Halloween Poem (Come Take a Trip with Me to Hell)

Come take a trip with me to Hell,
There’s Oh such sights to see;
I’ll bring your spirit while you sleep—
You’ll be quite safe with me.

I’ll show you where the tyrants burn;
We’ll listen to them scream;
We’ll have such fun and, when you wake,
You’ll think it was a dream.

Come take a trip with me to Hell,
You’ll be a second Dante,
And, if you think his visions dull,
For you I’ll up the ante:

We’ll watch the sinners boil in oil,
While all the devils poke ‘em,
And if the fires of Hell die down,
I’ll even let you stoke ‘em.

There’s parricides and patricides—
I’ll teach you to distinguish—
And fratricides and matricides,
In flames they can’t extinguish.

There’s murderers and torturers,
And Hitler’s nephew’s uncle,
And folks who don’t like apple pie,
Or Simon and Garfunkel.

Yes, take a trip with me to hell—
One night will do the trick—
Because your soul belongs to me,
Your loving friend, Old Nick.

A Few More Limericks

I was racing my steed round the Crescent,
When I knocked down a ragged old peasant;
He writhed in the mud,
Then he spat out some blood —
His manners, in short, were unpleasant.


We’ve enacted a strict moratorium
On crackpot proposals for thorium:
If authors submit ‘em,
We’ll simply commit ‘em
To the care of the new sanatorium.


That instrument known as the Dow
Is shortly to reach forty thou.
The masses and I
In unison cry:
“How is it I don’t have a cow?”


Blossoms bloom, we’re in love, and it’s Spring!
How delightful, you’re going to sing!
You’re as sweet as a flower,
Yet I’m suddenly sour
When you say, “And now something by Sting. . .”


I signed in a drunkenly way
With an outfit that tests DNA:
They sent me a kit,
So I sent them some spit—
And now I’m the Lord of Biscay.


King Herod was no great theologist
And even a worse angelologist:
He heard some strange things
About beings with wings,
Then he sent for his court ornithologist.

The One Who Pays the Piper

Oh, golden child, grip tight your silver spoon
And understand this wisdom true and terse:
The one who pays the piper calls the tune

The sage is bought and sold by the buffoon
The mighty pen is servant to the purse
Oh, golden child, grip tight your silver spoon

When Lucifer goes by, the people swoon
The masses are corrupt, the leaders worse
The one who pays the piper calls the tune

Your fortune is an over-stretched balloon
So keep your eyes fixed firmly on that nurse
And, golden child, grip tight your silver spoon

The meek can wait outside and sing Blue Moon
Be glad for what their betters might disburse
The one who pays the piper calls the tune

The traitor is received with a festoon
The honest serve the vile and the perverse
Oh, golden child, grip tight your silver spoon
The one who pays the piper calls the tune

Auto-Archaeology

To uncover the layers of yourself,
You must start calmly.
Survey the area,
Don’t prejudge anything.
Pick a spot,
Then bring in the bulldozer.
Tear off the top.
Carry out the rubble.
Now go to work with the spades.
Dig, dig, dig.
Whatever you find here is of no consequence.
Haul it away.
Only when you are certain that there is nothing left,
That you have reached the original ground,
Come in with the trowel;
Delicately.
Scrape, scrape, scrape.
What do you find?
Indiscriminable,
Grimy,
Unpromising,
Blackened,
Stuff.
This is your treasure.
Wash it off carefully,
Polish it up,
Observe it from all angles,
And in all lights,
Not forgetting the infrared.
Behold, something new for once.
So old that it’s new!
Hidden in the midden,
But what does it mean?
Can some hermeneutic of stratigraphy be applied?
Can it be understood?
Or, are we alien to the core,
So deep that we have no affinity with our own wellspring?
Is there any depth to our depth?
Or, are there just infinite layers
Of disposable
Emptiness?

Hunters

The fox is a hunter.
He doesn’t know why.
Hill and valley, grass and stream,
Up and down, and on and through,
Heartbeat, panting,
Aching legs,
Looking for water;
Meat chasing meat
To fuel the rush
Of meat chasing meat.

Man is a hunter of the invisible.
Ideals are his meat,
Ideals that can never be fulfilled.
We catch glimpses,
Pursue in haste,
Into a sunset we never reach,
That sunset unto which we are raised,
Transcendent,
In our dreams.

We hunt the Tudor-red fox,
Of whom we have no need,
Who is not even meat
But only a meaty stand in
For objectives that we have not fleshed out.
But he will do,
Meet for the task.

Man is a hunter.
He doesn’t know why.
On and on,
Hoping to catch a break.
The fox,
The hunt,
The dreams,
All pointless,
And cruel,
But how pleasant
The galloping thuds of the horses' hooves,
The cries of our fellow hunters,
The bracing breeze,
The shimmering waters
Of the sun-splashed streams.

When I Was Young

When I was young,
I wanted to be Leonardo Da Vinci,
But, when I was old,
I became Homer Simpson.
What made the difference?
I took a road less traveled,
The wrong one.

Leonardo:
Built parachutes,
Painted madonnas,
Set the caged birds free.

Homer:
Watched buttons,
Ate donuts,
Juggled job and family.

Leonardo grew old
Seeking patrons in dark castles,
Spinning the fragile plates of art and science,
Thinking himself a failure.

Homer never aged,
Never failed,
Hadn’t the awareness.

So, I shall pass at last
From the futility of Homer to the self-reproach of Leonardo,
Having skipped the wonder years,
Only to catch the disappointing finale.
But, unlike Leonardo,
I’ll at least have donuts.

Words

Human beings,
Like hogs,
Quickly go feral.
It only takes a small threat,
Even an imaginary one.
We must be well-housed,
Fed,
Entertained.
Still, there are no guarantees,
Because, unlike hogs,
We can turn feral spontaneously.
Education is the hitch:
How do you keep the mind open,
Yet also discerning,
When the old are so eager to mislead the young?
Remember the dove and the serpent.

Did someone say serpent?
We become afraid.
We panic.
Decency? Self respect? Joy?
Out the window they go,
For nothing.
Chaos is as close as the next Olympics:
People strung up like hogs,
To resounding applause,
Because of words.

The Emperor

I like to go incognito among the people,
Traipse their streets, marketplaces, vineyards.
Their dogs bark at me,
Slaves eye me with suspicion,
But I am among my people,
The people who would otherwise quake in my presence.
They don't notice me passing in front of the temple,
Walking the perimeter of my stadium.
Mine is an empire
Of rock and flesh,
Concrete and wine,
Oil and water;
Bricks of beige and ochre,
Blonde and brown,
My people!

I find myself in the Costco parking lot,
Grabbing a cart in the rain.
I enter wet.
I scrutinize the goods in every aisle.
At the exit, they ask for ID and I hope for a nonchalant cashier who won’t
Uncover my true identity.
I wander out.
On the quayside, men are loading amphorae onto the boats.
I watch a departing galley,
Her oars breaking the water.
Serenity.
Fuck the Federal Reserve! I’m going to devalue the denarius.

The Human Mind is Made of Glass

The human mind is made of glass.
More fragile than we think,
It feels as hard as arctic ice,
But shatters in a blink.
Unseen, its hidden fault lines creep
Towards the bone-dense skull,
And not a thought, a dream, a love,
They won’t at last annul.

The human mind is made of glass.
It slips between the hands,
And spawns a hundred sharpened shards,
The second that it lands;
And there’s no telling who’ll get cut,
Or on what random day
Some piece will pierce a tiny foot
At unsuspecting play.

The human mind is made of glass;
Preserve it from the smoke
That rises black from every hearth
And seeps from every joke,
Till one day all is tar and cough,
Each window choked with gray;
Then all that once was on is off,
And every joy dismay.

The human mind is made of glass,
A crystal Shangri-la
That resonates with each glad laugh
And echoes each hurrah.
From balconies with creamy rails,
We relish and we gloat,
While all it takes to bring it down
Is one shrill, blaring note.

The human mind is made of glass;
No matter how it glints,
The most prosaic wear and tear
Erodes its gilt and tints.
The human mind is made of glass:
I saw your smiling face,
Reflected in the sparkling light,
Now gone without a trace.

In the Little Park

I go to run
In the little park,
Round and round the stony walk.
Sometimes rain,
Sometimes snow,
More often the hot, hot sun.
Long sleeves and pants
To keep off chiggers;
Counting my breaths,
Forgetting the number of laps,
Wondering how long I can keep this up;
But without it I grow fat,
My ballooning belly
Inversely proportional
To my self esteem.
So, I shall run until I drop,
Or until,
Either within or without,
Something breaks.

Perhaps someday the sky will split,
The bottom will fall out of the world,
And the last trump will sound -- great heavenly fart,
Portent of Eternity,
With Its infinite unbreakable laps,
And no hope for release,
Because the bottom
Can only fall out once.

No, keep running,
But confine hope
To trivial things:
Cups of coffee,
Glasses of wine,
Well-timed rays of sunlight,
The right song playing at the right moment,
Hot baths,
And, above all,
An occasional sincere interaction
With a fellow human being:
I and Thou,
Me and you,
When time is obliterated,
Zapped,
In a moment of identification—
No earth, no sky,
No death,
No apocalypse,
And no Eternity,
Not now.

The Trumpers Have All Gone to Ga-Ga Land

The Trumpers have all gone to Ga-Ga Land,
Where very few ever come back;
They galloped away in a hell of a huff
When they heard they were under attack
From the people who don’t “get” America,
And those feds who are not on the level,
From China and antifa, dark folks and gays
And, of course, most of all from the Devil.

