Our lives are pregnant with insignificance.  
Things like--pecker gnats and Chihuahuas,

fake bronze menorahs,  white t-shirts,
and plastic daffodils.  Good Mental

health demands we balance life’s  trivial
with significant concerns, such as--cost-free

drugs to feel less bad, dealing with suicidal
people who find homicide intriguing, predicting

a python’s hunger pangs and the why, of
Saturn’s four rings;  the wise know the difference.

How frustrated
Are you
That I'm still alive?

And how relieved
Are the people that invest in me?

I don't want to add insult to injury
But then again,
Who is injured here, really?

So kiss my pink ***.

My smart, kind heart
keeps beating
against the tides
of nihilism.

Mine will be a life well lived.

I need someone
who won't push me away
at four in the morning.

So I don't get up
feeling unloved,
to write to other

Lonely
Four in the morning,
writers.

I wonder because
of a lover gone by
if I could ever

Fall asleep all night
nose to nose
again

With someone else.
Maybe even sober this time.

I'd settle for tipsy, though.

Stress
Comes up in gassy eruptions.
Over and over,
I belch like a rumbling volcano
While my neighbor's baby
Cries through the night.

Paralyzed by nerves,
I'm so...
not a hero.
Just took two pills
the side effect of which
should make me functional tomorrow.

The main effect should ease this gas-
The manifestation of so much decomposition.
My love of country
is in crisis.
How to avoid perpetuating
a negative cycle?

Like Mary Poppins,
I want to ride my Mary-go-round horse
Off into the sunset
My pupils
gleefully
galloping
with me.

I'm not singing.
But bumbling through.
How to keep afloat
amidst all this well written wisdom
and the variations in spelling
and the power of just telling?

Let alone lead them down a path
That is smooth,
because life is rough.
And rough,
because life is rough.
And honest,
but not despairing.

Fretting over tomorrow
Instead of seeing the top of the mountain
In the distance.

This is a great chance
To ride the wave.
But that nasty undercurrent
has got me.

I need to love my home
In all it's (only recent) diplomacy.

And tell the beginning of a new story
where relations
are just that.

Her daughter's spare key,
slipped
in the lock, to open

A lifeless house

The granddaughter
follows

"Take the shoes, they're of little value."

Obediently,
timidly,
she goes to the bedroom closet.

She tries on a pair
of beige sandals;
understated,
good quality,
and so

comfortable.

These are followed
by two more pairs,
which disappoint
in comparison.

Then,
Oh,
She sees the slippers.
So familiar,
knit
together.

And the
granddaughter
unravels.

She slips them on.
Slips into oblivion.

Do you need a hug?
Singsong from the office.

They meet in the hallway.
And slip into each other's arms.

It is easy
to wear
her literal
shoes

But the slippers
feel empty
on her feet.

Some days she comes home
sad, having ushered one of
her patients into the big sleep.
And she pours a drink, sometimes
telling us the medical side and
sometimes half asleep after the
first sip. And sometimes she
won't come home 'til 7 hours
after her shift, 'cause the evening
nurse didn't show and she has
paperwork to do (and management
has gone home, so she can relax
a bit), and we keep dinner
in the microwave cause even
saints gotta eat.
And her mom is becoming her
favorite patient, requiring
extra patience because my grandma
was a doctor. And she's now 92
with a failing heart and a mind
that can't quite hold on to what
it used to. And my mom is gonna
hold her hand, calmly carrying
another weakened, time-stricken
soul on her weight-thickened shoulders,
to the vacant hole that holds the
after. And she'll do it not 'cause
she has to, because all she's
ever done
                 is care.