
Doing
The girl with the bow on her head lecturing other toddlers about the importance of squirrels. The woman in technology-designed shoes, shorts and tank-top pumping

The anti-script
Roads less traveled . . . You could just as easily forgo the script and think yourself a maverick by deciding not to have children

Not poems
These are not poems. They are a peeling of a personal onion. It’s not art, it’s an elimination game. Looking under each level to find

Get used to it
You are the assembler of your experience. Fear alone keeps you from scenes of beauty. Fear of insignificance, like when the dog denied you her

Away it goes
What are the agreements? We all get up and exercise. We have pets on leashes. We marvel at nature miracles as if they’re rarely under

The pond (alt: You could)
And you could, at the behest of a guru, wait for the pond to clear, for the mud to settle and the surface to stretch


The character
If I’m a dreamer, have I dreamed this into being?A mudslinger.A baseball player.A quarterback.A genius at a desk, pushing eraser flotsam across a vinyl ocean.A

Nowhere
What is further?Further than where? Nowhere is further than here.Hey, there’s a doozie. Nowhere is definitely further than here.But, there’s certainly nothing further than what’s

Yes
Yes, sitting near a fire and telling half-truths. Yes, hands across a body. Yes, pulling words from thin air only to send them back. Yes,

So many cameras
And why do you reckon there are so many cameras proliferating? It’s certainly not for the narcs. So many symbols for eyes. So many replications

Instructions
Why not act out a wonderful, simple play . . . right here on earth . . . for the gods in the front rows

Peach seem
And I want to be kissed by the creature inside me. Knowing she’s death.Knowing she’s written on my recipe. I want my tongue to go

[Null set]
Maybe there are no words for this.Maybe just paintbrush strokesand confetti wilderness. I am the inheritor of you. The breast wider than an athletic build.

That breeze
And what are you? Look at your hands. You’re dying. Your shell is cracking and thinning. The purple return vessels are coming to the surface,

Juice
Deathbed notice, To get juice from every minute. Made into an obsession. Paying excruciating 😉 attention and to never be folded into the game of

The ears
What happens between your ears, boy, is more real than anything out here. “Habit yourself to the dazzle of the light,” said Whitman. Out here

Performative
I fiddle with words as the craftsman across the street builds a nicer interior for the ego of another.He measures, saws and binds.I do something

Re-boot
Creation is not only what the world wants;It’s what you want.You nurse a pathetic orchid just to see it bloom once more.You write words down,

Trash day
And what could I take away to be a more simple character?Ideas from he past.Things from the garage.Images of used up meaning.Clothing that says unsure

Degenerate
And it wants so badly to go on. The evidence is everywhere.Spring bursts forth.The walking man looks for evidence of life.The grasses push up below

And when
And I have a strange optimism when I read my own words. And when I see my own flowers pop up from the soil. And

Death to this pencil, right?
Books and books of sprouted thoughts, screenplay starts, sketches turned paintings . . . Does anyone think it’s real? Certainly not me. I can smell

Coupling
As if to couple,it would be my job to overwhelm you with a washing worship of sorts.Not a job as in work but a job

Coffee breathe
There’s a smell of last night’s fire in the room. A skin forms on the top of hot coffee, and it flexes with twitching geometric

The sky
Seems like it’s always about the sky. The sky above and the sky within.The one within is an area that doesn’t know words.A space free

Greatest game
I am the sum of time forever.I am the sum of none of it.I am only a starving witness.I am alien to Earth. Was I

Feels fine
What’s to report back to the gods? The experiment is failing. The ants have abandoned the hill and decided to smoke weed away from prying

Reporting on 0
They’re doing what they do. Fretting about the prices of things. Their worth and the cost of things coming and going, as if they had

Sneeze
To understand desire,you need to come to terms with the galaxy under your nose.All is here.When you do that, you understand truth.By understanding truth you

