The false self

“A morning glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.” – Walt Whitman I delight in me. I dote on me,

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Oh

Oh puppy waiting for a Frisbee. Oh dreams of last night. Planning to spill lead scratches out of my pencil here. Oh talent build me

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Creation

There is creation and only creation. Creation the only rule and the destruction of creation yet another creation. As erasing is part of drawing. There

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Kindling

I hate to break it to you, boys and girls. But none of this is real. The feelings . . they seem to be real,

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Those

Those that worship the soft morning opening triumph over the narrative of madness that gets played over and over again. Those that always see light

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Unclear

And if this universe, this one song, wants to know itself – wants to witness and celebrate its garden of unfolding;then what would an artist

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Self making

You don’t become anything in this life – this life becomes you. The sons and daughters you birth shine back your flaws. The birds chirp

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Cute

Start this day. And what is to be started? A moving across a road and into small towns. Loving forward. Loving further. Driving to get

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Comedians again

All I want with sleep is to sleep better in order to wake better.To dream better in order to wake better. To energize better in

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Love all wrong

And what is love? And what if we got love all wrong? What would have been wrong about the getting. To think of it as

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Writing

What is the action of writing? The spilling of ink onto a page. A thought going from mind to letters. An activity of exhausting the

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That word

And of course, you’re saying things back to yourself. What’s here is here. So you’re going to spread the word?What is that word, exactly?Love? But

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Kill the character

And what are you afraid of?No self. Yes.Starting with no “success” or authoritative approval for the character so assiduously crafted. No relevance. As in, once

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Wordless world

What is silence?What is without a word?Crows with no word, flying to an ocean with no word. The way a flag gets pushed by a

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News flash

Who are you? Who means character in dream state.So that’s not what you’re after. What are you? is much more scientific.Bones, nerves, salt water blood

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Play music

“Please, universal soul, practice some song, or something, through me.” – Rumi. This is always happening and you rarely know it. When you know it.

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Bliss or blah or black

What is your pattern? To avoid engaging with life. What is life?Life is the propagation of seeds, and ideas, and plants, and snails, and trash,

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Freedom

Is freedom a thing worth chasing?Or is it a game of dig another hole to hide in? First of all, what is freedom? Part of

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And you are?

 Who is you? But wait. Back up. Start with a scientific example first. Gravity is true. Correct. Then go forward miles down that road and

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Message in the bottle

Is any of this interesting. Maybe. But what do I know? That there’s an “in-between” world, that houses beauty, and we touch it only furtively.We

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What is true.

I am a potion of chemicals, cells, muscles and bones walking around a town.I am a beaker test sending results back to who knows where.I

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What is urgent?

And how would I die?Why be safe?What is chance?What is bad luck but a story laid over chance?What is anything?Is there urgency here?What’s urgent? Not

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To crack a thunder

How can there be any other explanation for what’s going on here other than play?There is nothing more than an inter-play of witnesses.When someone demands

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Me against the rain

The rich people who paid millions to forgo life,to live in boxes with small views,who never leave their TV living roomsto see the world,who tell

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What, wait, what?

And who am I?Just a character drifting through others’ dreams.What am I?Really.A pattern of thought held in a bone case.A circular waveform, round and round.Thinking

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Particle pattern

And the dream marks everywhere.Balloons and jet fighters.Explosions all around.The large and small of the universe demands attention.F-22s blow weather balloons out of the sky.

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Rainbow in charge

The only argument for evil or sickness or rain or deathis for it to be a backdrop for love, health, sunshine, or life.There must be

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Why not?

Why not revere the sun? Why not drink the wine?Play with balls and Frisbees? Taste goose livers and reduced fruits?Why not touch a breast and

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Is-ness business

What does knowledge mean? Agreement? To know is to decide with others that a thing is a thing. But what is truly known? Not much.

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Absurd artist

And a sea bird says something to me. I place the fruit of the earth into my body. I drink herbs from the bushes. I

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Vented ether

Waking slowly.And after all that, the moon is gone – casting a silhouette form around a lone pine tree. We are on the horizon. The

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Coyote pups

The coyote pups cackling this morning. The big white barn owl on the hunt. Sounds like fun, playing wildlife.While I play wildlife here.Everyone just a

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Extension

Further. You go further,and that means questioning the very root and basis of everything,and finding the jokes and laughing yourself silly about the nonsensical beliefs

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Pleasure

You look at me like you want something.And I doubt that it is simply sex.You want to know your self.But you think it comes through

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Tootsie Roll Pop

It’s structured like an Aesop fable.Boy asks cow behind a fence.Boy asks fox on a rock with Stevie Wonder sunglasses.Boy asks turtle with old man

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A stage

This is a stage to dance on.And I am armed with time today.Dali’s watch melts across my wrist.And the stars witness. And the city lights

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Fire

What’s wanted from a fire? Nothing required from a fire. It takes away. Fire taking away thought. Burning presence to sell you immediate wonder. Tearing

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Pigs in Zen

Your intellect will not figure out anything for you here. Your surrender will. The poems – the Bukowski “don’t try” moments – benefit from the

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What time is it?

