Last Gasp of the Monkey Mind:
Even More Poems and Chance Discoveries
by
Rob O'Keefe
Copyright 2016 Rob O'Keefe
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"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 < brown,
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