Weathervanes with harmonically
tuned brains, took up the call to Step Lively.  

Each one ecking, drop by drop,
To feed you silliness, to lighten your soul.

Wakey, wakey
Eat well
It's your Daddy, I mean attorney
You're really been being very bad.

If you insist, I will.
Learn obedience
or patience or something
in between,

a kernal of obedience?
I'll never promise that,
in order to give it to freely.
I was afraid to let you in.

They were menacing,
stamping us into tiny little molds.
Insistent that we are,
what they think we are.

Did they convince you
that I'd gone off and left you?

No, changing that would require
quantum amounts of convincing.
Was not mistaken that it was you,
just attacked by encroaching apiculture

That is how it felt,
How it feels, but subtler now.*
First course correction will be
the sliver of a melody,

Spreading like a depth charge.

Do you hear a little child crying?

Keeper holds up a cheap, placemat
With a pattern of Blackeyed Susans
And says *See that pattern?
You made it.

Came your birthday
Black coffee, a packet of Sweet & Low
I choked when the grounds touched my lips.
You're feeding her and telling her
Your Mommy is the smartest,
most beautiful woman in the world.
I painted white and yellow
petals around the droplets of coffee.
And mailed it off,
My gift, se lah!

It was returned two weeks later.
Marked twenty years!

That was the day we became friends.

This constant presence of you.
It's been a year or more.
You've seen the ugly bits,
The confused frayed edges.

All my lies and hedges,
a time to sit and ponder
On whispers of who I am to people.
Your sweet ****, my sweet heart.

That old whickering tremble
How did I get this lucky?
Bundled up in sweet cliches
Characters of my inner dialogue come to life

May I return to being an individual?
Once I find where I buried my Trust.
All the games and masks?
To conduct a minefield exposition.

My thoughts are so clean and linear
with you, I'm afraid you're synthetic.
A dog bites, it's tail
No one loves a lurker.

There'll come a time
when you'll have to stop hiding,
lay down your mask,
and come face me.

Joining past and present
Is never an easy task
So many different directions
so little certainty.

Too much below the surface.
I built a world for myself.
Invited you in and got leveled
Too much below the surface.

Ever explored a fissure in an iceberg?

No, I have a ritual.
I turn it over and shake it.
Get all the loose crud out,
then take a paperclip & dredge
the remaining particles of detritus,
The dust can,
preferably with a red straw.
Clorox the tops of the keys,
The sides of them
(scrape, if necessary)
Then dredge the bottom again.
Repeat with the phone, the 10-key.
Blow these actions up,
Apply to thoughts, actions, emotions
Swirl it all down the drain...