The back and forth
patty cake
twister like game
has my insides flipped
and knotted around
one another
like the necklace you gifted me
that has itself tangled
among all of my other pieces
proving impossible to remove
and constantly tarnishing all
that crosses its path.

A pair of two birdies, perched up on a tree

with their black birdy eyes glued tight onto me.

Just play along now, finish up what you need. 

But never forget, the pair of two birdies watching.

Please mind your temper, try not to see red. 

Lower your voice, child, and lower your head. 

I know the world’s spinning, but close your eyes, count to ten.

You must paint on a smile and keep everything in.

The birdies test my patience, but rather than cry

I just lay in the grass and allow them to fly.

You must ignore their chirping, their shrieks, and their songs, 

for these two little birdies can’t quite tell right from wrong.

Such a labor of love, to raise birdies like them,

preening their wings and their hearts to better fit in,

flying by example so the birdies can learn

exactly how to handle the world at their turn.

The pair of two birdies have grown plenty since then.

Their wings almost 40, their minds forever at 10.

I have grown too, from once bubbling behind a mask,

to genuinely, gently answering whatever the birds ask.

As I now look how far, birdies and I have come, 

again my eyes dampen, but this time overcome

with love and with pride over every endeavor

made to let the pair of two birdies…

stay pure and sweet little birdies forever.

I don’t have a poet’s soul
Because I can’t feel my emotions.
I live in the moment,
never 
reflecting on the past,
looking towards the future,
searching my innermost thoughts,
listening to other opinions, 
observing the world around me.
I forget those feelings that would set me free
And hang onto the ones that bind me up. 
I also lie to myself a lot.

light these screaming bugs up in flames
sure it’ll be louder for a second,
but then i’ll have silence
maybe be able to nap a while
i’m not sure where to buy a flamethrower
let alone how to light a fire

There was a garden
With music under the trees,
You should have been there.

Turquoise sheets spreading

white foam salutes, self, and sand

ocean pulls curtain

Distance is required 
but the path to it
elludes me

How to broach the conversation
how to renege on a friendship 

over an offence for whom I was not the target

should this be a conversation 
should it just be a fading of familiarity

Oddly I forgive you for any discomfort you caused me

But you grabbed a girl and spat on her hair
when she didn’t realize you 
grabbed and
turned her
and 
aimed 

for 

her 

face

who does that

Good mechanical aptitude and fair
Clerical skills.
Normal intelligence;
Neurological examination essentially
Negative. Admitted guilt, showed little
Real insight and had no real
Goals in life. Therefore, not
Likely to profit appreciably
By confinement.

Hope is a pudding-wonderful thing
in the icebox beside the grilled chicken,
a summer’s day by another name
that gyres and struts its hour
across the wabe.

Hope. It won’t disappoint, since every atom
belonging to each mermaid in trousers rolled,
as good belongs to you and me
and all the petals in a metro station
at the butt-end of a universe less traveled.

difference
like leaves in the forest
half a league on

(This mash-up of a haibun presented with thanks and apologies to Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, William Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, St. Paul, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Douglas Adams, Robert Frost, and Lords Byron and Tennyson)

*Observations and Thoughts on Sunday Afternoon: