Flashes & Occasional Pieces

We make each other’s lives possible

by living ours to their fullest truth,

which is hard.

Can I lean on you this Summer?

All the doors
are always
open

Last night I dreamt I was in a cheap store, older and mustier than 99 cents, and they
were selling balloons, but the only ones they had said “Happy 48th birthday, Jules!”
What an unsustainable business model.
I couldn’t get over it and spent the rest of the dream telling everyone.

Flutter up a few feet

song uninterrupted

and hover there

tailfeathers up-turned like a boat rudder in three dimensions

then alight in the same place

not flying but leaping

and floating down.

One-Sentence Album Review

Andrew Bird as Marat is almost a little too much for me,

but I’m impressed with what he can rhyme with Sisyphus.

The opposite of apnea

the fully drawn breath

sunlight reflected on a stream continuous and blinding

chases us from 20,000 feet below

a child on a bicycle chasing her father’s car

The surreal anti-climax
of being the best

In a dream someone asks me to write on the wall a reminder

to wake up in the morning and ask God what kind of world this is.

Notes from the Northrop Grumman Ethics Department

All day people walk by my desk muttering,

“I don’t know how much more I can take.”

Coming out of it, God I’m coming out of it again.

As the panic abates, a preternatural calm.

There is solace in words.

There is solace, for me, in words.

There is solace, only, in words.

8/7/06

Dick Cheney admits he was wrong two years ago

when he claimed the insurgency was almost over.

There is so little satisfaction in this that I want to cry.

what is the name of what a blue jay does
when it hovers close to the ground
in tight controlled circles

The waves rake the water-blackened stones

a seastone rattle, the wake,

roaring over future dust

A swarm of military helicopters materializes

from the haze obscuring the Santa Monica Mountains

Audiences were so horrified to find out it wasn’t Jennifer Beals dancing that

now an actor playing a welder trains to weld,

not just poke a spark at metal.

Don’t you think it’s funny

that this whole time I thought we were playing charades?

Flashes and waves

she felt only its warm

radiating

pinch

After awhile the ghosts you invite to your dreams

stop looking you in the eye.

They stare pointedly in the distance keeping you in their peripheral vision.

Or so you hope, even as you doggedly shadow their gaze.

Sparrows are among the only animals that don’t look like a pestilence in large numbers.

I’ve found the best way to get a pen you want is to find someone who has that pen and insist it’s yours.