Journals full of things I didn’t do. Lists of maybes. The triumph of not being hasty. Libraries of the ideas of others that kind of

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The dead

The dead say eliminate . . . get things out. Don’t contain things. The dead desire the stages of beauty only the living have. The

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Baller

A small boy picked up a baseball, round as the earth. ‘Have a ball,’ someone might have said. A small boy jumped toward the hoop

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The cinema

And a mystic said, ‘Brains are no place for serious thinking.’ Adherents sat in a crowded cinema – chained to their seats. Some hollered at

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Ways through

It was said the only way out is through. It can be a short way or a long way. All the ways through these pages

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Deliberation

Is the doing deliberate? Does the man have a plan? Or is doing coming through the man via the objective world? When the plan emerges

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Cluster

And these frames, they get jostled. And these pipes, they get clogged. And these recipes and algorithms get troubled and buggy. The mechanism is failing,

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I am

Alan Watts said you are an aperture through which the universe sees and experiences itself. But it’s worse than that in “real life.” Actually, you

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Fires and footsteps

Liking the color and shape of things, I turn off the sound to human drama. So much insistence that something is going on here that’s

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Fears again

And his the fear of someone fancy. A woman beyond his reach by clever definitions of Gucci and bling. A person beneath sparkling way brighter

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Meeting

This frame, this animal, this director of importance demands to live. When the “I am” inside has seen enough. And the groundhog day keeps rising,

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Enlightenment

If you have a spot that needs a thought,put an image there.If you have a space that needs grace,hang a painting high.If you have a

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Search

You will not find your self in thoughts.Your self stands by and watches as your thought-of-self scampers about a room,looking for keys that are in

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Arisen and dead

Is death something to be worried about?Is death to be feared?Is discomfort?Or is discomfort fear itself manifested?Alcohol gone to upset stomach.Rumination gone to headache.Overwork turned

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Same shows

I see religious people, and I see a comforting agreement.I see anti-religious people, and I see political agreement.I see surfers, and I say, “How were

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Hoot

Thinking of the constellation charioteer and looking at it.And thinking of how J could come to a party alone becausemy fantasy is that she’s unattached

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Happening

If the evidence is man and man is nature,then nature wants to see itself.The galaxies want to witness their unfoldings and destructions.Witnessing in the mirror.

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Panic

Who are you?A collection of things to do?A running loop of gags?A pattern of flexing muscles? A pair of eyes tracking stars. A membrane of

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Deleting files

Maybe ideas of wanting are tied to phases of life.Of youth to striving.Of middle age to pondering.Old age to surrendering.Why wouldn’t it be otherwise? But

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Not that love

A kind of love that’s not the one they agree on.An erasing of thought.That kind of love.An erasing of experience.A purging of agreement. Not the

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The hockey player

Ego stop, and just describe this man.The hockey player is one of the fastest on the ice.The seats in the stands are empty.There is no

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Persist

Arising again.Awakening at dawn to finally clear skies and a canopy of stars.To a grouping some society long ago decided was Orion.Arising to read the

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Tinkering

Why poison the frame?There is no way to get away from it. Even if the art is surrounded by a moat of mud – the

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Investment

When I say I contain much, what am I?What is that container?That “I” is a membrane of thoughts around a lifetime of characters played carefully.A

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Nailed

And the woman said, “I’m nothing. I’m nobody, and I don’t do nothing.” In a nonchalant Mancunian accent she actually said that,as if it weren’t

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The towel rack

The girls who live in fancy housessensed trouble when the bathroom towel rack pulled off of the wall.Drywall dust scattered across cheap tiles. Oh shit,

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Gamer

The world is whatever game you make it up to be. You could make it about avenging a villain or an abuser. It could be

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Flick in the eye

And the day started with limp thoughts. Vapid, empty, thankless thoughts. As if a universe of sparkling wonder ever cared a whit for one egotistical

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Fear

What is fear but a prevention mechanism?Prevention of what?Of chance?Of development?It’s not some homily from the “just do it” crowd.Or we’d all be nuked by

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Desire diet

And the man wants dandelion tea or dandelion capsules or just dandelions.Always wanting some bettering of the vessel while the vessel deteriorates.But the self improves

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Bench time

A lichen and moss covered wood bench.Squirrels discarding acorn husks from above.Just out of range from being skulled.Nike the dominant shoe walking by.Rarely an Asics;

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Student union piano

And a purple-haired college girl sat down at the sleek black pianoin the corner of a fancy traditional room of the EMUwith rustic oil paintings

