Life’s an awful rat race,
and it’s getting trickier and trickier,
so forget the woes you can’t face,
and do nothing in particular.

When life starts getting real tough,
relax from the perpendicular,
lay back and kick your shoes off,
and do nothing in particular.

I write a poem
You write a poem
We write to each other
In hopes that the other will read it
Hear our words
Feel our pain
And yet we don't talk about it
We don't talk at all
Except through our scripted feelings
These thoughts pour out of me
Freezing into words on a screen
But what do they mean?
What do they change?
It's ok to love someone and not be with them
But it's hard to know when that applies
And actions are trickier than words
But here we are
Putting our art
And our hearts
Out there for the world to read
For each other to see
Feeling
Loving
Thinking
And yet we don't speak

We were writers in love
And now we're writers in agony

rub it in... rub it in why don't you? isn't that the point of capitalism, this competitive mentality? why're you looking at me as if i killed your mother with a ******* harmonica?

i love how people regress their national frustrations
into sports - England is perfect with football...
oh? did i poke a beehive just now?
is Brexit for real now? it is now...
apparently one of the Icelandic managers is a
dentist, he just does the coaching in the summer
part time - i was walking for my daily metabolic
dosage of alcohol a little suspicious, acting out
all doom and gloom - well, it's more fun than
paying your taxes or seeking out career promotion
to be honest, after all, abolishing asylums turned
the entire social cohesion stratification into an
asylum, everywhere you go you have the phantoms
of "men in white coats", everywhere, can't ****
in an alley, can't drink a beer in public,
forget adrenaline *** - the entire human potential
of civilisation the Englishman stashed in his semi-detached,
by the way... don't you think that a Londoner will
find himself in lost-territory outside of London?
i love how the S.N.P. are in parliament 'aving a go
at voicing their compulsion for Brussels' choc &
guillotine chop policy - they want in... oh! does this
mean goodbye Jack ol' Boy? really? well, if you need
a ***** might as well be Wales - they're hanging, they're
hanging, and finally the bubble will burst,
why not Union John (like a toilet) or a Union Jeremy?
Union Jeffrey - Jaffas? Jizzum - Jazz?
but they're out for certain, if a bunch of
barbers, carpenters and sheep herders can beat them
living the Leicester City dream, i'm thinking of them being
the second Denmark from 1992 -
i've had so much emotion in my heart that now
i have a ******* headache - go on! a third goal! get in!
bam wam thank you Black Betty, bam ba'h lam.
it's not the football that interests me as much...
you seen the fans? ha ha! *a'woo!
              a'woo!                                    a­'woo!
a'woo!          a'woo!            a'woo! a'woo! a'woo!
mind you the sober wisdom of Alan Shearer
but that ******* chant man! coupling the missing
trill in the English R (how many gym sessions was that
to get the R to not trill? 2000 years and counting?
trickier than a French phlegm hark mind you)
and extending the E, well, the A isn't really necessary,
it's still reel...
*but who the hell decided what vowel goes where
and what vowel goes in anywhere given a change from
i - aye - and í - as in a punctured punctuation of
e    - prolonged -            and c            -
            a variant of        is              i.e.           ís
and not the German                   iß                    -
called a Kama Sutra of tonguing - slightly zeddy -
you really start to get polishing that mahogany table
for starters - no one gave me the rule books,
what's an offside, what's an penalty, etc. etc.,
i'm working at the scrapheap of language -
there was no congregation akin to the Diet of Worms
(ˈʁaɪçstaːk tsuː ˈvɔɐms) - try deciphering this
educated alphabet - upside-down Cyrillic for starters,
a bit of French, Greek iota, then circus without
a sheering process to add the -ta:k, and there too
a gamma is missing due to the softening into a kappa,
tsu;?                     huh?      why not              ßu?
to mind the Chiral (kye-rawl) nature of S and Z?
ich haben, ih blaben blabshen? *****-slap this to Jupiter,
i will... Tao no mayo in this ninja chow mein -
then it just, gets nuts! ɔɐ is what i've been discussing
about the umlaut - could have just written Wörms -
it's not straight arithmetic - it's that ɔɐ... thing...
like woad but more like woo'ed - you sort of have to
speak sideways - wo'o'erms - werms - or
so i thought.

