charity case

Maybe we should walk around all day
with wishes ready, set in place.
Think how many shooting stars we waste,
burning up in skies of blue,
never to be wished upon,
rained in vain - should've stayed
in outer space. Maybe you,
with wishes fixed like fishing nets,
could catch a few as they blaze by
invisibly. To grant one wish -
that's all that any shooting star
aspires to, and so - to die
unmiserably.

winged moments

I forgot what I was waiting for, and then you came in
making me come up excused for being there, which wasn't
very easily, but which I pulled quite neatly off, along
with some objections I'd been saving for a drier day,
still soaked from memories of pride. You've now since
stripped those from us both, despite I was the wandering
one, out in the storm of darkest nights without the sense
to come in from. As usual, you, adopted tones as if you'd
rescued something lost, that couldn't fend itself a way,
despite how many times it has, despite how many ways it's
made to find its way at smallest cost, to you: that pride,
again. It fucks
with you. Don't let it.
Just be cool. Just settle in
and down, and up. And wish your
falling stars for luck, and lose your
mind in what the hell are we doing. Don't ask

education, Pt.2

We must educate adults
to know better than to bring up things
we can't explain to children. To explain,

"Don't ask. It's rude," or "That's gross!" or
"What if a child had heard you? Don't you feel
ashamed?" I'll tell you when you grow up

you won't ask questions like those,
bring up things like that, you'll have learned

we don't. You'll have learned
not to.

The benefits
to an adult society
are enormous. It is rude

to talk politics, religion, right
or wrong or anything else
people might be embarrassed about
not being able to explain
what they themselves strongly believe,
or, the lack thereof. This makes

it easy

to avoid scrutiny of wrong
and thought about what's right,
concerned about the difference
between yours and mine, we can simply agree

everyone's idea of it is good, and
no one has to have one! Saves us all

bringing it up.

and/or else

When a child is learning to count - there's nothing
you can do about it. Just like

when a child is learning to read,
there's nothing you can do.

There's no way we can protect them
from these dangerous things. Just
grow up. And try to

The world
is a bad example. It takes
a long time to grow up, and seal
yourself off

so many things, uncomfortable
you don't know how
The children are vulnerable. Use them

to tell the world off when
it acts too adult. We will never be able to say
why. Uncomfortable facts, acts and ideas but

at least there is always
the children. We will do it for them,
and/or else if we don't, they might grow up knowing

and be able to say, and we
would look dumb, and scrunch up uncomfortable

unable to explain except don't ask it's rude
embarrassed by the only answer we were taught, looking
round for the children to rescue
us.

love from who

stringless kite adrift
Wanting nothing in return,
and never to return,
like a freely-given gift

you've been secretly admired,
and so you trail along -
ever after under it, just
to spot some one.

the result

I love it when your lower legs are
suddenly itchy like bug bites despite
you've been wearing long pants
all day, and you'd been wearing shorts
all week before that with zero contact, and

the only place different you went was church

for your nephew's baptism, and
that

is not a buggy place. So

itching like crazy, you surreptitiously pull
your pants cuffs up to your knees and SCRATCH
SCRITCH SCRATCH, stymied by the seeming absence
of actual bites, and the more-or-less all-overness
of the itchiness, then

1 day later

there are what look like legit bug-bit welts, scattered all over,
and they end up with those tiny clear hard amberlike scabs.

I say I love it. I don't love all of it. I just love the scabs.
Those tiny clear hard amberlike scabs.

I love the end result.

Written instruction

A poem can be read
in many ways. Perfect
is only one of them.
I leave it to you,

the reader

to choose. Go back
to the start,
and try again

darkless

You brighten my life to such a degree
that I wonder sometimes how I used to see.

for reals

as the death toll mounts
on the internet, and around you
everyone in your social set
gets shares likes posts,
unfriends for keeps,

I can't believe you would say that
to me

your sheep

the spectacle

Poor thing. What a jolt
seeing this delivers.

