a quote from Samuel Johnson, or Dr. Johnson, the storied eighteenth-century poet and essayist who once said:

“The sole aim of writing is to enable readers a little better to enjoy life, or a little better to endure it.”

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our “sole aim,”

Oh what burden the doctor places on our shoveling pens,
to be earthmovers
that dig trenches, uproot earth,
that lies and hides our faces, entombing our hearts,
eliciting and erupting emotions that cannot be contained,  
nor controlled,
indeed, deserving of replanting in
our shared selves, transplanted into a communal flowerpot
of our multi bursting colored commonality

lift my composing tools,
peer into
winter blue skies guarding the towers of
Manhattan isle, longing for guidance.
lusting for specificity of direction,
how,
how, to easy our burdens
with carefully selected and
careless wonderful words,
words that deal out caring uncarefully,
with a graceful recklessness of abandon
that open thy tears,
lift up the edges of your lips,
so that my duality is your duality,
the burden shared.
the burden eased…

to cry and laugh simultaneous,
lift and lighten,
a momentary distraction,
a cut flower in our vase,
that lasts but brief,
yet with each gaze repeated and
repeatedly,
well stains us with
eyes uplifting