Am not
What am I not?I am not a narrative. I am a constantly appearing thing.An experiencing thing – within moments, I gather up what they are

Unfolding
Dreaming of a woman’s touch that has no webs attached.Loving every scene found.The home made into a fantasy. Feeling the absurdity with an oddball urgency.You

Perpetual
What’s really going on? You’re hurtling toward death. Death of the organism. Your family is dying. Your home is disintegrating. Your planet is ending. All

Find the worm
Live up the illusory dance, even though it’s known as fake. Nothing is more important or less important than anything else, so there’s no way

Walt Whitman
He walked through battlefields and deathly triage outposts Fascinating on the beauty of the redness of blood exiting the living. Draining in transition to death.

Pencil smell
An upside-down four-limbed octopus, I am. Nerve ganglion creature of an alien planet. Planet alien to who but me. And why? To giggle and be

Abiding
Does a dried leaf surrender to gravity? Does a man actually rage against the dying of the light? Does the stream’s water surrender to new

Sleight of hand
Why does the will keep going? What is the game it’s programmed to play? What needs to move forward in time? If time is a

Self letter
What starts with me? What ends? Enthusiasm. Going. Making sense. Absurd laugh. A shell of being trouncing across a planet. A hedonist. Chocolate, wine and

Staged perfection
The scene changed from dull to wild color circus. It was as much us crafting the scene as a god peering down. Possible it took

Oceanfront property
A dirty, sewage-punctuated road to the left running straight to a beach called little closeout. A term devised to keep other surfers away. A lie

Nothing to solve
Interested in what’s going on here . . . But it appears not much. The noise of a dryer looping some clothing. A toe torn

Wait
If death is on the table – a skull awaiting eternity – is there truly urgency? If so, what is urgent?

Intelligence inside
Intelligence, data, information and what’s it all for? Why did it become the collective obsession? The moon sinks down into the horizon anyway. The ants

Disgust
So quickly what was once a kitchen preparation headed for a mouth becomes a taboo piece of disgust within a trash can. How can it

Don’t try, said Bukowski
No hall of fame for first world guys who worked with mania and tried their hardest. May as well believe in heaven or that money

Animal
What is an animal? Animal is what you are minus this animating chatter. The inner nag of language and voice. Were you born when you

Availing
Like a sane soldier, I await a death with a master’s curiosity. Awake. Alive. Availing.

The lamp
How much of the lamp is the light? The post The reflector The element The filament The glass The aurora The halo spikes beyond the

Punching goddess
Describing things I think are real. Bright eyes. Orange and blue sky crossed slowly by gray, lumbering low clouds. Dog smell, wet from the harbor.

Small truths
I’ve seen the owl. I’ve seen the bobcat. And they don’t believe me. Miracles of nature in their midst, and they deny it. Nothing so

Ape fire
Reality is a story. That’s all. And the story unliked is the one where achievements go for naught. Life was futile, and here come all

Duality
Eating whale steak by the light of a whale oil lamp. Eating sirloin with an ox bone knife. Consuming something with the thing itself. Feeding

Swingset
Nobody knows where words come from, or strokes of a paint brush. The why – because. The where – who knows. Please remember me, says

Who on earth
And who do you think you are? I am. That’s the start. The lights are on. I’m behind the eyes, awake as awake can be.

Trust no thought
“Truth” happens when bunches of people get into agreement with one another. They huddle and nod yes, yes, yes, As the storm that kills all

Sweet parts
The women with sweet parts come down the hill. And the only danger for a man is loss. But even with that, more comes and

The curious case of John McAfee (Part 1)
A man comes across a computer virus, something called the Brain Computer Virus. It terrifies him. This virus breaks a constructed biological system – a

What kind of drama?
Rings of silver, white, gray and black jiggle in the lighted still-life water glass. A splash of blue, a dash of yellow. Track lighting from

Smoke
A distant memory. A childhood sound. Na, na, na, na, na, na . . . But not a fun one. An endless, jibbering echo of

Empty canvas
You found another blank slate, A clean canvas, A small but giant place for a story starting now. For God sakes, don’t bring yesterday’s story

Rise
Rise up like bread dough, not like a revolutionary. Something inside pumping life into a package of skin. Dreams from the night before coded into

Patterns
For the awake, two patterns matter – what you notice and what you paste onto what you notice. And the pasting on is often how

Unforgotten
Lightning strikes over parked sea boat masts, Dividing the sky into puzzle pieces. A hasty wind turns the harbor top into scales of a fish.

