ill at ease

Ill at ease
does not mean a discomfort
to the point of nausea
aroused in a state of self-satisfaction.

I suppose it is comforting to know
that this same word, Anxiety,
is on everyone's nerves
and coming out through the lips as
verbal indigestion, along with a liver and onion
aftertaste.

How many times have I needed to scream
a curse word
with the most volume possible to project outward,
to release some other demon
banging on the walls of my soul to escape,
as if my sound would shatter
gates

and makes me ill
swallowing this thought back like moonshine.

That was not a question.

Our survival depended upon this fine line between
cooperation and fugitive, patient and shaman,
poetry and prose
words and thier usage.

We made statues of security and braced ourselves
with agendas, acting in stone, we planned, we waited,
we toiled and cried over the temporal state of
poison, we consumed all we could with-
stand.

Resistance said not a word
about its origin.

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].

a disenchantment of nearsightedness

We searched
each other.
Diving in
with our whole soul,
unafraid of the brackish waters,
darkness, mirth or depth
of each other's eyes

Seeking what we had
lost, once had, where did
we put it, over there, outside,
ourselves, and with the things
that keep us
apart,

Spinning wheels in alternating
rotations, going nowhere fast,
or beating our chests like hearts
and pinching nerves to make a
sound come out...

Oh No.
There were so many ways to say,
I see where you are going,
you are getting smaller
as you travel
away.


Painting by Lionel Constable c. between 1849-55, Yale Center for British Art [Public domain].

Go pace yourself

Two hands
for beginners,
my mother would always say without
knowing what she really meant.
She quoted Nietzsche with
the same naivete.

I told my daughter about books
on records, that bong when you should
turn the page. She liked my retelling
of Peter and the Wolf
best.

I watched her start off,
as passionate as possible,
with everything at her fingertips,
only to try to finish
like me, too hurriedly.

I figure
-Slow Down-
is good advice
for any age.

In the beginning
I heard myself say,
two hands for beginners,
knowing that holding steady
requires much practice.

We make it look
too easy.
When using both hands
we should say something
about the strength
required.



Painting by William Adolphe Bouguerau, c. 1899 in Israel Museum [Public domain].

7 WDS

There is nobody
who goes unnoticed.

♠

Time spent on memories
never returns more.

♠

Together two words
leave space between.

♠

Indulgence is for one
expression for all.

♠

I see you
seeing me as you-

there are things
that cannot be shared.

♠

A star, like the ocean
reflects light.

♠

A speck is not one
of anything.

♠

What is possible
has a chance too.

♠

A full deck
is not limitless
luck.

♠

Arrival is not the same as
presence.

♠

Here we are
just now
and then.



Image credited by: Snyder, Frank R. Flickr: Miami U. Libraries - Digital Collections [No restrictions or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Photosynthesis

To grow in the moonlight
               whispered the purple breeze,
daunting its profundity
                in a lilac lilt,
makes for the most sensitive
skin, the thinnest rays
               wasted across barren lands.

A tiny trio of skylights
show how syllables
need less volume
when speaking in
                         moonshadows
across open floors.

Grey becomes more than shade
when the pale moon
was more than enough
to still feel
growing pains.



Artwork by Ohara Koson [Public domain].

Summary of a shadowed moon

Struck with a new Idea,
I held onto it like a treasure map,
rolled up,
with the lines inside.

I carried it around
so long, wrinkles
were inevitable,
weathering and what not
made it fade.

After revisiting this place
I am lost a little,
afraid to start
wrong,
I fear it will not become
as I thought I remembered...

No mark would be made,
no footstep
impressed,
unless
anywhere I begin becomes
a starting point
that vanishes...

which made it obvious
to fill the space,
flooding it in white
so I could build it
by taking away.


Photograph credited by Jon Sullivan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.