Confessedly, I try to read you
like a poem. The vowels your
lips hug, how your teeth
bite the consonants, the
salivary slips of the tongue:
Flashed. On the surgeon's
table for inspection, diagnosis.
But how your syntax spurts
across, your rhythm irregular
unlike heartbeat. Your stream
of consciousness running,
unceasingly as blood. Your
diction as numb as anaesthetics
(as alarming as a sudden
awakening mid-surgery.)

Even if I could dissect your speech,
your mind remains a mystery.

If reality is a bowl of
smashed cereal,
irreconcilable with
wholeness;

Then dreams are those
cartons of overnight
milk, mixed with reality
for a sour solace.

the world is not enough, the world is not enough
says a dull woman
throwing to the wind
her plastic stuff.

I cringe to think
that my kids won't know
of the Rhino's
it'll be in the textbooks near the Dino's

and Mermaids.

the modern ills we face
all have ancient roots
back to one old Tree
a Tree of this and that..

from the Tree a virus spread
with special virulence now..
anxious ills and worry
fueled by this and that..

few seem to know
a medicine is extant
and really here closeby..
yet mysteriously hidden
alas..in our plain sight..

a preliminary dose
is a simple location..
to find a bit of this in that
and that in this..

a spoonful will send us
on our way..
a transforming surprise
an immunizing gift..

a gift when recognized
clothes armor to confront..
new dark incursions
of the virus we now name
the familiar this and that..

yet now we might be offered
a second dose
stronger than the first
a sudden recognition
there's really More than
this and that..

this special More that
we now swallow..
a More of special beauty
enclosing only gentle hints
of our former
this and that....

I come to this blank screen
without any conscious knowledge
about how to write this,
but I have
a sneaking feeling
that I already do know
exactly what to do,
and it's like meditation,
when you start
to meditate,
even if you've done it
a million times,
I always get the notion
that I don't know how
to do it,
but then I go ahead
and do it,
so this poetry racket
is the same thing,
I just sit here
and write it
even though I don't know how,
because actually
I do,
or maybe I don't,
you decide.