the sieve and the sand

once I was a star-eyed child
standing still
between a muddy earth and a glistening sky and
dream of fire and God.
I had not learned how to tip toe
I was lighter then,
and silence was still.

Give me a holiday without
holes beneath my feet,
clowns dancing above my head.
oh a holiday,
a holiday’s
scent of lilac and jasmine,
soft and intoxicating.

Never trust anyone who doesn’t cuss.

If I ever have children, those six words will comprise the whole of my fatherly advice,

but if they want more wisdom I might add that one wants to be watchful around people who cuss.

Opinions, I’d inform them, are like assholes, in that everyone has at least one,

and they usually stink (not always!), and that’s all I ken.

red and pink
pack your bags
tomorrow you’ll be a dad

and notes scribbled on the back
of receipts showing your desire
to not lose even one word of
whats coming

all the people wondering why you chose here
to write it down

will words
can a word
describe the experience

new - not feelings or experience
LIFE
of mine!

no desire to eat
placenta
but oh to see her break
into the world the very first time

that very first breath
i want to see her

but much more
to kiss your head
to pray for you

i want to hold my daughter

gleaming and dreaming, running for air

clopping and sopping, fighting unfair

(hug and hug and hug and hug)

Sure,

flowers are nice

but not near so nice

as the smile

on your face.

Pink petals of snow

moved out from trees to find

their new sidewalk home.

eyelids cower back to call on arms and brain but mind enough

curse your mom once your chin breathes and you find where you’ve been dropped

float or swim around you’ll drown or hit the wall

(tired or not)

but if you busy yourself going nowhere long enough to turn your head on purpose, even if upstream, you’ll soon enough reach one place: where you guessed and saw better and better

The sky is my home
a roof I won’t lose
In the torment of night the moon smiles softly,
the silver rays ease my heart, and
breathing feels enough.

learn to play your favorite song
you’ll see the math
lose the music

PLEASE

never learn to read my writing
you’ll see the joy
lose the poetry

Tonight
I enjoyed
the solitude
of crossing the street
in a downpour,
hood up,
into the
buzzing neon lights of a
chinese restaurant,
escaping these
pink petals
wilting and dripping.

24 years after 1984
and i’m still reading dystopias
because they seem the most true

I Want to Believe
That the world will be a better place
That everyone will be equal
That the future is on an upward course.

but no matter how much i want to believe
i can’t get past the lessons
that Mulder taught and the fear
that we are all mind slaves
caught up in our ideology:
capitalism
communism
what’s the difference-ism
if in the end
we are always wrong
in the end.

there may be no Big Brother prying around
but is America all that different?
there may be no Fahrenheit 451
but surely Fahrenheit 911 isn’t much better.
in our quest for a better world
do We inevitably end with a Brave New one?
or is it as Nathaniel said
that man’s accidents are God’s purposes
that no purposeful action will ever do what we intend?
after the Earth’s Holocaust
will everything merely be the same
in the end?

hurtful in texture but not to touch

because imagination is the foreplay of experience.

i think therefore i am,

and i also trust all i can see,

and believe only what i can predict

all it means is that i’m embarrassed when alone

not guilty.

fresh sashes over empty faces,

both struggling;

patience and keep worthless once a martyr is announced value.

seduced by the supple taste abreast

i wander the waning wide-open.

Convince others that one sees the world exactly as it is, rotten and unreedemed, and understands that one will change nothing of it not even our aging bodies.
Yet believe in the secrecy of ones soul that one can improve the world, even the neighbor of stage who sneers and cackles when she sees you.
Make her beautiful like politics, noble like justice, and generous like life. All turn in circle, so and how little it matters if she is vicious, if one is vicious, if the world is old, because all turn and stop not. Otherwise it’s death, the death people loathe or welcome, which despite everything never misses its secret rendez vous and lurks in silence, prompt to gather someone, anyone in its arms at the least excessive sign. The anguish of being no more is banal, one wears it on the forehead like an invisible tag:”will die one day”, and engraved in the feisty spirit:”as late as possible.”
Nothing is to be done, one is born mortal. Nevertheless, everyone precipitates ones life differently. Some people save and manage life like the budget of a country with an imminent crisis, others consume life intensely and fast as if they have only few minutes left. Most people, however, either resort not to think about it or emulate someone else life.
Still none of it matters, life holds everyone in the palm of her hand, and magnanimously question ones existence. She tickles and throws ones vulnerability in the face by simply asking: “who are you?”, and “what are you doing here on earth?”