oh dear one
lost across the sea
so unknown to me,
how fair thy little mind
thinketh and playeth thy harp!

no man shall raise a hand to thee!
least ye scorn him,
banishing him
and his brazen knuckles
to the brazen edge of
the whole brazen universe.
shy be he not!
lameth shall he be forever.

but two shovels should be found
and used for to dig unto the ground,
a new grave: doubly wide and doubly deep
for two of the fairest of them all:
the maidens lost to the wilderness,
left to her own devices and thus
self-deprecating her selves
into planetary alignment
with that new planet they just found
that's like 1,000 times bigger than Saturn
and with millions of icy rings.
forever cold shall she be!
forever unknown to me!

bear witness to thy handiwork:
my shoulders, lips, and toenails are all mine;
for a moment they were thine
and in breaking my peace
i thus aireth my whine.
and i'm fine. really, i'm fine.

taketh no liberties with me!
giveth no light,
shareth no warmth!
beseech me no inquiries!
for i have not an answer that makes sense,
nor a limb that works perfectly,
and not a day goes by
that i don't ponder you.

yet
the
moon
pondereth
the
sun
forever
and
ever
and
ever
bu­t
never
the
two
shall
meet.


wandereth, fair maiden,
and i shall wander, too.
but should you face about
my eyes will surely see you.

I drink the hot tea,
but I do not taste it.

you could travel to india.
you could hop on a plane
and end up something like
10,000 miles away from here
in the middle of the rain forest
overlooking a beautiful waterfall,
the mist kissing your cheeks just
the perfect amount to remind you
that you're loved by Mother Earth.
you could do that. sure, you could do that.

or you could dig a really big hole,
i'm talking about a massive hole
that you could start to climb down in
and work towards reaching the center of the earth,
running into all sorts of mythical creatures:
demons and demigods, demogorgons and dugtrio.
you could get way way deep down there
and find that in the center of it all is
Indra's net, and all of a sudden
everything in the universe makes sense.
and it would make sense. and you'd be right.

or you could realize it all
right here and right now.
you could understand that
going anywhere out there
really doesn't take you anywhere.
you could see that by going anywhere
you prove that you don't quite understand
the point of what you are doing.
you're putting lipstick on a pig.
you're restating the directions
instead of just following them.
"Bake the cake at 450 for 10 minutes" becomes
"Cook the pastry one degree above 449 for 600 seconds."
the truth is that you've got every right to do that.
it's just that one way or another
you don't eat unless the cake gets baked,
and it doesn't matter how many ways you read the instructions,
you've still gotta put it in the oven and wait.

just got out of the shower
and i'm already sweating, buddy.
but i can't get the ****** thing off my mind
and i'll tell you why... oh boy you'll wanna hear it.
at first it's got you feeling all uppity
like you're ready to just
bounce up out of your seat
float to the windowsil
stare out for a brief moment before
whacking open the shudders
and taking the sunlight on your face and chest,
(loosening the top three buttons to really get the full effect.)
hell... the durned thing makes you wan-
t to break open your own durned rib cage
so your heart doesn't burst right through!
["you're your own monster!", somebody yells
but the rest of the audience shushes him right quick.]

then, buddy, comes the whole galloping and galavanting bit
where you triple jump your way through Villeneuve,
carefully noticing the shopkeepers and
hourglass employees at les boutiques.
["fingers crossed she doesn't drop it!"
an irate audience turns and glares... he stops.]
The nostalgia is ripe with a spring air, a thick humidity,
and a ******* chorus of plants and animals following you around.
You're on your first day of summer vacation!
You're free of every living thing that you've ever known and
you have no past present or future to introduce a care in the world!
God himself crafted your milky white edges
for this moment and this moment alone.

but then at the water's edge it all changes, buddy.
and before you all know it our anonymously familiar heroine
is stepped in (what feels like) a simple self-pity
that's been passed and passed anew since her
little house on the prairie ancestors,
["probably should've grabbed that spine!"]
and there's no telling when the panic attack will begin.
she is chained to the shore in true promethean fashion,
and the lights dim down real low as the tempest approaches.

but it never comes.
instead she is greeted by the ghost of #$%^##$%s passed
and the words that a younger woman wrote,
a fierce woman, who takes cream in her coffee at the cafe
but always tips the people because she knows how hard it is;
someone who would pick up a three leaf clover and keep it;
a lady who loves surprises.... just loves 'em, good or bad;
a seamstress who could weave a pirate's tale,
and leave you waking up in the morning itching for adventure;

... somebody who listens when other people speak.

