lessen

The lesson is to lessen, or a lessening. Not, removing or throwing away, but moving, as in stepping back. Step back intact and examine, or re-examine. I'm in for it, until I'm out of it. And when I'm out, I can see the best way back in, but less so (not the seeing but the being in).

soul full

There's only one soul, a dove coos, a rock implies, a leaf blown loose whispers before it dies. None of us are us, they say in chorus. It's all of us or we're all it, but we, we've been. broken. broken off, to become this, and that. and you. so aloof. And I see they're right, right there. Where I'm staring, into a nothing, and everything, it looks white. It looks to be. a place where I'm not me, or I won't always be.

the rain bowed

The rain bowed, deep, and the sky spoke in strokes of cheap yellow about how its time is short, or shorter. It spoke about how. How's a tall order. It would sort the how out with the clouds who applauded. They're still applauding the rain.

reasoning

Everything happens for a reason. The reason: being. This season's. Fleeing a fleeting feeling, as I'd flee a hard rain, I come back to the reason this season isn't. Being.

bat and beetle

A bat looms blue, not black. or brown. a moon pulling the tide of your inside eye back. and forth. waiting for the wings to move. This beetle, no bat, hangs, a small. coppery bulb. with no power to draw you in, and no need. It clings, a seed too nimble to fall.

As pretty as death

It's not all pretty. this life. me. But what's not, can be. Pretty. It's not all sweetness, and light. this life. me. But what's not, what. stings. tangs. bites. What casts shadows, it can shed light. Or give sweetness. As unpretty as it is. An upturned bug, big. brown. hard. Its legs, twitching toward death and night. Sour, and ugly, and yet pretty in this fading light.

$8.23

An unexpected check came today. Made out for $8.23. Made out to me (not much, but it's something). A silver cup was held up, today, or tonight. By the men, some almost boys, in white jerseys. They're on TV, and they're smiling. More than smiling. And kissing it, the cup, a prize (less unexpected than the check, but more fun). And with them both, I think. Though with them both, there's no reason to think. But with them both, more than thoughts, comes a hope. A dumb hope for better luck.

stirring

Her soft-hard bulk, young and old, ripples and rolls. She unfolds beneath it, the asphalt blanket, its heavy-slight weight. Then, she pushes them. She pushes stems out, these creeper greens, and even greener tips, flowering, to peel back its blue-black, and breathe.

super moon

It's not too soon for this June moon to pop from a cottony soup of blues, the jewel to engage me.

long

The long of it is this longest day, not the one longed for perhaps, but pretty far along when its prettiness made longing unnecessary.

black spider

This spider trails midnight in its creep. It orchestrates shadows with its forelegs. It ministers to menace, and yet it's so very, very small.

what matters

What matters is matter made light. Matter's made lively. Not long, no, not long enough to know its own brightness before lapsing back to night.

comedies

The hardest thing, or the smartest thing, about Purgatory is not knowing when it will end. Paradise isn't its ending, it's moving on, or up, or out, without knowing what's the end. The Inferno is all knowing, and it's not ending, unable to move, unwilling to bend.

the meek

If I were to posit what the meek might inherit, it would be: the brunt of the bludgeon's bullying blow; the worms off the wormiest of worm-eaten scraps (without the scraps in tow); all manner of filth flushed by the finely mannered (plus whatever garbage they can throw); and the bottom of a rapidly descending and impeccably polished shoe.

wordless, and with words

The world would speak to me, sometimes with words, sometimes not. The not was in the green of grasses, or the way a knobby twig twitched in the wind. It was an afternoon's shadows and hues, or the way the bay's water would ripple and move. The words came too. They would come, the words, on lighted signs; those bulbed boards on the front of buses, or the sides of buildings. The world made messages there, for my eyes. The world used words, on those signs, only the world would use, and it amused me when it could. It could, as only the world can, and it would try and try, this world, to keep me from trying to leave it. Too soon. Too soon.

home

I can go home again. I can, and it is. Home is where the mud wasps tune their clay flutes to jostle lost June days. It's where a skink is the link to hidden fauna and all that's been forgotten.

