Mistaking

There are no mistakes but
                                            Mistaking I've taken
                                                                               Asphalt for sea
The sky for clearer
                                 Dryer waters
My feet for faulty
                                fins The sin's in not
                                                                 Swimming upward with them

calls to come

The call that doesn't come couldn't Come from a coolly composed moon Soon to come under shadowy circumstance's calling To mind the bite of calls not come With a clear and cherished clanging Autumnal in its coming

friction

The frictions of night bleed the fictions from me But not the need

Freed to spill out in spells the fictional Blood tongues new trails of a milky blue

It spills them out It speaks them Silken roads to take me They walk me where more fictions pool

Wells of words dipped into with a diction so precise I can't not believe the lies

stencil

The sidewalk stencil isn't confidential . but it is . confident It'll be alright

I pass two . strangers on two . benches and their sense is I'm not . too Strange a face to question . and gauge . the stencil's foresight

I walk

The pretty city street I walk is less traveled . than visited It comes with thin star-lit trunks . anonymous stones that plunk . into tall grass and foot prints sunk . in the cement These shoe prints . printed to fit my foot I won't . step in them

Last morning . I dreamed of fog This night . the fog comes rolling in

quest(ion)s

The quest(ion)s don't stop, they're positively charged and they hop back to where I've been, the now that's then colliding with the finding of again.

pocket Watch

I've put time in my pocket Watch . me stop It's topped . with a locket of what's been lost . (too Lost) to what it costs The days . aren't numbered They aren't but they are Counted . not for what's remembered Not . for what's amounted into them . those knotty little problems They are . counted for what's not . and never was apart from them

items

The item is time This time . I color it the colors . I see When I close my eyes . I don't see faces Faced with time . I see a space . where items hide

magical

I can't escape the magical . thinking It's hard . wired , thinking  there's more . happening When it's happenstance . happening Again , I read the chances . differently I connect dots to lines , lines to curves  . make pretty words into handsome . scripts Those scripts are littered with hero's . parts Armed with ascending arcs , they'll bow , drag and drop . me Plop me down at the gold and rubied feet . of difference I'm in different

love is a many

Love is a many (Spend or bring or linger lovingly back with it wherever it waits) Any love (if it is a love that waits) it reaches, stretches it to a many more (for one or many, any who are meant for it) For love thus manied can't be happy (and its meaning isn't hard to find) until it finds more manies to meaningfully multiply

suggestible

I'm suggestibly yours (I'll see myself) gray or green or blue (I'll see you) near and dear or far if (Tell me) you love me or hate me and can't do this (with or without me) It will still be (us until you tell me) It isn't.

dead sparrows

A dead sparrow might be . worth a ha-penny or not . so much, Alive and pulling . darting eyes out from feathered treetops . to a stoppered sky, It's unaccountably more precious . than the counted hairs on us both . tethered here or there, She's beyond that and whichever . more to me as I am, As helpless to help her . escape it

messengers

You can't tell . the messengers, They come . with many faces, They come . in many guises, They'll come . disguised as a message. beetle sleek and midnight quiet, They'll sneak . up on you . but they won't tell you . any messages, They don't carry . any message, They wear . mirrored moonbeams . shells softened by age, They'll show you . the message inside you, You've carried that message's morning blue . close but it's meant for another

noise

It lets go its tiptoes . and this reality's heels . peal with multi-textured echoes . and the thud of much . delayed rhymes, The newsprint for an instant . reminds the previous day of a stray . bit of conversation, It had when . a leggy bug leaped from the screen to run . underfoot, I've been told too many . times how they multiply, These coincidental rumblings . whenever you've stumbled . onto a path to take you . home, I still haven't . recognized where it is . I'm going, With the television on . and all those sounds bouncing in . from the window, It gets harder to find . certain steps signaled through the noise, I've found none . of it's noise.

pangloss

We live in (the best of all) possible worlds . we do . it is, Filled with crowned crocodile kings . and frowning (plastic-wrapped) archangels, It plants (this world) . tender seedlings in our younger (less) fragile minds . that (suddenly later) we find . fat with blooms . and weighted with the very oblong fruits we'd be(en) longing, We eat . like hungry crocodiles . feasting on our chance (discoveries)

karmic circles

I did(n't) wake up a roach . or mosquito . or the skittering waterbug I could(n't) bring myself . to approach, Last night . to dispatch it to its next life . I did(n't) wake up (dis)patched to a life (un)changed, I live . many lives in this one, I've had . many selves (re)built from scratch, Growing in this . knowing ever(y) . self is its own buggy dream.