[nobody moves but somebody starts crying and the spell is broken.]

she is startled alive from her musings by the coast and finds herself
surrounded by a thousand heroes with one face that's smiling at her...

... a lousy smile, i'll give you that,
but a smile, and an ordinarily little push of the thumb
to fix that spine back into the shelf.

no money is needed to be brave.


not a dime is needed to show respect,
nor to grant privacy to another being, no matter how small.

nothing is required of you to be kind;
to care about the smallest things
that most people overlook:
feeling the moth on your leg
or paying attention to where
the wind is gusting from.

[just looking at a tree
and revering it for standing
tall and strong, daily.]

there's no charge to be aware.
and in that awareness comes
a certain knowing that
in due time all things will come to you-
nothing that is forced is
ever happening at the right time.
wait and it shall find you.
move and it shall seek.

nature has it's own economy:
it is an economy that accepts
love as currency and
the exchange rate changes
moment by moment.
in this world, i think,
the value is ever increasing.

you can do it, my love.

with your first step,
you are on your way-
and how good does it feel!
how light is the pack
now that your feet are in motion?
darling you could trek to the stars.

in your journey
you'll surely encounter spirits:
some will come to you from above;
most will well from inside,
but a few will rise from below,
(evil and toxic enemies of the angels).
pay heed to each spirit,
request and receive its transmission
and refer again to your fingers,
releasing their grip of control
on your hurtling craft.
You have done this and should rightly be proud.
(That is to say, smile at your righteousness.)
A path appears before you from the darkness,
the Lord is crafting your road from gold-
You cannot fail!

Forgive the populous their opinions.
Whether you are loved or hated,
you are on the path of the Lord.

i am sitting here. blank face.
counting the ripples on the pool.

one.... two.... ok, enough.

the hairs on my arm?
too many.
too blonde.

practice minor pentatonic scales?
if only i knew what they were good for.
blues scales?
ok.
root, flat third, fourth, sharp fourth, flat seventh, eighth.
[**** i'll be proud if that's right.]

overthink everything.
write way too many poems,
save them all as drafts.
wonder if you'd even respond.
think of calling you.
decide not to.
"your unwanted calls"...
or something that you wrote forever ago,
keeps me away.
you keep me away.
[if only you handled this by saying
maybe in the long run we'll actually get to know each other...
this is for the best.
wouldn't that be grand?
wouldn't that be way better
than some short term relationship
that would just end in this hatred for me anyway?]

i pout,
look out the window,
notice the blue sky.
i wonder why you can't be happy.
i wonder why I can't be happy.

i wish i could just forget it,
but christ-
there's a hook somewhere inside of me
and it's wedged in real deep.
the only way out is through
and the only way through is you
but there's only one you
and the last time we included you
was the time you got out of my car
and left me with a mouthful of
buddha says this and taoism says that
and blah blah blah i know what i'm talking about
but i don't know what i'm talking about
and you know just as well as i do
that i don't know what i'm talking about;
oneness and demons, we're all god and ego and prayer, just stop it!

you could have sat there and listened, though.

but you still got out of the car
in that construction zone with your friend
and did you look back? i don't know
you never said before you left for italy and left me
antique shopping at just the gosh-****-cutest shop
this side of the PA/DE border
don-cha-know.
i wanted to buy everything there and say
"let's have this one. let's have that one."
let's register for this one.

its just you always have a script in your head,
but i always fumble my words when they mean something,
and i can never talk about what i feel-
never say what i really believe.
maybe there's just no words for it,
definitely there's just no melody for it.

but if there was, it'd be all like...
capo on 1: amin, g, f, c.

say the word and we'll start heading home.

oh see,
i will take this outlet
[this two pronged outlet
one of you and one of me]
to reply because
i picked up the phone today
and called someone else
thinking
"oh hell i'll warm up a bit
before i dive into this-
i mean, i want to get
my personality right
don't i?
I MEAN DON'T I?!?!?!?
WHO THE HELL AM I ANYMORE?!?!?!?!"
panic set in.
i called my dad.
he's always calming.
we talked about christmas ****.
what he wants. what mom wants.
it calmed me down.
i figured out who i am:
i'm just a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude,
not breaking character til we're done the DVD commentary.
[paraphrased of course cuz I don't plagiarize.]

