Thoughts make men strangers
and create great moments of urgency,
as well as nervousness, when a thought
moves you to wake up and light a cigarette
and lie back on pillow, content
in thinking, in playing the thought through,
that's the only way for it to die!

The death of a thought isn't wholesome
like coming home from school for a glass of milk
and cookies. There's no wholesomeness
in guilt, but it comes in dreams
in the form of pictures
of saints and rabbinical figures
lighting big cigars.

There's no thought like the one I'm having.
It bends me backwards in my chair so that
I tip over and break a few vertebrae.
Thoughts come in harsh, colors, in voices
that link you with mechanical impulses. Bad
thoughts about people you loved but who betrayed
you mean you still love them,
and if you lie to yourself in thoughts
and think that hate is simply the bent of human nature
the people you think of will strike back
with conviction and ire
like names printed in black letters
across the front of a tabloid.

More power to you, now that your thoughts are known,
not weighed and pocketed like enzymes
racing through your system,
a thought of heartbreak on a summer night
of revenge, bile swallowed and spat out across
your neighbor's fence.

What does it matter if you die without thinking,
but with a clear mind proceed into your new life,
no thoughts of the future, your destiny's
a shambles, of the past
a crowd of animals passing up a ramp
onto an ark floating out to sea
like a man speaking his own defense,
what's in a death but your thoughts while dying?

What's in your heart
but someone thinking? Your intelligence
nestled in a breast? A thought can be positive
or negative, but the best are serene,
that advocate no stance, tolerate only the moment,
and flow to the source, unconcerned, like a caress.