mirror, mirror on the wall ...
what the hell happened?!?

I played with words
much like I fed the birds

    one morsel here
       another there

then suddenly became aware

they pulled together
     and made sense

have been a player ever since

you sense it grow
and rather would not
     look at it too closely
prefer that it remain
just vaguely powerful

until one day it crystallized
into a sphere
     perfectly polished  brilliant
but hard to bear alone

you start the search
for one who would be willing
and of worth to share
     with you
what weighs you down
while it elates you
      desperately
at times

you recognize that there are few
whom you would gladly have
     alleviate your burden

many just want to share
     the tiny part
you’d rather keep yourself

others already bear their lot
and  willing though
could only join you for a while

love can be a hard thing
in its time

sometimes I think of you
   as of a gentle loving breeze
   whose caress
   makes my body ache

at other times you are the storm
in which I plunge in wild delight
and let myself be tossed
around the world

and then again
I feel surrounded
by warm playful waves
gathering force slowly
   down the stream
   then bursting forth
   in one magnificent
   deafening roar

amid the forests of my life
you are my lair
   of soft moss and leaves
   where I recline
   and live my dreams

you are the mountain
from whose top
   I look upon the deserts
   breathe blue skies

follow the flight of birds
into the sun

"This is the end, my friend…"

Take refuge in the Golden Years.
Retire to an inevitable monastery
plopped on a suburban mountaintop.
Immerse yourself in the lost writings
of Nikita Khrushchev and Harry S Truman.
Learn to cook gizzards and meditate.
Find solace in obsolete atomic weapons,
enlightenment in the raw, butchered
expressions of the naked thermonuclear.
Wangle, ******, fire, and maneuver.
Get in touch with your inner Eichmann.
Devour baskets of tasty deplorables.
Stop clinging to guns and religion.
Love the fascism of the ordinary.
Become content with mere content.
Stop waving daggers at the innocent.
Wash yourself in the blood of the lamb.
Accept that Woodstock was futile.
Admit you can’t get no satisfaction.
Penetrate the goddess of unreason,
and come screaming to your senses.
Declare the dawn of the Age of Onanism.
Keep your fingers out of Pandora's box.
Bid farewell to the ghost of Joe Hill.
Depart the smothering, smooth life
of lust, corn flakes, and competition.
Expand your mind in a mushroom cloud.
Travel upriver to the ****** of Darkness,
legendary source of honeyed generation.
Attain new heights of perfect despair.
Discover the latent bliss of cassowaries,
rooted in their strong disdain for kale.
Play poker with the spirits of the dead.
These are your days of lucky revelation.
Lick magic frogs and witness lost dreams.
Arrive at the perfect wisdom of what is.
Everything and nothing, just what it seems.