diversions

The trap, for me, can be defining a day by what it's missing. A pleasant early summer evening spent sipping bourbon on the sidewalk as a sickle moon slides by helps me do a spry sidestep.

code

The charcoal squiggle flew past. It blew, or was blown fast behind clumps of lighter grays; a leaden tip pushed too hastily for me to read.

summer

This still air is where summer's flowered smells come, but they can only come when I'm in a close proximity. The heat comes too, and it competes with the itch of insects biting. A cartoon bird with elongated beak was drawn on the cement's gray, perhaps with a playful stick, or a finger, and it points a way to be taken, or not. I take it and am taken by the air and this summer.

what's left

A fly fell from the sky, barely alive, onto my hand. No, not a fly, but some small thing with black wings it slowly flicked while resting. It didn't buzz at me, or couldn't. It sighed a hum-drum was and left, or it left what was left of it.

the pretty never

The pretty never endeavors to ever. Not in a petty way. Not feverishly. It lets me believe. Pretty much everything reaches ever eventually.

digits

These glowing digits play hard tricks. They won't stick to orders, or stay organized by their sizes and my inclinations. They jump. They hop. They drop from view. They have no destination, but they go and go.

hints

This lonely night puts on. It slips on alluring orange tints. Its drizzly voice hints. It gives away hints of grisly reds, the glints off cold and colder hollows. It lips a darker purple impermanence to blot out our blue tomorrows.

maybe in the next world

I'm tired of so much. I'm tired of waking up. I'm tired of the sink full of dishes. I'm tired of opening the tap to see brown water. I'm tired of shaving. I'm tired of dusting and sweeping. I'm tired of the constancy of other obligations. I'm tired of the accumulation of disappointments. I'm tired of reading the current stream of bullshit that passes for news (like this and this and this). I'm tired of this masquerade we call democracy. I'm tired of the elected officials who spout lies dressed up as patriotism. I'm tired of the fetishizing of the military. I'm tired of the hagiography of the shallow. I'm tired of a society where too many people just don't give a fuck about anything but themselves, and are willing to give it all away, this entire world, for a little bit of comfort.

Love, peace, and harmony. Love, peace and harmony. Oh, very nice, very nice, very nice. Maybe in the next world. Maybe in the next world. Maybe in the next world.

The only thing I'm not tired of is my music. And the ladybugs that have started to visit me. And the slim as a communion wafer hope that miracles can happen.

No hope, no harm, just another false alarm.

the ladybug drops for a visit

To tend to ends, its end's a friendly fall from indoor skies. It buys time on a dime to bend my ear with end-to-end tales, tall and tender.

fair ain't so fair

To quote the inimitable Tim Fite, "Fair ain't so fair, fuckers."

There's an endgame. It has an end, but it's not a game. Not in the sense that you have a chance to win it. Not even a lottery's chance.

I've played it before, the game that's not a game, which I've been given, but never non-stop. There have been pauses and breaks, for sanity. That was my mistake. There's no possibility for sanity in a world like this.

It's going to wreck you. What the heck, might as well play it as hard as you can, and wreck yourself first.

pesty

Buzzed by bugs during the day and dreams by night. The dreams can prick as much, and flit by as quickly.

sounds

Sounds and nothing else. Nothing is real; just these sounds, sounding their passing. They passed— a day, a week, a month— and were replaced by the same sounds, sounding new, and passing on. Not wanted or unwanted, but not the wanted sound that never replaces them, staying unreal, but not staying.

mixed

Taking the good with the bad makes one thankful it's not all bad.

The hot stink of polluted water stinks a little less when it takes turns riding the breeze with the sweet scent of honeysuckle. The ugly white of Styrofoam cups and plastic bottles piled up by the tide is pushed aside by the sight of a snowy egret poised gracefully on one leg.

Nothing did and nothing could balance out the bluish, bare-skinned baby bird left for dead in the middle of a scorching sidewalk.

mouths

Why would the starlings hop with yellow beaks agape? Maybe for the oppressive heat, or for the beauty of things hidden within overlong grass. I kept my mouth closed, knowing they wouldn't tell me which.