Such a poignant moment
of piercing, heart-cut tragic
comeuppance – the slapdown we get

for trying to shine,

spotlit for our one too-brief moment
on a too-smooth stage. This

teaches each of us
everything we probably don’t want to know, about
ourselves and about each other. I applaud

the crowd at the end,
for applauding. It’s certain
that if I were there, I

would have burst into tears

the materials of vengeance

the materials of vengeance
are assembling within
you are ready
to take all
of the love you've ever given,
and repurpose it as grievance.
Which will clearly be your
right. Now,

bring down in fullest measure,

measured perfectly and fair,

an end to this fight.

to bear in mind

It's not my goal
as a poet to make your jaw
hang increasingly open,
your eyes sting from not
blinking and leave you after
fifty or so in a row
ready to chuck it in, shut
your machine down and turn
away, slouching off to lie
down crumpled up fetally
on the couch, never
to bother again.

Keep going!
Yours is as good as mine
on some scale, friend.

What you have to understand
is, people say everything's
relative. All values
are subjective, and
there are no absolutes. No
substitute for them,
either! - no reason
for you

to put value
judgments on yours, just
because of mine. However

you like it or don't,

that's totally fine.

so we've died

so we've died

and we never did do all that stuff
we would talk about for hours,

I guess

it was just too much, although

we could have done some of it,
at least

Life was full. Life was
sure full. And I can't
tell you that you, or you tell me
that I

failed, or I
wasted - or you did -

a moment, a year, a
lifetime of it. There

were all good ideas
and reasons and things
coming in and gone through, and we each
held the strings, and swung vines, and

grew wings -

so we've lived. And compared,
in a rush of what's new,
catching up since we last,

for as long as we do.

"Drink More Often"

There is a wall
between me, and what I feel
- it's high and it's wide
There's things about me
that you should know are real
- all on the other side
I could not break through or help you
climb over top
you thought I was uninvolved
but then, it just - dissolved

I should drink more
often
I can't tell you,
all the things I'd say
I should drink more
often
- inhibition,
get out of my way
I should drink more,
often
- give you my heart,
subtracting my mind
and then your heart
would soften
- 'cause you'd finally see
how much I keep
inside.

I hate to think
of the opportunities
that I've let slip by
just because I could never
make you see
what was in my eyes
I know you're no mind-reader, and
hey, who is?
You thought I was a closed book
but now - it's open
take a look

I should drink more
often
I can't tell you,
all the things I'd say
I should drink more
often
- inhibition,
get out of my way
I should drink more,
often
- give you my heart,
subtracting my mind
and then your heart
would soften
- 'cause you'd finally see
how much I keep
inside.

I know it isn't
the healthiest view on life
yeah, I'm aware of it
but darling if I lose you
'cause I can't speak up,
then life ain't worth
shit, I weave a curtain of words
to hide behind
- but they were just meaningless
until you unlocked my lips


I should drink more
often
I can't tell you,
all the things I'd say
I should drink more
often
- inhibition,
get out of my way
I should drink more,
often
- give you my heart,
subtracting my mind
and then your heart
would soften
- 'cause you'd finally see
how much I keep
inside.

seven years

Met you seven years ago, today
we should've popped champagne
but how could we have known at the time?
who brings champagne to a thing

not normally commemorated by champagne. Such as
you know, meeting someone
soon-to-be very great, to be sure, but
you can't be sure
first-time meetings, you have no excuse

to be sure. Well, it's been
seven years, today since
you jumped
out of your seat,
seeing me looking confused
and removed all doubt.
And each year removes more
(as doubt does tend

to accumulate then,
and now). Seven years
such luck, still and soon
to be great - both of us should find
a broken mirror, and fix it

to celebrate

work bonsai

they say you should speak to a plant

and I try.
On phone calls, so no one
thinks of my sanity
too closely, and you know what
little tree? I think you help me
with my tone

I will turn my head, to you
breathe out

tiny tree,

set to the side of my desk, breathe in

frustration,
disbelief,
laughter that one doesn't cry,
and let

your little leaves exhale
as best they can,
given the light,

oxygen. And

I will turn you toward the sun,
give you water

I will turn you toward the sun,
give you water


each day I'm in
to take care of you.

Loyalties torn

A dun-coloured falcon just soared
thru here, three feet off the yard.

