stars burn effortlessly
while poets scrabble
plucking words like agates
from the mind’s pebbled shore

they have in common
the pleasure of those who bask
in simple outputs
of mysterious affairs

all we have in common
are kindred thoughts
sifted from every scrap we’ve read
as we seek ideas to explain us

adopt them, call them our own, tell others;
we're ripe and designed to spread
through an inky vector
or letters, anyway  

if you do it well enough you get a piece of paper that says
you’re qualified
but one can partake au naturel
and still have a good time

this is my compliment to you:
i'll show you the worst of me
and you’ll feel perfect
in comparison

if i were a better friend, i’d practice
become a learned artist
to sing the best of you
barring that, i could cheat

you want to be a pebble,
i know the way
come down here
and i'll feed you something from my garden

it will probably make you sick
you'll use words like rustic or pastoral
when you mean shabby and feral
woozy from the earthiness of it all

you’ll be charmed into mistaking seduction
for enlightenment
a tragic folly
like warming oneself with spent nuclear fuel

but enough about my dissipation
let us laugh instead
a wink between old friends
that is nothing and everything

for this is my compliment to you:
remember you are devastating
even when an echo
is the only applause you hear

long after i’m gone
this pebble will remain with
my touch turned to sand

These thoughts of you,
are like the smallest pebble to the grandest mountain,
everything holds a certain value, contributing to
the intricacies of this existence.

And there must have been
an unpleasant disturbance in my heart; as if a pebble
was thrown in my eye’s still waters- causing many ripples.

Oh, it’s perfectly strange;
not quickly recognizing your own tears
anymore;- some people do cry better in the rain.

I became hard
not like a man
but like a stone
impenetrable
camouflaged
a pebble on
the beach
able to blend
in with all the
other pebbles
and let the tide
wash over me

show me how to wear diamond
dreams without trembling
beneath their weight.

I am a pebble, peeled off
from a peak, fraying and falling,
faltering at its feet. end up

locked between the lips of
married mountains; eyes
hinged to the sky, feet sinking

into earth, chest caving into
a coffin where my heart hides
its head. as despair crawls
in to devour the decay, I linger

between the decomposition, dead
to dust to soil—waiting
to bloom again.

We ponder upon the emotions and metaphors
                                    of the meaning of forever.

Is it our wording our voice, is it a single verse sang
                            within tune with out a tune

that holds our meaning to the here after.

What is out contribution,

      do we sing or justly fade.

For we weren't a stepping stone,
               but a pebble that got buried in the sand.

Now but lost in the footsteps that never even felt us.

If we were the mirror of our creation
                and not made in perfect silhouettes.

Then we aren't the creation of perfection,
                           as were flawed beyond our sell by date.

Then that which made us is imperfect in its design.
                  So not omnipotent,
  flawed in its own blueprint.

And so just another pebble in
A dry pond where wishes die.

On the road to mental perfection
                 you have to get over pebbles,




before you conquer mountains.

Never let a pebble
       Become a boulder.

For troubles should never
     Accumulate to the point
          Where you are lighter


Than the weight of your woes.

I swallowed a pebble in a garden today. It was hard and thick and the graininess of it scraped against my teeth. I ***** the stones back up, shiny with bile. Perhaps I'm just tired.

I retch on cue and he smiles