This things are made for idling
transparent in their quotidian splendor:

A Buddha statue at the receptionist desk
golden skin, red robes
welcoming all yogis with its gaze
eyelids closed

The candle, a guardian of an aim
an intention that moves within a flame
over the palms of the wooden hands

Incense smoke dance softly around the entrance
like a dream seen from wakefulness
immersive enhancer of the humor
filling the place with soft calmness
Nag champa smell
and serious air

The bamboo doors
from Monday to Sunday
open the way to Indian sounds
and the voices of blooming teachers
guide the way
until shavasana
when practitioners become gently moving statues
and glowing air goes
breathing in and breathing out
daily efforts and daily hopes.

Here is a glass of water from my well.
It tastes of rock and root and earth and rain;
It is the best I have, my only spell,
And it is cold, and better than champagne.
Perhaps someone will pass this house one day
To drink, and be restored, and go his way,
Someone in dark confusion as I was
When I drank down cold water in a glass,
Drank a transparent health to keep me sane,
After the bitter mood had gone again.

Traversing the stream with a tunneled stare
The trout flows down from it's lair
Seldom feeling the dry earthly air
Or glancing upon a passing swimmer
No smile or twitch; not even a glimmer

The current sways just as the wind
And, carries the fish as if it's pinned
To no single thought of how it had sinned
Onto friends and alike there is no concern
For taking a life or spilling an urn

As then just becomes a memory of now
And, something is nothing if you allow
Time to wipe the sweat from your brow
Or, have clocks watch as you sit around
Waiting alone for the burial mound

To form inside of the weedy undertow
Where no one seems to care to know
Why they are destined to live below
The outer space that we call sky
Where talkers frolic and thinkers sigh

I've learned that happiness
cannot be found in the form of a little
purple capsule.
I've learned that Pisa will have to wait until next time.
I've learned that the third mushroom
held in my sweaty palm was not as
big a deal compared to the other two opening my mind.
I've learned that a part of me
died that night where we ****** in a
room with no furniture.
I've learned that life is work and that
the molotov cocktail of Dubrah and eay mac
that came spewing from me left an orange tang
upon the floor.
I've learned that pain is better than numbness
and that jabbing a sewing needle repeatedly in my arm
was an educated decision.
Most importantly I've learned that together we are better than alone.

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
’Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other’s tale—
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations-worm and savage otherwise,—
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue— to the scandal of The ***!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges— even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it cames that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

Tender heart and a night not over
tinder-box cast off
once the fire was blazing
and I miss that love now
in the fragile moments
when my mind can find nothing to cling to
where once I could say
  "let's call this day done
  and curl together in our shared bed"
now I simply make another coffee
and cough through another cigarette

And I'm sad, I guess
but not so sad about it
write under porchlight; backed by The Dead.

Sometimes I feel like the last abstract puzzle piece; set apart and waiting for the edges to be correctly aligned and the centre filled so that I can finally and inevitably be slotted into my right place.

Then I am drawn to the size of the puzzle and the way it seems to shift and shunt and change - and I know that one day I will realise with my whole soul that there are an infinity of pieces and I am not an end.

On another, more distant day I will no longer be afraid of this and will come to see it as beautiful.

But for tonight I will continue to feel incomparably small and foolish and alone. I will neglect my bed for a dusty throat and caffeine because the thought of being there and today passing away without me chokes my every action. I will endlessly run my tongue against the back of my jagged teeth until it cuts and swells. I will lay, paralysed, on the cold linoleum of the kitchen floor and hope something other than time will swallow me. I will continue to think of my friends far away and adventures we never, but could have, had.

For tonight it is okay.

There's pleasure in these small thoughts, like a slow waltz fading out, the last note hanging above my head; a blade that cuts apart the looming silence.