A yard high and half the yard across,
then out of sight past the corner hedge
of the screened-in porch. I didn't hear

her paralyzing cry, so
maybe she wasn't bun-hunting. If she was,

of course I wish her luck.

usual beautiful clarity

The mind is a brilliant, dizzying
gem made of lens upon lens upon
lens upon lens in a dazzling,
interlocked play of arrays.
Thought is capable of clarity,
but light loves to play. It takes discipline,
practice, desire and will
to learn how to focus in. It's more habit
than skill, and it does take work.
It's a conscious task,
but it's so much more rewarding
when the question is asked, and it's all
within grasp, because you can see now.
And you can say why, and you can show
how. It's as if the saying's true,
that it's all in your mind - except
for all the ways out
you're beginning to find.

A note on online poetry

Online poetry must be read

and understood by the light
of a differing standard. Not
different - just differing.

These people can't write!

And they don't have the benefit
of editorship, to read and
suggest, and send kind declines.

So you can see, as a result,
as a form, a differing standard
has evolved. Online poetry
must be judged within the tradition
and conventions

of online poetry. Besides,

have you seen some of the offline poetry
these days?

Maybe the problem is

you just don't like poetry. Or maybe
people have never been very good
at it. Well, if so

take your philistine critical acumen

elsewhere, bub. Or else - GO

Write some of your own.

I bet it's awful

done up neatly

In the drawing room, assembled
all the suspects lounged, arrayed
upon the chaise, the love seat,
sundry comfy chairs, or
leaning rakishly against
the paneled wall, hard by
the mantelpiece and cupboards strewn
with china boats and goats, and maudlin
figurines of shepherds,
ballerinas,

astronauts

(incongruously enough),

in the silence of the consciousness
of some impending awful guilt,

awaiting the detective,

who has as much as insinuated
that all will be made crystal,
just as soon as he's divested
self and disabused all present of
all and any smoked red herrings, and
deceptive, miscast leads, in one big
tour de force performance/
slash fishing expedition,

hoping the one that got away
is right here in this room,
at this moment. If not, well

perhaps we'll try another game.

waking dreamlike state

i wasn't asleep

I was in a waking dreamlike state

I was aware of you calling me

but I couldn't answer

or actually I could have answered

but to try would have been irrevocable

and I wanted to stay where I was

and I wasn't really sure
you were calling me

get along somehow

if I could only manage it, to die

right now

my life would be
complete. I know

that every moment on, from here

I'll bask in this
diminished glow.

If I

could only manage it, to stop

to keep

forever, just
for now

the world -

gone on without me
would be fine, I know. They'd get along

somehow. But

since I stayed, delayed
in hesitation, lingered,
lost -

convince myself, oh would you please?

This moment, slipped to memory,
is not the only one like this

that there could ever be, for me.

And I will find the cost

alone in the feels room

alone with my feels
in my feels room at home
it feels safe here, and bad
because nobody knows
how it feels in this room
where the feels get so
close, and there's nobody
here. So I beep my own
nose

better then

Better to slip once, fall, get
back up again recover your place and
go on, then to be caught, bit,
crushed and snarled in the

implacable teeth

of fate's mechanism, or

trod under, made a meal
of bones in a blood / mud
sauce by the implacable

wheels

of your mechanism's fate. If
by sheer luck, you

get to share your dream

with the implacable bitch, or
jerk
of your thoughts, dominating
therefore the rest of your

life, it is better to win

big, then die trying not to admit

to loss.

I keep reading this.

I keep reading this.

Later I come
back and read it
more. And with
never a thing

I can meaningfully
add. It is

strange and frustrating to
me, given how
the image shocks like a
deja vu, like
a recurring,
but always straightaway awake-and-fade
dream. I

know I never actually had
this dream.

Deja vu
is a memory-sensory malfunction. It is not
a combination of precognition and amnesia.

I'm afraid, in the falsely-recovered memory of this place.

Yet deeper than the memory, I know that
in the dream, I am not afraid. Never

afraid. My waking mind

knows it's all just tricks
of brain-lightning. I insist
I've never been there. I insist
I won't go back. The former

is just fact. The latter

is (I think) what scares me.

tailor's elves

needle
stitch, missed
a seam

between
a time or two
and we

have seen
what comes of that:
a suit

of clothes
that fit

like leprosy, that fits
like epileptic teeth
fit into tongues
til pried apart

so stuff a rag in it,
my love. I've heard enough

to beat
my heart

to sleep.