in hindsight, if I fell in love this easy, I should be able to fall out just as easy, but for whatever reason reversal always seems a lot trickier. faith is just something we use to trick ourselves into thinking everything's okay when in reality there is nothing left, so no, I don't have faith that we'll work this out because that would prove we couldn't. I'm not throwing what we are into the universe and leaving it all up to fate, halfway because I'm a control freak and halfway because it wouldn't be fair to our past, to all that we've been through, to shrug and leave it up to chance.

the night I was planning on leaving you, you were also planning on leaving me. we met up in your bedroom when the sun had just gone down and we were both exhausted, before you'd been at work all day and I'd spent hours in a bookstore, it was a very typical night for us to end up together. I didn't break up with you and you didn't break up with me. does it mean something that both of us had the intention to end it, walk out and not look back? or does it mean something that neither of us went through with it? later you told me the day before when you asked me to meet you in your bedroom at 7, you'd been planning on telling me you had to work it out with her. I laughed and told you that when you asked me to be there at 7, I nodded and decided it was the last time I'd tell you I'd see you there.
in actuality that night we had *** for somewhere around 2 hours and I decided that I wasn't selfless enough to adhere to the cliche of loving someone so much you let them go. you called me baby for the first time that night. to date, you've called me it twice.
in a perfect world, I'd be sitting at a red light trying to catch a glimpse of the accident thirty feet in front of me and I'd pick up my phone and tell you I was having an existential crisis because I was ten seconds away from being hit. in a perfect world, you'd smirk and tell me that's a really selfish mindset because someone actually did get hit and it wasn't me. in a perfect world, I'd lay on your chest and listen to your heartbeat and feel content instead of empty. in a perfect world, your arms around me wouldn't remind me of how lonely I am.
I know this love is real, and honest and incomparable, but I also know this love is selfish, and every time I dry heave in my car because your bedroom light is on and her car is out front while I'm trying to navigate, screaming "I have to break up with him, I'm going to break up with him" over and over and over, believing it less and less with every cry, I only end up loving you more, and that's some ******* *******
in a perfect world, I wouldn't have to write this. I wouldn't have to ask you to step outside because my chest feels so tight I think my skin might just rip, and we wouldn't spend 25 minutes of our 30 minute conversation having small talk just to trick my body out of panicking. in a perfect world, I wouldn't say, "she's waiting on you, are you going to be in trouble?" and you wouldn't say, "I dont know, probably. can you breathe?" and I wouldn't reply, "your voice makes everything a little easier," and you wouldn't say, "I don't like that you are in this place," and I wouldn't whisper, "in a perfect world, we would be perfect together, you know? in a perfect world what we have would be perfect. we'd be perfect," and you wouldn't get sad that I was thinking like that again, you wouldn't sigh and say "I know. I have to go soon honey," and I wouldn't say "I know. I know you do. I'll let you go," and you wouldn't say goodbye and ask me to text you when I got home safely, and I wouldn't say I will and wait for you to hang up before whispering, "I love you so much I think I'm going mental".

in hindsight, this should have never started. sitting here now I can tell you 4,000 ways this could have stopped before it became such a gross mixture of gratifying and the most painful experience to date. I read the other day that our hearts form before our brains so maybe my reluctance to listen to reason has to do with my heart crying out seniority and swearing it knows what it's doing. It's funny to think about the night we started and how many different things fell apart before you saw me and told me you liked my smile and asked me to text you. I wasn't even supposed to be there that night. I could call that fate, that the stars had me and you in mind that night when they got my gig cancelled and called me into work, or I could say something like, "in a perfect world, I could love you, and you could love me, and that could be enough"

You are distant from me,
Not in space or time,
But in a trickier dimension altogether,
Known as love.
And your distance
Makes me wish
I could build a spaceship
Fit to travel at the speed of changing hearts
And bring you back to me.

