The Rains Are Impartial

It is December, and
The air in my sailboat is cool.
My breath curls ahead of me in the morning,
One-part advanced recon, and
One part trumpeter.

During rains I sit inside
And count the raindrops on the roof;
A billion here, a billion there,
Each one a note in a symphony
That tends to end without fanfare.

Carrying jugs of water to the boat
My breath walks slower than I do,
Lost behind me on the docks
Unwilling to change its pace,
As my hands burn a brilliant red
From pushing through the cold.

At night when the winds howl
The dock lines creak and groan,
In a tugging match with those winds,
Both crying out loud for the attention
That the other seems to get.

This is the world I inhabit:
Cold in the winter, surely hot in the summer,
And yet I do not suffer, ever,
For never did I hope my tiny space
Would somehow trump that of the world around it.

How perplexingly egotistical we must be,
To think ourselves important enough
In the grand scheme of things
(which does not exist, by the way)
That we deserve to bemoan that world
In which we make our way.

The rains are impartial, as are
The wind, the heat, and the cold,
And they find no resistance in me.

My Cat Knew Nothing of Politics

My cat knew nothing of politics.

It knew of sunshine and squirrels,
Of food bowls and litter boxes,
And it seemed oddly talented at staring,
     mostly at me, as if I was absurd
     (and perhaps I was).

The unrest in the outside world
Mattered to it only
If it impacted its other truths,
     of squirrels, and food
     (and staring).

How it is that I got the body of a human
And the heart of a cat
I will never know,
     but its ways shine simply
     through the fiber of my Self—

I have happiness and warmth,
The occasional tender touch from love's hand,
And an odd amalgamation of constant joy
     and that odd staring
     (mostly at you),

As if you are absurd.

Define Me

You attempt to define me,
as the sands attempt to define the sea.
Do the sands have no purpose without the sea?

You yearn to understand me
but it is for you that you do this,
not for me.

You label me for your use and
stash me on a high, dusty shelf,
convenient.

You analyze me, always, but
no better do you understand yourself in the end
and I wonder why, then, you do it.

For I cannot sit on your shelf.
The sea will go where it will
without ever asking the sands.

for Alex

Here among us,
unrivaled by gods and kings,
lies a beauty of purpose
so simple in style
that it lives virtually unknown to man,

hidden behind your pillars of stone,
under the pages of your scripture,
lost in the storm of your
manufactured conflicts,
begging to be known.

You Are the Strong Ones

You are the strong ones,
you, who refuse to sit idly by,
who refuse to learn without questioning
fact and teacher alike,
who refuse blind faith
and prescribed worship,
and yet are at peace with the fact
that some things
are not to be understood.

You are the strong ones,
you, who see beauty everywhere,
not because of words in a poem or a book
but because it is simply there
in the faces,
in the flowers,
in the love, and
in the suffering.

You are the burdened,
you, who see the sorrow
of the world
and feel it fully,
toll paid to be counted among
the truly alive.

In the end
your views will die with you,
your perspective irrelevant,
your spirit a hazy concept,
nothing with you
but the sum of your nows.

And if, in this end, you are fortunate,
you will have spent your time
among the also-alive,
among the also-engaged,
among the also-aware,
through joy and through pain,
knowing that you have consumed
all that there is.

who killed you?

who left your soul bleached
white from a bottle,

paraded you around
high atop your carriage,

and made a skin of lies
for you to wear?

who wrote the script,
choreographed your steps,

designed your costume,
gave you notes,

and showed you pictures
of beauty?

who drew the line,
held the tape,

charted the course
and made the map,

to that which has become
your finishing line?

who told you stories
of princes and princesses,

white knights,
and picket fences,

and did they tell you
that all fences are made,

as rows of swords
to defend?

who told you
you were at war?

who murdered you
with disposable cups,

tales of someday,
a vocabulary of hate,

masked, cracking, brittle, 
like yourself?

do you know
when it was

that the last flakes
of your soul

fluttered away like
ash from a dying fire,

settling on the side of the road,
stirred into the air by passing cars,

and you died?