i'll call you
but how late will you be awake?
i'll call you
but what are you doing right now?
i'll call you
but why am i nervous?
i'll call you
but aren't we all one Being?
i'll call you
but but but but but but burt but but but but but but but but but
don't you have home work
or something better to do
than listen to me preach
and flap flap flap flap
and not hug me again
and not listen to me
or are you listening to me
or am i neurotic
or is it all smoke and mirrors
and seriously i'm coughing uncontrollably
and you'd think i'm crazy
but it's that holiday season
and for the next handful of weeks
i've got a handful of excuses
of why and how and what and how
but burdens only stack up
and i've released literally every single one
except i'm still replaying josh ritter in my head
and the car ride home from that purple chair
and the walk around the duck.

[not stopping for breathing
or trimming my toe nails,
which started growing again.]

and LA and Delaware and pencilwania and where we met on that pier at that show in socal and house of blues and mini golf and lists and names and places and "there's no hell when you die, so don't look so worried."

and i'll call you
but will you answer?

it's gonna be tough, boy.
aint nobody sitting here
telling you it's gonna be easy.
but look at it from the outside.
look at it like you're looking at it:
no matter who they is
no matter who they are
no matter what they say
don't let em get the power on you.
you do that, you lose.
do that, you lost.
keep the power;
turn inside for the power,
don't look elsewhere
don't let em say nothing to ya,
nothing not one word
that gets to the core of you:
that's how you win.
that's how you move on.
that
is
how
you
grow
up.

and then somebody comes to fill
up that space that you made
with all your confidence.
and she can handle it.
she wants you.
she loves you.
she need u.

If I could say just one thing to you
[and believe me, I am]
I would tell you to stop looking "out there".
I would tell you that you have everything you need.
I would tell you that you are everything you need.
Nobody can add anything to that.
and be **** sure, nobody can take anything away.

But you must share yourself with those around you:
your body, your mind, your words, your heart.
They are not for the PICKING. They are not for the TAKING.
They are for the sharing.
They are for someone to enjoy with you.
But lovely lovely love stop looking, please!
Release the pressure, drop the anxiety, ignore the stress.
It does not serve you.
It is merely in your head,
not in your bones.
Not in your flesh.
There is no "doing" in worrying.
There is only worrying.
And beautiful, that's not you.

If I could tell you one thing it would be this:
There are no rules that you do not make for yourself.
There is no time that you must do anything,
only times when you can do something.
Just opportunities that cyclically arise and fall away before you.
Did you miss one? That's ok.
Will another one come? Of course it will.
Let things come of their own accord
and you will end up happier than you could have dreamed.

There's nothing on the other side of that door.
In fact, you've already been there. You're there right now.
There is no lock holding you back.
No lock keeping everything from you.
You've got a pocket full of keys, and no locks.

Oh, if you'd only let me tell you,
I'd tell you everything in the world is alive in you.

it goes beyond just getting rid of things,
it's a way of life.
it means no unnecessary action.
imagined if you lived in your home by yourself
and you only did literally the things that needed to be done,
no extra stuff. no excess action.

that is minimalism.

the key is to be able to do that
when there's other people around.
the key is to be able to recognize
what's just filler and bull
and what is actually the meat of life,
because most of it is just
nonsense that gets in the way
of the important stuff.

but
it comes
from a perspective shift.
it's about seeing that
wealth is futile
and self preservation is futile
and that really the only purpose
to any of this ****
is to help others.
that is the only thing that means anything: helping others.

think about it...
why even live a long life?
why preserve yourself?
of what purpose is any of this?

we are only beneficial
when we are of use to each other.

we are of no use to ourselves.

is it weird that i feel like i never have any ideas?
i mean, could the idea fairy just speak up a bit?
is that too much to ask of my own personal imaginary genius?
just turn up the volume a little bit. ok, now the other ****.
everybody ssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
great, aannnnd i still can't hear a ****** thing he's saying.

