Well-being

I choose not to spend pennies of thought
for the benefit of others opinions
who have made no personal investment
into the savings of and for the consideration of
a profitable shared account wherein there is only one
authorized signatory and not that of the opinionated.

Buddhist principles encourage us to
'Let go' of attachment but 'Hold on' to
your spirit, stick with it, lean in-
to the fall, don't hold your breath,
all obstacles are opportunities.

I clear some space and feel smaller.
I create conflict and make a mess.
I clean the slate, gently blowing off all
calcium deposits thin as chalk.

A moment ago, I slept,
Now I know why a funeral is called a-wake.

I have lost it and found a-way
back to the well-
being-whereby
change was inevitably tossed in.



Painting by Kazimir Malevich [in Public domain], 'Woman with pails' c. 1912.

nightmarish

I have come to believe
All poets
must be subjected
to living with an infestation
of cockroaches.

An introduction
or deep reading of Dante
and Dracula has much to teach
about finding ones way
through the dark.

I play my hand
on the Book of Change
with my three lucky pennies;
one, because of Honest Abe,
2, because they contain copper
and lastly, mostly,
they are worth no cash value.

There is a Canto
that smolders into charcoal,
I am drawn to
the source.

The house is bigger,
emptier.
I guess the walls speak
now only in echoes 

and embers.

Some of us will make it out

alive.

Painting by Petrus van Schendel [Public domain].

Held

We carried decimal places in our pockets,

there was never enough change

to evenly distribute amongst us.

We put pennies under our tongue,

never noticing the green words growing out.

we nestled ourselves inside boxes like silverfish

swimming from page to page.

We wove blankets with blame and empathy for others

and died our thoughts of progress and peril

in complementary colors.

Our choice by natural selection never counted

on such a vast assortment of unparsed persons

holding onto everything in case the anchor 

dislodged and diluted by oxidation,
broken down into byte sized bits.

We will fill any holes with our fitting figures,

leaving no space for any one lone light to escape

in a flicker.




Painting by Charles Willson Peale, Portrait of David Rittenhouse, 1796 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Ripples of rhyme

There were poems in there...
A whole slew.

Now all I hear is a faint
whisper of you.

The pond is still
from over-fishing.

I have no more pennies
for poetic wishing.

The water waits
without reflection...






Photo By NPS Photo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.