The pen drew dots in my eyes,
my grip lessened and there I was
Nothingness

No, not bad
No, not good
Nothing

Nothing was...
Nothing

I liked to spend most of my time being nothing
in the bath tub
While the days happened without me
and blurred over like watercolor

every emotion has its shadow enrolled
in an ad on the six o'clock news

Science of virility, once
quackery, now proven,
Rhinohorn substitutes and such,

mere hints of unspoken rites in clawfoot tubs
at sunset.

Relieving, reliving
recall the pain

products pitched at every pain.

A pill, a plan for any pain,

for each

and ever y
dis comfort or dread.

Oft fear's the trigger
symptom,
fear of one name or another;
we gotta pill
f'that, phobiabout it.

tell y'pusher y'got it, step by step,
somnambulism. Doctor, Doctor

Am bein' sorta vague, y' see, a need
how to', tuts t'see

Doc say, on TV, 'tween the lines,
pull
PTSD , he say,
we can all do that now,
better 'n carpal tunnel in the eighties

Hey, opi-oid whistlin, fishin, re
min-iscing

Back in the day, we wusht f' nut'in' t'do,

now, me 'n' them voices in m' head,

do nuthin', ala time, jest watch.

Meditate, cogitate, take thought, fret not,
nothin' t'do but wait. Seeds gotta grow.

Snow is melting in patient drips, the theory
is that water's where idle words wait,
and as the axis ice recedes,

those idle words return to the cycle and
rain phrases worthy of heed, in theory,
the secrets frozen since God knows when.

Cognitive troubling knowns
have been loosed, to flow, and shift to
spirit once mormorphing back to
fluidity on a speck o'the highest dust of the earth,

growing an anti-bubble, a water balloon
rain drop,
remembering everything. Imagine that.

Water remembers everything. I heard. Somewhere.
That's another the or y.
Ys are odd alone.

There are thoughts not even mathmaticians
think they can know,
within mortal realitification
as mortal minded men imagining
times and time and half a time mean anything constant,
any fixed weight worth, wor-th,

methinks we know less of worth than those who sell.

Don'cha hate a false balance?
what scale, Libre, eh, Claws of Scorpio, y'know,

how many words to or from God does it take to
tip the scale of

Just is?

What ruler is here that
we might use right, to measure
what'samatter?

Is life broken? Is ignorance killing truth?
Is there no way where there seems no way?
Who wants to know?

Trow ye not,
We could do better, we could
pay. We sapiens aspiens augmentatious
could
buy the golden
rule,
tried in fire, drossless,
at our own expense, in a sense.

We can stand up under knowing good and evil,
inside out, leaning into good as good can be,
living edge-wise balanced. Being
confident, doubleminded, sapient sapient augmentedus being,
paying life attention
for all we are worth. Okeh. That's all I had to say.

I used to paint my nails every month,
the night before chapel,
just to have something to scratch off the next day.
(Flakes of OPI No. 25 in the cracks of cheap pews)
Today I peeled the clear coat from my index finger in math
while I stared at a bottle of Diet Pepsi
Kept up at night by politics or teenage hormones, but usually both.
(Transferral: Catholic to Jewish, Madonna to Lindsey)
Steel replaced by fingertips, arms replaced by thighs.
A year ago, I wouldn't have believed I would be thinking of foreign policy puns at midnight,
even if Jesus himself had told me so.