that giant bottle of Patrón Silver on top of my fridge is already broken, even though it’s still up       
   there
& yes possibly not for long because it almost falls every time I take down the blender 


Also, I’m already dead in spite of right now being propped up on pillows in bed between my    
   two
presumably also already-deceased cats & it’s true the one with cancer has been vomiting more     
   lately


but why rush things into nonexistence . . . when life is already full of reminders 
that we’re all like that guy in the old silent film who climbs up the side of a building


& finds himself dangling from the minute hand of a big clock, the clock face slowly peeling    
   away
He finally makes it safely onto the roof & kisses the girl & off they go arm in arm


which isn’t the end of the story, because there they are gaily traipsing into 1923
while the actor, Harold Lloyd, died in 1971, so he’s definitely already dead


I think maybe I’ve got it backwards, though, or just don’t understand the point
I guess it’s okay that everything gets broken, so we can just . . . relax . . . & meditate some more


on the void or a mental lotus blossom but I’ve never been able to meditate, mostly I drink
to feel calmer & stop thinking so much about death & impermanence


I’d like to be more sanguine about it all, I’d like to unscrew the lid on the jar of myself
& be okay that I’m already not breathing, but then I remember the bee


my friend & I once snagged from a swimming pool & trapped in an empty olive jar, convinced
it was from one of those killer swarms . . . It crawled more & more slowly until it stopped 


& I don’t want to be that bee . . . I want to forget where things are headed . . . 
I don’t want my portrait to be a painting of rotting fruit & slaughtered birds


beside a caved-in scented candle, I want to be brush-stroked into the boating party luncheon
at Maison Fournaise, the floating restaurant on the Seine, I want the wine they’re still having 


According to the Buddhists, wanting is the cause of suffering so it’s best to just . . . give up . . . & not 
   mind . . .
Actually that bottle of tequila did finally crash down, & ended in big glittery shards


scattered all over the stone tiles, and—full confession—even the bee revived,
something to do with the brine in the jar, & we let it go to die another day


& I understand all this about as much as I understand the nature of time
which according to the physicists is not what’s measured by clocks & doesn’t even exist 


at the teeniest, tiniest level, where there isn’t any past or future or even a present moment
like this one, as you read this, to accept and be okay in, or . . . possibly . . . not.