for National Poetry Month, April 2024 I:I’m still in love. Still,in love. In lovestill. 2:Cheek to chest, whatdo you hear?…
The Hope In This
Existence is wobbly, flawed, imperfect, scratched, inexact, unideal, seamed, askew, misaligned, typo’d, disjoint, dinged, frayed, mended, mispelledcreased, pocked, amiss,nearly, patched, our…
Checklist
First, There’s The Thing
First, there’s the thing. The five W’s we suspect we’ve come from, that we strive for, and that we assume…
Rules For This Mixtape: Try 2022
At the beginning of this year I heard a single song that I knew would be my theme of the…
Snoop Said, “It’s cool growing old.”
I’ve enjoyed a longer life than: Bill Hicks, Patrice O’Neal, Amy Whinehouse, Janis Joplin, Vincent Van Gogh, Gilda Radner, Sam…
Wildly Foolish
Who could envision the highs and lows, wholly grown, from a room full of wills woofing like gutsy puppies? Whoosh…
The Mud Season
We arrived from a knot of rivers, and so assumed we understood seasons, but in spring the seams cut by…
The Animist’s Analog
Someday the songs of this life will exist only in aging brains that hum along. Once they populated gismos made…
The Barbed Heart
The point of a heart is sharp enough to thread any needle, to dare to love and to bear any…
Fickle Painful Mean
I would love to show up today plain, without regard for the flicker of this flame which has passed through…
A Heart No Longer
Might it have been not long ago— earlier today maybe, that I let go of my altar, after the heartaches…
Madness charges along the ice…
Madness charges along the ice, claws etching inches of sleet. She scoots from the house twice and returns long-tongued and…
Mother ocean loves us…
Mother ocean loves us, reflecting the light and waves, her love unconditional and forgiveness unending. Reflecting the light, she waves…
Let the whole world be as it is…
Let the whole world be as it is. Dance and laugh and snarl and scream. But don’t lose your life…
The Next Day
On Christmas day everyone texts, everyone calls, they know it will be hard, being the first year and all. They…
Expansion on Rumi
“Who makes these changes?I shoot an arrow right.It lands left.I ride after a deer and find myselfchased by a hog.I…
Why The Oracle Went Silent
Mostly, the worthy would hector her about business or an electoral race, some an oath they were about to take.…
A Creation Myth
For the first billion years of multicellular life on earth the only thing that existed were fungi, mushrooms, mycelium. Without…
Chasing Dopamine, Running from Cortisol
I try to remember the name of that brain chemical which is released in small bits when you make a…
She, He, Him
God, you could have just given her a baby (She, He, Him), perfectly boring. Neural pathways laid out like a…
The most challenging thing I’ve done in a dream
The most challenging thing I’ve ever done in a dream was learning how to die. I lived alone in grad…
The Moon That Is
My moon. My man. Risen to the point of deity by songstress, poets, purveyors of story. Said in tale to…
Robbie Russo
Really, our bodies belong iron-encased. The ribs around our heart and lungs not nearly enough. The buttons buttoned-up on shirts…
Brightness
After selling millions of iMacs with CRT monitors, Apple’s final entry into the market was called an eMac. This 60-pound…
My sister didn’t call on Thanksgiving.