Dream
To dream something into being, to imagine it. Would it start with you? How could it? You are not start. You are a hash on

Mercury
Oh science master. Oh quivering mercury. Oh liquid Earth. Assistant of twisted car wreck metals and forever bunnies. Thank you for moving the set pieces

Confidence
No such thing as confidence. Unless you have confidence in that fact, there’s a thing. A trust in oneself, a humble trust that the self

My time
Every one of us walking in the park sees it as my time. And everyone is right, no matter how bitchy they become about it.

Conjuring
I conjure and and am conjured. My hands unleash the smallest and most medium-sized truths I know. The mind allows them through. The character plays

Dog walking
They gather to walk dogs. But the dogs would rather wrestle and chase. Neutered animals still desiring to play act at the game of “something’s

Open book
I’m an open book, he says. But his book is full of coded poems, only open for the thinking.

Biology
In the biological outer world, we’re all out here, playing in the gully because of sex. That’s it. A game that wants to be rebooted

Lonely one
Once the story stops, the lonely days cease. A narrative clipped. Evidence ground away by pulling back to see what actually is. Grinding to dust

Who are you, J?
And who do you think you are, J? Acceptable answers would have been: God, the watcher, or ‘not J.’ All the other stuff – the

Shine moments
The beauty of the dump. The brightness on a patch of water. A tree in the eye of a dog. You looking at you in

Two eyes
Two eyes to see the world. One with what is. And one with what isn’t. One direct. And one with a reflection. One with nature,

No retreat
And you retreated a bit. But where did you retreat to? A few books. An easy surf spot. Courts for playing ball. The single life

Meat puppet
“What if I’m just a character in a play called your life?” he asks a friend. And he wakes with a playground in front of

Waking
A beautiful woman with a golden heart and enthusiasm for days calls to talk about her wonderful life. What a brilliant window of time to

Fleeting fear
And sometimes a fear – fear that this drift of a life cheats the world of something. Absurd. Plenty of us live and die, contributing

A mini-course in the freedom of a death march
You don’t get more. You get less. There’s no extra sparkly here or toys or special flavors. There’s taking away, losing, and less. There’s stripping

Nature
Sunlight on the wakeup side of a Japanese maple. Snail craning neck sideways. Faith birdhouse waiting for some new homeowner. Dew drips down from maple

My expired war
I had my war. I laid down at gunpoint too many times. I sampled fear and turned fearless in one day. I took a ride

Headmaster ritual
I’m nowhere you can’t be or haven’t been. The settings and scenes don’t change much. You just keep getting pestered by the things that show

Rodents
We’re all rodents here, with plenty of food. Illusions of lack abound. The only task is to widen the eyes and see what’s really going

Always here
Nightshade on the hill. In my life. A stipe of dripping glaze on pottery. A reaching pine that pretends to bow down. A handful of

Those who mask
And the jester knows not how he jests or if he jests. He’s clad with shiny ideas – a fist full of data and facts,

Music awake
An arrival like a note in the street. Like a worm born of dirt. Like a mermaid. My own personal Buddha. A gem in the

Surrender Pattern
A young boy of maybe six years cries then laughs then throws a stick my way. He grabs it near my chair then throws it

Rooms in the mansion
Dream about renting out rooms in my mansion. I am, and the lights are on. Consciousness, that’s all. Nothing more to it. No goo-ruuu nonsense

