Hey, I need to talk to you.
Are you cognizant?
I have whisperings and shouts
needs and advice,
your response will suffice
to further your education,
of me and my clan,
and you and your plan
and I promise,
I will always play the poet
as long as I can

When we long,
we know there is more,
something missing
we need to find,
it is the motivation
to move on,
the essence of dissatisfaction,
the beginning of a journey
toward fulfillment,
it is the recognition
of unrest,
the need to discover
missing mysteries
in life.
Longing feels good,
it feels right;
it is the antidote
to complacency
and smug satisfaction.
When we long,
for others,
for something greater,
we reach past our dilemmas
and difficulties
and defeats,
we begin to climb
to higher ground.
Come, long along.

we don’t waste nuthin’
around these parts,
we boil down the bones
and make slaw of the stalks,
we compost the peels,
and crush up the cans,
eat all the leftovers,
chew roots for our hearts;
we do the same with
memories around here,
we forget all the sad times
and concentrate on cheer,
chew bark when we’re aching
and for sadness drink beer,
you may do as you like,
but be sure, if your wasteful,
better not come around here.

Vote for me for poet of the year,
I can make you laugh,
I can make you fear,
I can make you giggle
like a schoolgirl again,
I can give absolution,
I can make you sin,
I can make you sing
with my meter and timing,
or upset your balance
with imperfect rhyming,
I’ll need your vote
at the end of the year
so, I thought I’d better
start asking you here,
vote for me for poet of the year.

a person,
a chameleon,
an adaptee,
the inveterate migrant,
the person who alters himself
to adapt to the local color,
dress, speech, mode,
who invents himself
to be accepted,
to fit in,
to appear at home,
to blend, must
disguise his true self,
and because he can’t
completely, because
his false description
is insufficient
to cover up     
what he was before,   
what life has molded
him into,
the shape,
the flavor,
and smell,
of his combined
historical circumstances
and conceptions
and upbringings,
the slaps
and kisses
and praises
and criticisms of his years,
then he must invent other false
descriptions about his true self
to counter
the imagined
prejudices
of the ones
he is trying to become like,
and all in all
it is lies, lies,
and more lies
and his true self
goes deeper
and further inside
until it nearly
disappears
and can only
be heard crying softly
in the darkness
by the keenest
of friends.

On a tranquil sea, I float,
upon a cloud;
streaming from my mind
are many flowers,
lilies I lay gently
in array, upon the water.
The wind arranges them
in pleasing patterns,
but then, the wind
grows stronger,
and stirs the water
and the flowers
begin to sink.
I reach desperately
for the ones nearest to me
and fall from the cloud,
helplessly into the sea.
Struggling to stay afloat
I sink beneath the waves,
and there, I am floating
with the sunken flowers,
only now there is no surface
I must remain upon

I know how to make yogurt
and kefir and sauerkraut and
pickles, but I have forgotten
how to make love, maybe
you could show me again