swan seeing

Bush and tree and vine have conspired . to inspire me with a vision of, A swan . its great green neck gracefully bends upward . to the sky, Have I told it (?) how I have (!) the older I've gotten . formed more . hidden attachments to places, Our secret connections lie . and wait for my passing

this day

This day is (un)like any other . this day is(n't), Like another . I've (not) noticed, Rain drops  . can be disruptive to others . others much smaller, And some colors . don't speak their names as loudly . on some days (un)like others.

bug

That fly put a bug in my ear . the buzz of dear names . not clear but clearly . the ointment, It came to swim.

fingered

What was wished for was waiting . one fuzzy caterpillar wiggling to the end . of a twiggy finger, It brings many more . fuzzies with it . they ring the hand, To leave . to land . to eat the green . grow and change . aging it.

chirps

The cricket chirps crack open the night's . lips, Draw out reluctant tips . tongued with indigo accents, They trip me into melancholic descents . a chalk-line tracing of the face I miss

what you love

You can't always be good . at what you love, The moon loves . to brood, Its moony face . however moody can't, Shake the dear Sun's brightness . not nearly.

look for

What you should look for isn't . what the screen tells you (it) is(n't) suspicious, Look for . not what's packaged and left . unattended, Look what's right (be)for(e) you, It's the sparrows' shallow hops . down narrow aisles, They stop and go . unafraid and even if unrewarded . (it) do(es)n't stop them, Follow where they go and know what s(cr)een(s) can('t) be trusted.

take and give

This spider takes . elegant strides . not long but long for its size, It gives . no sign of its purpose . but it's purposeful . and wisely striding, To the tourist's surprise . he's snapping photos of skyscrapers . without clouds to scrape from the sky . and I'd ask him (if asking mattered), Why . marvel at glass and concrete . or steel or marble . when there are marvelous spiders . striding so discreetly nearby, To steal a purpose . and give it back to the wise.

give and take

it's not a given, What's given. who's. taken, I've given it a little. thought, Riddled it out. days ought to stay unnumbered, Strangers. brought to or taken. ought too, Stay. unnamed.

white and black

The shock is sight's. this white dart of dragon, Flying where I can't follow. from blade edge to golden petal to a trashed dull brown bay. or it's impossible to catch, Big and black and beetling into a crack. frightened away by my clank of metal door.

catbird

What the catbird squeaks isn't meant. for me, It speaks not-words. that don't teach or explain or describe, And yet they do. its not-words. the catbird's, Reach my ears, and the ears they need to.

bees

Some things. you cling to, Or they cling. to you and your likes, Like that bee. a dull drone, It's seeing. itself for the first time, in a Mirror. and it's clinging to it. like you would, To life.

I'd

I'd fall, Fitter. it's fitting. failing to fit it all, Inside where those who've died live not alive but present. they're content to influence or try to, How I live. they've tried and I've intended to thank them. I couldn't fit them in. those thanks with all the other good and bad intentions. not dead but dying, To be outside.

There but for

There but for now. here, The grace of unknowable gods goes. me a mere trace of what they can be, I don't know them or I can't. but I do, Know they're not. too mighty or merciful with their slightest. hands, Those invisible but not invincible hands. they used to grant me life.

muddle

In the middle it gets muddled, What can't end. and the intended where we'd started. we pretended it, The startling hues washing in. washing away again to lost shores. and the dull thud of doors shutting.

doors

When one door opens. or you open it (not all doors know when. to open) for someone else, Nothing. had to close, Everything. it opens to. was there waiting for you. and them, The small. glassy orange petals without stems. they're really butterfly wings to bear us. across the tops of untended grasses. a dog. mottled brown and white. has eyes smiling bright. blues as wide as, The sky. she wants to be carried along beside us. an old man's wheel-chair. bound (by old fights) and wanting to share. his mis-remembered stories. with us, He's frowning at another door. waiting to be opened.