Empty words pour over one another and we bath in it
I want to *****. Pinkies crossed, keep my own blood promise.
Clasp raised hands, you're just two ******* grand.
While the empty crowds and fake personalities go crazy in the stands,
And the non-imaginary friends rally to take a stand.
Judge me, judge them until you're at full self esteem
Shiny train wreck tracks, two tons more and full steam
Ahead, altered image in your head to fit the rhyme and time before we split
Apart into the tiniest of atoms, I wish you'd shatter and splatter already,
70% water and you're still pretty **** heavy,
Though if by mass or volume remains a mystery.
Open eyes, twisted spine, take your shoes, give you mine
The top of the pond is warm, but just wait until the dark fills the lake,
And the hopping waterbugs overtake and your body is no longer your own.
Queen, **** it, King, sit on my throne,
And look at the useless fruitfulness that I have grown.
Trust you as far as I could throw a stone and it landed among the seeds I'd sown,
Silver puddle reflects to me that the you I'd known has left me all alone.
Friendship without sun drowns us in a matter of hours
***** fertilizer and weeds choke out the flowers.
And all the while this ***** dreadful night
Can taste the lightness of our fright, and be remembered as the day,
That the privlaged beggers finally picked a fight.
*******, we used to care about one another
Though I won't say we've grown up or apart,
Our dimensions seem to have warped an awful lot.
It could be that this is art in the rambling, symbolic diary sense,
But let's have some common sense, no props to those
Who cheat and repeat, force the burden of meaning on the helpless seedling.
Abstract art and children separated by a mirrored glass wall to encourage real work
And here's to the curses written inside the bathroom stall,
Embraced and erased, then forgotten years later
Memories wiped without a trace, this human race
I'll bet you can win, but I still run faster
You tricky ******* set up traps along the track
Encouraged by the sadistic master.
Paper, tin and plaster;
Save the past so she remembers the tactless *******
That was presented as a present and in the present now presents
A trickier problem than he could devise if he had tried.
Perhaps he never lied, but looked at the fingers, little miss
Scarlet tips, tried to deny but the die is dyed with fine metallic mist.
Gleaming puppy-dog eyes pour remorse, of course,
But given another pure, white sheet
Would prove even more efficient in "accidental" deceit.
So row, so row, goes the lame claim that my words manage
To stay same in your brain, gain an image of the pain and strain.
No love, never then, never again.
Continue talking, and walking apart
I'm sorry, screamed. What's that you say?
Hate and love splatter tiny red dots on the scatter plot
Flash frame, freeze for a fraction, minds captivated by action
Divide and multiply the fractions and traction,
Keeping the same, grown apart, helplessly together,
Until, comparatively, even static falls apart.

There are ways
To be ready for a death of the soul.
The way you'd write a will
Or take medication to ease the pain.
People to say goodbye to,
Loose ends to tie...
Granted,
It's a little trickier when you know your body will still go on
After you die.
When you know you'll have to leave it and then
Slam back inside
And handle all the damage done in your absence.
But
There are ways.
Silently I tie back my hair.
Pour myself a frosty glass of milk.
I hate milk.
Always have.
I drink the whole thing.
Milk makes it less painful when you get sick.
Whatever I hear from you tonight,
I know I have been terrified long enough,
And there is just no way
I'm gonna keep this food.
Too bad,
I muse,
Rinsing out my glass.
I did love my dinner.
I had hoped we wouldn't meet again.
In the mirror a girl with my face
Raises a debonair eyebrow.
I wish I was as good at brushing this off
As she is.
I remove my earrings.
I put on some comfortable clothes.
It is rather like hearing the warning on the radio
That a hurricane or tsunami is headed your way
And there's not enough time to leave,
Only to prepare.
I am piling sandbags.
I am sealing my windows and doors,
Retreating to the cellar of my soul.
I am
Mechanically,
Numbly
Doing everything I can to minimize the damage,
And prepare to pick up the pieces.
I wonder
What will be salvageable
This time
From the ruins.
I hope the advance notice
Has made a difference
Because the tension of
Waiting for the storm to hit
Just might stop my heart.

we danced in starlight
and slept in mirrors,
leaving our heads
and finding our spirits.
small cities and escape plans--
like sardines we piled into the metal,
viewing different slides of life.
chasing the echo of thought
pinned between railroads
as sharks to the sea,
salty and brine.
we landed in Midworld's bar,
stepping out of our skins
and into new cells.
like dna strands unwinding
in a sea of atoms.
holding together on a galactic
cord.
we wrote our own science fictions
but finding your body again,
is trickier.

mind you, ancient egypt has infiltrated modern languge with the digital age... whatever you want to call them, acronyms or emoticons or emoji... whatever... they're the same as ancient egyptian hieroglyphs to me... please tell me that :) isn't a modern hieroglyph; sometimes i'm really & desperately searching for a modern rosetta stone.

