8 a.m.

I've been stacking vegetables for hours,
my hands cold from the intermittent rain
keeping the lettuces and the cabbages moist.

A customer stops to say,
"A plane hit a building in New York."

"Must have been flying too low,"
I think.

I am flying too low.

Fish flow.

They let the river take them.

Or if they fight,
they do it knowingly,

accepting it as a one-
way trip.

Skinny-armed boys in headphone
and flip-flops travel down the avenue.

They hold in high regard the brilliance
of each of their heavy footfalls.

Walking ever onward toward success,
toward politics, they smile at you.

You who know, who reject the fancies
for flowers, build the city walls.

star•light n. The brilliance of a distant sun, burning out its life for the sake of the seafaring and the superstitious. 2. A suddenness, as if an interruption, which cleaves something basic or mundane in an often-ignored attempt to shine through the infinite.

"To be something, to know something, and to be capable of something is to rise above the superficial." -Huston Smith

A life
of meaning

must mix
mysticism
magic

and philosophy

stir it well
with astonishment

Mystics are
Magicians can do

Philosophers know

all astonishing

E Pluribus

Tao

Unum

Does anyone want to buy a harmonica?
     He said.
I am out of gas today, and I need to get home.
     He said.
What do you want for it, friend?
     He said.
2 bucks?

Today I poured out the bottle,
the port, the wedding gift,
the opening of which sealed
the end of our marriage.

I don't know why I still had it
so long after.

I suppose I thought
I would finish it someday.

Now I've dumped it down
the sink and
rinsed out the bottle.

With each rinse
the water was darker than before.

Darker beacuse
I was getting to the bottom.

The sediment of sentiment.

But now it is gone.

And I am glad
to see it
go.

To my younger self...
I forgive you.
I love you.
You are more beautiful than you know.

Being
Myself closer to the one that can make me remember that I love my own
Being
Included in the thoughts of the one I adore and whose eyes can embrace all my
Being
Needed or wanted or created or focused on the viscous beating blood of our
Being
In love yet helplessly holding the hand that echoes: I can’t, I won’t stand
Being
Apart.

I begin
As everyone does
    In anger
My strawberry skin
Refusing the cold world
    Defiant
Resistant not to new
    Horrors
But to change itself
Pitying myself for
Comforts lost

I survive
As everyone does
    In anger
My flexible mind
Twisting and contorting
    Grasping   
At possible worlds
    Unfulfilled
Fictions unexplored
Pitying myself for
Moments lost

I finish
As everyone does
    In anger
My tired eyes
Glaring at illogical
    Space
Noting the conditions
    Bargains
The rights demanded
Pitying myself for
Lovers lost

I begin
    Again
In anger

Not everyone does.

Welcome.  Here I am. And so it begins.  What are you doing here, my friend?

About me:  I am new in so many ways.  I am beginning the be what I should have been from the start.   A man.  In every sense that you can dream of.  In every sense that you cannot dream of.  I am the word.  I am the moment.  I am a creator.  An artist.  A renaissance.  A new vision.  I am a newborn babe.  Will anyone care?

I knew when I fell in.