Vox Populi
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Robert Okaji: Four Poems
Not Quite Sleeping
The opposite of living is not dying.
Is not radiance in a closed-eye minute.
Nor that faltering sigh at breath’s terminus.
Regard the half-life of life. Everything halved.
And again, ad nauseam. To that cat-size
space between shrug and endure, between sleep, not
sleep, and the emptied circle that comprises
my nights. On the deck, three raccoons dismantle
a suet cage. I curse circumstance, whisper
benedictions, allow self-pity. Wonder.
What is the half-life of life? This chair. This chair.
~~~
Multiple Enhancing Intercranial Lesions
I love opiates, how they let me doze, cough-
free, reducing the pain from infinity
to specific pelvic aches contained within
a drowsy blur. I love crows, too, how they greet
me before dawn. Caw, signifying your lungs
still filter. Caw, meaning get your lazy ass
moving! Or something like that. The nine lesions
in my brain have not yet diminished language
receptors. Nor my imagination. But
how will I know when it happens? I close my
eyes, stop thinking, drift off. I love opiates.
~~~
Black Chair
The egret waits on its white rock in the creek.
As I have waited on my black chair for months.
Seasons opened and closed, like parentheses.
Like pain in a dream of ozone and thunder,
like mixed lytic and sclerotic lesions. This
morning we stopped by the park where Matilda,
the turkey vulture, also waits. I wish we
were free to soar high above the lake and all
the malignancies in my finite body.
Do regrets escalate before death, do they
disappear? How I wish I could sleep in bed.
~~~
Terminal
I’m still dying, but my brain’s lesions have poofed
away—resolved, disappeared. They were merely
minor diversions from the main track. What does
terminal mean? A boundary, an ending?
A connecting point, a turning over? When
does it limit? Is it stone, edge, hole, place
or pledge? A peg or post, splinter or nail? How
do my circumstances wedge into this word?
This world? Is my life a platform with finite
borders? I want answers, damn it, before I
pass, before my ticket’s torn, there, at that end.
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Robert Okaji
Robert Okaji holds a BA in history, served without distinction in the U.S. Navy, toiled as a university administrator, and once won a goat-catching contest. Two years ago he was diagnosed with late stage metastatic lung cancer, which he finds terribly annoying. But thanks to the wonders of modern science, he still lives in exotic Indianapolis with his wife—poet Stephanie L. Harper—stepson, cat and dog. He is the author of Our Loveliest Bruises (3: A Taos Press, 2025), His Windblown Self (Broadstone Books, 2025), and multiple chapbooks, including Buddha’s Not Talking and Scarecrow Sees. His poems may also be found in such venues as Louisiana Literature, Only Poems, Wildness, Evergreen Review, The Big Windows Review, and his blog, O at the Edges.
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I love these frank, open-eyed poems. Power on, poet! Half-life or not!
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Such beautiful poems. We are all dying, but Robert, being a little closer to where the train terminates than some of us yet are, has lit the way. Flowers forhis honesty and grace.
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Well-said, Lola. Thank you.
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Wonderful, brief formal meditations on death, and so sad in that way, but sorrow becomes thinking and words lead to metaphor, none of which are opiates. And isn’t there a kind of consolation in these poems’ form and language? Perhaps not if you’re Robert or his wife, but these move and satisfy me, even as I want to read them again.
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I agree, Mary. I find strange comfort in these poems.
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These very strong poems manage tone masterfully. It’s almost as if they address the cancer itself, and one imagines the cancer blushing, sheepish, even a little embarrassed by its comparative weakness. Excellent.
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Thanks, Bob. I agree.
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These are magnificent, not a syllable wasted, an advantage of a fixed form.
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Such courage and clarity in these poems…
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Yes.
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I have been a fan since I discovered him through VP. His words helped me through my cancer. Help me now. I admire his strength and honesty. I will save these poems.
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Thanks, Barb.
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That voice of Robert Okaji—always so awake in its own skin, so insistent on life. I love this Suite, the interconnections are there and tie into my 70 year realities. Bed used to be synonymous with refuge, sleep-mindless and gratifying, so much changes over time if you make it at least some of this long way. That voice! What a possession! I relish its every moment.
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Thanks, Sean. I’ve been an Okaji fan since I started VP and was looking for new voices.
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While I thoroughly enjoyed these poems, it’s his bio that I find truly refreshing. A man at peace with himself, unimpressed with himself, and knowing as we should all know that we are simply part of the universe rather than the center of it.
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Along with the poems and bio, I also appreciate the photograph: showing Okaji pensive or meditative.
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Yes, the bio is like a prose poem in itself: mildly ironic, meditative, complete.
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I’m more than impressed enough with him for both of us… 😉🌷✨
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Agreed 💮
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