It is a different kind of quiet; a
moment frozen, a full restaurant
conversation hanging loudly, ear
level like smoke it swirls around
like brightness it presses against
a kind of quiet in her eyes her
lips her demeanor slides against
me through me and I feel the
quiet close up and intimate…she
smiles

A frequency arises, lulled and
frenetic the softness iterated with
bold shifts in conversation sound music
background pressure rises and
falls as eyes connect fall away, re-
connect again and again, a small
shift in seat in time in place and
the brushing of a knee…the motion
of a waved gesture and
I smile

Noise and pressure behind now the
night in front; a destination elusive
and always the leading edge of
tomorrow…typical New York streets
welcome wandering, embracing
discovery; she returns the focus to
knowing not knowing what is felt
seen heard…the town car carries
them toward a place they both
hope has smiles

Not inoculated it exists in my head in the abyss
between what I know, what I don’t…when seeing is
too difficult too based on filters bias conceptions
when believing; the exception

An emotional environment at once grasping and
hostile unforgiving alien…great leaps of distance
of ideas generated with little regard with
loose connection

Like plateaus leading to a mountain range 
different—the same—ordered seemingly 
without thought…the gist is lost on travelers
on thinkers

A homogenous political pattern decries
difference/shuns controversy…a favorable
outcome regards acquiescence with
knowing smiles

30 miles from the center the city the home
of what experience points to when it is asked
”why?”…Zombieland exists separate and
unasked for

The TV internet email telephone…conduits
siphoning bits and pieces, grabbing handfuls
of knowing…eyes ears taste longing for
sweet difference

Trains run in between, swapping this pain
for that pain for a few hours for…until
the process reversed stamps paid
across the front

Zombieland exists for those who will leave
not for those who will stay…inoculated they
stay disregarding influence; unwanted unasked..a
different world

Silence fades daylight seeps under closed
shades slowly slowly filling shadows, a
moment stretches past breaking…snaps
plainly heard the morning starts, a cup
of coffee sits staring back, the WSJ newly
unfolded…the news waits breathless

Seen from behind I am motionless, sitting, a
morning location with coffee with paper with
time set out on the table before me…a new
day forgetting the previous, the last one in
line for experiencing for knowing for feeling
time pass…the news is impatient

Not completely still my eyes roam the room
a minute here there mostly toward tomorrow
toward where shadows haven’t fallen where
time hasn’t touched stained left indelible
footprints showing discovery finding where
the news doesn’t yet exist

The coffee in the cup lets go it’s last little
warmth it’s heat drifts away a moment too late
I drink it gone…my reading glasses a sign of
time passing of traveling forward I reach and
push them into place, the page of newsprint
in focus I jump into today.

Yesterday lay on the floor, a pile
of memories strewn like leaves, dead
reminders of the small spaces we live
in…living…existing between the here and
the there, the then and the now

Mentally we sweep up the debris with
hand with time we let it go into the box
a place where nothing ever really goes
away, disappears…a carton so big so
small it fits inside us all

The box lives on a shelf, a place reserved
for all of the minutes before this one, a
hidden not so hidden place we ignore
we think of little…we imagine when we
forget the future is in front of us

Today sheds and drops pieces like leaves
memories only smaller, more, as they
drift combine into piles mounds of dying
minutes until a mass forms into a full
blown yesterday

Lawyers don’t have
poems written about them,
about what they do feel
experience they seem/are
separate species apart
abandoned stranded;
a commercial entity
made of contractual &
persuasive arguments
for and against.

They inhabit a place
where words live where
meanings are fungible
malleable but very strict
(meaning they mean what
they mean until they need
not)…all toward an end
a resignation a
judgment of validity and
assignment.

It is a helpless sadness
…that place where words
are money are twins under
the skin; boundaries
of battles raised lost won
all as proxy personalities…
one step removed, avatars
jousting on judicial fiat on
borderless battlefield
with paper tracked
casualty.

At once hero/foe, a
helpful instigator they 
reach…simultaneous
interceptions; one hand
birthing freedom via
repression’s death,
another destroying
latitude (creating wealth)
contradiction by career
by habit, by design they
are and aren’t what we do
and don’t want.