The Trumpers have all gone to Ga-Ga Land,
Where the cars are American built;
Where the churches are bubbling over with grace,
And everyone’s armed to the hilt;
Where the morals are biblical, tested and true,
So old that they’re in black and white;
Where the Math hasn’t changed since the waltz was brand new,
And where teachers can still read and write.

The Trumpers have all gone to Ga-Ga Land,
Where nobody ever grows up;
Where Lassie’s still saving the folks at the mine,
And coffee is ten cents a cup;
Where no one doubts six-day creation—
You won’t find a fool with such nerve—
And there isn’t a single convention
Apostrophes have to observe.

The Trumpers have all gone to Ga-Ga Land,
Where everything’s just as it was;
With the cinemas still playing Gone With The Wind,
And next week the Wizard of Oz;
Where the fathers expound with authority,
And the daughters all listen in awe;
Where the mothers are home, baking sweet apple pies,
And chopsticks are banned under law.

The Trumpers have all gone to Ga-Ga Land;
Of immigrants there, there are none,
Except for the girls at the whorehouse,
Who’ve got Einstein visas, each one,
To safeguard American ladies,
Who never must know such a trade,
Is, thanks to their God-fearing husbands,
Enabled to thrive unallayed.

The Trumpers have all gone to Ga-Ga Land,
Where the reptiles and pedos can’t come;
Where the atheists can’t stand the glare of the light,
Or the beat of the patriot’s drum;
Where the cherubim circle the home on the range,
And the spines of the students all straighten
As they solemnly pledge, wiping tears from their eyes,
With a gusto that scares away Satan.

The Trumpers have all gone to Ga-Ga Land,
Way over the proud purple hills;
Where Old Glory is never mistreated,
And Mexico pays all the bills.
They’re waiting at Ga-Ga Land station;
The engineer’s sounding the bell;
The Ga-Ga Land train is departing:
The next stop and last will be Hell.

Civilization

The peaceful family,
Community,
Nation,
Are soon washed away,
Depending, as they do,
Not on human nature
But on culture,
History.

Eons of experiment, discovery and reflection—
Gone in a thousand days!
It can happen here,
It is happening here.
The sands collapse beneath our feet,
The very sands that Abraham walked,
Because we have not communicated our values,
Have not embodied them.

Civilization is risible,
The father of all jokes,
Until you lose it.
It is injustice piled upon injustice,
Until a greater injustice comes along.
Jeremiah,
Confucius,
Aristotle,
Francis.
We mock them all.
We are hopeless without them,
Children unparented.

Oh Zeus,
Don’t take it all away just yet!
Give us one more chance
To teach kindness and humility,
Respect for facts,
Wisdom.
Compelled to start again,
We might not get this far.
Perhaps this was the only chance.

Oh, to return to the old days
When we felt safe enough
To put a torch to it all!
But we were only cartoon characters then,
Sawing the branch that we sat on.
We must grow up now.

The Children Who Fell Through the Cracks

Here come the children who fell through the cracks;
Here come the whiz kids who went off the tracks,
In between sitters and saccharine snacks.
How will they pay us for being so lax,
Now they’ve come out to play?

Here come the babes that we lost in the wood,
Missing and miserable, misunderstood;
We did what we had to but not what we could;
It’s no use to say that we meant it for good.
Look at them, my how they’ve grown!

We are the pilgrims who went the wrong way,
Faithless and spent at the end of the day,
All of our visions befuddled and gray,
Plenty of learning and nothing to say,
Shining our light from the mud.

Here come the children who fell through the cracks,
Brooding in solitude, hunting in packs,
Showing up just when we’ve all turned our backs:
So many angles for launching attacks!
Now they’ve come out to play.

Our Heaven

Here in America,
We’re all going to Heaven
Not because we deserve it,
But because we are entitled to it;
Such is our creed.
Heaven must be within reach of the majority,
Appeal to the median voter,
The average citizen,
Carrying an average burden,
Making the average number of complaints,
Being cruel only rarely,
And kind only superficially.
Heaven sanctifies moderation.
If saints do exist,
In our Heaven they will live a marginalized existence,
As despised eccentrics;
The exception and not the rule.

You might think our Heaven a humdrum sort of place,
But it isn’t,
Because the amenities
And the service
Are extraordinary:
The pillows are that soft,
The music is adorable,
And you can fly,
Without even a jetpack,
Simply by willing it--
Whoosh!
It’s like living in the best possible hotel,
In the best possible amusement park,
Surrounded by people who, inexplicably, think you're awesome.
Heaven is Vegas on steroids,
And who wouldn’t want that?
Heaven is like being stupendously rich,
But without being miserable,
Like so many of the wealthy on earth are.
Otherwise, why have a God at all?
You can see Vegas from Calvary.
And we are all going.
Gee whiz, what fun!

New Roses

In bars,
Factories,
Forgotten villages;
Through rain,
Wind,
Snow;
Standing at stoplights;
Or going from car to car,
Trying not to get hit,
I have hustled many roses
Down the avenues of the dead.

I sold my roses to young men,
Who gave them to their sweethearts;
I sold my roses to married men,
Who handed them to prostitutes;
I sold my roses to little girls,
Who presented them to their mothers.

Sometimes the dead were gracious and thanked me for my roses;
More often they were hostile,
Or the roses themselves perished,
And joined them.
The blood of the dead
Reddened my roses;
Their thorns
Pierced the living.
I kept up the hustle.

I used to sell my roses for God.
I have new roses now,
But no God to sell them for;
I park them in a cheap corner of the market,
And wait.


“I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.”
Charles Bukowski, Consummation of Grief

For the Aliens

This one’s for the aliens,
So far away,
Who have so few poems written about them,
Though I’d like to think that they’d be cultured enough
To appreciate it
If we bothered.
So far away
That we can probably never reach them,
Nor they us;
But we can think of each other,
Like sailors on different oceans whose routes never cross.
Perhaps the aliens have more of a handle on it all,
Or at least some of them do,
Since there must be billions of races of them,
Unless none at all,
In which case,
They will not be wondering about our poems.
We can still wonder about theirs though,
Because they’re that far away
That the ones they haven’t written
Are just as interesting as the ones they have.

God Who Cannot Be

A God dwells within me—
The God who cannot be.
He offers no eternal life
But only a palpable sense
Of solidarity with all people,
All conscious beings.
He watches over my shoulder,
The God who cannot be;
He knows my inmost dreams.
He is imagination,
Like steel and rock,
But He cheers me on,
And gives me wisdom,
Assurance,
Grace,
Sometimes correction too.
Here he is,
The God who cannot be,
Ignoring all evidence to the contrary—
Not even offended by it.
He is unmoved,
Unaffected even by His own nonexistence;
He has no inclination help my unbelief,
Or otherwise cross my palm with silver.
We wait it out:
Me here,
Him here—
God who cannot be,
Till death us do part,
In preposterous equilibrium.

The Young Man’s Reply

Dear Will, these pretty sonnets that you sent
Were ordered and created all in vain;
I’m of a downcast, melancholy bent—
All thoughts of procreation I disdain.
Though some do say I’m blessed with looks and wit,
The dullest blade might bear a burnished hilt;
Within me, there’s a gloom I can’t remit,
That swamps the praise of those who prize mere gilt.
I’ll not supply another girl or boy
To brave life’s ceaseless turmoils and deceits,
To struggle in a world I don’t enjoy,
Whose fruits are shallow triumphs, deep defeats.
Let’s leave the risks and toils of screeching birth
To those more prone to nurture hope and mirth.

Children of Darkness, Children of Light

Children of darkness,
Children of light,
Children of one cryptic womb;
Dancing together,
Concealing the spite,
Furtively watching the room.

Children of darkness,
Children of light,
Glances won’t tell who is who;
Follow the fiddle,
And have some more wine,
Everyone’s looking at you.

Children of darkness,
Children of light,
Waltzing in endless dispute:
Which is the parasite,
Virtue or guile?
The benefactor or the brute?

Children of darkness,
Children of light,
Everyone toeing the line.
How will the balance
Be broken at last?
Will it be chance or design?

Children of darkness,
Children of light,
Speaking their piece to the court:
Light gets the blessing
And solemn acclaim,
But darkness wins all the support.

Knock Me Down With a Feather

You could knock me back down with a feather,
Or shrivel me up with a glance;
I feel a bit under the weather,
But people still want me to dance.
So, just let me know what your wish is,
Enough with the hullabaloo;
Or send me to sleep with the fishes,
I really don’t mind if I do.

Just grind me to dust with your pestle,
Then blow me away with one breath,
Or lead me where rattlesnakes nestle,
Below in the valley of death.
I haven’t a reason for crowing,
Or even a wing for my prayer;
Today, I don’t know where I’m going,
Tomorrow, I won’t even care.

My body is clumsy, not agile,
My mind gets more spongy, less crisp;
The life that we lead is so fragile,
We waft in the will-o'-the-wisp.
But though I’m all hat and no cattle,
I do what I can, by and large,
So, prop me back up for the battle:
The enemy’s ready to charge.

Corridors

Corridors are tunnels
That we build above the ground,
Between the present and the future,
The known and the unknown.
Corridors are rooms to which Time has been added:
They must be passed through, endured.
In dreams, we find ourselves inside them,
Panicked;
Running against the clock;
Trapped between the observable and the hidden;
Bewildered by constantly shifting connections,
While striving desperately to reach some crucial goal.
Time is always of the essence—
Time that lurks in corridors,
Clutching its silver baseball bat.