particle lives

My mind reads in lines (one word. then a person. then another moment passes by, It makes sentences of time) but it feels. flow, The waves of particle lives going. out and in, Through sheer, rippling curtains. to uncertain futures. and back again, They collapse with me. we, Crossing paths and colliding. spilling our messy stories into each other, Wordlessly.

clocks

The clocks in this room don't tell. time, They're not broken. they talk of times. Times held dear. the nearness to them left unspoken.

days

Where have these days walked me? Not chalky miles but faces away. Their paces, these days, take me. from what were knowing. smiles to the sadness traced with a strange mouth's hello.

high priests

Do rust colored monks hover in this sky? Cowl-hooded heads bowed in prayer, or to shy from. their god's exalted eye, Exulting to its flame. they're not moored by why. they drift between unnamed rooftops. and beckon to me. below, Beckon to me. to believe.

sticking to being a stick

This curvy, broken stick isn't. a mimic, It's not playing at being. a snake, or aspiring to Moses' trick. If life came back to it. it wouldn't slither or bite. but it might. Entreat a tiger swallowtail. to play at being its leaf.

feather-flake

A single white feather-flake. flutters down, against the brown. brick, It could be a sign. a sign a dove's taken to wing. Or the hawk's taking. to hawking.

doubts

This harbinger doubt's not out. the window, or the picture. yet, It's out and in. an apostolic finger. with no intention. To linger round the edges, hedging its debts. it gets.

aligned

When the stars align (or numbers. stars having been mined from numbers) I make mine. what I wish, whatever wish comes to mind. One wish comes, fed. fat as the line.

heron

What the heron calls, falls. between a croak and a honk. It's pulled slow, and it pulls me along. to steal steely blue glimpses from the taller clutches of green.

signs

It doesn't hurt. the sign says. to be alert. as if a sign could know. hurt, or say. I stay alert to signs. the everyday signs, everywhere unknowing, unspoken but full of hurt.

ends

The end's not. such a mean or frightening place, when you reach it. Lend me it, that light. Teach me it, how it brightens. the face, widening its smile. to a welcoming length, seen days. and not-miles away.

heat

This heat pries open sparrows'. nervous beaks. They follow. the unbroken instructions, It speaks. in mechanical hisses and hollow squeaks. and the unbreakable breaths. it pushes through its plaque-filled teeth.

swear

I swear to gods. who don't exist. simple gods who won't insist. I keep my godless promises. promised simply to resist a god. They show me is.

death comes

Death comes. but once. it comes and stays ensconced there, where it's taken. Breath-and-dream-and-dances. taken, not to cancel them. out, but to make them. precious.

throes

We're in the throes. Those hesitations. throw them away, and throw aside any reservations. You have. to throw back the false. hopes, the impossible cause, that knack. for looking back. Throw in, instead. with those helping. with those who haven't, who have nothing. but who are focused ahead.

humbling

The very moment. to the precise second (split atom intense) I begin to sense. it, that inkling I'm something. more than this, this mix. of mass and energy, life. comes humbling.

weight

The heavy weight is laid. It's placed by hands unsteady. hands not ready. to let go, yet, or to wait. It's given. not a gift but an offering. to hands that can lift it. away.

mind full

My mind is filling but not to mindfulness. Too full; to empty it won't still it. It steals from the emptiness, and takes banished thoughts where they won't vanish, again.

real

What's real in this street, this bustle. these sinews and muscle. pushing by me, is. What's real is. the feeling, I've been. here before. before. there was a here, this street, and its bustle, or I was anything. more than a feeling. Then the feeling, I'm more. I am. the ancestors still walking, still pushing. to be alive.

voiced less

The unvoiced tones. muted red and brown, of these stepped over stones. aren't voiceless. The unchosen roads, smoothed down, black and gray, staying their courses. with or without me, aren't choiceless. My unrejoiced friends, the dull brick and smudged glass that grasp. for inattention. or an end. they never reach me joyless. They teach me what life is. and what I can be when it isn't.

tissue thin

My tissue turns tissue thin. thinned to billow below these blowing winds. My bone's gone as hollow as reeds. A heavy air feeds. it tunes. tuned to soon. too soon for a sadness to settle in.

out's in

That thick hide between inside and out, is less, or more hidden from. the words who choose to flow. They flow. from fingertip to eye, and from eye to the places I go. I went down a street, where a word dressed up to meet. me, bolder. than I remembered it; me not that older. then I remember, I went back. and the words tracked. along with me, flowing out. those traveled tips, out. and down to the page again.