We don’t listen to people…we listen to ourselves
in the words of others…imagining we know what
they mean their fears their ideas their meaning; we
think we do…we don’t; our souls shifting silently
away from understanding away from a common
goal direction and we fail

Without listening we fail at living fully completely;
alone and apart we lose humanity bit by bit/mile by
mile; not born with it we didn’t have it we are
supposed to come into it…to realize it later to
find it within (without) ourselves so missing so not
having it isn’t death

It might as well be; living without connection without
intersection without that umbilical thread to humans
to the earth life the universal fabric that shrouds us
protects provides is essentially being dead while alive
while breathing (we don’t) we watch and wait as it
passes…a parade we can’t join

Only watch from an uncomfortable curb from places
dark and tired from a vantage point we’d never pick
given the choice…and we have been; every day every
minute motion miniscule reaction to these events we
call living we have choice reason motivation to change
what we call life

Life is not a something not a time not an idea…it is an
all and everything and mostly a nothing that exists; 
an energy underneath/throughout us while we never
notice the arc we cut across time space toward an
ending we don’t pick a vantage point partially described
completely defined by living

Living is listening…to people to nature to yourself
without adding words feelings…your world across and
over the top of them—it—us—we all try we all fail we all win
when we all become “we all”…a singular plurality a specific
rhythm frequency toward a common goal idea; the fabric
life connected and in motion.

Imagine we are three dimensional lines traveling along
multiple axis along our paths toward tomorrow toward
a future unwritten unrealized unknown always waiting
beyond reach time and thought

Imagine we are lines all of us the billions the everyone
we believe in when we believe in an “everyone” like grass
like fur on the planet, individual hairs swaying to the
pressures of living being believing and seeing

These lines like beams of light they cross and never
touch they shine though each other leaving nothing, no
mark stain inky residue no memory no little emotion
left…not a drip on the side of a cup

Think normal direction is 90 degrees crisscrossing a
billion lives here to there, there to here; a huge woven
fabric that blankets the planet, holds us all on the surface
all unknowing unbelieving and connected anyway

Sometimes rarely almost never considering the number
of crossings per day per life two lines converge and change
direction combine for a minute hour day forever and travel
parallel making stronger brighter warmer light

Think of life an infinite pattern of light beams at right angles
some cross diagonal (brighter fuller stronger) meaning
couples marriage boyfriend girlfriend; two traveling the same
path together for however long

Life does not require two for the path it does not compel
or dispel…life provides the energy the wall socket the
grid that these lines of light travel upon…there are no signs
no laws rules or directions

Recognizing the lines of light we travel through, the individual
paths we cross daily, reaching out to touch to mark to stain
to combine…this is who we are who we want to be who we
can be as long as we know we can

Knowing the direction the map in your eye the
path before you behind you…a part of you
that becomes the movement you aspire to, the
motion desired all gathered a storm ready to
rain down the intent the meaning the life

Knowing is a small detail a very small event
in what we call being/living/having/seeing yet
it becomes a crutch we use to prop up our
less than accurate intentions toward an actual
and meaningful ending

Knowing is the “can’t” that we believe
Knowing is the “don’t” that stops us
Knowing is the “won’t” that we all see
knowing is the “aren’t” we all become

Knowing gets in the way of being in the sense
that knowing is not (nor can it ever be) being…it
is something else something immovable once
installed once planted taking root growing under
walls and sidewalks breaking foundations

Knowing is an end too many times…but no no no
when it needs to has to really can be the beginning
the upward the soaring notion that where we are
is always before something, not after not an after-
thought in the aftermath

Knowing is the “can’t” that we believe
Knowing is the “don’t” that stops us
Knowing is the “won’t” that we all see
knowing is the “aren’t” we all become

Knowing sometimes is too much is too hard is not
what we need when we need to know how to stop
knowing…when going feeling doing and being are
what we need…when we find ourselves paralyzed
by knowing too much

Knowing is an impediment wall barrier if we believe
that it is enough when the real difficulty of being lies
not in doing but in the hazard of feeling that just
knowing reaching that level may be enough when
knowing is never never never enough

when knowing is the “can’t” that we believe…just go
when knowing is the “don’t” that stops us…just go
when knowing is the “won’t” that we all see…just go
when knowing is the “aren’t” we all become…just go

Just go