My sister didn’t call on Thanksgiving. It’s no big deal, we are not close. But when I was small she…
I Rose This Morning…
I rose this morning. Everyone I adore who dreamt in their distinct realms last night also woke. And so I…
A simple life is beautiful
Launch
“Well, congratulations. You’ve completed your orientation and training. Everything looks like it’s in order. You’ve picked out a situation, location,…
Too
Everything inside this world is thick with verbiage, classifications, terms, taxonomies, and such. I’ve eschewed prose and fed on poetry.…
First Person
There was a kid once, to whom many things happened. And while a handful of people recall watching these happenings,…
Taxonomy of Meditation
Meditating, I recognize different levels (of depth, effectiveness, rejuvenation, reset, insight), based on what my attention is doing. 10 –…
A Dolphin Among The Stars
“Pardon, milady. His lordship has asked that the topsails be trimmed, turned into the wind, that the aphids again, as…
Said The River To The Sea
God, as a kid I was long and lanky while you lapped up a bit of everything. I would melt…
For Restless Sleep
Waking when the sleep-theater was vivid, when the story was a snickering forest of fear and flying, waking up weights…
Waking when the sleep-theater was vivid
Waking when the sleep-theater was vivid, when the story was a snickering forest of fear and flying, waking up weights…
A gift for you
I am always so moved by the folks who like a post or comment. Well, I have put together a…
It’s warm enough to sit outside…
It’s warm enough to sit outside, which means it must at least be Spring, which doesn’t mean that the earth…
The Nothing Stone
No one knows the softness of the nothing stone Perched, as it is, on a pedestal On the head of…
My Husband Used To Buy Me Roses
Roses used to be rare: difficult to come by, seasonal, expensive, delicate, fleeting, pungent, thorned; just a little bit dangerous.…
In The Primordial Ooze
Professor Gill inquires as to which sense we assume to be primary, (glasses cockeyed, rims bent) “Would you guess in…
As A Holding Cell
Each space inside us (each cavity, cavern, fold, and hole) stands as a holding cell for our delinquencies (mucus, breath,…
A Ceremony In Their Honor
Only the notable earn a ceremony in their honorwhile still upright and sentient:the hero-worshipped, the cheered, the adored. Sure, if…
A student went to the gate…
A student went to the gate and rang the bell where Jesus lived. There was no response. The student ran…
A Conversation
“Dammit Bones, you’re a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with a wave of a…
Quantized Emotional Capacity
I came here for…
I came here for the experience of breathing for the hard slap and wailing for the warmth of another. For…
I Rose This Morning…
I rose this morning. Everyone I adore who dreamt in their distinct realms last night also woke. And so I…
Current Self-Conception
I’ll give you about 2%
Somewhere under two percent of the mass in any molecule arises from what is called “rest mass”, that is the…
The Plants Are Teaching Us
Different plants have different personalities. When we ingest them we ingest a bit of their personalities. The cocoa plant invites…
I’ll give you about 2%
Somewhere under two percent of the mass in any molecule arises from what is called “rest mass”, that is the…
Lives Led In Delusion
From the shade and feel of our sheets, and the carpet on our feet, to the motives we ascribe to…
One must conclude that hatred…
One must conclude that-hatred is more thrilling than love. The heart beating at intersections, howling that everyone else has green…
How I Love
When an ex-girlfriend first met my now-wife she said, “He will love you like no one else, if you are…
No Point
There is no point in talking about a single electron, no mass and all charge. They don’t exist except in…
Stone, Wax, Water
The dent left by the first love you can remember, and remember losing, shapes the malformed fist of your heart.…
Wobbly
The first Noble Truth of Buddhism is that “Life is suffering,” and as Wesley added in The Princess Bride, “anyone…
Thoughts On A Walk
The universe is an unimaginably immense spacetime where counterbalanced forces merge and annihilate without care for the current forms and…
Nothing
I arrived into a culture which placed the highest value on effort and competition; the go-go 80s with ladder climbing…
You have never been separate…
You have never been separate, not once untouched. Your entire life you have been held, right now your butt by…
This.
