I transfer her,

From my large white bed to her small pink one,

And if I'm not careful when laying her back down,

She tenses up for just a moment,

Feeling like she's falling,

I hate that tensing,

So bend at the knees,

And keep her weight on me,

Until the mattress can seamlessly take over

Somehow just now, today, I have grown old,

Without the wisdom or security or really even the years that I think that usually accompany this,

My parents are better with their phones than I am,

My daughter smarter with her money,

My wife more creative and social,

I try to follow the Tai chi movements on a YouTube video, but lack the energy,

And desire,

To keep up

Closing the right eye, life is crisp and stark and marvelously detailed,

Closing the left, it is weathered and soft, with the harsher realities muted and manageable

Next Time Around

I plan to return
As a bare-breasted Ama,
Smiling in the spray

Bright Blessed Day, Dark Sacred Night

The day to obscure heaven, keep the attention and affections finite; The night for expansion, transparency, stars, sleep

A Grand Game of Telephone

My mother whispered her best guess,

Which I maybe could have caught,

If not for the tingle it sent down my side






**For future reference, this came from the idea that humanity is like a big game of telephone, where each consecutive assertion confuses the real message a little more. The real message perhaps being the immediate experience of the present moment (the tingle), although that is another assertion, I suppose? Babies then, relay the message more directly, before they learn to translate and reduce it to words. But in time, with all the reductions and assertions that they’re taught, as well as the iterations they come up with themselves, not to mention the impact of their specific genetics, a unique representation (or bastardization maybe, if you see this as a problem) takes shape which we might call a personality, or persona, or just person probably. A term i’m told means “that through which the sound goes.” Kinda like a telephone :) I have no conclusions here, and the more I write the more diluted the original feeling gets... let’s just say, I enjoy the smell of the dirt in Spring, but can also appreciate Vivaldi’s take on the season. Maybe there’s room for it all. And it’s just glancing back every so often to make sure Grandma can still see you. Check her face for approval, and just a tiny bit of fear, so you know what you’re doing is brave and special.

The Song of Angry Men

Michael Larsen hit me hard,

Though I didn't even know about it til two years after it happened,

Wasn't the fan I pretended to be, I guess,

Jesse's dad, Brother Wilcox, Brooke's dad, Elliot Smith,

Sad grist for songs and cigarettes,

Anthony Bourdain was a sharp blow,

In France when I heard,

And I've never seen the depths he has, but

I'd been on both sides of addiction and

Been father to a ten year old girl, and

Maybe started feeling that I can't know anything for sure, but

 I had found myself on a shore which suggested that

The game was worth the candle,

And now in a Paris hotel bed, left to wonder if

Even this is too much to count on