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.