Surfing
When you paddle into a big wave, you’re committed. When you enter into the asylum, you’re committed. The physical push yields a return of energy

By what brighter star?
Oil on concrete. Water on the oil. Color on the ground. By what brighter star might you navigate? You want your self to understand. Who

Yellow
The color yellow says something bright. Something so different than the others. The sky behind comes through thick tropical clouds. A dawn noticed. One day’s

Funny man
It’s 14 years from now and the dog died today, or was it yesterday? The stunning thing is how absolutely none of this matters. The

Nothing for Everything
People as frauds. The Catcher in the Rye phonies prance the surface. And I put on a costume or two. The Stranger. Caufield. K. Z.

The quantified self
Every little smart watch check says ‘who am I?’ How many steps becomes the person? Every analog watch check says ‘time to death?’ The count

Senseless chatter
And hello to Joyce, chooser of sounds, and to a simpler Hemingway post shotgun blast. Why music artists sing la la la la la la

You fool
The world is always this bright. The colors are always there. Clouds or no clouds. Wind or none. Can you write a softer symphony? Paint

Saucy threesome
And the most absurd of things. . . She pretends to broker bits of the Earth, as if she could receive money for trading the

Fear coach
“What are you afraid of?” he asks her. She doesn’t know but will say something like spiders or social ostracism. And he relents. “Obscurity.” “But

That space
Would you trade nothing for everything? What is really yours? Say truth now. Past and future? Those were never yours. A chattering mind? That’s a

Dreaming of the dreamer
Died last night. The day was gone. Little things done will come back a little bigger tomorrow. How to explain to J or L that

Clearly babble
World doing utter nonsense. Doublespeak. Gobbelty-gook. Mary Poppins-Tweedle-Dum-upsidedown-babble. Name anything people care about, and it will be useless drivel. What’s so important? What’s your flavor

Importance
Why on Earth is it so important to do something here? Who says so? What’s important to do? Who defines important? If one were to

Unwell
None of us are well. And it stems from this stark reality of our dispositions. Our denial. We have two facts surrounding us from all

A day in June
It doesn’t lament the work it took to deliver. A hawk just brings a mouse. A writer writes. A painter paints. A poet poems. Kids

Sameness birthed
What could be changed in a moment to create a radically different person at a later date? What turn now could lead to destination unknown?

Bones below
Four child hawks and one mother. The mouse feeds them and my dog finds the tiny bones below. Treats for one looking in low places.

Blueberry
Remembering the dead and measuring time in the stiffness of blueberries. He that is always love, like Rumi’s little stories, blooms again with a gardener

Metaphor for
Down in the Earth, slaves settle into mercy’s tomb Their conducting rope reaches up to the top crust What did they sacrifice? Jesus Christ, a

Know nothings
What is faith but a mere settling into what is? Wherever you stop is perfect. Whatever you do is perfect. This is infinite, so mistakes

Futile dandelion
Fear. Fear of insignificance. Fear of irrelevance. Fear of FUTILITY. So what. Thank you, Miles Davis. Onwards. Does the dandelion think its activity is futile?

What is
What is a mate? A cell mate? A choice of commitment for the long haul? There is no long haul. A mate is a choice

You look
The world is your mirror, Miss H. You found someone different because you are someone different. Is there something special about me? Wrong question. There

Whalecraft
Why weary, and palsy arm at the oar? (Melville) Broken pattern and white whale seen. Avenging life with unity. On the path repeated, surrounded by

Television on fire
Ah, to sit slack-jawed, studying the hours unasked for. Pushing logic onto illogic. Knowing it’s more fun without the thinking. Why even put pen to

Quiet on the set
If the scene is nothing, and the production crew is no one, then hire the director, actor, writer, lighting team and cinematographer. Demand action and

If infinity
If infinitywould quickly devour me I’d see the sun had been turned outand moon plunged into sea All tales eradicatedAll evidence annihilated The toads and

