Leave your hair the way God made it.
Keep it natural. Why try to
Straighten, curl, dye, tint or fade it
As if your Lord were one to lie to—
While you copy that silly look
From someone else's beauty book.

If your tresses, dark by nature
You decide to bleach to gold,
Oh dear vain and fickle creature,
You've believed the lies you're sold.
Low on info, you lost the plot
By not esteeming what you've got.

Cut it any way you please to.
Braid it, if you're so inclined;
But do refrain from paying fees to
Color-tinters fit to blind:
Day-glo green, fake blonde, bright blues
Are strange and nauseating hues.

What could I do to take your pain away?
You counsel others, but it’s yourself you’re talking to.
I see you nervously fiddle with your wristband--
I’m pretty sure I know what you once tried to do.

I wish I could share my healing skills--
there’s no one whom I want to help more.
But we’re far apart. It’s me who is helped by you.
Someone else must unlock your secret door.

Freud once said: It is love that cures the patient.
But can we truly love at will?
Take the love that’s freely given,
and banish what has made you ill.

Take my hand, as I walk this path--
guide me on this rocky road.
Stay with me until the end--
help me carry this heavy load.

Teach me joy and ecstasy;
be my love and inspiration.
Light my fire and set me free;
make each day a celebration.

Give me hope and make me see
how to be that which I aspire to be.
All have flaws that make us human
and the path before us is uncertain,

but whatever crosses I may bear
they are lighter knowing you are there.

In habit for the chase array’d,
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer, a shade !
                   Phillip Freneau

Haunted by desire’s mad melodies,
By faces idealized in reveries;
Memory itself is haunted
By photos never taken.

To visualize is to be taunted
By scenarios that reawaken,
Longing for what has never been,
Yet what the mind has seen.

The haunted are mistaken,
Hunting memories and dreams;
Trying to catch that which vanishes
upon awakening. Doomed to realize
That the hunted bird ever flies.

In the middle of the journey of your life
you had wandered from the straight path.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
and you took both of them.
You broke on through to the other side
but came back stateside pretty often.
Being lied about, you stopped lying.
From men and women you could sometimes require
the lineaments of gratified desire.
Clouds may wander, lonely,
but you’re pretty good at finding company.