trying to introduce diacritical marks
to english is probably
as hard as trying to push a whale
through a man's ****...
   (camel & the needle counter)
   saying that,
              introducing the german
ß into english?
two words: systematisation vs.
         systemize            
                 so much shorter when
the grapheme (ß) is used
                           in either example...
trickier when you look
at the devolved trill of the R
in both hark (french)
   and anaesthetic numb (english),
sure, the former goes well
with the cigarettes,
   and the latter?
                        general apathy
of the british public...
   apathy, hidden emotion,
  acting, a numbing experience
      with regards to a hope for trust.
saying that, i have found not
diacritical application onto
the R... unlike the spanish N (tilde)...
i had to go to russia,
  and find something
             that might resemble
a diacritical mark, indicating
  a requirement of *trill...
     i came back, successfully...
  indicator of a trill in R?
       яobot.... яow...      
                    яed...
   the english are like the japanese,
although the japanese
    pronounce:
               R = L
while the english pronounce:
                                  R ≈ W...
       (e.g. row   and w'ohw)^
obviously the latter example
is more subtle than the former
example... as noted by
                    the conjunction sign,
why я to imply a trill?

                           |/ Я
                     O
            R
                                        rotation
   and then, invoking a mirror ( |/ ),
     for the chiral representation.

^ i'm not learning the silly linguistic
   alphabet... the americans already
   simplified it, by using "the left hand of god",
   (yes, hebrew is written from right
    to left, which makes it easier
    for someone who's left handed) -
    how? the H...
    look at these two linguistic notations
    hope, the english  /həʊp/  
   and the american           [hohp]...
   i'm not learning this silly notation system:
an area of study, conjured out
of thin-air,
                      or, given examples
such as                  ə                 ʊ
   in terms of copernicus?
                     would that be grammacentric?
     or              homocentric?
               comparatively?
  grammacentric = heliocentric
    (that life revolves around words) -
                      or?
   homocentric = geocentric
           (that words revolve around life)...
right about now, the two seem
  hardly distinguishable...
                        well... at least a galileo
wouldn't have to worry about
a vatican censorship...
               since in this dimension,
   the "vatican" is mob rule...
  or as i like to call it:
                   a crowd of klein führers.

Like a pack running from a predator
we all dispersed
without ample time to say goodbyes
confess to one another
which beautiful moments
that we treasure most

Like a pack running from a predator
we knew the drill
it's inevitable that we all must leave
but that still does not set us at ease
our hearts pulling in new directions

Departures are always much
trickier than arrivals

Time slips by quicker
as the ground we walk upon ripples

And what was once familiar to us
feels like Déjà vu
we think we've been here before
but then again, we're not really sure

See, we're walking with new feet
down an unchanged street
coming across people
who want us to chop up our time
place our experience on a line
that can be measured

We all know that's not the real treasure
but we indulge them
for their own pleasure
they just don't know any better

But we do
we know that travel can't be plotted on a graph
it's effect on you is not linear, like math

And the people who we meet
enter our lives out of pure chance
our hearts collide and the fates dance

In the depths of my soul
I know it's true
that however brief
I was meant to meet
each and every one of you

I fell in love everyday with
people
places
moments
conversations

All of which will serve as
my central station
while I attempt the navigation
of re-assimilation.

igloo:
me-glue,
# @ ~sick ice     seems like bypassing the 502 bad gateway is getting trickier and trickier... no problem: where there's a will, there's a way (however cliche that sounds)...

i still can't believe that i've managed to study myself
ergonomically - i'm like: wow...
i have literally perfected the art of ironing shirts...
i used to hate ironing, now i get a little tipsy
and i'm like: shoom! the iron sort of glides of its
own accord... first the collar,
then the yoke, then the cuffs, then the sleeves...
then the front without buttons, then the front with
buttons, then the back... bam wham: thank you ma'am!
it is truly sinister that my modus operandi
is stressed with the infamous: arbeit mach frei...
i know it, everyone else should also know it...
but under the banner people were given
pointless tasks... concentrations camps made a joke
of work while beneath the "veneer" they were simply
utilised to slaughter people...
but even doing menial work: chores is releaving
as a release... i can automate my body...
i don't have to watch t.v. (or Plato's cave)
or for that matter fall into the Cartesian cognitive
"insomnia": am i really a "thinking" thing?
sure, i once had this pristine narrative in my head...
now i just comes across shrapnel pieces
of "narrative": mostly just... oh, right, i...

my to be father-in-law... the ****** that messed up
my guitar.... my acoustic Martin & Co.:
she was a stunner... anyway...
he called me a charmer...
   i like him... i was truly fond of him... up to a point...
later... well that diabetic fat **** get eat his
pudding while i spray dust into the atmosphere...
again: what is wrong with me?
oh Gemma, Gemma, Gemma...
a single mum, a boy in the background,
9K in debt... and i'm flirting with her...
as subtle to the best of my abilities...
what, is wrong, with me?!
perhaps i've had too many roller-coaster rides
of thrills in the ******* brothel...
but she's petite and that special hue of ginger...
might as well lodge a ***** onto my forehead...

