Life Story
How many life stories
Count.
Plain and fancy
Good and plenty
One
Million
Billion
Worthy of a biopic
Or a headstone.
Breathless and amazed
At what it has come to
In the pages
Or paragraphs
Or words
That sum it all.
Actor’s Nightmare, Actor’s Dream
I wake up to find everything
In the place it was left.
Props on the stage
For another performance
Moved an inch or two
Back or forth
But more or less
The same.
Is this the day
I try to speak the first line
But don’t remember
The words and actions
Or even which play?
It’s called
The actor’s nightmare
Entry to an unbidden hell.
But to me it is a dream
A heaven of unscripted silence
Where everything
Including me
Are newly born.
No different
Unpredictable
Ready and
Right where we belong.
Mirror
What is heavier
Than the weight
Of a mirror?
Love is
The boldest embrace
A stroke of the brow
A symphony
A single note
Distance in miles
As close as skin to skin.
Yesterday remembered
Tomorrow imagined
Meeting here now.
Confusion and clarity.
Intoxicated and sober.
Treasure found
Never found
Misvalued or lost.
Glad to sleep
To awake knowing
Or hoping.
Match
A bit of paper
A sliver of wood
Tipped in red.
A flick of a wrist
Against a strip of grit.
A stick of incense.
A candle
Lighting the dark
Sparking romance
Marking a birth
Calling to heaven.
Fire igniting
The bed
The room
The house
The world
The next world.
What miracle
Do you have
To match it?
If you had a round trip ticket
To heaven or hell,
Bliss or madness,
Sure you would return,
Would have to,
Which would you choose?
Tour over,
Now the common surroundings
Might seem shabby and disappointing or
Simple comfort and sanity a relief.
Conscripted for travel
Or volunteering,
This is what you learned
Gladly or sadly
For the next inevitable journey.
Babel On
What is the point and price of
The tower of words and thoughts?
High and fine
To reach higher and finer.
Was God protective,
Jealous even,
Of the secret word
That would reveal all
And make him redundant,
Obsolete, inferior?
Or was it a sign
We couldn’t read
That in the clouds,
On the moon,
Mars, the stars
We would find nothing but ourselves
Still babbling
Traveling
Going nowhere?
Approximately Analog Time
The digital clock is too precise
Four numbers and two dots.
What does it tell me?
What if it’s wrong?
Better the circle
Studded with the dozen
Swept by two lines,
Leaving a little to the imagination,
Not subject to the rule
Of the atomic heartbeat.
Best is the unadorned circle,
Just two hands pointing
Roughly and unevenly
To an approximation.
Admitting that it knows a little
But not much.
When you wake up
What is there to do
With your rumpled bed
Sheets twisted
Pillows tossed?
Do you make it immediately,
So orderly that it appears
Never to have been slept in?
Do you casually throw
The pieces in place?
Or do you leave it
As a recording
To be resumed and remixed
Yet again
The next night?
Breaths
The pain then and now
The troubles then and now
Are so many
That all the breaths
Past present and future
Won’t blow them away.
Yet in the death
Between breaths
Where are they now?
