…the moody sighing of beech leaves and the persistent grasping of rhizomes of grasses, the roots of pittosporum, as well as the hiss of nitrogen fixation by the underground nodules beneath the clover and, too, the industrious feeding of earthworms and termites…

Lately, I have become more aware of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we can do or even should do in our short little lives, plagued as we are by nihilistic melancholy and fear of anonymous mediocrity. Stories grown from ideas put into our young, inquisitive, spongy childhood brains by our parents, our teachers, friends, ourselves…all the messages we internalized, that grow into neuronal connections and pathways we keep carving deeper and deeper through repetition until they turn into trenches of thought patterns we can no longer escape.

How much is left here, o universe, trembling and alive.

I am in a dentist’s chair in July, watching a plane make two parallel lines across a clear blue New England sky, as that racy heart-feeling from local anesthesia kicks in.

When inventing a religion, be sure to include laser-focused, arch eyes, at least if you want your religion to have a God, a catechism, etc.

Guys, I love you but I have bad news: we are all fucked by Time as surely as we are by our wireless internet providers. And during the flicker and fade of our brief lives we will burn too much time sorting laundry and navigating the labyrinthine phone trees of insurance companies who make billions betting on our mortality.

I am an old man in HomeDepot and I want a lightbulb.

Twiddling your thumbs doesn’t get you high.

Wisdom of Butterflies by Jean Janicke

a small girl’s shadow...

I perceived the irony of the not-so-subtle message that went out in that gift-giving gesture from the family matriarch

Surely as poets write…

No one can tell another
how to live–so be wary
of anybody selling that particular
brand of promise. There is no way
you'll get your money's worth.

Molasses. Slow as. Trickles out the bolted spots, rivets thick with sticky sweet, thin steel buckling. 

Still, it stands. 

I watch you disappear, slight figure severe in concert black, sucked into that black immensity,

I feel without direction or certainty. Raw and vulnerable. Out of sorts. In a fog. Mournful. Call it what you will.  

You’re four years old visiting your dad at the castle that grownups call the social services building. A nice lady named Mrs. Chen usually plays with your dad and you, but she gets up and leaves the room.

I fly amongst swarms of
black and yellow lines between
bent-necked trees and church parking lots  

I preferred avoiding crowds from the early days of my life.  

To an apple in an orchard blue,
The sky’s a copper green,
Cloistered crimson honeycombs,
You’re recherché in elk-en tree.

Indulgence

My mother grunts like a greedy infant at the breast as the hospice health aide massages lotion into her flaky feet, her pleasure so audible it drowns out The Eternal Word Television Network she insists on playing 24/7 until the lesions on her brain claim her.