Be weary of anything that comes in small doses

Most people feel on occasion that life is absurd, and some feel it vividly and continually.-Thomas Nagel

Still Life

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since

-Fitzgerald

Our intention was to sit and watch the sunset.

Let the slow wobble of the earth slip us into a trance

so that we could inhale the mashed colors and

disappear into their fleeting folds.

Desert at Midnight

A couple people sat spaced out watching some old black and white film I didn’t recognize, but it didnt seem like they were paying attention, just gazing up at something bright. I sat down and we wasted away together, each one of us waiting for something as we watched grey men on the screen who were either dead or dying.

Every green leaf on C Street lit with the end of the world.
Each leaf in the mind said that the apocalypse
already happened or was happening each moment
but went unnoticed. To be young astounds me now.
I’d forgotten the same fine cord was drawn
through then and now and later, the realization never ended.
The poem, the pen, the lamp, the cup
all slightly more than their forms, already out of their forms,
exposed to sight. The shoddy heft of supposed age
withers away; its withering space provides
ample room. And the joy of mind flows
through the joy of form
and gladness takes the cool, pure air
into its great lungs.
Such great and easy destruction.
I am rolled up within it.

-Sean Norton

Grasping at Ghosts

One foot is pointing forward

and the other is rooted in the earth

in time tectonic plates will pull them apart

with a pain so gradual

that it will be as if there was never anything else

Black and White is Still Sight...

The moment still felt dead, oozing uselessly past. Squirming with memory. But at least I shared it with others. Even if they would cease to exist when I left.

A childless, futureless road

And then nothing. . . Is that it?

Or start believing in a God

Beyond the temporal limit

-Harry Clifton

Can't Stop the Feeling

The head is full is such devices. Backward glances are more soothing than what ever was. This child never stood as he does now. Dazed in his own memories.

It happens still. That desolating falling shudder inside and the our neighborhood seems only sprawling loops... like the patterns eaten on driftwood

-Peter Campion

Burying Feelings

There are no remains, just memories. Fickle haunts evoked by age and act. A thousand frames placed on display. Over lit and colored in, they are not real, they do not mean a thing.

I've other pills

to tramp on grief,

estrange pain,

and hatch the part of waking that

is dreams,

double one dose to un-depress

and to write less and less

-Sandra McPherson

TThe MMost LLike

The book never discusses the causes of love.

It claims confusion is a necessary good.

It never explains. It only reveals.

-Mark Strand

With emptiness

There is clarity

In what always was

Accepting Life as it Comes

You know that desire leads only to sorrow, that sorrow

leads to achievement which leads to emptiness.

You know that this is different, that this

is the celebration, the only celebration,

that by giving yourself over to nothing,

you shall be healed.

-Mark Strand

Our skin once stood firm against the sky

A canvas of sun and sweat and blood,

We died with the seasons splintering shift

Lying amongst the trees.

If this isn't it

Its pretty damn close