ecco

The forest's echoes don't rhyme. They outline. in finest green prose. the way wildflowers let go. while mosses cling. to the sting of a vanishing morning.

clues

These clues don't hew straight. from word to picture They do trace. swooping, curved lines. connecting unadvertised times. with marquee letters. I've read and they led me here. not forward or back, but around and about the same illusory lack. of conclusions

lies

I've contrived the most magnificent lies. the most magnificent. lives for myself, mostly. I tell ghostly. stories, I tell ghosts to move me. to prove to me. they're not dead. to prove what lies ahead, ghostly in the offing.

leaves

The oak believes. So many leaves. They're so much the same and so different. They came, and they went. They came. again unnamed. They'll go. It knows. they were the oak. They'll always be the oak. and yet,  they never were any. more than leaves.

escapes

The trick of the thick of the night isn't its lack, but this present of light. It paints with it. It feints with it. desert scapes. ocean scapes. the glue. of dreams I can escape into.

scudding

Scud, scud, you clutches of white, you pushers of blue night. pushing it. pushing on to northern reaches. to other stretches. to places I'd let you stretch me to. to places dreamy and true.

whole

I'd risk it again. Go there. Stare past it. the glare's bright. Irises a flare of white. and green edged when I close my eyes. I see them. and I saw the hole in the middle of them. The hole's where wholeness lives, and the self dies. if I stayed there, staring.

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.

tense

You will hear a voice you wanted to hear, but it isn't that voice. You see a face you wanted to see, but it won't be that face. You mouthed the wish you wish. You wish it and it will be but it isn't, until it will be, and it was.

bugs

Bugger, these bugs are good at bugging. Even with the windows shut, they find their way into chase the light, to bleed and bite, to do whatever bugs might. They try my best intentions not to kill.

I've found that even the most bitter and hateful people seem to lighten up around me. I must appeal to their better angels. Listening helps, but I haven't yet figured out a way to negate the hatefulness.

Here is another Tim Fite song that makes me feel better.

unafraid

Another song I've been listening to a lot: Because I Was Scared

I'm not scared to share it with no one in particular, or sing along with it at odd hours. The neighbors may be scared to hear me.

moonlit

No need to hang a picture there, where the moonlight makes art in shifting colors, art taken from shadow— the window and fire escape. Its clean lines crossed and a blurred diagonal— a reflection of a reflection— is more perfection than anything a hand could paint.

out of sequence

Imagine everything you experience, or could, suddenly freed from the trap of sequence. All sense— future, present and past tense— sensed together, all at once. How would you make sense of it? That's the dream I had.

It could be how information in a multiverse actually presents itself. An Artificial Intelligence, not needing to rely on sequential thought, might be able to process such an over-abundance of data. Not my over-tired mind with its over-active imagination.

honeysuckle

The honeysuckle sweetness thickening the air entreats: within this wood, today could be lifetimes, it could be all yesterdays and tomorrows.

this stone

This stone isn't precious. It isn't, though it is to me. I swallowed it years ago now. It doesn't shine, glint or glimmer. Its colors are muted grays and browns. It sings soft, comforting songs, about lost places it hasn't been and will never go. I can't sell it, but I would share it, if you asked me to show it.

cheer up

I have been listening to this song quite a lot lately: Radio Cure by Wilco

My mind isn't filled with silvery stars, but it is crowded with snippets of lyrics, and the randomness I see on my walks. Today's trek had more than its share of strangeness:

• A park filled with Amish
• A sobbing young woman climbing the sidewalk by the Peabody
• Clutches of Heavy Metal fans everywhere downtown
• Bridesmaids dressed in Orioles' orange parading by the ballpark
• A man wearing full catcher's gear in its parking lot
• A giant thumbprint, or what looked like one, formed by the glue left where a traffic sign had been removed from an overpass

Cheer up honey, I hope you can. There is something wrong with me.

reach

I don't want to box with god (well, maybe I do sometimes), but my arms are still too short, and they're tired from constantly reaching out. God's arms may be longer, and tireless, and more adept at boxing, but they don't reach very far, and they don't lift much. So, I rely on others. Others are always reaching too, but not for me.