by David Cope

These gathering
hours decades screams & ecstasies,
testaments of open-eyed friends & lovers
the many passages that each
heart brings, contemplation
lost to kali yuga beyond—

pleasure, treasure
best minds of my generation,
beat outriders who came before us,
burgeoning younger voices
who will sing the days
we’ll never see—

Silent serenity
thru storms, stars & huge wolf moon,
let jagged memory, earned wisdom
sing here with abandon
lives lived fearlessly
simple & plain.

by David Cope

No more will the scioto madtom
swim in Ohio’s Big Darby Creek,

gone are the ivory-billed woodpecker,
Backman’s warbler never to sing again,

gone three species of pearly mussels,
the flat pigtoe mussel, southern acornshell,

stirrupshell lost among the 36 mussels &
70 freshwater snails gone, gone forever,

bridled white-eye, Little Mariana fruit bat,
San Marcos gambusia, plants they pollinate,

plants they reseed, all lost, lost forever, all
thru heavy hands crown-of-creation madness,

the age now a time of fleeting souls never
to return, superstorms raking coasts, drought

borne of Hetch-Hetchy presumptions, fires
leaping over mountains, ancient sequoias

licked by flames, volcanoes spitting fire,
thousands dead weekly—ghost dance hours,

sunset hours, time of the fleeting stars
whirling in ever-turning ever-burning sky.

by David Cope

I must speak of the insistent melancholy of age, regrets
lurking behind shared laughter, endless smiles.

my small boat lingers in the eddies, among still waters
moved only by perch fanning slowly in shallows—I lift

my head and see the blue heron above, ancient presence.
the seasons roll on, the sun, now obscured, now the moon,

the body falling apart, gradually shutting down, memory’s
tales unfolding like quick films from another life, moments

rising to feverish yet near-silent crescendo, shared warmth
in a friend’s touch, radiant eyes lingering in dream. I pass

thru an open door in moonlight, among stars, and leave
the grave to grave business. Dawn comes quickly, I send

blessings for Zhang, wherever he may be now, his last
message speaking of high blood pressure and creatinine,

now prolonged silence after completing his life’s work,
dear friend singing quietly beyond the dynamo of dreams.

I am indeed surrounded by spirits day and night, old
loves still palpable, present, as are the sorrows, regrets,

filling the many paths with unheard silences among
the busy living with their chatter and deadlines.

tonight, my kousa flowers fully, as Allen’s did in years
after he passed, and the clematis, which struggled

years to simply climb in the orchid porch doorway,
now frames it with wild, open purple flowers: here

is a moment to honor the passing cortege, blindly living
among the waking dead. the heart endures for now.

the song rises even in this quiet moment, audible for those
with ears to hear it, chant the unbidden dream.

by Alice Notley

     rubies, remember? you had to
     bleed awhile, then you
  were changing and I’m changing how I
speak the gorgeous horrible suffering became —
   after humiliation of not knowing how
   to behave in your groups … the
      rubies finally spoke and
     told me who I was, in the forest
   that was myself, Chaos the never
 quite formed often ostracized, some-
times salaciously stroked by the salient
 near the castle battlements
   and keen-eyed malicious mynah birds.
 But I knew I was everyone’s “heart” since
I felt not what you said was to be felt.
   Perhaps I don’t feel. In my language
The Old, I pretend to be you so you might
   listen. But I now know I only feel the
emotion of being your holder, the grave
    and light the one who travels in place.
Saying the same as a sign that I am
being. The beautiful memory that befits
the one who has no shape or credo but, being,
repeats being. You shouldn’t have scorned or spurned me
since it is impossible to rid oneself of what there is only.
   You keep asking for hope — you mean a formula
  of words, for a board game or tale — you must
     be in a tale! … Forget it forfeit your fatedness
and lose familiarity with fortune, known forms, and fallow fields of
   friction, of wars you mostly watch, when you watch
along the wayside of the wounded limping

and the dead with substances flowing amid
      flowers I think I could descend to despise
     you but … I busy myself with lifting up
the dead to hold and hand to their ones gone before.
    Come to this same place you can attain
  now without blood. Do not despise me again
    for you will be sore to see that you
eventually
enter through a small hole with stalagmites
  and stalactites of blood ruby, the great hall
   where you’ve always been anyway —
   you will there find the song to sing of welcome
     to my new self — Can you forget your old one?
     Can you forget it Can you forget about fairness
   and futility, humanity and humility — I who am memory
       will help you forget everything but being here.