ROI

He looks forward to
a cold beer
after balancing the books
all day.

She looks after
the home and kids
before they fall apart
again today.

He questions
if she has done enough,
She answers,
Dirty laundry is never done.

His job is Important.
Her role is Obscure.

His time is well compensated.
Her life becomes poorly defined.

The tension to stretch
makes them both
recoil
at the thought of
broke(n).

She asks him about his day
now that he is relaxing,
he tells her about the stress.
No wonder
He does not
ask her
the same.

Eventually, he passes out
cold.
She checks in warmly,
to see if he needs anything
more.
He spends the night
breathing heavily.
She treads lightly
earning her commissions
in Time.

He will be right where
she left him.




Painting (still life) by Gerret Willemsz Heda, c. 1642 in [Public domain].

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.

Philanthropic to I

There was never enough time
and the anxiety pushes down
regardless of knowing that it is certain
to never be finished.

All of it.
None of it.

How long would we all go on
notching our lives in rectangular weeks,
segments and inclines, corner piles
sidling past
hurdles and ho-humming
thru the week til TGIF
and the recursive sickness of it all
as in another episode, chronic
cases of the Mondays,
if we can only make it
to payday to pay the day
we said we would.

There was no question.
We did and do.
Our lives depended on such
boxing and enumeration.

I figure
if I live to the age of eighty,
I will have a little more than two-
thousand weeks left
total.

And I realize I haven't taken a vacation
in 208 weeks, or four years,
I have accrued comatose
creative inclinations, arthritic
anticipation, or being too busy,
and paid or not
the work wants us
to not take notice of the numbers
always changing around
by only ones
and zeros.

My heart flutters in the rhythm of time
to myself, also frequently attributed to
quality of life, a pursuit of joy, or
volunteer work for the self.

Well, we all know we could never afford
to quit
counting,
adding and subtracting,
projecting and losing
the balance that remains.





Drawing by Louis Leopold Boilly, 'Studies of Hands' Unknown date, located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art [CC0].

Busy going down the drain with Eddy

Start here and get this over with
will you-so we can move on
with more of the same

wistful wants.
This two
let pass...

First things first,
get 'em on deck and in a row-
orderly, nice and tidy, see

things get done this way-
or do they, I pray
we are not just

tilling our rich soils
like Voltaire-infertile,
infantile and bored,

whereby garden side

resides this musing man
who gets lost with no plan-
hence without direction.

I reckon.

That is not you. This is not us.
We no longer grow our food.
Despite the growing bellies

thick with cancer,
bloated and blurred
in fact, it keeps us busy

wondering what happened
with all these weeds.
We were supposed to be a-
mazed, we can grow.

A lie, a labyrinth,
a temporary structure
lay in the dirt.

We were pulled in one direction,
despite resistance, like cancer
this was no choice,

but diagnosis.

There was only one direction,
it was a-
head.

On second thought
there is no good place
to begin to make it

in sphere

we are contained,
consumed and thereby
recreated

it keeps us busy.





Image of artwork by Lodewijk Toeput [Public domain], Pleasure Garden with maze, (c. 1579-84) via Wikimedia Commons.

Working up to it

We had hopes

And held on

To air

Imagine this, delicately, with your fingers.

Tell me,

Is your faith strong, rigid, cold?

When we close our eyes, nowadays,

our metronome is muffled with backfire.

It is still

So busy so

We try to think

Optimistic, or up,

But that is not doing

Anything

For lift.

We had work to do, we all knew

Sweat

Yet, we hoped it would all get done.

Painting by Paul Peel [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Chit for chat

Who are you talking to? or what are you talking about?

Nobody. Everything.

If 'Nobody', then aren't you communicating to no one about Nothing? 

Why waste your precious time? 

It occupies-my (precious) mind-some-times.

Who has Time for all that? reading? writing? listening? to 'Nobody'...

What else is time for?

Work. Some Thing. 

So, writing, and reading and listening-these are all                leisurely-un-activities

-easy would you say? not Work.

Yes. Of course. Everyone knows this. No.

How does Everyone know? Did somebody tell you this?

No, Nobody. I just heard it somewhere. Everything productive is work. Work is a productive thing.

That works...for some...productions or some things. I read that nobody listens anymore,

you have proven everybody wrong. Unless I am wrong.

You are right. 

Painting by Károly Ferenczy, Engaged in a conversation (1912) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.