(a series of micro vignettes)

Chella and I are reading our analysis assignments together because that’s how we link and build.
We read out loud too, because how else can you judge the flow?
When my phone, lying on the table, jiggled. The caller ID read, “Tommy’s girlfriend.”
Chella gave me a little look. “I never change anyone’s ID,” I confessed. “Neither do I.” Cellia agreed.
“She broke up with him years ago..”

I feel sorry for panhandlers, I don’t see them often but I saw one yesterday. Who carries cash any more (Noone)?
Along the same line, Chella and I are wired, it-girls - we’re noise cancelled. Were you talkin’ to us?
We’re hard to engage, not because we’ve got attitude - we just can’t hear you. It’s irritating when I have to tap-out of some stream to hear people.
Even if it’s the waiter from the bistro downstairs delivering their exemplary frozen-strawberry-smoothies and burgers.

Later, after the pool, we showered. As I was toweling my hair, I studied myself in the mirror.
“My skin is SO ******* up,” I moaned, “I need a ‘rescue spa’ ******.. Let’s go to New York (city)—I’m taking you there.”
“There’s a ‘Forever Young Spa’ on Beacon street.. about a mile from here,” Cellia offered.
“Ever been there?” I asked.
“No, but the ad says they have an AI-powered massage robot. I’m curious.”
“Ooo! Call ‘em up, see if it does happy-endings.” I laughed.
“We could get a home unit.” Cellia updogged.
“I think we’d need the industrial version,” I added, “that’s the sell.”
.
.
A little playlist for this:
Nothing Can Stop Us by Saint Etienne
Goodbye by The Sundays

Our cast:
Chella, A tall, lithe black girl, from Liberty City (Miami) Florida. She's a Harvard Master's candidate with a ‘Bachelor of Science in Global Affairs’ from Yale. She had it rough growing up - she was buying skin-care at Trader Joes! I'm showing her some things.
Your author, a simple trust-fund baby from Athens, Georgia and a Harvard Master's candidate with a Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale.

the moon has died in a poem
overused and forlorn
its avatar is rising
in blazig pixels and scorn

we are at this threshold
one foot in the moon
the subtelty of dying will be
presented on Zoom

Godot isn't coming but
I am waiting too

the fullness of words in your mouth
my trembling hands
a truth cuts deep
into the ribs of morning
it's the big bang of language
when silence has no shadow

Thousands of eyes,
looking at my sleeping body.
After my false awakening,
I saw them,
still trapped in the dream.
They were recording
my every painful breath.

Eyes without eyelids,
dense, dark air.
I became an unexpected glitch
in the imposed system.
They just didn’t know
what to do with me.

The spiders around my bed
were watching over
the meaning of my existence.

I had only a deep need
to find a place
for all elements
of the broken vessel,
the black pupils,
the witnesses
to my faltering walk.

I am not yet a butterfly.
I am the caterpillar
in a long ego tunnel.

Thomas was right.

To heal,
I must keep going
and going
until all becomes
one seamless whole,
ready to transform
into a flying being,
free from the chain of wounds,
sacrificed
on the altar
of broken Ego.

I grew up in Kansas.
I graduated from Phillips Andover.
I matriculated at Colunbia over Yale.
I dropped out of law school because I couldn't sleep.
I spent a year at Menninger's that saved my life.
I wrote a poem to my parents. As my father walked by me,
he said "Go buy a rental property." That was the moment
I gained my independence. I was no longer his
"good little boy." I would no longer be his son to live out
his unconscious dreams through me, dreams of becoming
megawealthy, famous, powerful. I was free to be
my real self. I would write "the intellect sees that all
are different, wisdom that all are one." I came to
understand that wealth is not worth. Love is.
I took my dog, Shepard, to the banks of  the Yampa River
where the two of us lived with the animals and birds,
our friends. I wrote over a thousand poems. I even
wrote a novel, A CHILD FOR AMARANTH. I was at
one with all around me. I live a bucolic life now.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

I feel time running like a wild animal tnrough my body
the air might hide from itself in the frenzy of an embrace
the molecules of emotion create the music of muscles, of spheres
I watch this momentum of life unfolding, rising and decreasing
passion feeds the wind, the waters, the eartquakes, it dances on liminal edges
bound and unbound the pulse of creation, of destruction
I am so very quiet, as quiet as the retina that translates the light
when the light touches you my optic nerves get burned but look
how strange,
I see further away into the clarity of hands