Pressed against you like paper and ink
through the rolls of a printer.
Stories read to children
to help them sleep at night.

The author’s prized creation:
solar systems of endless
chances repeated
with each bursting supernova.

We could have a sky:
habitable or raining diamonds
or the catalysts for life ready to procreate.
Chemical reactions fusing into flames.

We are a fragile anomaly
of lives and worlds colliding.
We are words printed
across this infinite universe.

We were here before;

then, like blind people, we didn't --


notice each other.

Since time is taken universally,
to be measured in portions to each
thing a time and seasons, within that time,

to use the will to live, and let seem living
all - what, curiously wrought musings,
wordless, falling for the lure, seems living
moving itself aright, as often wines may do,
inviting titles do to musers unbemused,
but no child knows the meaning of things
such as admonitions not to look upon
the wine red, swirling beauty, see
books judged by covers oft stink of
deceitful meats, imagine the ruler's
condescension, partake in silence,

answering freely all who question why,
breathe-ing and eating,
I am but a temporary mover of matter,
from one state to another, as I pass along
this trail that speaks of long disuse,
where it leads, at this junction,
I lack a will to lie and say I know, but

I know, I am willing to believe, where
I would be if I turned around, here

from there, relatively no time at all,
nonsensed wish to be known,
for having been a survivor,
sensed as something natural, self

set up to become this old, enough
to know, no greater need than peace
with purpose, a faith that your duty

is to learn and make do-good things
from things not being used at all.

We on Earth, honestly,
we have no where to go and be,
we do know what must be done,
we leave undone all we have no

will, or means, no way, to do right,
no way to do at all, wrong or right,

yet, with a will used to prove, right
my will, a will used to wait, to see

after many days, few change life's initial
gravitational course.

Every time I eat here,
I wonder if she’s still in the restroom.
I watch the cakes orbit
On refrigerated turntables—
a silent waltz for the ballerinas running omelets and coffee.
Back when she excused herself to the restroom,
the hostess was probably still in diapers.

The joyful crowd throws

me into his arms, we laugh --


and then I lose him.

We are going
To die and
That makes us
The lucky ones

In the teeth
Of these
Stupefying
Odds, it is
You and I
In our
Ordinariness
That are here

The needle won't
Reach the record
And that's ok
We reach for
What to say
As the silence
Grows too strong
Yet nothing ever
Remains within
Forever is
Far too long