This is everything. The only thing. The thing, if a thing exists, exists here, as this. I am this. This…
From Prequel to SQL: Episode 1
After spending years telling anyone who would listen to hire for mindset, not skillset, an enterprising team has taken my…
A Fish Proclaims
A fish proclaims… A person proclaims… “One day I hope to attain wetness, to be one with water, to allow…
Must Write
As each being– from lichen to lamprey, to cousin to auntie– must find their own way in this existence, so…
Today is Today
One. Today is today. Nothing else exists. Whatever you have is a gift from someone else. The continuity of existence…
What I Want From Art
At its conception, uncontrolled wailing, skinned knees ¡Bravado!, a form struggling to be born. Mostly struggle. At its publishing, tectonic,…
Retrospective
I can not recall ever feeling different from this. A day when what hurts was still, and other segments ached,…
This Guilt
Allow any good thing I have ever done to live in the stories others tell (to illustrate a point, coax…
Flow
The educated child learned the best farm to plant was over top of the septic fields. And so, the line…
This Fear
This fear is meant to keep us here, distant from the perimeter of the compound where the fuel is found.…
Alertness
I was told I would see natural magic. Assumed there were imps in the trees, fairies (like Fern Gully). When…
This Anger
This anger fends off predators I’d be unable to defend against (and friends). This anger. This anger is a well-reasoned…
Proprioception II
As my left calf flexes everything’s disengaged (relaxed separate frictionless spinning). When I let go they click. Right hand in…
This Pronoun
“I worry about losing.” My age, my loot, my guns. And so I seek a strategy against goblins vanishing. One:…
After Burn
When they left our solar system (nemeses, accomplices, cronies) it was not because we’d conceived all the good art but…
This Consciousness
YES! Fear not. All that feels permanent about existence is temporary. It passes. Use whatever metaphor feels most like the…
Cardinal Forces
They’ve slotted us in since birth, shaking the tray so we’ll settle, each into the slot most shaped like our…
This Breathing
Most days I’m invisible to myself a mere impulse perusing the landscape while pulleys and servos keep lenses focused and…
Follow the Leader
The first lie is the sunrise (compounded by telling us that some imagine a man in a chariot who invests…
This Focus
Stage 1: You have no clue who you are and must wait patiently for an answer as you pose the…
Peripheral Consciousness
My laptop is smart enough to have ports on both sides ready to offload information and allow new. Smart enough…
This Touch
This touch is our one true sense. Amoeba halving into eternity, quanta touched down on retina, vibration of air in…
Conscious Alternative
This moment (each), you have me on a leash, hooked because we are one (enmeshed) in the same. For the…
This Smell
This smell shores its sacred breath, wafts its way around monasteries and nurseries, round children and daisies, only sense tucked…
Impending Doom
I fret the inevitable heat-death of the universe galaxies fleeing from each other faster than light shudder about our red-giant…
This Taste
This taste, to a light-switch, is little more than hot & cold knot & hold shot & old. And while…
Barometric Pressure
They said derisively that I would move to the mountains (for my protection or theirs) not realizing peaks are our…
This Sight
This: if sight is about making sense of light, receiving heat careening off every surface and making meaningful use of…
Proprioception
Here I am, hung in the clouds; legs scorpioned like a tail, arms outstretched like an angel, skydiving to the…
This Sound
This sound unfolds like a fresh sheet unfurling, suppler than a sheet of paper which must be scratched at the…
About Time
A completely unqualified collection of thoughts about moving sideways through time The residents of line-land are obsessed with ordinality. In…
What Have I Done?
Phillip Levine was one of the great 20th century American poets. There is something in his work I have never…
October Thoughts: Volume Two
An unordered collection of quips and notions collected in the second half of this month. * There is nothing you…
Quiet Mind
I ran a 5k yesterday, the same Halloween 5k we run every year. I ran without a watch, without headphones,…
Life Can Be Fun
There are certainly days that need Carpe Diem, Dent the Universe, Kick Today in the Dick. There are incidents you…
Perhaps One Thing
I wish to retract the parameters of this month’s practice. I have said often that what I was trying to…
Fail(ing)
Habit is the sneakiest creature. Like a cat waiting to get to the bathroom and drink water from the toilet…
Vacation
I am here to offer you a vacation. It is only a day long. For today (or tomorrow if that…
Thom Ingram 