Awakened,
We have clocks to remind us
That we are late for something,
But not what we are late for.
The second hands move too fast for us;
The hours too slow.
The satanic, black minute hand is the worst,
With its tantalizing, almost perceptible movements,
Which seem to say that Time is barely out of our grasp,
Like water in a nightmare of thirst.
The brutal Time that persecutes us in our dreams
Is the deranged henchman
Of this dull time that regulates
The monotonous tick-tock of our days.

Yes, all clocks say only one thing:
“You are late!”
But there’s ultimately nothing to be late for,
Except the clock itself,
With its circular reasoning.
The Earth turns and makes its way around the Sun:
There is no late in Astronomy.
Clocks lie to us.
What tyrannizes us is not Nature’s time but civilization’s.

Another dream.
Now we are in a mineshaft—
A different kind of corridor.
We trudge into pitch black,
Toward gold, or disaster.
We see a light:
Is it daylight,
Or something massive hurtling toward us?
What we really want it to be is a lantern,
Swung by a friend.
Miners withstand corridors far worse than ours.
Why is it that they do not all go mad?
Camaraderie.
Brotherhood.
Fellowship.
Those who walk gentler corridors—
The air-conditioned, well-lit, antiseptic
Corridors of power—
Lose their minds quite often,
For want of the same.

Corridors are rooms
In Halloween dress up.
Are we going to let them frighten us,
Or are we going to party?

Walking on the Sun

If you and I were to hike around the perimeter of the Sun,
Covering thirty miles a day,
It would take us 250 years;
By the time we returned to our starting point,
Everything would have changed.
We can never really know the Sun.

A photographer out on the sea
Records only fragmentary glimpses.
Observing his photos, he might imagine that he knows the ocean,
But that would be foolish:
It is too vast.

With a powerful enough microscope,
You could spend your whole life
Studying a single dust mite
And never be finished.
Even the tiniest things are too big for us.

The brain collects snapshots of the self,
Which it tapes together,
And declares, “This is me!”
It isn’t.

Our mind cannot fully apprehend itself—
It is too small,
And too big!
We are bigger than the Sun,
Bigger than the ocean.
We are infinite.
You can never know yourself
Because you are too big for yourself.
The oracle lied.

It’s well known that we only experience reality indirectly,
As our consciousness recreates it.
Go to the Grand Canyon and what do you see?
Only you.
Look up at the night sky—
That’s you out there.
Under that microscope—
More of you than you could ever explore.
The Sun?
You too, every mile of it.

The smell of fresh bread,
The taste of honey,
The softness of cotton,
The notes of the scale,
The colors of the rainbow,
Are all you—
The legacy of millions of years of evolution.

Just as you can never see anything on TV except the TV’s own light,
You can never experience anything in your mind except the activity of that same mind.

Yet, we intersect with others,
Whose senses derive from the same origins.
On different screens,
We can all watch the same events;
In different minds,
We all see the same stars.
Your Sun is my Sun.
The waters of mighty oceans mingle.

We can never know ourselves,
But we can spark others,
Who are also infinite,
Igniting flames of mutual recognition and celebration.

Peace of Mind

Though peace of mind is everyone’s desire,
With calm and cool reflection it would seem
That hope of its attainment must require
A basis of sufficient self-esteem,
And this in turn on character must rest—
On wisdom, kindness, fortitude, restraint—
So, those who view contentment as their quest,
Should try to keep their conduct free of taint.
Wherever in this lifetime you might go,
There’s just one simple precept to employ:
The honest life’s the only way we know
Of nurturing a lasting sense of joy.
At any cost, stay faithful to your virtue—
Your dignity, in that case, can’t desert you.

The Banks of the Nile

The ancient Egyptians investigated contraception.
If only they had mastered it!

We could have lived happily under the sun,
Along the banks of Mother Nile,
Adjusting our crops and our numbers
According to her magnanimity.
We could have stayed there forever,
Contentedly,
Blowing south with the wind,
Sailing north with the current.

Now comes our final chance
To flourish within the boundaries
Set by Mother Earth—
Generous boundaries at that.
We could stay here,
Empowered by the sun and wind,
Not deceiving ourselves into thinking
That there’s somewhere else to go,
Or that there should be more of us,
Infinite as we are:
An easy choice,
But so hard to make
As long as superstition masters us.

To Know What Life Is

To know what life is,
In all its burgeoning splendor,
Look at the evolution of birds.
To thrive in all climates,
They have developed a bewildering variety of forms:
The penguin, the vulture,
The hummingbird, the dodo,
The chatty green parrot, the mute white swan.

They are newcomers to Earth,
Long predated by mammals and reptiles,
But the diversity of birds is staggering.
Study their anatomies, social networks, reproductive strategies, building techniques, travel habits, songs. . .
Profound mysteries await.

Consider our quick-witted neighbor, the crow:
Her rapid adaptation to complex modern environments;
Her precocious tool use;
Her puzzle-solving skills;
Her mimicry of human speech—
All with a brain weighing only half an ounce.
What efficiency!

In the race of life,
The mammals have a head start,
But the birds are faster.

We have the overconfidence of the hare
And the speed of the tortoise.
We’ll probably have to cheat.

More of My Limericks

The crew of the famous Thor Heyerdahl
Lamented, "We're just far too teyerdahl
Why on earth did you hire us?
We can't sail a papyrus!"
But he shouted, "Shut up, or you're feyerdahl!"


There once was a man from Prestatyn
Who plagiarized poems in Latin.
Titled In Nocti-bus
Albo Serico— thus
Was his rip-off of “Nights in White Satin.”


Paul Gaugin declared to his sweetie,
“Oh, why did I come to Tahiti?
I'd rather reside
On the Lower East Side
And devote my best years to graffiti.”


Said X, a Cartesian coordinate,
"Oh, Y, damn this graph! We're both boredinate.
Another dimension
Would break up the tension,
But we don’t have a way of affordinate!"


There once was a nurse with a lamp
Who wandered all over the camp.
Though it gave little light,
She remarked: “That’s all right—
It will look fucking great on my stamp.”


There once was a learned tomato
Who lectured on Dante and Plato.
All the shoppers said, "Gee!
You should be on TV—
What a waste teaching greens and potato!"

The Great MacGuffin

My life is a film noir.
I’m the protagonist,
Investigating the mystery.
I don’t want to kill anyone,
But I didn’t write the script.

I’m out on the street.
Can’t afford a taxi,
So following that car is out of the question,
Even in the rain.
The MacGuffin disappears around the corner.
I have to find out where,
But the police in this town are all corrupt.
They’ve never forgiven me
For the last case I solved.

I elbow my way through China Town,
Sweet-talk amiable young baristas,
Flatter jaded bar tenders,
Hunt down the usual suspects,
Keep one step ahead of the protection boys.

A woman with a shadowy past and a black future
Steps out of the fog.
Am I looking for some place?
She will lead me to the man
Who holds the MacGuffin’s secret.
For her there’s no hope,
She'll never know that the genre itself is
The reason why she can’t form healthy relationships.
She smokes. Little wonder.

Another whiskey,
But from my own bottle.
Cheap, local blend.
Hollywood got some things right:
The drinking,
Piano music,
Darkness,
Smoke,
And a few bright specks of light peeking through.
I’m wrapped up in a white, tipsy haze,
MacGuffin my Holy Grail.

Maybe the blind man selling newspapers has the answer,
Or maybe they took the MacGuffin down to Mexico,
Where I’ll never go,
There being a limited budget and no chance of a sequel.

Eventually, I realize that it’s only a B film.
Nobody expects it to amount to anything,
Except me,
Because the lead actor in a B film
Must take it seriously,
Even when nobody else does,
Like the teacher on a school trip.

Frankl says we must have a MacGuffin in order to flourish;
Hence, temples and churches,
Ideologies, football teams.
They won’t even let you into a twelve-step program if you aren't looking for one,
Because its better to remain an addict than go MacGuffinless.
Blessed be the Great MacGuffin!

The conclusion is trite;
My enemies are vanquished.
I watch the credits scroll by,
And realize that it was all about the chase.
The MacGuffin was superfluous,
Like that incongruent dance number in between the murders.
Take it away
And all you have left is actors and scenery.
Oh, and infinite possibilities for actual enjoyment.

The Twelve Step programs lied!
What people need is not meaning
But one another.
People need people,
Love,
And love has one great advantage over meaning:
Love is real,
Unquestionably so.
Just look into a few recent suicides,
There’s your proof.
But I’m never in that kind of movie.

We are not looking for some thing,
Or some place,
But some one;
Better still, a community, a home.
Well, ain’t that sweet?

Break out from the screen,
Like Mia in the Purple Rose of Cairo,
Or Buster in Sherlock Jr.,
And, if you capture the Holy Grail,
Drop it.
Smash that sucker! For there is no MacGuffin,
No thing,
No idea—
Only you
And me.
That’s what I think.
And that’s why they don’t give me better parts.

Some of the Best People

Some of the best people are psychopaths.
Nothing to worry about there!
They are great achievers,
Big spenders,
Economy stimulators.
Psychopaths make the world go around.
What would we do without them?
They come in all colors,
Shapes and sizes,
Worship all religions equally badly,
Attend PTA meetings,
Most of all, give to charity – hooray!
Our friends the psychopaths:
Clean-shaven, suits and ties,
Impeccably tasteful eveningwear,
Manicured lawns and sheepskin slippers,
American flags flying everywhere,
Picking up the groceries,
Running the kids to school:
Nothing to see here, citizen!
Leaders, mentors, role models,
Solid pillars of superficialdom,
Sunk deep in the shifting sands of respectability.
They touch the bedrock
And they are the bedrock,
Or so they tell us,
And we believe them,
Because
Some of the best people are psychopaths.

