Sh...
What's that whisper?
You didn't hear it?
No, only me.
It's just my soul
in the dark.

Wait...
Who's behind?
You don't feel that?
No, only me.
Just the ghost
of my shadow.

But wait...
If it speaks
and it walks,
should I be following
ignorance ahead
or the knowing soul behind?

If you catch yourself falling for someone,
                                                        ­                       *run.

The sun beat down on my exposed skin.
I looked up into the blue and drank it in.
I felt the heat soaking up the water that ran down my back.
Not realizing what danger lay on this track.
I brought my eyes back down and they fell upon you.
My heart beat picked up, and my muscles tightened too.
Suddenly a new internal force sparked to life.
And I wielded it like a knife.
For the first time they came together, my body and my mind.
And I used them like I never had to make two beings intertwined.
Like a missile I was locked on course.
Only disarmed by an older wiser force.
I never forgot the feeling of discovering myself.
Of using them together to collect hearts for the shelf.
But that was then and this is now.
Life has worked her magic and eventually my confidence had to bow.
I still know how to weave them together, how to use my special skill.
But I am no longer that girl in the water, armed and going in for the ****.
Now a woman with battle scars, and smile that has earned its place.
Looking for a hunter who can maybe keep pace.

There is no religion in meditation
but it's worth visiting with your mind
in the morning. What will you find?

Equally, think about the moose and nation.
Cleaning house no less than apocalypse,
food rations. The mind lights at random.

Sit ten minutes. Breathe in, out.
Counting, or imagining the mind's a horse
galloping leads to other thoughts, not

catastrophe but also not allowed. Visit
with your bones which will outlast
words and desires. In them there's a fire

banked low, where particles of sun are
stored and slowed, or stilled entirely.
That's where I reside. Not really,

not certainly, not virtually. Then
eyes open, flowering or snow falling, the day begins
no wiser, happier or myself.

You are a cockroach

you are a big cockroach crawling up a pegboard
the kitchen light suddenly shines
and you must get through to the other side
but testing every evenly spaced hole you find
your shoulders will never fit
and to get away you've got to fall.

                                                          ­    fall
or refuse to crawl and wait motionless
until inspiration with an overview filters through
or you die of hunger, lack of love, fear of death
or the outlandish hands of another angry animal
with a wisdom wiser
but infinitely useless as your own.

so you die. but now the big hands are gentle
and you receive a respite of thoughtlessness
and the garbage grave has warm chicken bones
and you don't care what happens to you
or the oldest species of proud recalcitrant insects
or procreating it or foraging a grubby kitchen sink

for food. the joy of making life is new. let go,
and through the night be carried carelessly along.