What do you see when you look my way?
Do you see me, or do you see something else?
Do you see all the imperfections I possess?
These imperfections make me feel less.
Like the shell of a girl in a picture frame.
Do you see what I see in the mirror looking back at me?
A body, all deformed but shapely; this body has had two beautiful babies.
What do you see when you look at my face?
Do you see the unevenness of my eyebrows and the squint in my left eye?
Maybe there are enough glasses for it to hide behind.
Do you see the freckles splattered on my face?
The sun hasn't been gentle on this aging face.
What do you see when you look at me?
Do you see my darkened eyes, so deep and dark that the colors almost don't shine?
Do you see this hair? It's starting to thin with little strands of gray.
What do you see when you look at this aging woman who is almost forty years old?
Maybe…me?

,000 drafts of poems proposed,
some but a bit, a title, a bob,
some wondering why are they kept
in suspended animation, the fire of exiting
from placenta to screaming baby, most,
patient waiting, over the undivided divide,
the Cumbersome Attention Gap to cross,
to the state of hallelujah completion

this race should be an Olympic one,
it is unwinnable, but only open to poets
who willing to go the unlimited distance,
every finished oeuvre, spawns bornes two
more, so you, fool, even a fifth grader,
intuits the higher math of you’ll never
catchup, but rise invigorated to meet,
greet the wonderous sunrise challenge…

and the promised ones, “next one for you,”
the unconditional incompleyedy poems
so overdue, the muses send an armored truck
to collect just the largesse of fine fines…
as my old West Village friend sang, you poet,
“might as well try and catch the wind”

this leads me to observe a new day’s first
birthday, even as Leonard sings Yom Kippur
hymns of mortality, and all the ways humans
can pass thru the gap in the morn clouds that
is the passageway to the Higher North…

you see, this is this poems day of naissance,
one day, one candle, now extant, but sooner
to be a not, one more poem sent heavenward
after a  brilliant brief coexistence with the
innards of my mind…

dear basil,

please start drawing again
singing again
please start loving again
and living again

please start writing again

<3,
basil

That's the good thing.

Every 40 seconds
someone in the world dies of suicide

Every 41 seconds
someone is left to make sense of it