point being...
apparently women still listen to astrological
demands... like there were any to begin with...
zodiac signs...
zodiac signs "tell the truth"... next time i work with
her i'll ask... if she's a Libra: no...
if she's an Aquarius... no... if she's a Cancer: YES!
if she's a Gemini: no...
                     i am yet to meet a Leo...
if she's a Sagittarius, YES...
                             being a Taurus etc.

but if women are so concerned with these matters
i figured... beside the showcasing of history...
construction of the pyramids,
the Mongol sacking of Moscow,
the ****** sacking of Moscow...
the burning of the great library of Alexandria
by the Christian in-breeders...
whatever the hell happened with the Mongols in
Baghdad...
the defeat of the Mongols
at the hands of the Mamluks...
the battle of Lepanto
that gave us Don Quixote...
      the twilight of the Aztecs...
             how ancient Greeks became rigid
Byzantines... etc.

o.k. so that's a sample of history...
me? well if i'd really want to experience everything /
understand everything or anything through
the lense of Darwinism... i could, but... no...
i can't be bothered going that far back...
Jung's ideas were always more concise
for me and the lived experience...
English thinking is not for me,
whether it be Darwin or whether it be Hobbes or Locke...

sure... the Englishmen can sing...
Milton... Shakespeare... but please don't give me any
English ideas... they run on objectivism for
the most part and i don't deal with
objective language... with "fact checking"...
i need language to be nuanced...

history through the lens of etymology:
the origin of words...
or, rather... to live in accordance to the meaning
of one's name...
Matthew: gift of god (from the Hebrew Matisyahu)
Conrad: wise counsel (Germanic)...
this ******-all of the question that's:
what's the meaning of life...
well, live... and find out along the way...
but primarily... live up to your name's meaning...
not everyone can live up to the meaning
behind the name akin to Alexander
or Xerxes...

                        i'm literally surprised that there might
have been a Peaches Geldof...
but not a Gomorrah Smith...
          fitting to the times... but even i'm not immune...
pronoun-bollocking and all that
reincarnation pillage of a blocked toilet...

i'm going to pursue charming her...
even though: it's certainly not good for me...
why? oh, you know... the thrill...
and the disillusionment that comes with it...
even though i have a phallus and a pair of *****
between my legs i need to feed into the tingling
sensation that i have a ******,
or that she's thinking about me while i'm thinking
about her and she might be *******...

as weird as that might sound: at least when growing up:
when a grew his hair long he was most likely
into metal / rock music... it would never *******
stick / translate as taking up a transgender
offensive!

what the hell happened to metaphysics in western culture?
i'm starting to doubt whether it ever existed
in the first place, then again; if a language
has no study of orthography... Charlie, ****-squat-ens...
perhaps in the 19th century you could
elevate calling a spelling mistake an orthographic
mistake... no! that's not how orthography works...
for orthography you require diacritical marks!
English doesn't have any!
little and litle is hardly an orthographic mistake:
it's just a spelling mistake:
English is almost a phonetic arithmetic...

    let me show you how an orthography looks like:
gówno     & not guwno... i.e. ****...
chudy - thin (masculine) chuda (feminine)
    that's CH as X - i.e. ha...
but then the oddity of a X without a C...
heroizm - heroism...

maybe that's why i never heard of anyone with
dyslexia in Poland... i've heard of a bad orthographical
aesthetic but never about someone with
dyslexia... after all: dyslexia isn't a complete and utter
illiteracy... it's the end result of the language
being written one way, while spoken another...
because if you were to write English as it's spoken...
well... it wouldn't be aesthetically pleasing to the eye,
would it?

the supposed argument "against" ******,
i.e. "there are too many consonants jumbled together"...
if you know how to divide a word
into prescribed sounds that correlate to the letters....
akin to the English SH and CH
     it is a language gifted with the trait of:
written as it is spoken.

coming back to Gemma... i'm about to launch a full-on
charm offensive, only yesterday i sent her a link
to what i was listening to (with a photograph of my perched
on the windowsill with Quorus - the maine **** -
sitting with me) - the prophecy theme from Dune
by Brian Eno...
she's looking for meditative music... well then...
i'll give her meditative music, medieval music...
i'm going to charm the pants off of her...
i know she's a single mum... i know that there are too
many pitfalls...
                              but i can't get rid of the butterflies in
my stomach when i think about her....
i might as well shoot myself in the foot...
no matter... this was going to happen, anyway,
i'm a fatalist after all: i know i will come off disappointed,
hurt should i fail or for that matter: not have any success...

