your welcome

You're welcome, don't
mention it. The pleasure
was all mine, and it
was nothing.

we broke up

you and I,
we broke up
there's really no two ways about it
we broke up,
and you left yourself wondering
"did we really broke up?"
yes
we did.
Only it should be "break,"
there. If it's an honest question,
about an event, if you really
don't know -
then it can't be past tense.
It sounds
like you're
a moron: "did we broke up?"
Oh yes, we did
you recall
You can even seem
to remember why

out of unbelonging

You won't belong
where you've never been,
where nobody knows you,
where you're

not wanted

- how could you be?
When nobody knows
before you show up,
what to want you
for?

But if
you show up,
the people will see

you've arrived. And decide
how they feel
about that.

You are useful, you know
- but only so far
as you put yourself out,
as you give yourself back

where you go yourself forth.

For wherever you stray,
and wherever you stay,

you won't belong, unless
you have given yourself
to it.

So easy. Find a place -
It accepts your breath, and
it gives you air, and everything else

you can find that's good, and best,
and blessed,
and available, too

You belong to it all, but only if

you have given it you.

thought balloon festival

people who think in thought balloons,
clouds in the sky, or the corridor
- wherever they find themselves. They think,

and balloons go up, in white puffy shapes
trailing smaller puff shapes like a kite
trailing bows, and their thoughts within.

I don't understand
why the shapes their thoughts make
are so uniform. Like a white, fluffy cloud:

semicircled around, and resembling
nothing. Just abstract form.

What does a "cloud-shaped cloud"
even mean? I want thought balloons
that resemble

cows,
or cars,
or dragons - and everything else
that people say they see
when they look at clouds.
Any wild form that a cloud can take.
Why put your thoughts in a

boring shape?

skillset

I'm

my job is to...

analytics basically. In the job industry
that can be huge.

I consult

with people for their own good. Sometimes
people do something totally else, based on some stuff
I found out about? For them

Stuff only I might have noticed, basically. Or maybe

I notice a certain angle in my advice, and
I focus in, and emphasize that. People

can tell, sometimes. It comes across, word of mouth
gets around. A lot of people

come to me for exactly that. It's a nice feeling

when it happens.

to be respected

bee guru haiku

I teach shy bees how
to approach pretty flowers
without bumbling.

Wrong time

time out of joint
like a phantom limb sprain

I am used to these moments
occurring

by now. But you're not asleep
now,

and you won't be
for hours.

And I get up,
set to sit down

to the wrong meal, washed down
by incongruous beverage choices

and then go out, wondering why

it all seems too late

outbound

The world turns over under you,
sleeping as it speeds its way and you
with wings, at cruising speeds and altitudes
lie hovering, for all intents and purposes.
A stationary bird in flight, asleep on solitary wing
and waiting to awake from night. Restless, lightly,
you'll touch down and make your way
to waiting dawn, migrating days
and nights to come, on paths planned out
or chanced upon. The world turns over
under you, as you walk on above its
sprawl and bring new landscapes
into view, to frame with eye,
and drink with heart,
and sign them all.

validation, lately

So
I've been trying to get into
validation, lately.

It's just plain lazy
of me not to
try, to sit around
my whole life

wondering in anguish "why?
why other people need it
so? Die deaths of deprivation
over lack thereof?" Instead,

time for me to SEEK
VALIDATION and see

whether I can identify it

when any comes. Look out,

world. Validation
time!!

Please accompany any validation with
I don't know, a stamp or something?

so I know what it is. Cut me a pair of slacks
or something alright I'm

new at this.

the pact

my friends and I
avoid each other out of consideration
for each other's
respectful difference, and
preference - we go
to lunch, kind of

at places that have lunch counters

with stained-glass
windows

in different parts of the city, and

we order dishes
that seem to speak to us. It's

okay. It's okay to be

seen, in seeming isolation
in knit hats and clunky
glasses, speaking word jazz

extemporizing life

explaining your point of view
to statues

in the middle of all this wondrousness,

surrounded by cartoon touches
and dressed like an anticliche cliche,
it's okay. Go now,
forth.

Make yourself a list: and strike

off

every

one

from

it.

counting time

There are times
- and this is one -
that come only once
in your life.

At least, once in mine.
And I don't expect to see luck again
like what landed me here.
I don't want to think twice

before losing this chance.
I don't want to think once
that I could be so dull.
I don't want to think

this

Is about to be gone.

I just want to take time
- just this one -

and hold on

low morning

a city carved from rose and soap
rises from the morning sky
that sinks away to background grey
as foreground marsh recedes to bay
and panes of glass gleam wet like suns,
just barely up from morning swims
- one eye, not even open yet
no coffee for the likes of him

to choose again

It's a fear
many of us have. Once we've made a choice,
we've committed ourselves
- even if not irrevocably,
we've committed ourselves to
having once, in that moment, decided,
believed. Been for that choice, as
the choice that should be made
- that we needed to make. There's
no taking that back.

No taking it back. Once it's on record,
it's irrevocable. If ever again
we choose against it, we are

take your choice:

hypocrites.
Wishy-washers.
Wafflers.
Indecisives.
Milquetoasts. Morally lax,
whether because of
lacking moral fiber
or having taken too many moral
laxatives, we're

lax,
lapsed,
lost, we've
gone

back

against the choice

we made, back when we used to know.

We should be so lucky
to know. We should be so afraid

to know better.

to fix the past

If we're going to fix the past, we need
to go in hard
and study what it is,
that actually was,
that happened, then
argue over whether it
should have and why. Was what those people wanted, or
a subterfuge, a sabotage - a failure to
achieve what could have been, or some deliberate
thwart job? And if so by whom,

That, plus the implications and permutations.
What could have been, if only either/or
times the nth degree, and on from there
in orders of descending consequence cascade - if we are serious,

we have to think about these things.

About this task, which we've undertaken
or may be about to: to fix the past, or
at least fix our understanding of it,
perhaps that's a prudent place to start; we need
to get together now

and make plans first, fast,
built to last, and most especially

determined along definite and pre-argued lines,
so we know what the past should be. Then, get
a radical element within the group to construct a time machine

- like we always figured was bound to happen, once you involve
radical elements in these things - into the future, travel to the age
when they'll know whether it's possible to do so, and if so,

probably lose the plot at that point, since
once you've got a time machine, other things seem
proportionally less
important. Next thing
you know you've got to create
some kind of restrictive body of guards
to guard the timestream from major perversions
and watch out for damage done, zero in on where and when
and send a team back

to fix the past.

That's probably our best chance. Now

enough talk.

the wishing hook

Hung on a wishing hook, dangled as if
from the unsteady firmament, stars
falling left, right
around you, you
hang

there so
steady, as if

none of this

is to do with you. And it isn't.

I wish
and I wish,
I could lift you down, but
I cannot reach, and

you do not fall

for any of it. Yourself pierced through,
you've concerns of your own to occupy you.

It would be
so easy, or

easy enough, but

this isn't a dignified way to go, love.

I wish that it was.