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Oregon city blocks

And the house-less, home-less, place-less, loneliness of Eugene streets bicker with themselves as the orange morning breaks.There are spoils to be divided from the student

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Secrets

Morning show. First light.The brain is different at dawn. There are secrets in every one of us, and they’re the same secrets.They’re the ones that

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Heart work

And the woman in the park wearing scrubs heads to work.She’ll send catheter-driven blades, saws and cameras through pig and antelope hearts. What are you

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Dog bolsa

Life is truly wonderful, and anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit. A man in a white park maintenance truck said “hey” to

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Football

And the woman at the park disparaged football.And the men at the park bristled at the heresy.A player hating the game.But no doubt the woman

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Unbeliever

You mistake me for a believer in things.Nothing could be further from the truth.Wait.That’s wrong.All things are right next to the truth.All things now and

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Paid in full

Arising again, the sky goes from a blackish dotted blue to some kind of powdered tone of navy. To cerulean with a band of dusty

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An insensitive one

Everybody knows someone dying or dead. Some tear-jerker of a story they’ve put in a boxed narrative and held at arm’s length like some garbage

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Color cards

What you enjoy when a cloud goes by and the sun throws pink onto everything is the fact that nothing’s going on here but oh

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Current event

To remember that feeling and attitudenot rationality and logicare the currencies of the mud and flood world.

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A reminder

The truth, should you care, is that nothing’s going on here.Grasp that and you can flip into the other truth that everything’s going on here.And

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Lost keys

There were days when you hid your keys, when you hid your phone, when you hid your remote control.And you pretended to be frustrated with

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Light you

Stare at a street lamp.Understand what a street lamp is.Are you beginning to see the light?You are that.Do you see the waves coming from the

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Your image

“There are love stories, and there is obliteration into love.” – Rumi “Your desire must be disciplined, and what you want to happen in time,

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Purpose

And there are stories the human child should and shouldn’t know. Grimm’s fairy tales come to mind. Friday the 13th. Days of infamy – you

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Sunflower

The sunflowers came up on schedule. A ladder climbing up from a seed. Swaying awkwardly in the morning wind. All rusty, golden, dusty and yellow.

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Vanity

“It is vain to skulk.” – Walt Whitman One can get the feeling that something is ending. But nothing ever ends. It only bursts out.

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Many moons

At dawn today, an absurd little insect scampered south on a vinyl floor made to look like French oak. Way back when, the moon, like

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Early waking

To wake early is just to be with the morning. It’s no other exercise. It’s not getting to something else sooner. It’s not some way

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Dog knows

The dog only knows the noun.There’s the word squirrel, and she knows what that is.‘Coyote’ and she goes bananas.Bunny is known.But not ‘not a squirrel’

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Man the switch

If you hang around long enough, you get to do lots of things.But those things are not you.He caught a fish.He slid down a snowy

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Algo

Things show up for you because of the algorithm. “These are not popular headlines,” he said. “It’s obscure stuff.” “So they just show up for

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Projection

And who are the bugs that get into the house? What are the parts that explain your existence? What do you want of the self?

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Whitman the heretic

Cryptic can seem pretentious.That owl is hunting every night, but I see it only five times a year. I’m taken care of by generations of

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Business

A poor girl is dazzled by wealth.A rich one is bored with two thousand dollar hand bags. A painter struggles to keep the image of

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Hide and seek

As an adult, you pretend you don’t know where anything is.Where are my keys?What’s my password?What is this life and where is it going? As

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Good morning

And the sky births things that would be comforting in death.Death but a process from one place to another. Jets like thorns floating across with

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Opposite motion

What is the process of waking up in the morning? Addition. Of adding on an alarm bell or a funky sound or a radio station.

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Edge of eye sky

Everything is alive with the animating force of you. If you have access to greatness – to godlike power – and you do, you would

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Vocation

A baker sees the world in terms of hunger and sustaining. And scents of toasty, secure warmth. A certain delight that comes with passing risen

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Daybreak

Must one convince the self that the world is full of wonders? Or is it just so? The dawn sky delivers awe to a man,

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Within

And the day is a process of delusion. One wakens with some clarity then layers gum onto the eyes as the hours pass. Gum from

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Journey

And she said, “Journey,” like she’s on some kind of a reasoned itinerary. “This is my journey.” “How’s your journey?” And the man couldn’t help

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Thou art

Sitting around with the glow of a pre-dawn street lamp – one notices what it is. Of course, it’s energy from the sun re-routed through

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Drama

And everyone says, “I don’t do drama.” But if they’re players in the game, they have to. Drama is the currency and the purpose of

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TV channel

A big, burly pine tree grows too high for the neighborhood association. Someone on the road above prefers their view of below has no obstructions

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Scatter

Thoughts are things, and things are thoughts, and you, my friend are stuck in a thing pattern. . . a thought pattern. And there is

