Black young tough
Middle of the way
Holding sway
Instigators to the left
And the right
There to intimidate
To make the place
This space
Safe for commerce
“Look at that cracker.“
“See how he look at you?“
But I move on through
’Cause I’m cool too
Room enough in this great place
For any race
And each in every place
Six millions leaves room
Far more than six
Or sixty-two do
True

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

By the many, so many too
Concentrated here
Could overwhelm a mind
That sought to touch
Them each in their separateness
The most basic needs met
If not the standard
Of our TV fair
Our movie, large screened
Every place at once

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

I wonder
Am I even visible
On those days alone

Long walks to,
Through and among
The multitude

But feet clad
In a peacock way
Gather eyes
To the ground I cover

I’d ‘ave never thunk it
Oblivious
As I am

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

Having already caught the girl, she works on. What lay before her is home to bed, together, or over and apart. Still she works on, to catch the girl she’s already caught, one of the guys, laying down the story of Ann’s tit flash, of Joe’s month long birthday celebration, back to the tits . ‘Cause the tits made a difference and she needs the girl she’s already won to know it. One of the guys, salaciously.

And I, having been there before, wish she could see she’s already won.

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

Another day,
another way,
toward another goal,
in another place.

Always still, ourselves,
as we work to hide the truth of it,
from ourselves,

as those around us hope,
we find our way,
to let ourselves,
go free.

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

So many mixed together
The physicist’s gas
Heated
Active
All a swirl
Hydrogen passing
To and fro
No collision
Just a shudder of activity

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

Back in it,
surrounded by the illusion
my mind constructs
from the images,
the sounds,
the aromas,
the taste of the air.

Having lived,
just there,
I remember
the lonely alienation
that was my reality
of here,
then.

Still,
enough of the trappings have changed
to make this scene

fertile ground.

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

Here I am among six billions filled with an abiding loneliness as I pass through this moment in transition from where I was to where I will be. I am in between. In between is one of the three places I have lived my life. The other two are almost there and here, now.

When I am here, now, the time and events are not catalogued or examined until those moments have become a part of yesterday.

Almost there is the place from which I can see the edge of something new that may enter my life if I but find a way to open myself to possibility or glean a lesson that is just before me or even already upon me or somewhere just behind me, unrealized.

That other abiding place, that in between, is neither here nor there, it is a place of transition, not lived in but passed through.

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

This isn’t what I planned,
were I thought I’d be,
what I thought I’d be doing.

This isn’t what I planned,
who I thought I’d be,
what I thought I’d be doing too.

But I like where I am,
the road that got me here,
the folks I met along the road.

But I like where I am,
the who I have become,
the folks I met along the road too.

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

Bound to struggle as we navigate
these interpersonal waters,
two beings ever separate.

Bound to struggle as I navigate
this world, outside it, yet contained
fully within as well.

Bound to struggle as he masters a new task,
the conscious mind does poorly
what the subconscious will do
with ease once the conscious mind
is finished.

Bound to struggle as they all learn
the steps to this dance and that,
an unending choreography of us and all.

Bound to struggle.
Bound to struggle.

Then to be done with struggle
and rest easy for a time,
’til…

Bound to struggle.

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

Rage
Subsumed just below the skin
Leaks out in dribs and drabs

Screams against the traffic

Clenched at unreliable friends

Reality grates
Tears away
Leaves broken ripped and torn

And with each light brush
Bits or raw flesh
Fall free

Food to season Hell’s meal

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

“Do this.”

All the words say.

Then

A bunch of words
seemingly intended to explicate

“Do this.”

But that in fact mean

“Do the other thing.”

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

Halfway may be far worse
Than none of the way at all.

Sometimes it is a binary choice.
Here or there. There or here.

I don’t want to be Schrödinger’s cat.

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

The business dreams of, yearns for.
Truly wants, and needs, creativity.
Not knowing it itself, not being the source.
It isn’t sure when it sees it.
It fears the risk and so rarely takes the risk.

And why? Are the consequences so great?

So fearing the risk, they do not take the risk.

