By the grace of Neptune, and the humor of heaven,
We are free to carry on erroneously.
To the unsounding ailing, time has no meaning,
And in reality, indeed, presence is fleeting.

Patrons sit in a Chinese restaurant,
They look like quilts.
The subjects of anonymity. Trees bent down heavy with fruit for their families.
Rich with memory, they are the royalty of fortune, having found
nothing perfect, but something adequate
that makes sense of the wild
Of city towns and streets. They hold close to each other,
like jackets in this coming winter weather.

Sorry tonight,
the road was long and dark
And I could not see my friend,
or at least her face, in my mind’s eye.
Sorry, I guess, for being numb and devoid,
and yet my apology is a feeling,
thus I hope yet.

It’s been so long that I do not mind lying,
though by truth I had better yet set that down,
for I can’t keep track of myself, a mess I’ve already become.

Yet things are not so bad, not so barren as the tough vine,
I wake up every morning and, bless fate, I have a means to follow, that means within my heart. Were that means ever to die, may my heart beat again that I may reform some new means, one away from fate, one made within the realm of honesty, where my agency resides.

Speak easy as led by good feeling,
a meaningless pass,
a meaningless pass.

in your light i feel small,
fragile,
gossamer struggling with
the morning dew.
each bead is a word i almost
choke on,
reflecting tiny sky,
reflecting you.

where are the spiders that
spun me?
where are the gods that
molded you?

i couldn't care less if those
questions ever get answers.

Kindness may be a simple vanity,
I know some of you may struggle with this-
I do too, and to this I can't demur.
When I was young this was not a question in my mind,
And though I was not particularly kind, I was simple,
It was only after I decided to try to change myself,
No matter the cost...
That I was made aware of the darkness within.

On the bright side, however,
Some artists have made it abundantly clear to me:
In great failure comes simplicity.
And others say that the truth is that we are our own masters,
and that it doesn't matter how much time we have left,
only what we do with it.
So pessimism may be handy.
"Let heaven come slowly..." - Emily Dickinson

Green to the eye
begets the visage: life-
Startlingly simple,
a color tells it all.

So ‘tis with the note
and the morning earth is smelly-
I ask,
by what happy accident
is everything made plain?

Like a dog bearing its belly
or a moth sleeping in daylight-
the unapparent thing of life
these words just cannot say.