Thanks in advance

Universe, if you will let me be perfect

I would be grateful, of course

Being perfect and all

I would be grateful.

But if, as I suspect, you want me

Imperfect

Perhaps you might let me know

Your rationale

Thanks in advance, you asshole.

Unemployed?

Looking for a job?
Got goodness?
-Gentleness toward all beings
That job is available
When can you start?

Live for the moment

The thought expressed by today
is forgotten tomorrow
and lost on yesterday

How can live for the moment
be a philosophical stance?
As it necessarily keeps
us all in a trance

To escape the moment
Is exactly like a massive oak
Escaping an acorn
You see it tomorrow
It's still emerging

I'm in here
nobody can get me out
not even me

Only time

Transitions

They break on your shoulders
from the sunset
you shrug and say
hell, let's get on with it
until you notice you are not
where you were
nor doing what you did
and with whom you did it

Time is a bee straight line
between two short points
the angles you see
are the corners of your mind
the only nodes in the net
are dates with transition

To a poem I saw

If you call this a poem
You might call day a verse
And night a work of art

Give the sun a literary prize
Pen a smile with highest honor
Write home of a friend's embrace

Give grand descriptions of family ties
Search water streams for rhyme
Afford clouds wide margin

If love to you is the masterpiece
You would be effusive indeed
At what I find in you

Getting Back On Your Feet

You say you’re going crazy

But you live alone

Sewing the seeds of senility

You say you can’t think straight

But you never finished grieving a loss

Stretching your days of sadness

You say they’re driving you mad

But you don’t leave them alone

Staying within striking distance

You say the days are dragging by

But you’re in a state of transition

Uncertainty can be sinister

You say your dreams haunt you

But that’s just what they do

I’m scared too sometimes

You say you never feel well

But have you stopped to think

You’re as sick as your secrets?

Talk to someone you trust

Listen to the woes of a friend

Others may not genuinely care

For you or even themselves

But don’t make their mistake

Darling, you’re better than that

Someday, and soon I hope

You’ll remember this as the time

You returned to the land of the living

When you got back on your feet

Praying all night in the woods with daddy

Daddy and other preachers decided to pray

All night

In the woods beside Whitehorse Road

Near Tabernacle Baptist

Our Church

In Greenville

I asked if I could go

Of course I could

I was the only boy

Ten years old

We prayed til daybreak

I buried my head in leaves

Threw them in the air

Peeked on occasion

To see what others were doing

Yelled words

Sometimes nonsense phrases

They ran

They wept

Mostly they yelled to the stars

Some climbed up and sat on tree branches

Everyone tried to pray the loudest

The subjects included:

How to deal with uppity black people

The Beatles being bigger than Jesus

Long haired men

Braless women

The devil's weed

Astronauts playing God

America a godless land

When the sun rose and we left

They spoke of how close to God they felt

Dad put his hand on my shoulder

We walked to the car