Stay deep within yourself And stay alone there

can you repeat the question please

 we are each other's destiny--mary oliver

We all have forests in our minds. Forests unexplored, unending. Each one of us gets lost in the forest, every night, alone.— Ursula K. Le Guin

now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and i am sorry--wendell berry

how to laugh at yourself in three steps

you must number one admit
you are ridiculous, it doesn't
matter who you are; in fact, the better
off and the higher the
reach, the more ridiculous,
though you can't always help it, can't
help the luck of your birth, the happenstance
of who your parents were, or the country
you sprang from; second
you must look at yourself and all
your secret vanities, the tiny elevations
you rewarded yourself because you deserved it,
you earned it, you worked so hard, you lost
so much, you did every thing you could,
it was for the best, you were only taking a break,
and dammit every word you said
was always mostly true.
the tricky part is step three
so much like the trust game
you lean so far inwards you get behind yourself
and the shadow play you put on
for yourself and others falls in a heap
all around you and your left in a jumble
of sticks and rags and brittle bones
and that little pen light, and
you see it now, how small you are and how
large that background sheet really is
and you shouldn't be able to help it but laugh at yourself.

“Don't base your decision on the opinions of those who don't want to see you grow.” 
― Yvonne Pierre, The Day My Soul Cried: A Memoir

i'm not done fighting this bloody battle

do not enter

do you ever get
this sense
that all people ever want is
the ability to make
things go their way
in all ways? that the happiest
people are those
who have worn
out a path
going round and round
their one, their
sacred, their singular
way? although,
maybe not happiest,
exactly.

i haven't learned to trust happiness

what i owe the fading day

'But that doesn't mean to say, of course, there aren't occasions now and then--extremely desolate occasions--when you think to yourself: "What a terrible mistake I've made with my life."--Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of The Day

sometimes i feel just like the guy
standing in the middle of the road
neither left nor right
numb to all the other senses
but the one that will feed
that hungry heart.

sorrow mixed
with more than a few designer touches of
madness. 

it isn't normal to know what we want

ineffable landscape
reveal yourself to me

“For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Mozart-Piano Sonata in C Major, K. 279- 2nd movement

the only way to
be truthful is for you to speak
it to no one.

the questions are
also the answers.

i seen all good people
turn their heads to stay so
satisfied i'm on my way.

Franz Schubert Piano Sonata No. 21 B Flat

never never never never

There is a disney world perpetually
living inside the pretty snow globe
of Other Choices. Accept this and
you will be happy.

i have been feeling

lately well whatever

at least i can feel even feeling like

shit is better than who

am i kidding, i hate feeling like 

i could have done something

better different been meaner

or played the game like a man, as

if being a man would have made things

easier. i dreamed i had a son. i dreamed 

things were stolen from me, my wallet

my ID, my purse rifled through by

an unknown hand. maybe the

dream was telling me that the things

i'd been protecting, the things i'd been

hanging on to were running me

while i'd been driving with the window

down, one arm browner than the other,

as if all was well.

owning the road here while all 

around me, things were falling into the ground

just like the old house now just a toy
in the attics of memory.

never the end

when the universe comes down hard on
you and gifts your enemies with
your very best friends so that their laughter
echoes down the hall where you are left standing
alone and you feel the world has begun to spin
backwards and you question what day it even is
anymore, or if there was ever such a thing as
a day since your despair has blinded you into believing
this long night will never end, listen: don't believe
those voices that you hear. those voices that are
telling you how they've won the prize of
togetherness meant for only them.
don't sing out your chorus
of agony and broken hearts because this is not the end.
the end is never the end. the universe will go on
and so will you. the sun will become bright again and
you will see the shadows this brightness has now cast
upon your face. you will be wiser to the treachery
of happiness and understand that nothing forever
stays in its place except the dead. and even they are crumbling
and shifting in their place as only the dead can. so go on with
your life. be wise be free. don't give up on the idea that life is meant
for living.

knowledge is a slow burn

Question: Do people in russia kiss the police?

Answer: Only when they're angry.

The worst of it often is that, while we are in it, we don't want to get out of it. We hate it, and yet we prefer staying in it—that is a part of the disease. If we find ourselves like that, we must make ourselves do something different, go with people, speak cheerfully, set ourselves to some hard work, make ourselves sweat, etc.; and that is the good way of reacting that makes of us a valuable character. The disease makes you think of yourself all the time; and the way out of it is to keep as busy as we can thinking of things and of other people—no matter what's the matter with our self.-William James, to his daughter Peg, from Letters of Note

how can you teach anybody how to write

salam alaykum

words to live by

apeshit
global warming
dingy
quit your job
honey

There is a sadness in every note's beginning

"And when you think about it, poets always want us to be moved by something, until in the end, you begin to suspect that a poet is someone who is moved by everything, who just stands in front of the world and weeps and laughs and laughs and weeps . . . "
 - Mary Ruefle

Back then

I realized only quite recently that I had finally gotten truthful about a near-relationship from long ago.  Up to that point,I'd glazed over the memory, making him much nicer and kinder than was accurate. But the truth back then was that he'd been rather cavalier about whether we were "together" or not until it was clear that we were not; and then at the first public meeting afterward, I with new date in tow and he with his typical posse of male miscreants, he'd publicly denounced me as though I had proverbially fucked him over, all for the benefit of those he'd allowed to construe that we were together when, in fact, we were not. Indeed, apologies (from him) were extended and accepted (by me) later and we'd gone our own ways and let each other be although always with the thought that things could have been different, or worked out somehow, and that we might have had a happy successful life together or some similar kind of nonsense.  It's stupid, you might say, to take this long to get over this business. But back then, I was even stupider. 

don't walk

save yourself

the secret is we know more than we say

sleep dammit

don't wait

13 hand poems

embrace the paradox of doubt as the key

green ball

somewhere a green ball bounces

while clocks go on unwound

not only by time because you

never left, really

just ask the leaves.

down secret streets of memory

untravelled by words

as i lived up to the highest light I had

higher and higher light came to me--the peace pilgrim