It started with never being warm

I never got Warm today. I wasn't Cold, but today never got Right. When the door opened at work, and evil, dark, clammy cold rolled in and engulfed me like a tear gas, threatening to kill me. I did not Like it, not at all, although I did not complain, because that's just not my thing so much.

Last night I slept well and I awoke at a decent O'clock this morning, enough so that there was time to eat, time to meditate, and time to leave The Boat in a lovely, cleaned-up state before I left for work. Coming home to such a lovely Cleaned-Up State at the end of the day makes me want to relax and be Happy, to bask in the accomplishments that surround me.

The dock lines are Just So, because I leave them Just So every day out of respect for The Boat, respect for the neighbors, respect for Doing the Right Thing because [boating], and I look at them every day when I return from work, satisfied that I am being responsible and mateeuurr and those kinds of things.

Inside The Boat we are all systems go and whatnot, Captain, with batteries charged, paraffin in the lamps, House Slippers at the ready, because that floor is cold, Propane full because we (Fernando & I) FILLED it the other day because that was fun and it felt like a REsponsible thing to do, what with me being all Captainy and whatnot and testing this accountability and REsponsibility thing out.

The {work} clothes were shed and dropped into the Don Henley, such that I have named the Dirty Laundry bag in an homage to 1982, warm clothes on, and those Slippers, and a New Book which is so cool, about an author who can't get another author out of his head, chuckle, (which is a Weird Word), and FLUMPF I drop onto the port Settee, as the bench is so-called here, and the smell of the Liquid Paraffin from the lamp is filling the air and is comforting to me, and the tea light glows whimsically (not such a Weird Word) in the Lotus Flower candle holder, no music, not a sound but some creeaaaaaks from the Dock Lines--SEE ABOVE--and little splooshes of water (probably not A Word at all) against the hull and the occasional SMACKEREL of a wave slapping against said hull, which Ave notices about as much as a Rhinoceros would notice a Flea ****not of the Chili Pepper sort.

The lighting is good, because I installed it. No, nay, "Nay," the lighting is AWEsome, because I installed it, and it works Every Time and is great for reading, which is a sport I enjoy playing. I have a pillow, all my pillows are feather pillows, and I have this Fat One that I don't sleep on because then my head would stick up at a weird angle Like This [ image in your head ], and this pillow is also AWEsome for squishing behind oneself for reading, which I do. Light on, warm clothes, book, settee, all so good. Commence chewing bottom lip that way that I do when I am stressed and Idon'tknowwhy. Perhaps a Commencement Address would be in Order.

The Boat, "Ave," Ave del Mar, Bird of the Sea, looks like she's ready for a highly-popular-yet-soulless sailing periodical to pop through the door for a photo shoot. My little fragile plant is alive (yay), the Books are lined up (yay), queued up if you will, in a basket on a shelf above my feet, peeking out from the corner is my Buddha (~om), always looking happy, and a brass lamp which I have polished to a shiny shine. Yet this foreboding "meh" shall not abate.

Captain?
Yes?
We've checked all the vital signs, Captain, and everything looks Good. A-Ok.
Poppycock. To the brig, yeoman.
I cannot do that, Sir, as I am just a voice in your head.
You are?
Yes.
Shyte.

The book is right [THERE] because i stopped reading it so I could write, which is always cathartic, a really Good Word, and I'm not really mad at the yeoman, I was mad at <me> because although I don't have much stuff I do have Stuff To Do and I was Thinking too much and sometimes Listening too much to too many people and Analyzing too much, and you can really talk yourself into a Spiraling Shyte Storm pretty easily if you might be the type to be prone to Thinking Thoughts about Stuff.

But I think it started with never being warm.

Snowy Path

Suddenly I came upon it,
Curving just ahead of me:
A snowy, hilly lane unplowed,
Mine the only tracks to see.
Somewhere deep within myself
Where feelings start to gel,
I smiled a smile of the purest joy
And fought the urge to yell
At no one in particular—
My joy became vehicular—
And down the path we fell.