open heart to suffering rooted
       in extremism and narrow-mindedness

open heart to awareness of suffering
   rooted in extremism and narrow-mindedness
commit to non-attachment to views, even my own

see guiding principles as ways to nurture
   tolerance, insight, empathy
instead of beliefs to justify engaging in harm

comprehend many facets of fanaticism
    result of seeing all in polarity
unwise and prejudicial in attitude

practice myself to see with open-mindedness
    view existence holistically
to change intolerance and aggression
    in myself and all beings

I am sorry that my new washer and dryer
were delivered before 6:30 a.m.
I hope the banging and doors opening and closing
did not wake you up.
I am sorry that I bleep my locks
and bang my trash bin lids after 10.
I am sorry that I do not often mow my lawn,
that my back yard looks like a jungle.
I am sorry that I don’t feel safe
posting a Black Lives Matter sign
or flying a Pride flag. 
I am sorry that I don’t see you often
because I love my air conditioning.
I am sorry that I do not know your name,
even after three years of living here.

You stopped wearing yours, too.
I didn’t notice when
    – close contact with your hands is a thing of the past
if I had to guess
it was probably when you punched the refrigerator in November
broke your hand
and received my eye-rolling disdain on overdrive
    for several weeks.
In the residual images that will solidify into our archived history
those few months last fall will give the illusion
    of the implosion that brought us down.  
But the decomposition started so long ago
each passing year adding crumbling dust at our feet;
When the time came
    barely a tremor
    led to total collapse.

Just like everything else
I’ll probably never know if you meant to
leave it off
    or if it simply vanished into your drawer and out of your mind
just as my own hand has been bare for weeks now
I’m sure
    it’s all the same to you.

Make of me a bridge spanning
white noise machine waves
toward the charging makeup mirror 
on the dressing table, illuminated
green like the end of Daisy’s dock.

You stalk, securing the perimeter,
nightstand to pillow, back across 
to the bed’s ledge to warn 
your elderly brother off your turf,
compulsively repeating the circuit 
as many rounds as it takes 
for him to hop onto the dresser or
saunter off into another dark room for now.

I settle into a curve on my side, 
pillows between my arms and knees
another covering my torso and hip
lest they be exposed to the conditioned air 
and back claws when next you
spring from the floor, scale pillow mountain
and plop your heavy form, 
you pear-shaped fuzzy bean bag,
strategically behind my knees 
so I am pinned and cannot disturb
your throne while you bathe. 

The hardest of workers dash about, landing
from time to time on the aerial runway lit up

in salmons, whites, lemony peach, violets,
carmine rose, scarlet, bright purples and pinks—

one upon a tequila lime. Their seeded path
strewn in a sensible fashion winds ‘round

a small lily-pad-filled pond and a petite white house
where inhabitants sit and watch and welcome them in—

a spark of iridescence swoops in to say hello,
but the rest of us are so very still.

With no parent home,
Neighbor boys rush in. Damnit!
She likes the… bad boy.

Stretch your brainpower
Through quests, puzzles, challenges
And learn something new

* 4 of 9 strategies for a creative life

We rode through bone-frame houses,
beams like ribs not yet covered with skin.
I said we were on another planet.
You told me who you wanted to kiss.

On kiddie bikes
we looped the cul-de-sac until the air turned gold
and the rebar started looking like prophecy.
You had pockets full of lip gloss and smoke.
I had a portfolio with unicorns on it.

You let go first.
The handlebars, the fairy tale, the gasp.
That summer you rode ahead into
boys who smelled like menthols and sea salt.
I stayed behind to name the clouds
and memorize the scaffolding.

I imagined you trapped on Mars.
You offered me a cigarette. I said
I’d rather read Wuthering Heights again.

Recently I saw a girl who moved like you,
like she owned the place.
She laughed like you did: sharp,
like someone braking in reverse.

What are you doing today?
I hope it’s something real,
messy and ordinary and alive.

is a stone we carry
a stone that has long drifted down
to the bottom of our bag
beneath the phone with its musical insistence
the morning latte receipts
the makeup bag and money clip
we have held it long enough
and the desperate hour is alive in the world
reach down and retrieve the stone
from its linty kingdom
and hand it to someone
freely 
saying
here put this in your pocket
let your fingers play
over its crystalline heart
on days when heart
is absent from humanity
or the overwhelm of struggle
is almost too much to bear
let it be a soothing                               
a kinship of earthly graces
a lantern against the dimming      

Through the generations we’ve learned how to best sort the goods:
milk and eggs dimly tucked behind rows of individually packaged sugar.
As shelved bread depreciates according to a function of its preservatives
just in time for its tag to grow larger and turn yellow: “Deal of the Day”.
Here an organic label can be purchased to turn higher profit.
It’s easy to forget the spell of scarcity cast by our kings.

The guide to being a healthy consumer would tell us to pay
the extra $3.50 for the eggs laid by chickens that walked around
5 square feet instead of 2.
Or better: buy the newest shelf-stable amalgymation of beans and spices
to scramble in your pan over toast

Free means valueless: that an item used to be worth something to someone
But a gift is invaluable. It has no price.
A sweater made by your grandmother warms differently than
plastics formed by children overseas, shipped, and purchased.
I can’t pretend to have answers to all our problems, but it seems to me that
community, Neighboring, sharing, gifting, and growing
are the ways to show that we don’t need to be isolate competitors.
sharing is the ultimate undermine of currency and scarcity.