she casts her pencil like a wand as magic soaks into the page her flannel cascades around her work, shielding it from curious eyes she tilts her head to listen to the lecture, but her heart is elsewhere running through castles and stumbling through candle lit streets colors tangle to mirror the expanse of her dreams she shares her soul with every meticulous stroke each face blessed by her style but never the same when she designs she never aims for perfection for she knows perfect is just a fancy way of saying flawed she erases and redraws as if her art could never satisfy her desires it can always be better but it is never good enough if only she knew I meant it when I told her I loved her drawing her art speaks to me like Mona Lisa never could

is scrapped; a Lost Boy, messily hand writ,,
can’t resurrect from memory the title or the
subject, or the precise provocation that
made me need a pen worthy provenance in order to exit~express~expel~exhale
my disordered grievances and

an output likely of seeping deepening angst,
of a middle ages man, in a midlife proto-
typical crisis, which now vague recalled with
the sadness of just really longest period of
dark December nights, alone and hopeless

let the origin be mundane, simplistic and plain,
probably trite words of hand sleight, of an
excessive heavy light weight, going ** ** hi,
woe is me, a time of loss and reincarnation of xjoys when stumbling in a new life that coincided and collided and coordinated with a new century’s commencement,
would be my best guess, that,

this version of my whodunnit is acceptable
even if not accurate, ego permits lies of many
colors, but it grants me treasure by believing
that the joy journey subsequent recovered,
that keeps the little engine that could acooking, in a still-quiet mid of night humming productive is:

primal
ever intensifying,
lighting the unburdening of age-ing,
burning of dregs of going away midnight oils,

and oh my,
even why now
a quarter century later
the fingertips continue to tango cross a white
tableau, dotted with alphabets of words unknown,
only uncovering that all the old ones were quite a usefully alive, when succored in new
combative combinations


(happy~sad that it is diminished into the
nether, a far far better fate, than one I would
have likely selected; a lost child, of your own,
will always
always be,
be you eternally)

and all the other here afters; for all are an
aftershock, a stunned embrace emotion to
a trauma, that stuns us into a overwhelming silence, when words fail, for they are but a tool, not always handy…in fact, sometimes the hands, their warmth, the slow squeeze of supportive strength, is the most
uncommon elegance
humans ever devised

After all, when all  is said,
that shard of a touching outstanding
will

survive longest in the tracks
and crevices of
our fingerling cells, handy
and purposed for those flawed deposits

that are always kept best within
our safest harbors of valued,
touches,
ready to be recalled
and better yet, perfected, when

*shared

is a delightful pleasuring, to be equally enjoyed by the giver as well as the recipient


say it slow, like it is a well chewed, tastefully
delivered morsel, let it hang in the air so
it is available to all, and greet it with the
precisely perfect response like an old dearest friend, recovered & uncovered once more, with the well considered, perfectly constructed and fine elegance of a


welcoming

I once told my wife I was going out to buy an envelope:

“Oh",  she said, "well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go  online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?"

And  so I pretended not to hear her. And went out to get an envelope because  I have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I  meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire  engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I'll ask a woman what  kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is -  we're here on Earth to **** around.

And, of course,  the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don't  realise, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we  love to move around. And it's like we're not supposed to dance at all  anymore.

Let's all get up and move around a bit right now... or at least dance.

Kurt Vonnegut

Eventide had blushed listless. Its once slick pink lips chapped filmy white until faded darkness claimed the screen. Crouching shelf clouds growl. The distinction between cloud and breath is long lost.

Bedroom-jailed for pre-teen misdeeds, I break out to watch the sky. My slack-jawed shutter yawns wide enough for a grateful, lithe-graceful, exit. I land dully on dust-crusted, dinner roll earth, too dry to crunch. Each damp footfall collects another coating of soft, fine flour, congealing into ghostly pedicure foam. Outside is airless, closer than my detention. There is no freshing comfort here.

As the prescient cumulus towers, the earth and I expect. We are storm-primed, desperate for the great release. We sit torrent-wired, tongues out to taste the fat rain drops. Our tardy Robin Hood will come to steal the pressing moisture from the air and send it groundward. We are alert for his redistribution. His deeds will turn flour puffs to glueing paste, and free wheezing chests in sweet, wet, relief. Low thunder is our drumroll with intermittent cymbal crashes. We wait for the splashes in slick, fuggy, discomfort.

The earth is waiting to breathe, and so am I.