My “now” is not your “now” it will never be but it never
was…to start with it never started and was never
finished; ”now” is Reality looking back at and seeing
where it is going…as it goes there, as it expands from
the center out it rolls over infinite points of “now”
all relative only to themselves.

Reality has no plan no design no effort expended or
managed for where we go-do-say-think-feel as we all
are prodded along…pushed by time toward someplace
that’s not the beginning not quite the end but some-
where that is very much like now, or now, or now, or
the edge; a split second before the last split second

That thing we perceive and color our own we mask
and drape with expectation with dreams and worries
we call when sad when poor when hurt when in love
and deliciously happy…that thing that stands next to
the thing we see, the thing we call reality perfectly
happy to be the silent partner

In essence we are nothing more than a notion, an
idea of who we are…floating details of hair color of
penis length of breast size of psychosis of factual and
fanciful reaction to the collapse and avalanche of
competing energy…another one of us thinking she he
is real is solid is more than just thought and dream

It all goes away, this life—this reason—this rolling
motion moment toward an unknown we know too well
a blurry future memory of where we will be when we
will be no more…a siren song of gravity inexorably
pulling us downward, needing us to be close to be
there when there is all that is left of here

it all starts again…as it is dying it is born and it is
always and forever locked; a fluctuating frequency of
being and not being, of the perpetual myth that is life
and happiness like reality notices cares wonders why
we expend so much toward something irrelevant to
time to space…to the edges of where now is

I had a moment
held tight in my hand
had to let it go
just couldn’t understand

Had a thought
just inside my head
saw it fly away
and disappear instead

How many times will I suffer this fate, this
misalignment between me and the rest of the world
in the end I don’t mind as much as I miss your
smile, the way your lips would stretch and curl

How often will I think this, this single thought, the
one where what was…really wasn’t after all
knowing it was my fault that I couldn’t love enough
as summer faded into the long cold fall

I can’t help thinking although I know I shouldn’t, while
the past sits there untouched, no matter what I try
all the wishes the hopes the dreams and fortunes spent
nothing changes even as the tears fade and dry

I had a moment
held tight in my hand
had to let it go
just couldn’t understand

Had a thought
just inside my head
saw it fly away
and disappear instead

Knowing is not enough when it’s doing that counts, that
means what it means when it means anything at all
and I knew but I didn’t do when doing was called for
throughout that ending summer and long cold fall

She was the thought the dream the idea of something, the
moment that I held too tight too tight in my hand
and I let her go like the thought that drifts into nothingness
and finally now, finally now is when I understand

I had a moment
held tight in my hand
Had a thought
just inside my head

and I held on so tight that I let her go instead
I held on so tight that I let her go instead

The cold sits outside my window smacking its forehead
against the glass…a rhythmic beating…a low frequency
lament; a greeting a threat a mindless call to come out |
and have my soul sucked through my skin—through my
inattention—to help me leave this earth this life

Within my memory sea I feel it’s misery its crying need
for friendship connection…with squinting despair I have
no intent to acquiesce to agree to join that mortal spiral
down toward the collapse of movement of mission
from motivation I can only look and listen to the rattle

A memory fish swims toward the surface of simple thinking;
a boot a foot the cold cold cold of a 10 year old walking
across imagination and hope, across time I feel  the cement
hardness of packed snow and numb toes, clenched hands
diving to the lowest depth of useless pockets

The fish nibbles at my edges watching the cold on the other
side of glass thinking in two dimensions; then and now I
feel my own heat, my life radiating outward toward the rest
of humanity…the cold dispassionate…watching my dreams
waft in and out of thinking…of sharing my warmth

The cold rages quietly—pent up pressures of sadness—just
outside…freezing the surface of my sea, creating a thin
grey & translucent barrier—acting—cement and stone, an
icy wall separating me from what I knew (I didn’t know much)
to what I know now (that I wish I didn’t)

The cold, the fish, the ice and the sea…all collude toward
agreement, a choice made about living without knowing the
choice made…a 10 year old, his feet in cold boots, his mind all
about moving forward, going home and the me watching
the cold now through glass…almost no difference.

I don’t just see her; I feel her, her eyes felt

on skin on time…a roving slow brushing away

of yesterday, I feel her eyes holding me…

settling on my shoulders carrying a weight

like thinking, like thinking that tomorrow

may not come but always thought of as if

it will…a weight like the sadness when  we

want and are unrequited are lost a little are

wandering without notice of breathing…of

living we feel the weight but don’t because

it is never not there…something sitting slowly

quietly and forever we think (when we can

ever think of forever).

I don’t just hear her; I swim though vibrations

through eddies and currents of whispers

dreams all concurrent all sliding past with the

slightest movement toward a focus once

planned now idealized and made secondary

the sound of her voice flowing amidst the

idea that there is more to living than can be

seen than is heard felt known always a motion

forward, a grand convergence of want need

love desire feeling along for the edge of the

table the place where solid flat ends in empty

air, in the place where we think.

