hiding in plain sight
a moon-flower in full bloom
gotta share this -click-

hey there, i am a
Buddhist existentialist
ask me anything

the little bird shouts
in a sea of other birds
all we hear is -tweet-

huh, what time is it?
phone slips back into pocket
huh, what time is it?

a bear with regret
making its bold confessions
from behind a meme

life in the future:
computer in my glasses
yet still no jetpacks

ancestors hunted
only ate what they could ****
now we have WalMart

flowers were once wild
bananas used to have seeds
- how we shape the world

High up on the far back wall
in the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
is a constellation of dirt, chipped paint
and cobwebs
forming the shape
of a bear
lounging in a hammock

I have coworkers who insist
that it's a monkey,
trapped in a net
but they are wrong.
It's clearly a bear

Ursa Somniculosa,
or, as the layman may call it
the Little Napper

No matter where I am on the floor,
I can see him hanging there in his hammock
enjoying his perpetual vacation
maybe sipping on a nice tall beer
soaking up the sun -

not being a trapped monkey
like all of us down here

The bumper sticker
On the red jeep in front of me
Orders all who see it
to "Be happy"

Challenge accepted, stranger,
Challenge accepted.

He pairs kinds of rain with kinds of jazz
like some folks do with wine and cheese.

He says a thunderstorm goes best with bebop
Especially if you can time the record just right
for the drums to explode just as the sky does

He says free jazz is for those unpredictable days,
where the rain keeps coming,
but will ebb and flow at it's own pace

He says a light Sunday drizzle is the perfect time
to pull out Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool,
and sip slowly on the moment

I think he may be a synesthete.

The way Sunday sits in its secret hideaway paradise
at the end of the week
It's legs carelessly kicking at the lake,
with wet bare feet
making concentric circles in the water with its toes

That's how you make me feel.

17/30
long walk through a park
an abandoned swing set sits
waiting just for you

18/30
thump-thump-thump-thump
woosh-click-click-beep-thump-woosh-thu­mp
broken radio

It's not you, It's me.
No - you know what, it IS you.

You can't keep coming around like this.
It was okay at first, but we had our fun,
had a couple snowball fights, and hot coco nights
but you and I both know it's run it's course.
We're over.
In fact, honestly, you overstayed your welcome this time.

What do I mean?
I mean, you're cold, you're bitter, your relentless and pushy.
I couldn't take it anymore.
And when you coming back like this every other week, honestly,
It makes me consider moving.
You're like a stalker.

Oh her? Yeah, that's my new season.
She's nice, warm, and beautiful.
But she's shy,
she's not going to come back out until you leave.
So, you should go.

Look maybe we can try this again
In a year or so - maybe.
Just give me some time.

I don't miss you yet.

Her eyes are so deep set now
that in a certain light
they are just holes in her face

She is so thin now
from the chemotherapy
her skin seems little more than
an empty balloon stretched over her skeleton
and tied off at the scalp,
to keep what’s left of her from falling out

She shakes so bad now
that she needs assistance
to cease the drought
on the jagged landscape of her lips

Now, her days are spent
in an endless sleep
punctuated by a waking sleep
in which she does a lot of staring at walls
and vomiting

That waking sleep, or living nightmare,
is itself punctuated by the occasional friend
come to mourn at the gravemarker
that is her hospital bed
She now has sympathy for the zombie
knowing what it’s like to be dead
and alive at the same time

She thinks, if she had the energy,
she might bite people too
just to remind them
that she’s still here

I hear a voice of a guitar -
the cords to an Irish jig -
Whisky in the Jar.
I stand there a moment
listening hard and rocking softly.

I am not sure if it’s just the weight of winter
finally melting off my shoulders,
or if there's something deeper,
something spiritual happening here.

I take a nice long breath of the Ohio air,
feeling relief, release, and repair.

He sat there behind the table,
with his glasses sitting on his nose,
and his skin sitting on his bones - both loosely,
the way you’d expect someone to sit
after 75 years of good, but hard, living.

“The trick is-” he said
deliberately pausing to shift the weight of the sentence
toward the upcoming words
“you have to wipe away all the things you don't want to see."
He said this as he scribbled his name
inside my new copy of his old book
smiling in that gentle old man way.

I scampered away like a schoolboy
feeling like an idiot
having rambled at him
in my best impression of a scholar
- like a kid wearing his dad’s oversized suit.

I talked at him about
how well he captures a moment in poetry
like this former US Poet Laureate
wasn’t aware of his talent
and I was somehow the first
delivering the good news.

As I wander the campus,
having escaped my embarrassment
I think back to a poem he read tonight
about watching an old couple sharing a sandwich.
It was an ode to love,
an image you can see in any sit down restaurant,
literally anywhere in America.
He focused in on this couple,
in this diner
at this moment
apart from time, like a moving still life
forever framed by his words.

He wiped away the screaming kid
and its overwhelmed mother in the booth to the left,
the table of teenagers playing hooky to their right,
and the underpaid twnetysomething waitress
who clearly didn’t want to be there anyway.

He wiped away all of that distraction
and unearthed this beautiful moment
this pure example of true love-
A sandwich cut from corner to corner
by the shaking hands of a man
whose glasses sit upon his face
and skin upon his bones
all the way you expect a man to
with woman he’s loved for forty years
with whom he shares everything.

I think about the moments I have missed
the poems never writ
because I was staring at the waitress,
who clearly didn’t want to be there anyway.

Drifting
somewhere between sleeping
and waking life

Dipping
in and out of the fuzzy lake
of my subconcious mind

Straining
to keep myself on the surface -
losing grip, (here i go again)

Waves a blue and white
painted like the sky in that Van Gogh
Starry Night.

Paintied in thick blue tears
and yellow splocthes of infinity.

Snoring
snaps me back
to barely awake.

Tripping
up the stairs
I make my way to my bed,
Wrap my arms about my Love
and let myself fall into
Van Gogh's heavy tears