they tell me that the whole world is speaking to me...
that there is an intimate meaning in everything that happens
and that it somehow pertains to my personal life:
the light turns red, but you drive thru anyway, and
BAM you get sideswiped and you're ******* dead.
they tell me there's meaning in that to learn from.
yea like maybe don't go out into the intersection
when you know **** well the light's red?

but that's not the kind of meaning they're talking about.
the kind they're talking about whispers like a willow tree,
like a real-life "colors of the wind" remake is just going on,
swirling around your head and through your *****
all the **** time... and it's actually telling you something.
see, there's a message in that ***** damage you just received.
(or did it pass right through like some Slimer type of creature?)
["a fireplace just kind of appears and he goes through it like this"]

yeah well pick up the t shirt gun, Egon, and launch a few into the stands
because there's a widespread panic down at the community park...
photographers lined up wall to wall just to catch the tiniest glimpse of
the yetti who's writing a hemmingway-esque classic from cover to cover!
tell me who tf ever wrote a book by sitting down at the computer,
looking at the blank screen, and just starting off in a clear direction like,
"well, this 400 page novel is going to be about this, that, and the other,
here's 15 events that will help us get to a coherent ending, now type!"
[i swear some dude reading this is gonna be like, "um.. i can do that."
yeah? well you can shut up for now friend, cuz nobody's listening.]

[sigh.]

that was the idea fairy, wasn't it?

to my darling who feels she's not:
our separation is mere illusion.
truly, your pain strikes me as i write this;
your sensations of abandonment,
and the decisiveness they have caused,
bleed from my skin into the fibers of my clothes.
i am no longer clean.
i do not feel pure.

to my severed arm and shortened tendons:
destruction is merely another side of life.
out of disappearance comes all things-
without space, there would be nothing to contain us,
nothing to allow and enfold our beings' spirits,
and they would sputter and cease like my love's flame.
i am no longer yours.
i do not feel full.

to the farthest star that my eyes can see:
your light reaches me- i glimpse you!
in the perceived emptiness between us
there is no distance to be found;
around us exists the infinite potential for
further connection and deeper growth in closeness.
i am no longer alone.
i do not feel sorrow.

learn to settle in.
no matter what the situation
no matter how bleak it may appear,
settle in.

you expect permanacy.
after all these years of change
you still sit back and
on a subconscious level, anyways,
expect permanency.

it's not going to happen.

so.
knowing that its not going to happen,
you can settle in and wait for the change.
you never get too comfortable at all.
and whenever there's a change,
and there's a big upraor about it,
you can join and and sing
"RA RA RA"
and
"i can't believe this is happening !"
......
and to yourself,
[again.]


settle in and
maybe shut the hell up about everything being
so miserable all the time.
chill out.
it'll pass.

understand this one thing:

your life is a divine poem.
meant to be played out amidst the heavenly bodies,
with all of their summits and troughs,
the vast open deserts of heat and exhaustion.
nobody is born any different,
we just choose to be so.


when your moments are few
you will not look back on the coins you didn't save.
you will recount the stars you beheld
and the glorious perspective the morning gave you
when you thought the night would never end.
you will remember the way drops of seawater ran down your face
and how you swallowed a few and inhaled a few more.
you will look with fondness on
the smell of fire and smoke captured in your clothes,
and the nights where you defined who you were
in front of yourself and no others.
you will remember the cold
and the heat-seeking wind,
extracting the life from your face;
your "poor" lips chapped on the face of the rock,
and your eyes barely opening against the frozen precipice.

should you consider suicide,
remember that nobody is asking you to leap to the end.
[in fact, nobody is asking anything of you at all.]
you are only required to step forward.
one step. the unknown lays before you.
and if, in your life-long poem, you find no more strength
for that one step- you find that step impossible to take-
remember how you were born in love, in life,
ready to kiss the cliffs and sing into the abyss.
leap off if you must,
but remember that you can always write one more line,
you can always take one more action.

and that's all you must do.

go for the chills my boy
whatever the hell it takes -
go for the full body chills,
the ones that start in your ****
trickle down the backs of your knees
drift up into the top of your cabeza
make ya think there's chakras and all that,
kind of chills that make ya think
somebodys standing behind ya
in the best possible light,
hand on your shoulder
watching you make the right decision
over and over and over again.

go for those chills, my love.