I don’t just know her; I want to be her skin

her covering her collapsing tent all covered all

fallen by wind by neglect by the fact that

creating that closeness connected confusion

of here and there her and me…I want because

I can—it has no cost no risk—to want to dream

to visualize a tomorrow unlike today while all

the while the time moves past us past them

past this moment and I think that creating

today over and over and…

1. She lived in that moment where the intersection, a simple
2. line over line created a single from a multiple, reduced by
3. expanding…she became more by taking less but in the end
4. had too much to give as he fell within her sight within her
5. heart…he tried but trying wasn’t what was needed when
6. she had in her head everything she knew to be true
7. He fell by never believing that rising was possible, was
8. something thought real…something external brought inward
9. absorbed contained converted with motion without thought
10. all imagined like life is just an illusion waiting for revision
11. looking for meaning mining the bottoms of our dreams for
12. anything anything anything resembling god love life death
13. It rose quickly the urge the movement the seeping little
14. feeling sliding right around from the back to the front, from
15. none to all…it made him think and realize with open eyes
16. with nothing close to knowing I was wrong when right and
17. knowing what begins also ends and the reverse is more true
18. than not, more this than that…just more
19. Sadly he embraced his happiness fondly remembering the
20. pain keeping him sane, keeping thinking within range of the
21. power pulsing beating heart all the while floating thinking
22. spinning slowly toward a line of sight mission …the long sad
23. arc of death pronounced as begun at the first wail of birth
24. the first molecule connecting splitting replicating
25. Complications—in the end—are nothing but the complexity
26. invoked when communication obscures reality when the truth
27. remains embedded in a common understanding within
28. common sense…like knowing seems so much more powerful
29. when no one cares that what we know is nothing less than
30. the ability to hear our own thinking

The difficult thing one of many difficult things we
experience the pain the longing for simple for 
same when time spins when days pass when
we create today from the shadow of yesterday

It is the effort we put toward trying to just know
trying to see what can’t be seen, we try, we look
when we feel…we categorize and prioritize, we
pulverize it into some form of meaning…to us

The long arc of love soaring diving toward a
moment a minute gone is a flash a spark in a
sea of lights…once thought impervious to the
liquid we call living it erodes the same, the same

Why is it now different…gone…when its shadow
hasn’t left hasn’t faded still with a weight an inertia
it expands to fill the day the night the emptiness
where fullness was; the long arc touching down

Calling that instant another name another form of
recognition derides the moment with a pain unfelt
but known intimately…a whisper behind diaphanous
dreams of having…having and having still more

An unplanned history toward an unexpected past; it
can’t be anything but what it will be…the universe
cannot be simpler than any of its parts…when nothing
is an immediate contradiction

The long arc swings and doesn’t care where cuts
are made are left with bruises with no apology, she
was who she was (as was I) but all in all it is always
what it will always be; not destined but created

It’s not Zen not spiritual not anything but

life love living within and without thinking

that strength and weakness are merely

perspectives of the same thing the same

idea feeling motion toward an end that is

a beginning always always

It is not madness nor mindlessness but a

need to connect to choose to find the limit

to thinking having feeling while nobody and

nothing exists between now and tomorrow

between here and then we are all singular

and plural

It is not vulnerability when our weaknesses

give us the strength to be who we are when

who we are is only what we have in our souls

hearts minds…really what today represents

a slice of time space the moment frozen in a

magnificent slow-turn toward reality

It is not now that we worry about, it is what we

can’t see hear feel…know…so we wonder plan

plan plan all derived designed toward creating

something that doesn’t exist (but nothing really

does)  that provides a guarantee a promise, a

predictable end to a (too well known) beginning

It is not anything that we don’t make an agreement

toward, a flash frozen idea of what is now when now

is past gone a faint stain in passing a small trail to

follow…it is who we are always always always when

we wake when we breathe when we live just by

believing that we are living.

Space, where we are…work play where

we breathe where we live consists of

time and motion sometimes stopped

always moving slow slow slow some-

times but it is fungible…it bleeds across

understanding across moments waiting

for meaning and always there no matter

where we are we are there

Time stains us with mitigation and with

graduations of yesterday today tomorrow

while speeding ever speeding toward

the other side of now, the minute lost

tossed and put away until motion and

meaning, movement and maintenance all

conspire toward an end state proposed

and ultimately completed.

Us as we stare across the divide between

time and space knowing knowing knowing

that they are flip side coins spinning in the

great nothing…in the emptiness between the

something we call life call living call when we

call anything…time, space, us all vibrating all

everything and nothing moving with and for,

against and simply here and now.

It was her voice that woke me, woke the
feeling shook it free from its hiding, its
little shadow seemingly forever in place
now edged free and precarious…it was
her voice; the center of the cacophony
the middle frequencies battling, echoes
across the copper bar the stem glasses
the beautiful small food plates pushed
and pulled from and to…her mouth; I
felt her voice caress me with knowing
with recklessness she unwrapped herself
and gave me slips of light, glimpses of
moments and stirred the darkness…she
was everything my vision my heart my
fingers delicate on her skin on wrist arm
back and forth the ideas bounced, be-
came solid inserted in-motion toward an
end too soon too quick…her voice among
many directed planned casually given to
ears waiting feeling the soft minute of her
always…her forever and the awakening
circled the ground until—finally ready—it
signals that my eyes should see the
beauty before me…know the voice
that unlocks my soul.

She sang the words without melody without
thought they were written in her heart across
her life they—tattooed—against her soul, she
sang the words through tears through time

First at 16 then at 29 the words came from a
deep well, a place of clear cold, of intensity
of meaning when she meant more than saying
the words, more than living the memory

At 16 it was birthdays and living; moving toward
a future at once certain unknown misplaced and
ultimately found…an idea that what appears
today has a solidity that carries it to tomorrow

At 29 the circle had turned and death, announced,
lay at her feet;a wreath of disregard of shaking
off the coils the chains that bind…and singing the
thoughts words ideas into the dark today

She sang the words a poem of regret of love
of an inside crying feeling the world sliding away
becoming a tomorrow unseen unprepared un-
known yet always…just…there

She sang the words for him for her a call to
the gathered the lost the forgotten she reached
that well that clanky geared place where all of
what she knew was from him

…and only him