Instead, they follow each other like sheep.
They overwhelm us with formula and copycat productions.
And where they mistakenly grasp upon a creative force.
They muck it up, with a shoehorn and another formula.
12 minutes of this, x for y, followed by z.
Plus, toss the ending that sold the idea for

Plastic, implausible, hooey, that coins the word

Hollywood.

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

Famous Putdowns

• I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here. — Stephen Bishop
• He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. — Winston Churchill
• A modest little person, with much to be modest about. — Winston Churchill
• I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. — Clarence Darrow
• He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary. — William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
• Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? — Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
• Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it. — Moses Hadas
• He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others. — Samuel Johnson
• He had delusions of adequacy. — Walter Kerr
• He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know. — Abraham Lincoln
• I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it. — Groucho Marx
• They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge. — Thomas Brackett Reed
• In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily. — Charles, Count Talleyrand
• I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. — Mark Twain
• His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork. — Mae West
• Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. — Oscar Wilde
• He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends. — Oscar Wilde
• Interpreter! Interpreter! How do you say the opposite of Vive Le France? — Winston Churchill, on Charles de Gaulle
• A sheep in sheep’s clothing. — Winston Churchill, on Clement Atlee
• I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend… if you have one. — George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
• Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one. — Winston Churchill, in reply.

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

I am just like you.
I am very different from you.

I walked through all the same doors of development as you.
I arrived at them at nearly the same time as you.
My passing through them had most of the characteristics of your passing through them too.

Still where we have arrived isn’t the same.
Mine is uniquely my own.
Yours is uniquely your own.
From our own minds eye.

Aggregated, still, we look the same.
Undifferentiated in the filtered view.
Consumer, taxpayer, job holder, eater of food.

But here we are and here we are.
Both the same and different.
All at once.
Apparently different and the same too.

Word Counts — Today: 0 | February: 0 | 2010: 930

A fog lay over us all
for some few days now too
In and out the sound breathes
The day and the night
dressed in the mist

I wear it about me like a cloak

From here upon the hill’s top
I can watch it waft in one window
and out the other

Joyously it is weather
Northwest style

Being the child of the times
from which I came
I look out upon the fog
and see visions of the moors
Quiet, and still, and unmoving
Forbidding nonetheless

Or in a more urban vein
with the sound of hoof on cobble
and the slap of leather rein
I see street and alley
Perhaps footman and attendant too
Gentleman in fine dress
out for evening sport
or liaison less respectable

But too
on American battlefield
I see soldiers line on line
cold and hunger still
yet facing each other
brothers
soon to add the burnt powder
from their shot and cannon flare
to the fog that lay all about

Or from high mountain spine
I look down on valley and dale
and watch the mist climb
never to reach me
sitting here in the sun
above it all for this small time

Not for me yet
are the memories of this fog
upon these streets
with no retreat
hungry and alone
unable to escape
with the street, my home
and my mind not my own

I wear it about me like a cloak

And so you see
what you can see
partially revealed
and partially concealed

through no intention of my own
but only the nature
of the weather
and the climate
in these times
in this place

upon these words
and the many more
that preceded
and that will follow

Word Counts — Today: 0 | January: 930 | 2010: 930

Consultancy

An arrangement where a person or organization is engaged:

• to give expert analysis and advice which facilitates decision-making;
• to do a specific, one-off task or set of tasks; and
• to do a task involving skills or perspectives which would not normally be expected to be found within the organization seeking the consultation.

Word Counts — Today: 0 | January: 930 | 2010: 930

Sunset
and open sky
from this hilltop
home.

Red, gray, blue, pink.

Sound and silences
scent of life
and summer.

Defined quality
of sight
in these

moments
before

the end of
twilight.

Word Counts — Today: 0 | January: 930 | 2010: 930

Swim,
float,
sink
and breathe water,
evolve,
eve love.

Save and
cast into the pool
of what needs
not to be saved.

Are and Am!

We worship
at the altar
of impatience
and patience
of our own
transformation
from what we were
to what we will be.

Word Counts — Today: 0 | January: 930 | 2010: 930