go for the risk. where's the risk?
who's got the risk? gimme! gimme!
pshh... selling risk up and down the stairs
like foolhardy can-boys sell miller lite
at the ball games that we coulda gone to,
where i never woulda seen your picture.
selling risk like it's real risk -
saying, hey! hee.. haa.. lookee over here -
we got risk for ya: start a family!
aint nothing more risky than that!
and then boom! your lying on
your back, in bed with an accountant,
and he's a'counting out your finances
planning your pleasures down to the dime,
[won't letcha buy that dress that slips right off.
ya know, one with the black lace all over?
never did a great job hiding nothing from me,
ya little piece uh risky business, you].

no, err, sorry then...
can't afford that risk...
not in the spreadsheet...
can'tttttttttt compute ....
err... no second opinions...
err... find FAQ's for further information.

i got a wooden spoon, derr.....
that's me ^^^.
spot the difference.

one makes ya smile,
the other takes it away.
one makes ya laugh,
the other takes it away.
one makes you come,
the other takes it away.
one gives you chills,
the other takes 'em away.

how's about we dine on perrier
and Michelin stars, tonight?
i promise i'll wear the napkin
round my esophagus, but only
if you reach 'cross the table
and tie it tight around me.
mmmn... tie it a bit too tight
at first, then slip a finger in between.

can you feel my pulse?

i would never ask
and you may never tell,
but do you ever see that
dream of us in Mexico?
it's okay. it's okay. it's ok.
you don't have to answer.
just hush now and say
something sweet to me
inside of your head.
Tell me dear tell me
do you still see us
at the Louvre, in the rain?
is it me standing there
or is it someone else?
how do his hands feel?
how does his voice peal?
does his fragrance waft
away from his skin and
tickle the ***** minora?
does he wash his sheets
every four or five weeks
to keep the lonely facade in tact?
does he live on a staple of
beer and roast beast,
an occasional moonshine
when the mood strikes him just?
does he torture himself senselessly,
incessantly, bridging the neurons
to find he's forgotten it all?
... does he love Cherry Coke?
no.
he isn't there with you is he?
it's somebody else. somebody
with yellow hair to his shoulders
and bright shining blue eyes:
the kind of eyes that tend to
outshine you, and all the
things you convinced us
you've got going for you.
the kind of eyes that seep charity.
oh, is he there with you when
you're snorkeling in the Maldives
and you realize that you've gone
just a bit too far underwater...
you're very deep when you
well know you shouldn't be.
then tell me: what happens?
you are found and swept,
carried and rescued until
BOOM! You breach the veneer
and there are all your friends
looking down at you, thinking:
"thank the Lord our Savior for
Titus Arnold Masters McMajor."

but love please love oh love,
tell me who you really see.
touch your lips and swear to me
that it isn't the mediocre man
who doesn't spring to your mind.
both of you without a stitch,
floating abreast and prone:

skeletons in the Dead Sea.

sometimes i wonder if shakespeare was behind the pen
that fiddled and diddled in that old church parking lot
i drove by it the other day but there was no one there
nobody freezing their buns off in the wake of the open door
nobody trying to canoodle in the back seat that wasn't folded down
nobody even thinking about pulling into that darkness.
would you even do that again? i would a hundred times think.
what even happened to that kid who used to write songs
and play them as if he were playing in front of a hundred eyes
but they were all your eyes and there wasn't a flame in existence
that was brighter than they when each lit up in its own way.
what even happened to the girl who showed that boy her house
and the colonial colloquial drapery and carpeting wall to wall,
her little sister sticking her finger into the brownie batter
and protective mother who i've gotta admit was 100 percent right:
stay away from the bad man with the non-leather patagonia jacket
and all of his sassy ideas that got him good grades in k-8
but really started to expose his weaknesses steeped in frivolity
when he got into the upper level courses and advanced placements.
[a GD mile wide and an inch deep, that's what me thinks jar jar binx]
stay away from the burnt out eagle scout who let his guard down
and allowed your guard down both metaphorically and not sooo... but
remember that coffee shop show that you never came to?
strange, it feels in this moment like an aching sore thumb.
i listened to joshua radin all the way home and thought
christ what am i even going to do about this can this work and
if it can work how can it work but if it can't work why can't it work?
because lord knows this lady is easy to please when we drink. but
silly,you're tough as ***** ****** nails when you need to be told no.
& i aint never heard of sucha thing as a dude who's charming as hell
when he's telling a gorgeous woman sum'thin she don't wanna hear;
make me a pill for that and i'll sell it on The Street for days without end.
[so how much supply you got when the thing aint even fda approved?]
"lose yourself in what you're doing and you'll never work a day" is
what they tell me while they cast me into this steel bending furnace
and demand me to find a way to be cool and relax and chill the f out-
been doing that on my own and there's no milky white ear to listen
or a record to put it on or even a GD vocal box that feels like working
unless it's singing showtunes in the car or harmonizing to justin bbr
like i'm the **** 6th man in the pentatonix or however many there are.
capitalistically useless thing i was born with and worked really hard at
until one day it told me i don't have the capacity to scribe anymore.
so i'm forever speechless like the kid who got coal for christmas last year.
& you'd catch me in that backyard again with all the 15 year old girls
still kinda trying to impress them but mostly you, & give my shirt away:
wear it and be proud that you snubbed the bad man who passed through
with the non-leather patagonia jacket in the old church parking lot.

