trying not is trying, too

Trying not
Is trying, too
If not it be
I stand by you

Your efforts wasted
Not or so
Yet something got
From aiming low

If joy not then
At least then grief
So terrible
And yet so deep

When once desire
To rise at all
So high aspire
From break, from fall

sitting in the booth behind the sweet lady who smells of mothballs

sausage omelet
yummy, indeed
waiting
between bites
naming
the things in my mind
in my heart
places
where I call myself out
hold myself accountable
pleading
with my mind
to quiet
to leave off
the anguish
however
costing far less
than all the waiting
and patience
will pay forward

early onset

my mental retention
getting so bad
anymore

images like bubbles
from the mouth
of a cosmic fish

I miss so much that rises
from the depths

immense
immense the possibilities
when I can let go the nitty details,
allow the essentials
to surface

hold only those
that strike the tinder
set my wires afire
resonate with those places
where I grow
so weary
so alive

blank page blank stare

blank page
blank stare
writer's block
clock running out

page fills
somehow
unfills, empty
once more

I have fallen
into a reverie
fallen off
the page

of preconception
of selfishness
of all the extorting
of dreams
from starving people

a third solution (for Thay)

Thich Nhat Hanh has been ill. This is something I wrote for him a while ago, and am reposting. His "Third Solution" is the balance point between fighting and fleeing.


some push, some pull
some empty, some full
some rich, some poor
some block the way
some open the door
one fist strikes in hate
many, angered, retaliate
an answer, a reaction
expansion, then contraction
a new day dawning
the eve brings an end
the morning delivers
the birth of a friend
a world comes together
to search in unison
billions of hearts whisper
a third solution

the purge #2

colliding
with myself
on a Sunday afternoon
waste management
and antique preservation
both needed
for the purge

I Want You

to wake up
in a coffee shop
to Bob Dylan's
"I Want You"
all I want
and all I need
here
in the not having
oh, that child-like
harmonica
oh, that exuberant
awful
voice