Each night, our needlework
undoes what dawn does to the day,
and leaves
us
stretched,

exhausted.
Worn.
Cast off, we close the wound
and weep. But in the dreamforsaken dark,
some pitter-patter feet dance in
like storybook ex machinas -

they make the bed we wake up in,
and dawn does what it does to day.
And you see what you saw in me.

Tonight, let's stay up past our time
and catch them in the act!

Shall we?

word for word

I'll return for you,
word for word, what you said - and you make
it mean something

new each time,
like a magic trick.
From an altered priest
turning water to wine
to fine allegory, and I know

what you mean. What you say, just
so. So precise, so exact, without
shade or spin. Every time, word for word -
I return them to you, and you tell
me what else you had slipped

right in

haystack

Grasping at straws
from a camel's back, I had never
intended to break the spine
of the book of our love,
with its pages
blank. I had given
to you what was never mine.

Now it's tossed
on a jumbled-up pile, in smoke
growing up like a column
of ghosts and snakes
from what once was a stack
of orderly thoughts
and ideals, shelved in lines,
perfect-pressed in space
with no spaces. Between
what one meant and the next,
it was all of a piece. One thing,
all arranged

for the best.
What a loss. What a mess
we have made

of the stately arrays
we browsed through and into,
and strayed,
and stayed.
Truths borrowed and used, and
New. Thrown away,
well

I thought you were through? Each thought

that the other was already
through

le assignation

By the sea, unspecified
salt tang, orange and bitters
in the air, hot

like a cotton shirt wrapped
roast, reddening and flushed,
with emotion, mostly: check

time, check - place, yes,

a melt-beaded glass, tall
and so close to cold, held
to sweat-daubed skull,
breathing hot, shallow
air, simultaneously panicked
and comfortable.

There. Perfect. Napkin folded, newspaper,
pen - table in the corner, by the creeping
vine thing,

All to plan. Here.
Halfway to China from the West, past
France, keep going
where Buda meets Pest,
just a little down and left -
turn around three times, blindfolded,
and dance -
there you are.
We are right on time. Wherever
this is, Mediterranean blue? - otherwise,
could be Aegean, or - no, it is probably one
of those two.

Just as planned, long in secret
signal, cipher and plot.
We knew that it would come
from alone, to together
to apart,

like a million to one.
It couldn't probably succeed. But
we picked, carefully
time and place,
and we purchased all the ways, and
that's all of the luck we could buy,
or find,
or will need. Job done.

Aced. I am here and high

on life.

On time. Now
- wait for it! - sigh.

Now a little bit past.

You'll be sneaking up behind,

any minute now

fast

the vestige of dignity

if you've lied to yourself,
who catches you out? Will you notice
yourself? Can you trust you to? Were you
trying to save your feelings? Why?
Were you going to be mean?
Like you always do
To yourself,
I mean.

To everyone else,
you could not hurt a fly,
could you? So you'd say. So
you tell yourself. This is how
it begins. You always have run
yourself down this way.

The lie -
was it little and white? Or big?
Was it fat? No, I know - you'd never
say so.

But was it? This lie,
you've been feeding it years.
You've been stuffing it full,
of sweet reasons why it was true

and this lie

is finally fed up.

It is no longer willing
to screen your fears. It is no longer willing
to make you look good, to only
yourself,

with the rest of us here.

The rest of us knew.

multiple hot dogs

I had multiple hot dogs

walking around, trying to find my beer. Misplaced
at some point. From room to room, even rooms in
which I could not have set it down, not having
been through them during the time between
tossing the last can and popping
the current one, I refuse

to give up the chase
in a case like this,

I put on mustard, relish,
and, pausing Oxford-comma thoughtfully,
ketchup. Even though I know ketchup

is considered disgusting
on a hot dog. According to Dirty Harry Callahan,

most things are. And I refuse to give up

that sweet, vinegary tang, just because
some superstar devil-may-charming

quasifascist cop

who doesn't even exist
(some people don't)
(most people don't)

has elected to share his bigoted views
on condiments in a major motion picture

release!

My beer

Finally.