the ultimate life hack
is when you realize that
life is happening right now.
it's not happening in the future-
i mean, it's not happening tomorrow
anymore than it ever happened in the past.
it's actually just happening right now
and no matter how many times somebody says it
or how many times oprah prints it in her books
or how many times ferris bueller repeats it on TBS reruns,
life moves fast and you've gotta slow down and just live it.

once you do this one time, you're addicted to it.
you find the simple task of folding the laundry
has some hidden mystery buried in it.
picking the lint from the lint catcher.
typing the keys on the keyboard-
there's some hidden mystery in every moment.
and these are things that you know you should be doing.
that's almost the worst part:
the mystery is hidden in the simple, routine, mechanized things.
the more we let machines do those things for us
the less we work with our hands,
the more emotional and intellectual stress we feel,
the less we have a mundane, mindless task to work that stress out.
don't sit there and tell me it's not theraputic
to rub clothes against a washboard for a while.
it's rhythmic. it's tribal. it's instinct. it's therapy.

we spend so much of our lives
working as hard as can to get away from these things,
and ironically they are what we need the most:
to be able to turn off the brain and just
scrub a dish for a half an hour
it's ******* mesmerizing,
an endorphin release.

but, sadly, if you're anything like me
you skip through these moments
and trade them in for 10 more mins in front of the TV.
Or worse yet, you actually have nothing to do
so you just worry and fret about dumb ****
until you've actually created a real problem.
don't be like the ghost-of-you's-passed.
make a list of real problems you've got right now,
and when you skip washing the dish
because you're opting for the washing machine,
take that 5 or 10 minutes and
work on solving one of them son *******.

Get-r-done.

when i think of you
it's always christmas in my heart.
it's always icy cold and brisk -
not the kind of cold that you bristle at,
but the cold that makes you gasp for a breath,
like you've just realized you're alive.

the feeling swells from my heart,
up the sides of my neck,
warming everything it touches,
enflaming muscles it has no business brushing,
until i can barely get any air down my windpipe.
my lungs seize up, just as they are,
and i can't remember ever taking a deep breath in my life.
are you buried down there in my solar plexus still?

i know i've gotta be out of my mind -
that's one thing i'm sure of these days.
but i can't shake that excitement from my heart,
like i might see you this time,
you might be around just for a few days
and we might sneak off together to talk,
dreaming dreams bigger than each of us,
bigger than both of us,
or just sit somewhere and be silent.
i'll make up and excuse about seeing an old friend,
not a lie, really. no, not a lie at all. simply understated.

god i'm thankful for these memories.
i'm so grateful, through and through,
for the blaze that flames on in my heart,
a feeling i could never forget, never replace.
God bless the freezing air, the frost on the windows,
the leafless trees, stiff and cold on the side streets,
the brick buildings and all their contained heat,
a hot tea, and you forgetting all the words to all the songs,
the fireplace in the downstairs den that I'll never see again.