but i like the way she smiles like a matriarch...
what links will i send her?
well... the obvious... chants of the Templars...
some Jordi Savall - stella splendens in monte,
    laudemus virginem mater est...
hammock's ketonic album...
godspeed you! black emperor's - F# A# ∞

oh for ****'s sake, why am i in love?!
   why now, why with her...
                 i've seen what love does to me...
it's hardly pretty... but i have in me the sort of
"thinking" process best associated with
creatures at the lowest point of an existential
hierarchy... after all: even tapeworms and viruses
are charged with a will to preserve their
existence without question...
     it might be morally apprehensible to want to sleep
with her given the fact that i might
**** up her boy a little bit more...
then again: what am i? i don't have the sort of income
that might pay off the debt her ex left her with...

at the end of the day: it's what i feel that is more important
than who i know or, for that matter: what i know...
i need to feel this... i need to feel more of this!

Every end is a new beginning.
But where do you start
when there was no end?

Life is tricky.
Love is even trickier.
One thought can change the way
you think entirely.

You may think you have it all
figured out. Only to have
one person distort your
reality.

I had thought I knew what life
and love was.
Then you came into my life and
had me scrambling to fit pieces
into a puzzle that didn't belong.

Unfinished poetry is normal to me now,
because there is never an end to emotions.
What you may feel now, may not be how
you think later.

Poetry has a beginning,
but it doesn't always have to
have an...

Math is appropriating the qualities of form so as to make generalizations about their interactions.
Like saying W=wisdom, l=love, and s=speech, then I could say W(l,s)=Wl+Ws.
Here wisdom acts as a qualitative change of l and s together.
Or, W(l,s)=Wl*Ws.
In this way wisdom act as a multiplier, but it could get trickier if wisdom acted as both a multiplier and a qualitative change.
So I could ask how I could represent that.

The difference is that wisdom has no physical representative.
Whereas stating V, a smooth vector space, has elements (e1,...,en) automatically gives a representation.
Functions onto this space would be characterized both by its definition and representation, much like the term "running".
What seems difficult is adding more and more verbs together to form other verbs, where these verbs have a whole list of what is included.
Also, why would two different symbols, like walk and run, have similar qualities?
Or, why would two similar definitions, like escort and escrow, have different meanings?
Thus, although math is said to be a universal language, it still is a nuanced language, and the number of years and hours spent learning it is directly related to its familiarity.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                    When is a Man Ripe for Harvesting?

Sunflowers are easy enough – the petals turn brown
And the base is yellow, or better yet
When in the heat of summer birds and squirrels
Present themselves in your garden as dinner guests

But humans, now – that’s a bit trickier
It would be most undignified to be eaten
And pills and electrocardiograms
Are even more undignified in their own ways

Autumn would be better, on a golden day
Yes, autumn, bright autumn
                              when the geese are calling

We're ****** into the Game of Life
Crying, "Here I am! Make way!"
And then we have to play along,
Whether or not we want to play.

Confused and bewildered at first, we strive
To gather together strategic tools
To help us maneuver through twists and turns,
And as we play we learn the rules.

The game's not always easy, for our
Priorities often need rearranging.
What makes life even trickier yet
Is that the blasted rules keep changing!

Once in a while we win a round;
And then once in a while we lose.
We learn to celebrate our gains,
To ride out storms, to pay our dues.

We also learn that fellow players
Are NOT always on our side.
Thus, it's necessary for us
To be prepared for a bumpy ride.

Along the way, we will encounter
Liars who try to sabotage
Our efforts to thrive. We also have to
Learn what's true and what's a mirage.

Ah! Those moments of happiness--
We want to grasp them to make them last.
But sad times make their unwelcome entrance
And must be dealt with until they've passed.

Close calls often occur, and at times
We don't even know that they are there.
Don't be neurotic and paranoid,
But here's some advice: always beware.

Play with gusto, and always maintain
The enthusiasm of a beginner,
For in this game, each of us
Can ultimately be a winner.

Once we make our final move,
Forget grasping, fortune, and fame.
The rules will have changed again;
We'll be playing a different game.

-by Bob B (3-22-20)