Hour 23: Tread the Boards
I’ve always enjoyed
Playing at being something else
Different people
Different things
It’s easier
To steal other qualities
Than it is
To use my own
So naturally
How different is it
Under hot stage lights?
Hour 23: Anywhere But Here
Alice had Wonderland
Dorothy ended up in Oz
Wendy escaped to Neverland
Yet they all decided to come back
Those magically, mysterious, marvelous worlds
Could not contain them
None of these lands could persuade them to abandon this world of reality
I wonder if they would feel the same today
I wonder if when they grew up to become women if they had regrets
Knowing what I know of this world and fantasy
I’d choose the magic, the mystery, the marvel over the mundane
Staying Awake
Hour 15
Staying Awake
The reader will have to get flowers
to disconnect from the reviews.
I have been unfinishable.
The crawl into reality is
the sword and shield
of flat earth and the
Martian rocks.
Belief is that everybody
dies again.
To be honest with yours
according to research it is a
supermoon an unforgiven escape
the bad feelings that
the songs of country is
about the seven dwarfs.
I don’t know if you
have any questions.
Poem 23
The night we stuck our heads beyond
The safety of the roof awning
And let the cool drizzle of the surprise
8pm mist create dewdrops in our hair
I felt baptized for the second time
here in February
Gone was the fear of getting sick
And worrying about the tomorrows
I embraced the dazzling kisses one
After the other. Accepting each beautiful one
Reminding me of childhood,
Soaking myself to the bone,
leaping through streams
Of the International Fountain
in Seattle
You encouraged me to follow your lead
And in all my controlling nature
Always the hurricane never
The gift and blessing of sweet
Soft powdery rain
For once I’m not looking over my shoulder
Nor am I looking above
I simply am looking at you
Hour 22: Silence
Silence
The absence of sound
Stillness
The pause
So much lives in that pause that we take for granted
In this too loud, too fast, too much world
We forget the pause
The inhale
The exhale
The breath
The pause
That pause holds infinity
It says more than can be said in a lifetime
That moment
That second
That pause
Allows us to reflect and compose
To create meaning for all that is not
Silence
Hour 23 – In which I replace myself with coffee
In which I replace myself with coffee
after Nico Wilkinson
When my partner
greets the morning with coffee
he does so with gentle precision.
He grips with fingertips,
never palms,
does not want to overwhelm
what is already warmed for him.
My partner worships
at the altar of the espresso machine
having tuned it so carefully
to fit his needs.
He knows exactly
the impact caffeine will have
he’s made sure of it.
But suddenly, he’s weaning off coffee,
says it is making him jittery,
unable to think straight.
I wonder if he thinks about
how many other people
are drinking coffee, his coffee.
Cannot cleanse it from his mind
despite the bag locked in the cabinet
meant only for our own tastebuds.
My partner, he is done with coffee.
Will not meditate through
the practice of making anymore.
He is done participating
in the morning give and take
as we decide who has the energy to give.
Done with acts of service.
He is left unbothered
that my love for coffee remains.
How I started to cherish it again
in mugs I pulled from his cabinets,
rather, in the pieces
I pulled from his view.
My partner does not want coffee anymore
but I will love it hard enough, now
it will need nothing else.
Pizza
Never before have I tasted its taste,
Until then I traveled to the East.
I said it before, and I will repeat the same
The most influential things are two only
A woman, and a dish of pizza.
Wouldn’t I tell you the reason for being an official bachelor?
Spending years scrutinizing for a Pizzaiola
Perhaps I was born under the shade of a grilled pizza.
The secret is that dish made –
of thinly rolled bread
dough spread with a spiced mixture,
With some tomatoes cheese and pepperoni.
Hour 22: Genetics after Neil Hilborn
“I think the genes for being an artist and mentally ill aren’t just related, they are the same gene” – Neil Hilborn
Robin Williams
Chester Bennington
Marilyn Monroe
Kurt Cobain
Sylvia Plath
Ernest Hemingway
Vincent Van Gogh
Virginia Woolf
and countless others
It’s a shame they can’t keep us all from high places
Dice Goddess-Hour Twenty-Three
Entire worlds from my brain,
rising to the fore. Voices of those
echoing in my mind, telling their stories,
weaving their tales. And like every god,
I begin to spin, to warp and weft each tale,
layer upon layer, a story of destinies,
of peoples great and small, and
of d20’s scattered across a weather-beaten map.
I’ll bring the horizon, and the calamity,
and bring the players in,
we’ll see if heroes or villains shape the realm
that I have created once more.