin to bore.

But I’ve found a way out
I do this – this writing thing.
The past can come in rambunctiously,
and futures can be fantasy
better than heaven’s obscure beatitudes.

III

Death’s dark, the last light fades,
all ones questions and hopes are unanswered,
dogs wail, the chorus cries and rends its hair
the spirit remains in memories
by nightfall the body and soul buried.

Simple.
Too simple ‘There must be something more’,
truths can’t be left untouched.
Tinkering with death is fraught
naivety, like a blessing, looks skyward all the time.
If you expect to rise into heaven at a final bell
you’ll never hear it, no one rings it anymore.

It’s not bad, — just going —
be grateful there’s no Hell
though in Purgatorio great conversationalists
Plato, Archimedes, Democratus,

Be grateful you can read this
you’re still alive
so forget it, breathe sweet air
swim in the sea of life
its just once – remember –
so drain every delicious drop,
from the ever full flagon’s elixir.

Kent Bowker
June 23, 2016

Silent flowers

So many were the dead
.     Print the news in red sorrow
.             of dying and injured lying there
.      In mixed moaning clumps
We know the name of the killer
.      one homophobic man one gun,
.            Don’t know the loves crumpled on the floor
Noise and silence
.     never to hear the sirens
.            The many who did not
Pulse, where the gowns were stained red
.          The Gay club Latin dances were over
The flowers stand in for all of them
outside the empty dance hall

Silence
Then flowers began to gather
outside the bloody dance hall
iris, poppies, spring pink roses,
bougainvillaea.
The flowers are silent.

Kent Bowker
June, 16, 2016
49 died, 50 wounded
2 AM on June 12, 2016

Songs of a Late Night

Last night from the top of our rock
I watched a bronze disk
set furtively behind the woods
fragmented shining through tree tangles
shifting its aspect as we can do
seeing our pasts, our loves and hates
unfold as mysteries.
So much not understood in muddled language,
as we so often live in a fog of our doing.

I remember, in my twenties, the rush I felt
racing over the Bay Bridge with the top down
radio blaring the Italian Hour, Tartini’s ‘Devils Trill’,
Domenico Baccarini’s ‘Vertigo’
exultant.
High on the night’s kisses, bodies entanglements, the boozy fog
swirling about the bridge towers.

How do you disentangle Flesh and Soul in love?
Perhaps you cannot,
Until you lose the nightly connecting touch,
a love warm beside you. Sentiment perhaps.

The past and present are not so far apart-
the long trudge in between seems ignoble, forgettable
in the stress of making it. Keeping promises.
Remembering being
Seventeen, wondering about where to go.
Chopin’s Nocturnes, foggy night, I’m outside smoking.
Kent Bowker
May 25, 2016

Media Declare Hilary Winner

Now Hilary’s won the shouting match
Bernie’s ideal state of the old New Deal
can safely be ignored, too bad.
The corporate state can be content.

Thatcher and Merkel are feminine, does this
soften the world or lead to austerity and war?
Promote the equality of women?
Can a woman lead a patriarchy
without becoming a patriarch herself
a tough leader?

How can we attain a cooperative society
where men and women are equal,
treated each as they need
where there are no extremes of wealth

Though there was a depression in 28
and things were hard when capitalism collapsed
it got better slowly with New Deal
full employment, when a war got us there.
Democratic Socialism seemed possible then.
As if a light blazed forth, Sanders campaign
has given hope of a fairer USA.

Still the Capitalist parties prevail
bending just a little bit.
For revolution is in the air,
the under class has awakened,
beware.
Kent Bowker
June 9, 2015