Fake it till you make it, darling
We're not all as happy
as you wish you were
Pretend at your mask
It'll start to impress her

This is the way of the world, sweetie
We're not all as happy
as the story books say
Some of us die slowly
It could happen any day

Love is an effort, not a feeling
We're not all as happy
as the therapist would claim
Sadness is not the evil
It's the wind or the rain

Knowledge comes at a price, dear
We're not all as happy
as the TV portrays
Joy is not a question
It's light that shines or fades

Count on those that count on you
We're not all as happy
as the songs that we sing
Life can be quiet
It can make your ears ring

Evil wins when you quit, honey*
We're not all as happy
as we think we have to be
We can make life beautiful
If you stay here with me

Look at us, I'm carrying a basket made of trash
and you're carrying a mouse, well
the dog chewed up your glasses
but you're still rockin it
you have a single drop of coffee on your nose,
we're ready to go to D.C.

I had another where-are-we moment, it was fun.
Good, that's downtown Baltimore right there,
****** capital of the world.  

An elaborate mural graffiti.
Wall after brick wall.
A rustbelt city like Grand Rapids
Detroit Cincinnati.

Did you sleep well?
Yes I woke up feeling like a clam in a cocoon.
A sea creature inside of a forest insect, okay.

I've wasted too much time on both desire and regret.
Yellow bridge.
Blue-green supports.
Singer on the radio saying, we're young right now.

There's a healthy and an unhealthy way of dealing with pain,
I'm sorry for my selfish behavior in the islands.
I want to go back and leave a better legacy.
'Word.'

Last night to come see you I drove I-95 N, the overpass
and though the rest of the city was really moving
I was all alone up there, it was like
driving in the sky.

We pass signs saying: Icy Conditions:
bridges and ramps freeze first.
And a billboard: Learning Kick Flips
Takes Work, So Does College

We listen to our favorite island song:
love the islands, love the islands, oh.

You look like a rasta snowboarder girl
There's something really right
about having you in this car

An old man is sprawled
across my steps, in the night,
shouting for cigarettes,
crying out—as he does—
Lord, have mercy on a poor man’s soul.

**** or be killed.
That’s how it was
in North Vietnam.
He’d said that and pulled out London dry gin
to wash away only God knows what thought that got in--
I do not understand him
but I understand him
better than I used to.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst to do right.
Have you ever collapsed the bridge under which you slept?
Leapt from your bed when the earthquake hit
or lay awake in it when the kids came to school
with black eyes and suicide eyes?

Blessed are the poor in spirit
but the kingdom hasn’t come yet
and the children are too beautiful for their own good
and I am not good enough.

I am on Your steps, crying
Lord have mercy
on Your poor kingdom

I desire to frolic in land mines
Toxic compatriots desiring little past flesh

I talked like moving my mouth was compulsory
Word *****
Actual *****
Alphabet soup

Teenage mutant ninja hurdles
I think most of us have failed those
Switch my mind from off to on
But you can keep your ***** hose

Destructively productive
In all the things that don't matter

Pope brings glad tidings
Of what the Holy Spirit's after

Let's talk about ***, bay-bee
Let's talk about running free
Let's talk about all the mistakes we've made
Let's talk about Sexually transmitted infections
Let's talk about my music collection

20/20, John Stossel
I don't care if I get your name wrong
Justin Timberlake
Dances through your mind in a man-thong

At his little hippie college
he shows me a *** that looks like a wall
in a Rwandan museum, all skulls, he

learned clay in the Rift Valley
boarding school, on a kick wheel,
still his favorite

My brother is a potter
multicolor plaid shorts
little goatee

Banjo
Japan dreams
girl from Mozambique.

When we were little in Loiyangalani
we made tiny huts out of obsidian
while our Rhodesian Ridgebacks

sniffed the ground for cobras
sand vipers
scorpions

while twenty camels
walked by in a row
followed by tiny replicas

My brother is a potter, says to me
'When I am doing this I am
doing what I was created to do'

He makes a green and blue
candleholder for me which he calls
'The Islands,' light escapes through many holes

which look like sea turtles
pockets of air and
an atomic bomb just gone off

we turn off the lights
in my room in the hood,
snorkel in candlelight

My brother gives me
Rumi, incense, peace flags
We walk the silent night

smoke a clove
look at stars
like we used to do in the African riverbeds