Huh
This poem held up as a desire to be involved in something completely ridiculous. Dress me up in jester clothes. Plaster on the decades. Only

Dog show
This play dream world is the mirror. Bitching truth with every little symbol and image. Irony all around mocks and steers to a truth. To

Fake war
Gloves off. Saw them on the road. Philos character puttering and muttering. Disolving by the roadside while hitting the marks. Being the soaring tail eagle

Self sea
See self again. Re-thinking pattern, order, perfection. See again. All he’s been doing for decades is seeing self again. Then it’s stuffed away as the

Damn you, Tom Hanks
Joe vs. the Volcano Cast Away The Terminal Ha, ha, ha. Jaw on floor with the idea that the cast is away. Never thought about

Diabolic Fool
Clutching time like a branded fool, I walk a line in a crowded school. But one day I came to Mary, with one idea so

Into the lawful
Soaring into the living once more. Into the lawful. A dazzling wonder materializes before my eyes. A lovely face and frame prances through my text

Sitting, blasted with Walt Whitman
Dear God – placed here on a worn teak chair, blasted with the morning sun. A phrase foisted on my eyes: “Long enough have you

Prank
Into the looking glass went your eyes. And there you were again. Like the worm in your pocket after you stomped the Jerusalem beetle. You

Onward
Oh Philos, you dug so industriously, like an ingenious prisoner with a spoon sneaked from the mess hall. Tunneling and pushing out past trails and

Battlefield
And oh the silly battlefield of days before. An hour floating in a puddle of magnesium water. Breathwork and mind stilling in a chair called

Nothing more
I am nothing more, nothing less. Just a ray of light looking into a dirty, pulsing goofball play. At a shit-stained stage with second-rate actors.

Almost yellow
Take your time. Take your fortune. A green that’s almost yellow. Sprawling nightshade leaves on a hillside. Purple horns blaring bird chirps past humming bees.

Burn the day
What would I tell you, Philos, from just at the cusp of the grave? You tried too hard. You thought the other actors cared about

Yo Adrian. Rocky.
“It feels like a party every day. Hey Jesse!” said the college boy. I can and do manipulate my emotions at will. When I let

Moonset kingdom
He says he doesn’t like pines because the pollens give him allergies. The lines on the road here look like birthday candles, and there is

Flit fly
Change, change, change. Delta gate two. Fat man in surgery mask parks nearby. Nerves straight into the skull via the teeth. Who would like a

The beheading
And the Kalliope crashed to the ground. Curbside delivery. Asking the morning sounds for a hint of what’s to come. A meteor shower blocked out

Lights one way (part 2)
So what is the opposite of this death thing? A dream? The lights on. Arising. Awakening. Understanding a pack of lies then knowing they’re lies.

Death one way (part 1)
How far away is death? So near. Death is the stopping of the heart, the ceasing of the brain. The stillness of the fluids and

Whipping flame
The sounds of whipping flame in the morning breeze.
Car tires hum across the street above.
The chime of the harbor mouth bell buoy

Running out the clock
The puppy fails to grow fast enough for perception.
Tik tok.
The joke of all jokes – an app that burns life into insignificant ashes is named for the old devil who murders the moments.

To the vet
And the veterinarian loved animals, so she played the part.
And I loved words and signed up for that one.
“But I’ve lost the words to find righteousness in thought, ” I said.

Doublespeak unbeliever
No belief is true. No. Belief. Is. True. Even this one.

Hey you!
You are everywhere at once.
You are as far as I can imagine.
Co-create the imagining, but don’t force it. Let it come. Your circumstance is ideal.
Your dying days are paradise.

Black dog on sunrise morning
A big black dog greets me at my door. And I see a beautiful blonde woman in the light. And a fingernail moon, and the

Bank shots from 180 feet away
No matter what I do, it keeps throwing life at me. The Jerusalem beetle got stomped out, and then in my pocket was a young,