and what is justice in the face of adversity?
what is confidence in the midst of cowardice?
what is fine and what makes your throat tight?

i do not know, for i am simply a poet
but i wish for someone to guide me
so that nobody hurts me
so that i
no longer cry...

An Optimist’s Guide to Falling in Love With a Woman


have a very minor fender ******, you’ll never get a persons digits any easier, consider it a bonus first date, a stress test interview, when humans on their worst/best behavior, their true nature revealed and tough exteriors melt when gallantly take full responsibility, details to be discussed over dinner

risks: she’ll  will never ever let you drive her, even after, no...never ever after, the issue is closed, ‘twas your fault and is non-discussable

critique her order standing behind her at McDonald’s. blowback assured! charm resistance and openness will be tested, but you claim pure concern for her well being, even after offering to pay  a dollar for every calorie ingested if she only switches to a plant-based burger

risks: hamburger grease soul staining, no love stain stick remover handy and everybody knows mixed marriages really never work tween bronco busting cowgirls and city tree huggers

you take a spill, nose in the phone crossing street, she lifts you up with wonder woman strength and gentility, you sputter with half-feigned indignation for you’ve embarrassedly first sight-fallen in love, all your words and everything else is failing and flailing as she tends to the cut, drives you to her office where she stitches you up, while cracking jokes that are truly funny

risks: she is a Dallas Cowboy fan, or worse, someone else got there first, and you need life long therapy

she’s in seat 10C, Miami to NYC, pretending very poorly to not be reading this very story-poem you’re creating, but doing so VERY poorly because she is editing, making suggestions, punching you in the arm excitedly, asking if you want to share a cab home, for she reveals that she too, secretly dips the quill in ink and needs an expert opinion, yours for sure since you’re SO good looking too!

risks: the weather diverts the plane to Baltimore where you live together happily after-ever, cause you’re both tired of life in cities with 3-13 perennial losing NFL teams and it is exquisitely equidistant from your annoying relatives
and ex’s




Baltimore Washington International Airport
4:29 pm Dec. 2nd

believe
that you can surely shuffle your miserable untested
vocabulary into never been heard before combo’s,

believe
your insights have never transversed in my blood stream,
a poem unheard, yours, a transfusion of not-my-blood type

believe
you are special in life, in love, in pain, in sad madness,
only you can feel primarily and primitive, all of us, tertiary

does the optimist mock you?

most certainly not.

achieve
poems are allusions, born each time, first time, summary illustrations
of eyes, mouth, all your sensations together, make a messy birth canal

achieve
your first is our first as well, make the risk-taken a celebration,
newness is a gift unique, bond us to your children issue nouvelle

achieve
with insolence of the blind beggar, a teasing teaspoon of outrageous
good fortune, a fist hammering breakthroughs of pain and glory


N.B.
my words have been tasted by thousands of thousands,
a fleeting glory that is instantly lost to the crumbling
dissatisfaction that all that your needs, your findings, solutions,
the breaking of the chains of your boundaries, drawn by imposition,
the fragility of the lines that contour your image, make you nothing, are nothing more than just another poet which is the most,

most glorious honor one can proudly bestow upon oneself

In Death
there are only
Machines.

Machines
made to guide the man
to a heaven
that never existed.

Create to start day
Relax by midday
Learn by late day
Contemplate to end day
Read when it's not day
Dream it all away