God bless the early mornings and late nights,
the trading of songs back and forth,
the wrapping of emotional gifts and
the excitement of opening them in front of each other,
the beanies and layers of coats and sweaters,
the dressing up, doing of hair, & sweet smelling perfume.
God bless the light beers and sweet wines,
antique shopping and long cash-wrap lines,
lattes and americanos, hot in your little hand,
the smell of coffee beans wafting through my nostrils
early in the morning when mom is the only one awake.

but most of all god bless the music.
the sound of church bells drawing out
a year's worth of love and hope from my heart,
eternal, transcendent and completely dissociated from personality,
the electric guitars playing "o holy night",
my mom on the piano, a text from you on the screen.

i'd be nothing without that music, different without you.
i don't miss the arguments and the fights, the awkwardness,
but i miss the rosy edges of everything,
all of my experiences at Christmas are tainted by you -
i miss focusing on what i'm doing,
while always half-focusing on you.
"sure, i'm helping cook dinner - but did my phone just buzz?!"
it did. it always did. whenever i checked, it was buzzing.

my brain can't understand this
or plan what needs to be done,
so i will leave the matter to my heart,
the ***** of deepening, infiltrating
penetrating and incorporating all of the love it feels
into every moment of every day of my life.

out here, a glass is raised,  always waiting for your cheers.

there are no more turtles in turtle bay.

the last one packed up his ****
and moved out just recently.
i think he was quoted in the paper
as saying, well this place
sure went straight to hell
… soon as those **** toads
started moving in here.

luckily, there wasn’t even 5 miles
until the next bay where
that turtle from before
could go to live with some
other people like him, resoundingly
intolerant of toads in any shapes
or
sizes.

he built a house for himself,
that turtle from before,
and found a wife who
was going through a rough patch,
employment-wise.
he gave her some good advice:
follow your heart because life is short.
[he was full of good slogans.]
they thought about having kids
[and tried]
but decided in the end
that they were better off
just the two of them.

one night she put a cigarette out
on his shell while he was asleep
and he woke up and screamed
what the hell did you do that for?!
and she fell over, passed out drunk.
[might as well be a toad, right?]
he coughed up a bit of slime,
but didn’t pursue the matter further.
he just laid her down on the bed,
and left without saying goodbye.

the road to tucson was quite long
and he was an amazingly slow walker.
and a few days later he hadn’t even
really gone anywhere because he
decided to stay for like two weeks
at his buddy’s across the street from High Dive,
some bar they always went to
if it was after 1 am.
[no special reason- just proximity.]

but there’s only so many
times someone can watch
“fear and loathing in las vegas”
before anyone is going to feel
like he spent that last twenty years
on acid and wasting every second.
so he begrudgingly moved out,
and bumped into his wife at the grocery store.

hey
i thought you were gone.
i was at Tino’s, but his wife is back now.
where was she?
her mother’s.
what was she doing there
house sitting- you remember her mom does that quilting contest every year?
oh.
do you remember that?
yea… listen why didn’t you tell me you tried to **** yourself?
what
mary saw you…
oh jesus
... through the window sitting in the garage with your car running a while.
no- what? i can’t believe we’re even talking about this
well, did you or didn’t you?
didn’t i what?
try to.
yes i tried to, but i didn’t expect mary to be watching or anything.
why
no reason
why
i did it- i was just, tired
[...]
don’t you think it’s funny the way we eat out on wednesdays? every wednesday we always eat out
i have to go, actually
i didn’t mean anything
goodbye


eventually, the turtles moved back to turtle bay,
when a pet shop moved in there
around seventeen years later.
[you know, turtles do live very long]
and that turtle from before
solitarily revisited his homeland.

the hinge is creaking

it's about to pop off its hinges
break right off the wall
the same wall that's
pretty much held it up
forever
even in the midst of the
green grasses of the teenage golf courses
when you could see her through
the window or in the driveway
or whatever / wherever you saw her -
but maybe you didn't even see her.
maybe it was all lost on you
lost in your imagination
where you used to be able
to let songs permeate through the cranium
fill in the cracks and
smoke the crack that you
might consider your brain ...

there are people that come and go in your life
some of them make sense
and others keep on
going on and on - oink and oink
not making a lick of sense at all
forever for ******* ever
and there's nothing you can say to them
because they live in their own tribes
inside their own heads and
none of them even played with toys as
kids. not a single one. maybe one.
no - not even one.

there's a calm that comes over you
when you realize that you are the last
of your kind. nobody else - not a single one.
haha
the first and last of your own kind...
i guess we all are, huh?
thank god there's nobody else out there
just exactly like each one of us.

for the love of god
let me meet met.

nice to meet me.