I can sit

like anything else, habit

A habit is only bad
to the extent that it is
a habit, and to the degree
that it's bad. But what

We call a habit - when there is some action
we continue unthinkingly - Some
take the attitude that

habit

intrinsically
is
bad; our actions shouldn't be undertaken
unthinkingly. Such people

cultivated the habit of thinking, prior
to taking action. Not

a bad habit!

but is it necessary? And if not,
is the opposite necessarily
bad? People

fall into a habit
of assuming that if a thing's bad, its opposite
must be good. A casual examination
of diarrhea and constipation refutes this easily, but
- is it necessary?

We must admit, not always.

We must also
admit even good habits
may not always be appropriate, in a given

context. But

- does that make the context bad? It could, but
it would be reckless to assume that it must
always be so in every case. Let's

look at it

foundationally the way

the key

to harnessing the power of habit

for good

is to determine in advance which actions,
undertaken regularly without any considerable
reflection, will yield the best mix of desired
and desirable results, and unexpectedly beneficial

or at least relatively harmless

unintended consequences. Are the latter
bad?

For someone who believes all consequences
should be intended, sure! Because for their intents
and purposes, unexpectedly beneficial

or at least relatively harmless

unintended consequences are a warning sign. It says:

"You didn't know what was going to happen
when you did that. That means
it could have been bad."

Now that's a cautious attitude, but
it carries with it the real risk
of reducing one's influence on one's
world

to only the relatively stunted effects
one can achieve by means whose mechanisms and impacts
one can thoroughly understand,

predict,

and manipulate. What if

instead, one made a habit
of thorough self-scrutiny? of motives
and a commitment to acting in good faith
and with good will, and then just go balls
-out nuts in all directions
using the best assortment of scattershot,
fire-and-forget, surface-to-air rumbling
-juggernaut-of-mercy techniques and
approaches one has

come across, or up with? Who wins Then?

I think we know who wins.
Like anything successful, it gets to be

habit.

At Being Told

You must be sick, at being told
you're beautiful. It's been too much,
it's far too done, you've heard it
all before, what's more

it makes
you feel
uncomfortable

for all those persons sadly left
without the awkward burden of
unwanted compliments that you
collect by bushel, dodging
peck, and shrugging

your acknowledgement

- but with a look that says
enough! I'm beautiful

I'm over it

Quit asking, If

Quit asking, if
it's ok, when you know
it's wrong, already. It's already wrong
by you, so
don't request an overrule.
Just
stop.

Or,
if you wish! keep going -
since you haven't asked me, since
you are ostensibly
in some doubt

As to whether it is or is
not ok "by me,"
Keep doing what you'd do
already
do, do what you must, if
you wish, if you wanted
to

maybe you
are the only one
who is troubled by what you've done.

And keep doing

waking

I'm quietly alive in a dream come true
where nothing makes sense,
but it thinks we do.

light

Another one, pulled smooth and flipped
absently to lip, drawn in to the
sheltering hand, head bowed click
rasp incandescent catching

the intake of your breath, and
pull deep, let out

sigh. With regret

wishes grow

wishes grow on trees, another
reason to replenish the depletions
of environments
wrought by our lotteries

same hat

same hat. Fits
a bit
differently, I expect
just like thoughts
underneath
flow in orders various
as the variegated
inputs

into each,
respectively.

But -
two heads, they say
speaking not
simultaneously, but
overlapping,
"are better
than one"

and if it's true
that size matters not,
or that one size
fits all, looks

good.
To me

beyond count

Pinpricks in the sky,
Like budding cherry blossoms -
A lace made of light. Night pulls
covers over us, way way way out past
cities making wishes. A shooting star
hovers, one syllable over
in the otherwise straight line
of God's haiku

Easy truths, become cliches

Easy truths lend themselves
to overuse. And, become cliches,
offend the ear of those who
value novelty. It isn't that
they aren't true, or have no
true or real value, it's just
that we begin
the fifteenth time,
the fiftieth, the thousandth,
to suspect the one who hits us with
such easy truth - a baseball bat
held wrong-way up
- does not know how to hit,
to win.

But still,
the truth

is just as straight
and curved and hard and long
and fast, as many days
as it's proved true, the first
as true as last, the worst

that you can say of it
is: this. The human mind
can grasp

and use

a truth, poorly, even
wrongly - we may reach
for what we mean, try
to say just what we want, and maybe miss, or kiss
the pitch fair, pure luck - and so,
deserve no credit! But that truth, itself
has force. Even if

we only hold it out
to bunt,

take off and run