offering

offering

what’s held by you or me isn’t really as

meaningful as it could be unless it has

been shared with those who have less.


as value accrues to what we keep the

longer we keep it, so too does value

accrue to what we no longer hold

when we’ve shared it with another.

presence

presence

walk, run - move across life’s vivid stages in stages;

shift into being you, the one who hopes to fly someday;

the stage comes all aglow with flight-motion's presence.

a sense of you

a sense of you

you don’t think like me. i can’t see through your eyes.

we can agree but will those pacts hold, who knows?


i can’t change one second of my past, nor can you.

based on that, you’ll judge me and i’ll judge you.


you say you haven’t felt this way for a long time.

like an echo, i say it’s been even longer for me.


we’ll hope against all odds that love will win;

and risk our hearts that what should be, will be.

immane

immane

writing about concepts in ways i can relate to helps make even

the most ambiguous, finely-shaded idea take on a life all its own

in my febrile but often rich imagination.


but sometimes, i come across archaic latin words like immane,

whose two disparate meanings defeat any efforts at lucid prose.


for example, when i try to write about immensities that defy

understanding of the words: 1) vast in size and enormous, my

meagre skills are overwhelmed by an inability to imagine anything

larger than the details depicted on maps; or, the scale of a nebula’s

contours silhouetted against more distant galactic features portrayed

by infrared photo-telescopy printed on papers or projected on screens.


but trying to express ideas of a word that can also be defined as: 2)

inhumanly cruel, leaves me short of breath, anxious to avoid what

would be, for me, a downright betrayal of imagination, to mentally

harbour even the most subtle ideas of those unthinkable agonies

perpetrated in the name of man’s cruel inhumanities to other men.


faced with such a dilemma of description, few good options remain,

but of those few one shines through brighter and more powerful in its

honest simplicity than most: that quaint ideas of scale and torment aside,

universalism’s ideals of love remain constant, unbidden by change or

struggles to conceptualize immensities that cannot be understood or

unspeakable horrors we can own only upon peril of the dissolution of

our essential humanity and goodness. so, for me, love will have to do.

willpower

willpower

it isn’t about preventing what must be stopped or maintaining

what musn’t degrade or be allowed to expand beyond limits.

it’s about spinning whole cloth out of thin air, time and again.

at each of life’s stages, willpower enables us to become

who we need to be to cope with ‘new’ current realities

based on events that constantly modify our perspectives.

a long aftermath

a long aftermath

foggy, rainy summer’s night on a winding, wet mountain road;
a small herd of deer caught in the headlamps, surprised, not less
than me; i swerve and lose control, time’s sound skips long beats.
did i know i was me, the rescue man asked before i sank into
dark oblivion; still, as long as i don’t move too quickly, i’m ok.

pain’s reign ascends sharply, can’t move, screams or drugs, no sleep;
eight hospital weeks briefly preamble twenty eight bedridden months.
orthotests, physical therapy, nerve conduction tests, surgeries, neurotests;
permanent physical and mental degrees of disability; ‘real life’ sentient
dreams overwhelm me; still, as long as i don’t move too quickly, i’m ok.

eighteen years go by slowly as dense hot bubbles bursting into steam
smelling foul like effluveum from a red cauldron’s decocted brews,
offering only slightly less poisonous effects undrunk, virtuously avoided.
repellent worlds of unlearning and relearning and new learning thwarted,
or allowed as needs must; still, as long as i don’t move too quickly, i’m ok.

elder’s view, too late to go back now, clarity shifts out of, and snaps back
into focus; fear is no longer as hungry to haunt my mind as it once was.
forgiving all others in this life’s past includes loving my own endurance;
etched memories of horrors and torments overlaid now by remembrances
of love and kindness; still, as long as i don’t move too quickly, i’m ok.

bad mood

bad mood

noise intrudes unexpectedly, awoken tired

from the highs of days before. seeking sleep’s

restorative cruelly denied. sound encroaches

forcefully fed, layered into unconsciousness

unpillowed as hated awareness of audibility.