The Terminator

One leaf falls

holographic illusion

across time the Terminator travels

to shape Sarah Connors' destiny.

Heart attack

a common enough destiny

as common as young men discussing girls' tits.

The Constitution

is the document we refer to, the lodestone

to correct course and not go crazily astray.

Lose all purpose beyond murder, child sex and food hording.

Illuminated manuscripts

in a dark age, tape decks remind us of our voice

our communal voice

Supremes and Fred Astaire

the silken wail.

I lie alone in the night

its sensuality makes the best sense

it does or does not clarify the day

of classes or clients or chain saws

whatever fever may have infected me at the moment

a fever to achieve access to foreign films while living in the mountain

      community of Schroon Lake

the fever to instruct the American people how to apply ideals and

      practicalities of Constitution to international relationships

the fever not to die today, to maintain consciousness just one more

      season (and one more after that).

Anyway, what is being discussed --

the finiteness of one life --

or perhaps existence continues in another dimension, on another frequency

no owl hoots

but other purpler and indigo occurrences

with other purposes

as incomprehensible and wonderful as these purposes

to choke on a cherry pit or nuclear bomb

to wail our wail together

each individual identifiable hoot and wail, loud laugh and suppressed scream

one orbicular chant, humanity, from India to Indiana

complete, one sing.

I feel this way

searching for my place among you

childless, but a child among children

obeying or not obeying the speed limit

as my hormones permit

everywhere among brothers, the sisters among sisters

the races together exterminating the last rhinoceros and preserving its

      genes at the zoological society

my species attacking entire rain forests, temperate forests and boreal forests

like the engraver beetle in the red pine's inner bark.

Thus, I occasionally cheer the Terminator

cheer the machine and neutron bomb

even in the face of individual heroics, the male and female face

their physical love, tender and violent

I don't know what I want.

It could be simple

as this headache.

Not to despair

just to care enough to think clearly and accept 10,000 years of history.

Not to hate those in authority

humor is the only remedy

yellow ape teeth chimping in the glass death face

and ritual is remedy

a death song

and one for planting

and one for the beginning of loving.