The Good Deaths

When the dying one is encircled by loved ones,
The sting of death is blunted.
He is entangled with life
Even as it vanishes,
Engulfed by itself,
Like candlelight swallowed up by the Sun;
He slips into silence,
Surrounded by good will,
Merging love with love.
He is gone, but his heart has already been distributed,
Long before the scattering of ashes.

Death shouldn't feel like death:
It should be tranquil—
No struggle,
No fear,
No promise,
No god,
No need.

But more noble still
Is to die alone
On some obscure mountain,
Or in a hopeless, sterile room,
Yet to still die well,
Borne up by the absent arms
Of those whom one has never known,
And never will;
To die alone but not lonely,
Smiling gently,
Not from faith,
Or resolve,
But actual contentment;
To die with clearheaded insight,
Yet with imagination —
That’s the way to go!
See us all,
Gathered around you.

Nobody dies completely
When there is someone there to say goodbye,
Even if only in his mind’s eye.
The candle is out,
But every color,
Every shape,
Every movement,
Remains,
Ready to flicker
For another flame.

People Don’t Change

People don’t change.
They have always been kind,
Helpful to a stranger;
Sharing food and water,
Smiling at the neighborhood children.
We know they’ve been that way
Since ancient times:
In a word, considerate.

People don’t change,
Until they feel threatened.
Then, they will rip your face off.
Yes, they will cheer and jeer
While you are being
Slowly
Turned on the spit.
And they are so easily threatened.

Yet, even while watching you roast,
They will share their snacks.
They will stop
To lift a toddler up so that she can get a better look.
The good people
And the bad people
Are mostly the same people,
Under different conditions.
Kindness and cruelty
Depend only on frames of reference in a world
Where true virtue,
Absolute virtue,
Is so rare,
Perhaps absent.

People don’t change.
They take offense at the slightest encouragement;
Don’t stop and think;
Can’t resist momentum,
Like those bicyclists who don’t really want to knock anyone down.
The inability to resist momentum is probably the Original Sin:
What is a mob but people with momentum?

People are improved by culture,
But culture can be dropped
Instantaneously,
Like a harlot’s gown—
Which is all it is.
People don’t change.
Evolution moves too slowly for that.
So don’t expect too much.
Tread carefully,
Don’t be tempted to hate,
And be wary.
You are forever a stranger.

Some More of My Limericks

There was once a black widow named Janet
Who buried twelve husbands in granite.
When asked how she pled,
She giggled and said:
“Well, it can’t be coincidence, can it?”


Self-sacrifice took Mr. Morehouse
From luxury’s lap to the poorhouse,
But his last, greatest trial,
Was to give up denial—
He’s a pianist now in a whorehouse.


Two earthworms met up underground;
Said one, “This whole lifestyle’s unsound,
Our annelid phylum
Could use an asylum”—
Those radicals, how they expound!


S.O.Bs like to buy SUVs,
But they drive them however they please:
If we get in their way,
We end up DOA,
And that really POs EMTs.


Though you don’t know quite why or quite what,
You are drawn by this feeling you’ve got.
That’s what’s called “intuition”:
A compelling suspicion
That your mind has a plan you do not.


We pros play the best golf we can
But still there are flukes we don’t plan:
The fluffed bump and run,
The freak hole in one,
And when the mishit hits the fan.

Every Dog Will Always Do His Duty

The canine is a model of contentment,
A citizen of pedigree unmatched:
He never acts from hubris or resentment,
Or mopes about an itch that can’t be scratched.
He helps the blind man get about the city;
Policemen see him as their truest friend;
He doesn’t care that you’re not young and pretty;
Just as you are, he’ll love you to the end.
His dinners are as humble as a peasant’s;
His lodgings are as simple as a monk’s;
He’s never miffed if you don’t buy him presents,
Or gets sucked into existential funks.
He never says a word if he’s mistreated,
Or disagrees when told that he’s been bad;
He makes no bones about where he is seated—
As long as he’s invited, he’ll be glad.
His barking is as righteous as old Moses’—
Protective of his loved ones’ life and home,
And, if you’re not the cad he first supposes,
His wrath will fade as quickly as his foam.
He’s tops as hunter, playmate, guard, or herder;
He analyzes anything that moves;
And, even when they lock you up for murder,
He’ll lick your face to show he still approves.
He doesn’t care how loud your music’s playing;
He’ll join you for a swim or for a jog;
He never disagrees with what you’re saying:
Oh, fealty supreme, thy name is dog!

Though every dog will always do his duty
And every bitch is eager to be best,
I never can work out for love or beauty
Why humans can’t display an equal zest:
They’re seldom up to date on vaccinations;
They’re not disposed to take their daily walk;
And, faced with any threats or deprivations,
The human can be guaranteed to balk.
If only we could live more like our dogs do,
Oh what a wondrous place this world would be:
Each woman with a trusted friend to turn to,
Each man contented under his own tree.

Eliza, the Taverner’s Daughter

Here’s a tale that I’ll share
Of Sir Bostick the heir
And a pub called the Lamb and the Slaughter,
Where he frequently came
And demanded by name,
Eliza, the taverner’s daughter.

Now, Sir Bostick was vicious,
But he thought her delicious—
The only real reason he sought her:
She was quick with the wink,
And she knew how to drink—
Eliza, the taverner’s daughter.

She was just seventeen;
She was low, she was mean,
And she sold all the trinkets he bought her,
Then she turned him down flat,
And he couldn’t stand that—
Eliza, the taverner’s daughter.

Thus, Sir Bostick did dream
Up a dastardly scheme:
It was out by the stable he caught her,
But she used every claw
And she clamped down her jaw—
Eliza, the taverner’s daughter.

She was rather petite,
But she kicked with both feet—
She was shockingly strong, but he fought her,
And it grieves me to say,
She was carried away—
Eliza, the taverner’s daughter.

So he took her at last
To his mansion, so vast;
To a room in the basement he brought her;
She was tied to a chair,
Only Bostick knew where—
Eliza, the taverner’s daughter.

She was bound hand and feet,
Given nothing to eat—
Not even a glass of cold water:
In a room with no fire,
Oh, her prospects were dire—
Eliza, the taverner’s daughter.

But she somehow found hope
And she slipped from the rope,
With a trick her grandfather had taught her;
She could hear Bostick snore,
As she crept passed his door—
Eliza, the taverner’s daughter.

She made fast for a farm,
Where she raised the alarm—
She was tougher than Bostick had thought her,
And that motley farm crew,
All agreed what to do
For Eliza, the taverner’s daughter.

Bostick cried, “Let me live!”
But she would not forgive,
Though he groveled and begged and besought her:
Now he hangs from that tree,
Very much to the glee
Of Eliza, the taverner’s daughter.

Private justice like this
Is entirely amiss,
And if you don’t oppose it, you ought-ter;
But, upon cool reflection,
I’d allow an exception
For Eliza, the taverner’s daughter.

Something About Trees

There’s something reassuring about trees.
Look up at the branches—
Always eloquent,
Always inching forward,
Reaching for the light.
Think of the innumerable lives that trees harbor
And nourish;
The winters they pass through,
Naked.
Trees endure
More successfully than ourselves,
Though they eat only air
And drink only water.

They were home to our earliest ancestors.
Later, villagers constructed huts from them,
Traders hammered out boats,
Pioneers built cabins,
Furniture, fences—
Trees still smell of home.

There’s something reassuring about trees.
They call children to play,
As children must;
They call old folks to reflect,
As old folks should.
They encourage everything
To find its proper place
And breathe.
They leave room for others.
They even purify our air.
Like the sun and the rain,
Trees refrain from judgment.
You can trust a tree.

There’s something reassuring about trees:
Deep in the infested city,
Humanizing the concrete,
Calming the populace;
Their movements too slow to perceive.
A tree will never sneak up on you,
And you can never sneak up on a tree—
Nothing surprises them!
Yet they catch us off-guard,
Releasing bold new colors every fashion season.

There’s something reassuring about trees.
They are never agitated.
Angels might go to war, but not trees.
No matter how often we strike them,
They never hold grudges—
As far as we know.

What kind of tree would you be?
Any kind.

Sugar, Tobacco and Cotton

The streets of the spa town are wide
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Gentlefolk amble outside
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Carriages rolling along
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Everyone sings the same song
Sugar, tobacco and cotton

Buildings in regency style
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Stroll in the gardens awhile
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Though it all seems so carefree
Something in Denmark is rotten
What brought these riches we see?
Sugar, tobacco and cotton

Bursting right out of each purse
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Two of the three are a curse
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Look how we’re flourishing now
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Don’t ever stop to ask how
Sugar, tobacco and cotton

Under the lash works a team
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Never taste Devonshire cream
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Sweltering out in the field
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
What will their suffering yield?
Sugar, tobacco and cotton

A baby is born with blue eyes
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Nobody shows much surprise
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
So many siblings for play
So many babes misbegotten
What causes all their dismay?
Sugar, tobacco and cotton

Portugal, England and Spain
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Amsterdam joins the refrain
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Baltimore, Nantes and Bordeaux
What has us all so besotten?
See how they come and they go
Sugar, tobacco and cotton

This is the reason you’re born
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Early to work in the morn
Sugar, tobacco and cotton
Many souls noble and proud
Why have their names been forgotten?
Everyone say it out loud:
Sugar, tobacco and cotton

Why?

