Twinkle Thud

You open your mouth
and words do spill out
but they only splash on me
make a mess

Those words that come out
of that big gaping
hole
don’t get very far
as words go

Those words you spill forth
are for your ears
I think
they kind of hang
around your head
kinda twinkle
kinda makin’ you look
sorta special
until they fall to the ground
kinda
thud

Those words you bother to
give
only take time from me
only make a mess of me
only almost had me believing
you were giving me
some kinda
you

Open your mouth
I need to understand…
Is it a faucet or a drain?

The Gravity

Surrender to gravity
she said
as I savasannaaaahed
upon my towel
mind wandering to that
old friend
that irresistable friend
that makes surrender
effortless

When I was young
gravity and I were not
friends
we were never on the same side
I wanted to go
up
to grow
up
to stay
up
but my parents
and their gravity
wanted me to lay
down
to get
down
and warned me I might fall
down

As I got older
gravity began to teach me
lessons I didn’t want to learn
lessons about flying
and falling out of trees

We go way back
gravity and me
it still has
a hold
on me

more and more
toward the center
of me
and down through
my feet
planted now
tree posing
I am a tree
complete
with monkey
mind

Ode to the Rollin’

It’s never quite and always almost
the glass half and that other grass
like Mick I
just can’t get no
perspective on
the relativity of satisfaction
like Mick I’m
always almost taking it
never quite by the tongue
I’ve got the moves
like Mick but not the swagger
like a stone
I’m just too heavy
to roll.

Here Is Neither

When I say
I am here
for you
My here is neither
here
nor there

I know that I am truly
here
when here is neither
there
nor
there
One there being
within
and the other there
without

For even when I am
“over here”
I am indicating a without place
and the indicating originates
from within

It is only
when
that solitary
eternal moment
of being
here
only when here transforms my withins to withouts
that unbounded
openly
freely
limitless
altogethernessness
all-encompassing without enclosing
betweenessness
of transformation in simultaneous stillness
the being and the becoming at once
only
then
is my hereness
perfectly neither.

Gauntlet Schmontlet

You threw the gauntlet down with one
impressed smirk
that barely detectable lilt
at the corner of your mouth
the shy glance beneath your
protective brow
that backward look
to make sure I am really
here

I took that gauntlet up and it’s burning a hole in my hand

I thought I wanted my groove back

but I’m holding back
fire
fire
fire that makes me cry

The Falling Night

The branches and their leaves, the hillside that sits behind our house, and telephone poles have turned into black construction paper cutouts against a faded blue-gray sky. White glittering pinpoints twinkle from white to brighter white. In the dusky blue above, some stars twinkle from white to green to red and become airplanes making their slow motion meteoric fall toward the quiet ground. Everything is black or grey, save the tan bamboo growing along the still whitish fence that guards our grassy heaven and home. Everything has lost it’s hue and only shades of muted blacks and whites and sky grays remain. Those colorful crickets though… they are singing to the night in a purple, pink, and orange melody.

Fall upon me, Night.

Dawn upon me, Light.