Marcus Aurelius

Sometimes I wake up in the night

with a terrible headache, my mouth

blackened; a ghost looking for valuables

in the debris, I turn on a battery-powered

light, clipped to a book, I write things down

in the spirit of Marcus Aurelius

who said the finest bottle of wine

is just grape juice, passing through the liver,

no matter the beauty of a frothing glass,

or a night of big Truth-seeking, never recalled;

the importance of putting something bittersweet

into our mouths, turning it around and around

on our tongues, attaching to it, our missions,

our purpose—in the end

we are all just filters, not even

as beautiful as the plainest bird

or as zen as the meanest deer tick,

nothing is given over to, nothing new is lit.

So often it is this. I wake up, urgent, fatalistic,

with the taste of nectar on my boughs.

I replay on a loop my one stoic consistency,

my middle of the night vow,

that I will start tomorrow

the essential dismantling

of what I live.