Canoodle away the daze.
Low productivity remains
sadly underpaid.
Dreams do not demand
To Do lists. As yet,
love requires no app.
Perhaps the world is dying
but green, green patches
remain in the shade.
Find a tree, see.
Take your love’s head
in your lap. Be glad
of time and hugs.
Glorify in achieving
that most perfect goal:
no goal at all.
Or one perfect kiss.
Clarity radiates from
exactly where you sit.
You can’t step in that
same stream even once.
Don’t try. Keep your lips
happy and your feet dry.

In any moment,
we become
different people,
born from
thawarted desire,
from what we lack.

Same vase,
different blossoms.

One life,
much need,
untold moments,
many variations,
familiar strangers
birthed within
one life.

Music hath charms...*

Our heart’s fingers
were never made
to play but one tune.

And so
we practice
songs of
joy, hate,
envy, jealousy,
empathy and
affection.

Wonderful and
terrible compositions.

Harmonic
intention
crashes into
dissonance.

Scores of love
and
scores to settle.

Simply sit down.

Don’t seek the Way,
you are already
on your way.

Just be present and
as you awaken,
the world awakens:

colors shout fragrance,
birds recite poetry,
breezes whisper caresses,
rivers of music flow.
light smells of hope.

Consider your past,
but do not dwell there;
consider your future,
but do not expect it.

Now is Is.

Peel away the squawking
layers of your heart
like an onion unwinding,
like a snake molting.

Approaching nothing,
you arrive at everything.

Do this until you think
you will vanish
and then vanish:

the more you lose,
the more you are.

Her eyes are
intoxicaitingly
limpid pools.
Dive in.
Frolic. Romp.
Revel.
Get drunk.
Then enjoy
the best
hangover
ever.

"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."*

The bullet that missed
on a sweltering 1972 day
remains the bullet
you fear the most,
the bullet still at large,
circling your life,
seeking a second chance
to lodge in your heart
that like all hearts
cannot stay lucky
forever.

The mundane world
must yield to imagination.
Eyes are not microscopes,
nor lips but for drinking.
Facts do not make a life;
events alone cannot explain
a single, beating human heart.
Nothing exists so basic that
it cannot be expanded and exploded
by whimsy and effort.
A butterfly is just an insect
until the tale teller awakens its potential;
a lover is just a lump of flesh
until a story renders her beautiful.
Our fictions generate a reality
beyond the dreary limitations of mere truth,
and truth is always mere,
always waiting for the magic touch of more.
Knowing only the particulars
amounts to knowing nothing.
Lift your hand to the world
like an astonished magician
and cast your soul’s spell,
ensorcell the ordinary;
lift your brush and paint a scene
with huge, wild brush strokes;
shout your words into the chaos,
bring about a new order,
a vivid, lush world,
a world that echoes, on and on…