Persistence is not justification;
Therefore, survival counts for nothing,
And reproduction also counts for nothing,
Contributes nothing,
But only begs the question:
Why?
What is a meaningful life?
What is thriving?

The answer is simple, but not logical:
Connection—
Positive, shared experience.
The reality of us alone,
Of me and you,
Of good will
Is solid.

A smile,
A nod,
A wave,
A bow—
Sparks of recognition
That ricochet from heart to heart
Are the cherries that top off our days.

Connection is not reducible to meaning,
But rather gives meaning meaning.
Why live? Because it’s worthwhile;
Why is it worthwhile? Connection. Belonging.

You can’t deduce it,
But you can feel it in your marrow,
As a certainty,
Because believing this really does make it true.

English has no serviceable synonym
For that unwieldy word, worthwhileness;
Yet, it is what we seek,
And that quest is seeded in every cell,
In the DNA,
Of which our consciousness
Is the flower.

Some More of My Limericks

I once knew a man who was poor
Who used to sell dogs door to door.
If you asked, "Is this legal?"
He would slip you a beagle,
Saying, "Gift for your wife – say no more!"


There is nothing amiss in a nude
When her form’s art historically viewed
In a Klimt or Picasso,
But in clubs in El Paso,
There's a form of a miss we’d exclude.


The teacher of Andrew McKay
Said, “Boy, there’s a spot in your eye!
The doctor, no doubt,
Must dig the thing out,”
Which made that poor spot start to cry.
“To the office,” she yelled, “You must fly,”
To which Andrew was bound to comply,
But pretty nurse Finkle
Said, “It’s only a twinkle,
And you’ll lose it, alas, by and by.”


There once was a glass of red wine
That mused, "Must all mortal men dine?
When we’re finally smashed,
Are our hopes simply dashed?
Are we raised again in the divine?"


A lover lamenting cruel fate
Once leapt from the Empire State
Due to heartless young Pam,
Who did not give a damn,
Though her brothers both thought it was great.

Backwards in High Heels

I might seem quite well-adapted
To the people that I meet,
A respectable consumer
You could pass on any street;
But just check beneath the surface
And you’ll see that something’s lacking:
I am walking over breaking ice
And all I hear is cracking.
I have terrible misgivings
That this smile of mine conceals:
I feel just like Ginger Rogers
Dancing backwards in high heels.

I’ve been working for a living
Ever since I was sixteen,
Toiling one way or another,
Though the fruits I’ve not much seen;
Like a monkey on a palm tree,
Like a hamster in a cage,
Like the drone in some loud beehive,
I’ve been robbed at every stage.
When they come to take the census,
I shall hint at how it feels,
When I list my occupation:
“Dancing backwards in high heels.”

They are liquored up in Congress,
Doped to death in Beverly Hills;
If it isn’t the Jack Daniels
Then it’s certainly the pills;
When they’re backed into a corner
And their options always stink,
Then it’s really not surprising
People turn to drugs and drink;
No one’s staying on the wagon
When it’s always losing wheels,
But it’s hard when you’re not sober—
Dancing backwards in high heels.

We’re all seeking a way forward,
We’re all looking for the light,
We’re all pulling up our bootstraps,
We’re all working through the night,
We’re all trying to be better,
Watching courses, buying books,
But we’ve found out that perfection’s
Not as simple as it looks,
And this thing called self-improvement
Isn’t worth a bag of eels—
“Seven Ways to Be Effective
Dancing Backwards in High Heels.”

We are laboring on life’s treadmill,
Trudging every day that comes,
But the people in high places
Are convinced we’re simply bums
That they have to micromanage
Like bacteria or slime,
Just in case we might embezzle
A few minutes of their time,
So, we entertain them daily
Like blasé performing seals,
Catching any fish they’ll throw us,
Dancing backwards in high heels.

I think most people are honest
To a moderate degree,
With some paragons of virtue
(I refer to you and me!),
But there’s no one’s road that’s easy,
Be they virtuous or foul,
Which is why the rich and mighty
Seem so predisposed to scowl;
Even New York’s greatest gangster
Can’t keep everything he steals,
It’s too hard to get those books straight,
Dancing backwards in high heels.

There are people in big houses,
There are people in small shacks,
There are those who watch portfolios,
And those who watch their backs;
There is heartbreak in high places,
Trouble on the factory floor:
We are all in this together,
Be we wealthy, be we poor.
Though Dame Fortune’s got a lot of cards,
There’s just one hand that she deals:
Everybody’s Ginger Rogers,
Dancing backwards in high heels.

John the Baptist kept his nose clean
In the desert far from town
And he tried to warn the people
What he thought was going down;
He avoided all temptation,
Be it money, sex, or meat,
And he preached purification
With no shoes upon his feet;
But they chopped his head off anyway,
The book of Mark reveals,
For a showgirl named Salome,
Dancing backwards in high heels.

Now, I’ve made my lamentation
On the state of human woe,
And I ought to take it further,
But wherever would I go?
There’s no deus ex machina,
There’s no justice in the land,
And if one thing’s not transparent
It’s that famous unseen Hand;
But my case would never make it
To the Court of Last Appeals:
No, you don’t get compensation,
Dancing backwards in high heels.

I’ve conceived a celebration
When they lay me to my rest,
And it gives me satisfaction
Just to contemplate this jest:
I’ll have Dixies’ fastest jazz band
To provide a sense of cheer,
And then sixteen milk-white horses
Bringing barrels full of beer,
Forty circus clowns in costume,
Prancing wild high-stepping reels,
Six strong men to bear my coffin—
Dancing backwards in high heels.

It Will Make the Game Harder

It will make the game harder:
Dealing fair and square,
Making sure nobody gets hurt,
Or left behind,
Keeping your commitments,
And leaving vengeance to the law
For those who evade theirs.

It will make the game harder:
Making kindness your default,
Prioritizing the good of the whole world,
Now and in the future;
Treating everyone with respect,
Listening to them,
Helping them—
Sharing your good fortune.

It will make the game harder.
It’s no path to riches,
Just the only way to keep your triumphs pure,
Your joy whole,
So that you can look in the mirror
With a happy heart while you live
And die contentedly too.

It will make the game harder,
Not easier,
But it will make your life bigger, better,
Your satisfaction more profound.
If you want that,
You have no choice.
It will make the game harder,
But it’s the only way to win.

Blue-Blue-Blue Day (A Song for Spring)

This morning, I’m feeling quite frisky
Maybe I’ll skip that first whiskey
Then again, no, that’s too risky
In love with this blue-blue-blue day

Surely, I’ve never felt fitter
A-flitter with twitter and glitter
Feeling each neurotransmitter
In love with this blue-blue-blue day

Something in nature is calling
Even the worms are enthralling
Possums don’t look so appalling
In love with this blue-blue-blue day

Each cooling breeze, every sparrow
Thrills me right down to the marrow
Why has my mind been so narrow?
In love with this blue-blue-blue day

I know that this ecstasy’s treason
To all of the dictates of reason
But Spring is one hell of a season
In love with this blue-blue-blue day

The sun’s such a succulent orange
Time for sunbathing and more, in-
-gesting an ice cream or four
In love with this blue-blue-blue day

Somehow my heart is ascending
All of my traumas are mending
Who needs a cynical ending?
In love with this blue-blue-blue day

Mourning Has Broken

You will die,
Really die;
Not go to heaven,
Or transmigrate,
Or watch, or haunt,
Or even sleep in peace,
But only die,
Like a burst bubble,
A forgotten song,
Flushed toilet paper.

This is your gospel,
Your Good News,
Because if you can digest this one thing,
Death,
Once and for all,
You can be free.

Right here,
Where you are,
In spite of Death:
The rain continues to fall,
The breeze continues to blow;
The Sun warms,
The ice melts.
Couples row on the river;
Children play in the sun;
The laughing lady kneads her dough;
A dog pees against a favorite tree;
Church bells chime;
Colors riot.

Everything has its limits;
Everything has an end;
Death is simply the wall
That surrounds our little garden:
Why stare at the wall
When there is a garden?

We are the rowers;
We are the children;
We are the laughing lady,
The dog, and the tree;
We are the sun and rain;
And when Death takes us,
Being all these things,
We remain.

Stand still.
Be silent.
Watch,
Listen,
And be this world,
This world that doesn’t have you in it,
Because you are already
Dead—
Contentedly dead.

More of My Limericks

A charming romantic named Bing
Sought to fly like a bird on the wing,
So he climbed up a steeple,
Which scared all the people,
So they caged him and taught him to sing.


Feeling dizzy, lightheaded and faint?
Then you're either in love or you ain't.
If your heart's not aglow,
To a doctor please go,
For you must have some lesser complaint.


A solipsist aired his contention
To peers at a recent convention.
He cried, “It’s quite clear
That you’re really not here,
But you bastards just don’t pay attention.”


A rather disgruntled young Viking
Found plunder was not to his liking:
When they yelled, “All ashore”
He just threw down his oar
And announced, “I’m not striking, I’m striking”


We think seventy virgins a must
When it comes to rewarding the Just,
But that neighbor we shun
Says it’s seventy-one—
What a shocking example of lust!


There was a collector named Otto,
Who bought an expensive Giotto,
Which he hung on his wall
And would point out to all,
Saying, “Don’t go to auctions when blotto.”

The Thing

Make a new relationship
With the Thing
That hurts you most.

You have three choices:
Destroy it,
Get away from it,
Or endure it as cheerfully as circumstances allow.

