Obsessive-Compulsive (the mark)

Compulsion’s curve
(I am a good boy)
Continually approaches a line
Reaching for infinity
But never reaches
Home
The stretch of the horizon
Is forever
Obsession is ever unhappy
With its endeavor
Always overshoots its goal
Never attains it
The mark of a mole on a cheek
A mistake
An inborn curse
I am the bastard child
Of two people
Who never loved one another
But I am a good boy
May I always remember that

A Simple Idea

The simple idea that we are complete in a way we do not comprehend…
When the shell cracks and I am aware of not being perfect, knowing deeply I cannot be, cannot fight to pretend to be anymore. Fully myself, no one, an empty whisper through the hollow crust of everything. Flesh, blood, lymph, excretions. I am here. That is enough, and it is nothing. I am bereft. I have accomplished nothing, and never can, and in this, I am absolutely free.

~ inspired by an adorable, little read -- Don Miguel Ruiz' The Four Agreements

Yesterday, today (an ode to the first day of autumn)

"Yesterday..."
there is a sweet feeling
a melancholy and a nostalgia
"...all my troubles seemed so far away..."
a little swing of hips, a shoulder dip
"...now it seems as though they're here to stay..."
a celebration behind the counter
"...oh, I believe in Yesterday."
I pay for my coffee and seek out a table
today, already bright

problem is

problem is
problem was
and I'm still
holding it
between
clenched
teeth

answer me these masters three

Issa, instigator
Basho, streamlined magic
Buson, boring

Judas was no antithetical folk hero

I do this in the name
of disdain
for those
I admire the most.
With rage for the one change
I will not make,
I will destroy the miracle
I cannot be

worried Walter

when he frets
for his "me"
he cannot see
anyone else

terrified in mind
sees galaxies collide
threatening
his fragile self

through clearing brush
the whole "us" appears,
crystalline and blue --
tears jerk through

his stomach turns
and throat burns
Walter finally weeps
for the wounded world

Precocity

plastic remnants
collect on the lawn
the drive
the woods beyond the house

it's raining LEGO's!

the titanic spacecraft
-- their own creation --
obliterated
by this legion
of 11-year-olds, armed
with makeshift missile launchers

the mark

ominous
the slow movement
of future
into past

let it be as molasses
let it be aware of itself
an ear, listening
for its own hearing

let it believe
in its own coming home
a remaining and a molting
into oneself
into the essential heart
the mark
we all bear