when there is only blue sky there's still quite a ways to go till heaven

when God is your co-pilot, switch seats

when life gives you lemonade put some borrowed, refined, white sugar in it, it'll taste better

when wife gives you lemons, for goodness sakes, be careful not to squirt her in the eye when you're slicing them for the lemonade, and don't ask her if she wants a drink when it stops burning either

when you're happy and you know it share a smile, when you're happy and you know it share a smile, when you're happy and you know it make sure your grumpy, stupid, lazy no-good kids all know it too

when someone quotes the old french proverb nothing succeeds like success ask them if it is also true that nothing fails like failure

when john wayne said wake up, we're burnin' daylight he was just trying to say life is meant to be lived, dammit

when your dad says he's proud of you, he means it more than anything he's ever said before or will say again

when there's nothing more to be said, stop talking

when they stare you in the eye, stand your ground and don't flinch, they'll back down every time

shaken from the tree of life that's me
not stirred up from the bottom drifting
but falling twirling twisting
blown wherever the wind or chance
but not me
decides

reborn to fly
though floating falling gliding
not flying
drying to death
in green then brown then black
rotting
with former friends
who once followed the bright sun
to make food
and now to be food

it's the life of the leaf the leaf the leaf
the life of the leaf for me

or death, maybe

we skim across the surface
as a wax shine hides the imperfections
we rarely dip into the pits and gouges
the discolorations, the mistakes
because, although that's where real life resides,
we have been taught to look for something more
we bought a lie and we try to live it instead

ever watch doves chase away a hawk
or sparrows eat bugs in a busy traffic intersection at dusk
they weave and dodge like the millennium falcon inside the death star
and it looks chaotic, fifty birds at once, all after different insects
all after the same thing
and i never see them dead in the road
nor even injured
and i marvel

i do not have that kind of need
that kind of drive
that hunger
come and get it while the gettin' is good
but i stand on the sidelines
and the worst part is
it's my life, and i'm watching, instead of dancing
how often do jump into the fray and live my life
and how often do i take a soft rag and some endust to it

socrates and his unexamined life...

i suspect my answer to the homeless coffee poem is inappropriate

i stand aloof, shocked beyond feeling, afraid to move because these emotions see only movement, nothing has really happened until i acknowledge it with a breath or a sigh or a shaking body, but they'll come soon anyway, you can hide but you can't run because they travel faster than sound

he was saying something about how his wife would really like these flowers and how he was looking forward to their dinner out tonight, he was going about his life, trying to make her happy, trying to do something unexpected and pleasant because he loved her as much as he was able, but now she'll never see him again because he had to buy coffee from me and i wasn't myself today

it was heavier than i expected, like the blueblack metal was from another planet, jupiter or neptune, someplace big, nothing should pull against the earth so hard when it is so small, and it was cold as death...i smiled at that thought, cold as death indeed...the click it made cheated me, i'd have to hear the real explosion, impotent clicking just made it worse, click, click, clickclickclickclick, clicking wasn't at all right, they sound so much more masculine on television

the explosion was just that, i was totally deaf in my aloof and shocked unmoving self, someone was screaming but i couldn't tell what direction because the explosion was the loudest thing i had ever heard in my life, and i notice now that my hand is numb as well, like an hour of vibration all packed into that tenth of a second when his head caved in

the brain is very very fast, faster than the eye, my brain was already filling in the gaps in the information my eyes had sent, playing out this long, horrible, slow-motion movie of those two seconds, i look back now, five seconds later, and realize i had a smile on my face at the time, and his smile had disappeared, not slowly as i had imagined, but immediately, like water falling from the sky his smile fell from his face as he saw the black steel gaping maw rise to greet him, i see now as i didn't see at the time that his last thought had been of her, how disappointed she'd be that he hadn't called to say he wouldn't be home

wild entreaties of disdain and confusion, along with the normal dyslexic typing, a passive agressive demand to be left alone and plied with attention, or is that smothered instead, stop don't stop don't stop don'tstop, i don't know what you want me to want you to want, so now i feel good because there is no clarity to reveal the flaws and it's all about glossing over what's true so the mirror doesn't accuse