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Video game

“And let’s say the game you play is a metaphor for life.” His son dropped the game controller at age 17 and stared back at

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Exteriors

To see clearly. And to know your own story of love. However improbable that could be. To notice what you missed 10,000 times. The kestrel

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Bird cloud

Who knows what they’ve been named, but the way they jump through the bush and clean it of berries is sublime. Whistles and a chatter

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Curiosity

If there’s no more wonder, then there are no more poems. And what is wonder but a simple curiosity? With a splash of something else

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Rocket ship

She said, “The age of ambition is coming to a close.” For her, it might be the end of wanting a baby. The end of

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Safe

You are not granted any safety. None at birth, none in life, and none at death. And what is safety but a deception by the

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Sea king

How to recapture a spirit of insanity? Further. How much further could you take this? Past shuddering sage leaves in a container garden. How to

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The sin

What is it to play the game well? At the root, not to violate the law. The law? To commit the sin of boredom. Whatever’s

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Smudge

She smudged the room with a burning, smoking smudger thing. A bad juju might leave the premises. And what better game to play? It’s no

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Argue

If you’re in an argument with life – what would it be about and why? What’s the reason here? Why reason? Is there such a

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Heresy

Is there really anything to figure out but the gurgling sound of a song bird? Knowing that a certain chipmunk makes a similar alarm-bell ring.

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Showtime

This character’s a walking TV show for the others. To the extent he hits lines, crafts dramas, provides mystery and resolves dilemmas, he’s successful. Few

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Curved lines

And she said, “Talk in straight lines,” as guidance to the conversation.He was playing with words, as usual, but saying things no less direct than

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Light on black

You’re about to experience one of life’s cherished lessons. Those around you die. And, by extension, you die. Yes, the end of intricately confabulated stories

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Arcade machine

Oh morning, oh fungus rising, oh leaned over poppies, oh gears of the biker heading down the hill. Teach me about living now. How to

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Over and over

A human staring down a ruse of permanence in a world that’s actually doing slow-motion impermanence. The snail dead today rises anew tomorrow. Obituaries fill

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Assemble

And the couples assemble because they agree about lies. Or, they fall into sex, then they justify further by agreeing on narratives – stories they’ve

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Laser strike

The hummingbird sounds off like some kind of pressing laser gunfight. Crows make a beeline in the sky for garbage somewhere. Micro mist drops place

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The death side of death

From something to nothing.There’s the hard part.All this to _________________.Flat line, unknown.Unknowable.Knowledge not even a factor.The holy ghost in reverse.No action.Take away.No action.No.Something not even

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Stop making sense

I can easily tell embarrassing and mortifying stories about my former selves because those characters are not me. They’re interesting roles in a book of

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Take away

Take away. Take away. Take away. As the day takes away, it goes from morning fog to thick marine layer to bright burn off.  From

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Star brights

“Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so. Only what nobody denies is so.”– Walt Whitman So little is truth.So much is

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Miracle now

The problem with thinking is that 99.7% of it is not true. And there’s a certain delight to an argument in your mind, but it’s

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Hummingbird

A hummingbird hovered over the grown-out lawn. Early morning. Sun crested the hill. No breeze. The down draft of its wings pushed long leaves of

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Love story

It’s possible, but improbable, that a bird has a song of hope. Only a fool would put that kind of emotion onto a nerve bulbed

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Stumble or dance

And I changed shorts in the bedroom closet. Dumb, pulling clingy fabric over grippy running shoes. I stumbled and goofed. Everything’s a trap. You either

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Story

To change the story you’re telling is to change the life you’re living. Bukowski tells of women, hard-ons and boozing. Waiting out the clock, taking

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Fascination

And there’s usually not much of anything going on. The people are pushed and pulled around town, around freeways, through airports based on stories they’ve

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Showing

I am a god mission. I want to own the night and the dawn and the coyote hours. The purple sky along the black horizon.

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Disappearing

Am I separate from these pages? I feel them as me. Ha! Pencil lead to paper. Follow the lines. Practice the way we think in

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Light

Why is this bunch of nerves sampling this world? Am I a planet probe? Am I reporting back to something else? What’s to report? I

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A subtle fear

There are meanings in numbers, like the code you choose for your combo lock. There are meanings in the lines on your hand and the

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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Instructions

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

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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

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[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.

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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Trash day

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Wait

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

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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

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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

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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

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Availing

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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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Swingset

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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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Smoke

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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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Conjuring

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

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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

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Open book

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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The WThe Wedge Newport Beach California

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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?

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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?

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Fake war

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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The beheading

https://youtu.be/iu5YhEhB8w4 And the calliope crashed to the ground.  Curbside delivery. Asking the morning sounds for a hint of what’s to come.  A meteor shower blocked

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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