If the Thing can neither be removed nor escaped,
It must be managed:
Give it boundaries
In space and time—
Know where your safe spaces are.
Don’t let the Thing go everywhere that you go.

If the Thing cannot be confined in space and time,
Set boundaries within your mind—
Mental oases from which the Thing cannot drink.
Though your life is hard now,
Life is always good for somebody somewhere,
And that is a blessing for everybody everywhere.

But don’t blame yourself for the Thing:
You never wanted the Thing,
Why should you be blamed for it?

The Thing burrows deep within your mind,
Beavering its three-dimensional labyrinth.
The meal it seeks is your essence,
Your dignity—
This, you can never let it feed on.
Stay one step ahead:
Create a new dimension in your thought,
One its claws cannot penetrate.

Make a new relationship
With the Thing that hurts you most:
Be its Master.

Maturity

She tries to live her life beyond reproof
And never act from turpitude or spite,
But angry rains still pound upon her roof
And voices still accuse her in the night.
She offers up her reasons, not contrition,
As if her good intentions could purport
To strike out self-judged failure and omission,
But still she feels she’s fallen somehow short
When, buttressing her conscience's complaints,
The triumphs and ripe fruits that might have been,
Fill out a better life her mind’s eye paints
In colors bright as day upon its screen.
She turns though, lets them fade into a haze,
And treasures her full belly and warm days.

I Am the Rain

I am the rain;
I am everywhere
And all I do is fall;
I fall on your hair,
I roll down your cheeks,
I get into your eyes
And mingle with your tears;
You feel my icy fingers against your sides.

There is no escape;
You cannot turn away from me,
But you can turn toward me,
And when you do turn toward me,
And accept me,
The miracle occurs. . .

I become water,
Pure, refreshing water.
I enter your blood,
I replenish your heart,
I nourish you,
I sustain you.

I am water.
I am everywhere,
And all I do is lift you up.
You are feather-light;
You are sailing;
And, wherever you sail,
The rain that falls down on you
Is the water that lifts you up.
I hold you; you are safe.

But, remember that the Tao is impartial,
So you must never fight me:
Those who do are drowned,
Swallowed up by their own power.
And do not take me for granted,
For I would become solid ice:
I would crack you.
I do not know my own strength.
Don’t make me be hard
When it is my nature to be soft,
Accommodating.

I am the rain;
I am the ice;
But let me be water;
Let me be everywhere always water.
Do not perish on that cold, rain-swept sea.

The Laughter of Children

The pot of joy bubbles over,
Unconsciously:
Children laughter.
Nothing surpasses it.

Delight is always within our reach.
We know that,
But not deeply enough,
Not to the bone.
Otherwise, we would fight our way back there.

The pressure that we create for ourselves
Keeps us miserable—
The very thing we don’t want.
What incompetence!

To step back seems easy,
Like waking from a nightmare,
But these grown-up habits,
Clouds that feed on their own blackness,
Leave us smothered,
Impotent,
Unable to reach what is well within our grasp;
Only very bad habits indeed can do that
Because without joy what do we have?
What is this force that fixes our backs to the wall?
An illusion of thought,
Which only thought’s unraveling can extinguish.

Slow down the merry-go-round, bring it to a halt,
Then step backwards, into childhood, into sanity.
We can awaken ourselves from dreams,
Why not from thoughts?

More of My Limericks

If you’re lacking a little good cheer,
Go and tickle a bull in the rear,
For I’m sure that the rumor
That they’ve no sense of humor
Is a product of ignorant fear.


Aloof types are never the sweetest.
It’s clear that avoiding them’s meetest,
So give them the snub,
And apply for my club:
We’re exclusively anti-elitist.


A native of Chalamazug
Once fell overboard from a tug.
He cried, “Ding-dong boller
Doo jango zong zoller,”
Which means, “Glug-glug glug glug-glug glug.”


Speaking anthropocentrically, I
Would prefer that we not search the sky
For quick-witted ETs,
Who’d subdue us with ease,
Till we know what they like in their pie.


See the Moon in the sky as it waxes;
Feel the warm tranquil wind that relaxes;
Turn and give me your smile
On our Paradise Isle;
Say you love your avoider of taxes.


The CAPTCHA's the name for the box
That you have to fill in to outfox
Those machines that send spam
That is linked to some scam
That would swindle you down to your socks.

Ode to Time

Oh Time,
It is not that you are an enemy
But that we have rejected you,
Refused to work within your confines
Of growth and decay,
Life and death—
Parameters that even you cannot alter.
We have been wedded to you,
But we have not been sensible;
We have insisted that you change,
You, who cannot change.
We ourselves should have changed,
As we secretly know we could have done,
Since there is no divorcing you:
It is you who divorce us all in the end,
Leaving for your future consorts
Unimaginable marvels
To be relished in our absence,
The absence even of our memory.
Perhaps they will accept you as you are.
Otherwise, that wondrous future
Will be just like today:
Love and loss,
Fear and loathing,
Happy face, sad face.

Our naked ancestors hunted shells along the seashore
In the cold drizzle,
Longing for the warmth of evening fire,
Where they huddled together,
Before slipping into sublime sleep,
Just like we do,
But with less drama,
For they were more at peace with you,
Oh Time.

Come, let us begin again!
No, we are too old now.
Find somebody new,
Oh Time.

I Said Goodbye to God

I said goodbye to God one day
Because I couldn’t see
Why one who seemed so full of words
Would never talk with me.
“Well, He knows where I am,” I mused,
“And if there comes a day
He’ll condescend to seek me out,
I can’t be far away.”

I said goodbye to God because
I’d finally concluded
That those who claimed to teach His ways
Were guileful or deluded:
What use is praying to a God
Who hides behind a curtain?
And how do you grow close to one
Whose feelings are uncertain?

I said goodbye to God without
Resentment in my heart;
I hadn’t any notion of
How long we’d be apart.
It seemed that there was just too much
About Him left to know;
I said goodbye to God and yet
I thought someday He’d show.

I said goodbye to God and now
My words I shall not mince:
I said goodbye to God and, no,
I haven’t heard back since.
I stroll along my merry road
And seldomly look back:
I said goodbye to God and that’s
One less load on my back.

Dust to Dust

Dust!
We have to keep on dusting,
So that we can respect ourselves.
Even if you have someone to dust for you,
Keep dusting,
Because, ultimately,
It’s better to be a duster
Than to employ one.
The rich do not dust,
And look how they usually turn out!

During the Second World War,
British soldiers,
Prisoners of the Japanese,
Were compelled by their own officers
To shave every morning,
Regardless,
Because one cannot stop dusting;
One cannot take that risk,
Not after being stripped
Of everything else.
From dust you come,
To dust you return,
But, in the meantime,
Dust.

Dust as free men and women.
Put on the music and dust.
Dusting is noble: ask your grandmother!
Dusting is never a waste of time;
Only the thought that it's a waste of time
Is a waste of time.
Dust briskly as if brushing off a hero’s statue;
Dust gently as if caressing a lover;
Dust reverently.
Chop wood,
Fetch water,
Dust.
The world is a big, jolly snow globe
Filled with dust.
The last thing you need
Is a vacuum cleaner
Because dust is the stuff of life:
Once you are separated from that,
What might become of you?

We Will Scatter Your Ashes on the Lake Today

We will scatter your ashes on the lake today,
When the sun shines full upon it;
Early,
Like you always rose early.
We will remember you,
And this remembrance
Will mark the beginning of our forgetting.

We will scatter your ashes with heavy hearts,
Because these ashes are you,
And we are at fault.
We will be silent,
At least we would be
If we could,
But we never can and that’s one of the reasons why ...

We will scatter your ashes in your favorite place,
Though these ashes are not you
And you will not see it.
If you were here,
You would only make sarcastic remarks,
As would be your right;
But you are not here,
Not now.

We will scatter your ashes in the midst of resentment,
All thinking the others more to blame,
Only agreed upon one thing:
That it wasn’t you.
We tried to love you,
But we didn’t know how. Old story.
Too late.

We will scatter your ashes with no sense of joy,
Though your life was so well-lived.
You were an example;
We are ashamed.
There is no redemption in tragedy:
Catharsis is not redemption.

We will scatter your ashes with barely a word,
For you have broken the bond that should have united us,
And by you have broken, I mean we have broken.
We would bow before you,
But there is no you,
And we would only be embarrassed in front of one another.

We will scatter your ashes sadly, shamefully,
Yet unrepentantly,
Because we do not learn from experience:
Not us!
But you know that already.
No, knew it.
You don’t even know that anymore.


This poem was a response to Visual Verse's monthly challenge to write a poem in one hour inspired by a picture provided.

Some More of My Old Limericks

An obsessive young lady named Fong
Would constantly bang on a gong;
Said her doctor, “I find
You’ve an unbalanced mind—
You should strive for more ding and less dong.”


In the village of Jingamafloo,
They don’t look at the world like we do:
When a gentleman dies
His dear wife shouts, “Surprise!
Now we’ll all get a little more stew.”


How to spell the potato has tried
Many minds, sometimes mine, I’ll confide.
Though it might have an eye,
There’s no E – don’t ask why!
Not until it’s been baked, boiled or fried.


If a thought that’s been thought has been “thunk”
Have those dreams that we’ve sought all been “sunk”?
Should “we ought” be “we unk”?
Can what’s fought be what’s “funk”?
And those stocks that we bought, were they “bunk”?


There once was a yogi who said,
“I can see I should never have wed:
Our carnal relations
Only cause lamentations—
I suspect it’s the nails in the bed.”


