2018 is a crazy over-pour of blessings and joy and love and
cheap art and fur babies and hugs and eating Mcdonald's with
our mouths open and poems and Shakespeare and roommate pizza nights and honey'd down tea and planting flowers and trips to
the 99 cent store and so many good pens that are everywhere and don't seem to get lost and this purple-blue feeling that I could get away with it all - gold that tethers to me like Christmas lights,   am I too bright? Will this silver crinkly valley let me sip much more?

While gallery sitting
amidst colorful paintings,
jeweled and sculpted objects
I chatted with fellow artist,
Jeff Filipski

Always on the edge, raw, bleeding
and alive!
Jeff does not mince words, tells it honestly
like it is...
beneath the dark blue rumblings
brilliant electric flashes of intuition
a loving Soul flowers on the
world pond

During a rare glimpse of the Truth
not given to many
Jeff's words struck my Soul

As he lay in the verdant arms of Nature,
gentle currents caressing his spirit,
swooning under the vast blue kiss
of the sky

His heart cracked open
gazing upward
with a raspy voice, tears streaming,
and a choir of infinite echoes
he declared:

I KNOW YOU!

They said this was a safe place
Then why do I feel like a profusion of
daggers and knives are being thrown at me?
Why do I feel like...      Whenever I speak
They're cursing...     Burning my ideas

Even though I'm invisible
I feel like they'll still find where I'm hiding

Noise surrounds me
As I sit in silence
the sun shines like a spotlight on me
no one else sees
But I can.

I'm safe when my sun is here
When my rain comes my insecurities
are washed away along with the
Bloodstains and knives on my back
I've been hurting from
While I dance in the rain
The sun comes back
I'm the same yet brand new

When will we
walk again
my Love
by the turquoise sea
under a blue rose sky

Starfish weep, dolphins sob
on the rotting dead sea shores
of Florida

All the sea Gods are angry
with bloodshot eyes
they throw their tridents down deep

The fathomless bitter tears
and red tide

bleeding....bleeding...bleeding

I am always looking
Looking for that permanent high
Trying to end my anger
I will keep looking
Chasing enlightenment
Chasing enlightenment
For the rest of my life
I will be looking
I will be chasing enlightenment
Until I die
Just keeping hope
And thanking my mom
Thanking both my parents
But I will be searching
Like a detective
Hoping to find the
Meaning of life.

One day when I was walking
When I saw some prayer flags
Prayer flags swaying
Swaying in the wind
Just swaying
Bring people luck
Making them the luckiest of the lucky
I ask what a simple life
A simple job
A simple bunch of flags
Then I become jealous
Jealous of their simplicity
Wishing
Just wishing
Just wish for their lifestyle
Prayer flags
Simple life, simple job:
Simple flags.

We walked in beauty at daybreak
a cool breeze blew through our arms
like long feathered eagle spirit wings

Sky pressed its cobalt palms
together in prayer and
bowed to the four directions

Stopping to commune with
the new baby across the street
round, gurgling Buddha face radiant
as the sun glittering above us

His mother expressed concern
over a recent viral infection he'd
just gotten over, her greenish gray
eyes beaming with maternal devotion
in the morningstar light

We continued our beauteous trek
I paused just off of Island street
to take a pine blossom bath
Thanking the noble, handsome pine
I immersed myself in the aura cleansing
prickly, tickling pine needles

A dark blue car ambled slowly pass me
wondering, "What the heck?!"

Laughing, I wandered on...
singing to the sun dancing higher in the heavens
showering the earth and all my
brothers and sisters
in Golden Beauty

i don't even know
what i want anymore,
writing poems in your notebook
on my apartment floor
i opened myself to you
like i've never done before
you roamed those empty hallways
before you slammed the front door

but now you beg me to let you back in
does your love ever end or begin?
i don't want to be hung up
on what could-have-been
but i'm exhausted from repenting
for all of these sins

and i'm running out of ways
to numb the pain
you're gone from my life
but i smell your scent in the rain
all i wanted was my freedom
but you're a ball and chain
all i wanted was pure love
but this one's driving me insane