Assisting a suicide’s fate
Is a practice all faiths seem to hate:
Is God, the Creator,
Some prickly Head Waiter,
Who freaks if you send back your plate?

The Gods Who We Are

Build an altar
To your wiser self;
Light incense and candles;
Await the presence
That comes only in stillness,
The presence that communes with you,
Is you.
Only you,
Who are so miniscule,
Yet infinite.

Our ancestors knelt before Osiris
And they received blessings.
Osiris, Apollo, Mary, Allah
Brahman, Buddah,
That flamboyant revivalist the Sun
And his soul sister the Moon—
All only you,
You and me.

However, like wild animals,
The gods who we are will not come
If they know that we are here.
So, silence first and foremost.
Fold into yourself,
That you might unfold from yourself,
Like the numbers
In an origami finger game:
Disappear so that you might reappear.
Still to active and back to still
Is the way of life and thought.
Be still all hearts.

Wait upon yourself,
At the edge of the night,
Reverently:
Hushed like a lamb,
Primed like a lion.
You are the only one who can receive the revelation,
And you are the only one who can give it.

The Dandelions

The dandelions are laughing in the grass,
But soon I’ll be along to mow them down.
I bend to ape the customs of my class,
And such displays aren’t welcome in this town.
We’ve deemed that all our lawns must look alike,
Bereft of giddy-headed yellow charms;
The place for flowering things is on a hike,
With rippling streams and wholesome, oblong farms.
To stop and stare there is a place and time,
But don’t pretend it might be here and now:
The workweek does not yield to the sublime;
The lapwing’s nest is nothing to the plough.
No, we’re resolved to hasten, strain and strive,
To squeeze on through like earthworms, not to thrive.

Nothing to Say

Humanity,
Shuffling through the street,
Watching TV,
Driving cars,
All with nothing to say,
And yet so quiet about it,
As if they don’t even see it as a problem,
The “despair of not being in despair."

No, if you have nothing to say,
That’s a stage-four symptom of something deadly;
You should be crying for help.
Shout it from the rooftops:
"I have nothing to say,
Oh, sweet Jesus, I have nothing to say.”
If you have nothing to say,
I want to hear you say it.
We all need to hear it.

Scribble it on the wall beneath the railroad track,
Wear it on a tee shirt,
Or flash it to someone with a knowing look—
Even a glare would do.
Form secret societies,
And murmur about it.
Take that first step.

Let all the people who have nothing to say
Join together
And march on Washington:
“We have nothing to say,
Goddamnit,
And we’re gonna say it!”

Nothing to say is reason to scream.
Scream until the bubble explodes:
Who knows what mystery might burst forth?
Nothing to say—
Bang!

Creatio ex nihilo.

The stars have nothing to say.
Life has nothing to say.
Lovers have nothing to say.

There is nothing to say,
But that’s no excuse
For going about it in completely the wrong way!
From the silence of unconsciousness
We must rescue the silence of awareness.

I’m Looking for a Mind at Work

I’m looking for a mind at work,
Compassionate and giving,
A consciousness that seeks the good
Of every creature living.
I’m looking for a sense of care,
A bias for protection,
But when I dare to stop and stare,
I just see blind selection:
The cuckoo raids another nest,
And Smokey grabs a rabbit,
While soccer moms strike squirrels down,
Just out of callous habit.

I’m looking for a higher love,
But only find a scheme;
An algorithmic strategy,
A program, not a dream.
I’m looking for a miracle,
If only on occasion,
But Nature’s brutal wheel just turns,
Quite heedless of dissuasion.
The suffering of innocents—
A cliché for good reason,
For in all weathers, hot or cold,
They’re never out of season.

I’m looking for a mind at work,
And likewise so are you;
I just can’t find a trace of one,
I know that irks you too;
For though we’re told the road is long,
And that the gate is narrow,
We don’t see why the rules can’t bend
To sometimes save a sparrow.
No, mysticism never helped
Us see behind closed doors:
And yet there is a mind at work,
The one that’s mine and yours.

More of My Old Limericks

I've no fear of the mean streets of Skokie —
I'm adept at concealed karaoke:
If I'm under attack,
There's a switch that I whack —
Then it blares out a loud “Hokey Pokey".


Is Algebra fruitless endeavor?
It seems they’ve been trying for ever
To find x, y, and z
And it’s quite clear to me:
If they’ve not found them yet then they'll never.


There once was a baby named Sam
Who would never be good for his mam:
His screams were so loud
That he’d draw a small crowd,
Then he’d sell bootlegged booze from his pram.


As for sex education, I’ve wondered
If our school system’s totally blundered,
For the textbooks these days
Just teach two or three ways—
While Norwegians learn more than five hundred.


There once was a man of Nepal
Who declared, "I have seen through it all.
I shall sit on my bum
And not even chew gum
And shall think and do nothing at all."


One’s stance on the flinging of feces
Is likely to hinge on one’s species,
The strength of one’s arm,
One’s urge to do harm,
And whether one rents, owns or leases.

Blessed Lives

We lead blessed lives,
Safe lives,
Never facing combat,
The slashing of iron against bone;
Never realizing
How resolutely the laws of physics
Stand to attention,
Ready to pump out the blood.

We go on gut instinct,
Ignorant of how quickly it all falls apart,
Of how readily we start putting people on trains—
Anything to be of help.
We only see the surface;
Living is not really living.

We must look unblinkingly into the abyss:
We must steel ourselves,
So that we can dare to think and feel.
A little suffering keeps despair at bay,
Enabling everything
Beautiful and good,
Virtuous and sound,
To come into being
And endure.
We must be armored,
Prepared to fight:
Only the hard can be soft,
And we must be soft
At any cost.

In Praise of Income Tax

I love the income tax,
I’m very glad to pay it;
It makes the world a better place.
I’m not afraid to say it.
To spread some of the wealth around
Enhances any nation,
If, like all acts of virtue,
It’s performed in moderation.

Sing praises to the income tax,
Oh people near and far:
The more you have to pay of it,
The better off you are.
Instead of revolution,
With bloodshed, ruin and strife,
How sweet it is to write a check
And get on with your life.

Not everybody has quick brains,
Clear vision or bold pluck,
Robustness, or resilience,
Or, most of all, good luck.
So, be a hero, not a jerk,
Should you be blessed with stacks:
Please act as if you’re all grown up
And gladly pay your tax.

We Shall Live On

We shall live on
In people far away
Who don’t know our names,
And don’t need to;
In those who feel as we feel,
Share our ideals,
Rejoice in what inspires us.
Let’s make this world a little better
For those people,
So that when they come
They will be more hopeful,
More contented,
More fulfilled than we have been;
That would be enough.

We are humanity:
Circling each other;
Engaging with each other;
Loving each other;
Life loving life;
Each a splinter of the whole,
A bright fragment of the kaleidoscope;
Mysticism without guile;
Just being, not Being.

In our separate dreams:
We arrive in class naked and late;
We are almost crushed by malevolent walls;
We watch strange gods move across the indigo sky;
We fall downwards
Into infinite space,
Plummeting toward stone, or fire.
We awaken petrified,
Always alone,
But together.

In one dream, a mother
Gave me her baby to hold.
I carried it around with me
Through several bustling meetings
And finally returned to the room
Where the mother had been,
But she was gone.
Did you see her? In your dream?

On the Sluggishness of Mother Nature

I have a strong suspicion, truth be told,
That tyrants had a role in days gone by,
When fearsome wolves pursued us through the cold
And gods made dreadful thunder in the sky;
In perils, hardnosed leaders were a must;
We had no time to glibly question why?
Was this command imprudent, that unjust?
Close-lurking death demanded we comply.
Submission then most likely had its place,
But now it’s just a need we long outgrew,
And those who shout in everybody’s face
Just blight and bungle everything we do:
When boorish brutes beset each institution,
How slothful seems the pace of evolution!

More of My Old Limericks

 

The jester of Amalek's dead.
The Israelites chopped off his head.
His last witty thing
Was to point at the king:
"That's Saul, folks!" — the last words he said.


There once was a man of great wealth
Who was told, “This will not bring you health.”
He was told it a lot,
So he had the man shot,
And that pretty much speaks for itself.


Now, listen up all of you haters,
And I’ll give you the word about craters:
They are holes that are strewn
On the face of the Moon --
Well at least that’s the meat and potaters.


There once was a gourmand named Finney
Who hated to see people skinny,
Which I think best explains
Why he left his remains
To a cannibal tribe in New Guinea.


There once was a baby named Lou
And he grew and he grew and he grew,
And he grew and he grew,
And he grew and he grew,
But he stopped when he reached six foot two.


There are three hundred girls in distress
In a basement at USPS,
Where the postmaster hides
All the mail-order brides
Who were lacking a proper address.

Old Rupert’s Almanac, a waltmarie*

 

If you want to succeed at the new farming --

sow lies

Distribute them widely, water them with fears, and wait while they ripen --

harvest 

Congratulations, you have raised America’s greatest cash crop --

outrage 

It’s the new plastic and people are getting rich --

trust me

If you don’t mind a little dirt, the terrific thing about the new farming is this:

it pays.

 

*A waltmarie is a ten-line poem in which the even lines are all two syllables in length and form their own mini-poem if read separately.

Starstruck

Our polluted air
Has taken away the stars,
Most of them.
How did we lose the stars?
What were we thinking?
Once bright, steadfast. . .
Dimmed.
Some people want to bring back the stars.
Some people want to take away the few we still have.

Children are growing up today,
Deep in our cities,
Barely knowing what stars are;
An undernourished,
Star-starved generation.
Is it not enough that we poisoned their air and their water?
Did we also have to block out the lights
That should kindle their dreams,
That guided the magi,
Columbus,
The Polynesians,
Harriet Tubman?
How will we quench our thirst
Once the drinking gourd is gone?
Will we even know that we are thirsty?

How do you break free
Without first imagining,
And how do you imagine
Without the stars?
Some people want to bring back the stars.
Some people want to take away the few we still have.

Leaders

 

We can feed and clothe everyone,
Teach them to read and write,
Divide and multiply,
Give them the care they need,
Every
Single
Person,
For a few thousand bucks each.
But we don’t.
We are generous enough,
But we are incompetent,
Disorganized;
We fight over details;
We choose leaders who have other priorities --
We are that stupid.
We choose leaders whose souls are vacuums,
With no imagination for anything but their own careers,
Their own self image --
And even that is not original!
They suck up everything good and true
And shit it out
All over the rest of us,
Again and again.

We could thrive, though,
That must always be repeated.
We are blinded by religion,
Ideology,
Ethnicity,
Fear,
A strange fear that ignores the many real threats that we face
In favor of imagined ones;
A fear pressed upon us by authorities
Whose legitimacy derives solely from the power that we gave them,
Though they know even less than ourselves.
We could do it,
Easily,
If we trusted the right people.
But the right people are humble, hesitant.
Honesty is timid.
The right people don't try hard enough to appear trustworthy.
The right people are fools.
We were the right people.

Somewhere, Perhaps

Somewhere, perhaps, there’s a holy river
That isn't polluted,
And a holy man,
Who isn't polluted;
An altar where the greedy do not go,
With the statue of a saint
Who has not been tarnished,
Not even after meticulous biography,
The publication of his personal diaries,
And extensive interviews with his wife and children.
Somewhere, there’s a book,
Whose language is elegant,
Whose tales are all edifying,
Whose morals are crystal clear,
And always applicable.
Somewhere, there’s a summit,
And those who stand upon it
Can think only wholesome thoughts,
And conceive only practical plans.
Somewhere, there’s a community
Where none of the children are awkward,
And none of the uncles are creepy,
Where dogs are always welcome.
Naturally,
This place is hidden,
Nestled in a cozy niche,
And does not advertise,
Which is just as well,
Because that cozy niche
Is located
Between
Your ears.

More of My Old Limericks

 

There was a young fellow of Putney
Who would eat only lentils and chutney.
He chose to migrate
To an Indian state,
But he died there of terrible glutney.

 

It took a few plates of titanium
To patch up that crack in my cranium.
That’s the danger you court
With a cocky retort
To a wife with a potted geranium.

 

An ambitious young fellow named Matt
Tried to parachute using his hat.
Folks below looked so small,
As he started to fall,
Then got bigger and bigger and SPLAT!

 

An unscrupulous bird is the stork:
He dines with no knife and no fork;
No agency vets
All those newborns he gets,
And when asked where they’re from, he won’t tork.

 

There was a young lady of Clapham
Who had too many kids and would slap ‘em,
Till the council said, “Cease!”
Now she calls the police
And they come round with tasers and zap ‘em.

 

What a limerick is in a crunch
Is a bit like a loony’s light lunch;
Though it briefly delights,
It’s just four nutty bites,
Swallowed down with a ludicrous punch

Against Hope

They say that hope's a thing with wings,
But such a view has flaws:
What comes with such appendages
Will also come with claws.
Poor Icarus had feathers too,
And yet he took the plunge,
Which brought his parents agonies
That hope could not expunge.
Now, when our loved ones writhe in pain
We hope they’ll find relief
And by this hope we daily learn
That hope’s in league with grief.
For hope’s a thing that draws you in,
It’s unsuspecting prey,
Concealing its intent to pounce—
Let’s keep false hope at bay!

Flanders Field Memorial

Before the flag-draped altar humbly kneeled,
Once more we pay respects at Flanders field;
We hear the somber sermon and the knell
And praise those loyal men who flocked to hell.
How hard for those whom statesmen’s folly dooms,
Their destiny betrayed in cold gray rooms,
The doors to which are closed, debate concealed,
And every door just leads to Flanders field.

The trip took days, another bleak November,
All for these scant dull seconds to remember,
Remember what we never even knew,
For they are gone, those last remaining few,
Who heard the blasts, saw healthy youngsters blown
To clumps of flesh and brain and splintered bone,
With nothing left to lay upon the shield
To bring a Spartan home from Flanders field.

But home some came, with tales they never told,
Took up their mundane callings and grew old,
Though waking still in time-mistaken fright
And hearing cries of terror in the night;
Or silently remembering the cost,
Of anguish gained for friends and comrades lost;
For those who lived bore wounds that never healed,
As much as those who fell in Flanders field.

This modern world would leave them so perplexed;
We don’t write verse these days, we simply text;
We seldom hear a patriotic word,
And yet, we’re not so numb we can’t be stirred:
We still fight wars that no one understands,
On distant isles, in far exotic lands,
Where poppy crops produce a deadly yield,
Though no one there has heard of Flanders field.

Flowers Under Pressure

Some flowers we extinguish
By crushing;
Others, we preserve
By pressing.
It all depends on how the weight is applied.

There are also
Rare flowers
Whom we preserve
By crushing.

We remember their names:

Marilyn
Billie
Virginia
Joan
Amy
Diana
Sylvia
Janis
Hypatia
Whitney

So many Ophelias:
A garden’s worth when living,
A book’s worth when dead.
But the garden
Would have been so much better.

I Sold My Soul to the Fairies

I sold my soul to the fairies,
When I was foolish and green;
Lost in a mystical frenzy,
Deep in the forest unseen.
Dark was the spirit who led me
To their perverse evening throng;
What was that potion she fed me,
Sweet on the tongue yet so strong?

That’s when I felt myself sinking
Into the Moon-haunted night;
Blackness enveloped my thinking,
Left me benumbed to my plight.
Soon they were circling around me
In a malevolent craze,
Rhythmically rapping their tabors
In the red campfire blaze.

Ever since then I’ve been falling,
It matters not how hard I try;
Cursed by one moment appalling,
Marked till the day that I die.
So, if you sell your soul to the fairies,
You need to know what to expect;
If you sell your soul to the fairies,
The fairies will always collect.

Monday Limericks -- A Few I Wrote a While Ago

I'm delighted to say that I've mastered

The appropriate usage of "bastard":

It's a person who's bred

By a pair who weren't wed,

But were too much in love—or too plastered.

 

If a lizard or worm's in a spot,

Then self-amputation's its lot.

For they're both quite autotomous,

But the great hippopotamus,

Though he rhymes,

To be honest,

Is not.

 

“Lord, we finally got into Canaan,

But we think you should do some explanaan.

Forty years isn’t funny:

Where’s the milk? Where’s the honey?

Where’s the benefits promised in trainaan?”

 

“I talk,” claimed a linguist named Hamill

“With every species of mammal”

When asked for a reference

He said, “What’s your preference?

My mother-in-law, or my camel?”

 

It is said that Dame Julian of Norwich

Was tempted to sin by her porwich.

At breakfast one day,

She yelled, “Devils, away!”

Then she locked all her oats up in storwich.

Mama Death

I will say to Death,
“Thank you for waiting for me!
I got nothing accomplished,
But I had a lot of fun."
I was a toddler in playschool,
Covered in paint and dirt;
Adoring the teacher,
Dodging the bullies.

At the end of the day,
Mama Death returned to pick me up,
Along with my empty lunch box.
She took me home
To wash me
And cover me again,
But only with dirt this time.

A Pain You Should Not Try to End

There is a pain you should not try to end,
Not even if it slices to the core,
Carves wounds that unskilled time can never mend
And remedies just seem to strengthen more.
This sorrow for misfortunes of another
Engenders all that gives us pride and hope;
Without it, what is sister? What is brother?
What keeps us from the razor, or the rope?
Some say such common anguish should be tamed,
That nobler souls transcend its worldly grasp;
But I say no, embrace it unashamed
And feel the widow’s tears, the victim’s gasp:
Don’t try to quench with water, or with wine,
The fire that lights the light that makes you shine.

Where Have They Gone?

Where have they gone, my bright ideas,
Those angels bold and wise?
They left me when I found them out,
The way they plagiarize.
They slyly flew to pastures new,
Whose farmers are more green
And left me but one thing to do:
Regress toward the mean.
The years trim back our confidence,
We know it’s all been said.
So, better just go take a walk,
Or grab a beer instead.

The Word Wall

I’m building a wall
Out of words.
Cementless,
Unequally shaped,
Yet almost coherent;
Strong enough to keep in a sheep.
Strong enough to keep out any but the wiliest fox.
Some of the words are boulders,
Others pebbles.

​ Walls demarcate:
Families inside,
Neighbors outside.
Without walls, there are only strangers passing through:
Not judgeable, therefore not trustable.

​ This wall I’m building
Is my private property,
But you are welcome to come in.
I’d love to show it to you,
If you are the kind of person who appreciates walls;
Otherwise, no.

​ Perhaps I just need to prove that I can build a wall,
Whether to impress you,
Or just to reassure myself.
“I built a wall; I at least did that.
It isn’t a very good wall;
It wasn’t easy to get the top straight;
It does the job though.”

Otherwise, where would I put all these misshapen words,
All this rubble of babble?
Some say a wall of words is an illusion,
Like currency;
But I don’t buy it.
If everything is an illusion,
Then illusion is real.
Words have consequences:
Step inside.