Shame
Shame dissolution
Same
Same my name
Fingers swipe thumb flick
Savior-ing savoring
Crunch
Remembering silence
Remembering sleep
Body is in a supine slump against a
Subway car wall.
2 teenagers get on.
Take up position
Ones arm keeps jostling mine
He is younger than my nephew who is my yardstick for measuring
How I dole out my love, tolerance, avuncularity.
I’m world-weary and also just regular ol weary.
I want to get to my coffee stained mattress
And lie alone.
Young canoodling man,
I used to canoodle too
Toodle oo.

But guess what.
I get off one stop early.
Instead of getting off at my stop.
Because I want to walk and meditate-pray.
I pass so many cats out and about.
They know it will be Spring soon.
I make a scraping sound with my lips
That means: I love you.
Your furry body darting across the street.
Your glowing always
And never-satisfied eyes.

You don’t look at me,
and you don’t look at me,
and you don’t look at me,
And then you do.
And it’s like looking in the eyes of God,
because it is
Looking in the eyes of God
Before they dart away.

Outside a car is gunning an engine
which hits a peak intensity
of brazen cacophany
before fading mercifully away.
Though I’m not in
New York City it reminds me of
New York City
Where you are and

Where
Nobody remembers silence.
Or reveres silence
Or cares about your furtive eyes.

Except me.
Well, and your family,
The whole lot of them
And your friends,
A whole passel.
A crowd then.
Rambunctious, fevered, clamoring
And your co-workers
And maybe a stranger or two, too shy
or too proud to say:

Over here.
Add me to the mix.
Stir me in.

I don’t like weed; it makes me paranoid.
Or I’m already paranoid and weed accentuates it.
Once I did smoke it. Ok more than once.
I sat on the couch afraid to move, staring at the TV.
Unable to unconvince myself Homer Simpson was thinking bad thoughts about me.

Better. Much better, to leave it be.
Alcohol on the other hand, well. I love.
The warm slow spread, like octopus ink,
or like the octopus’s suctiony arms themselves, in my chest, belly,
nether and hind parts.
The looseness in my face, it goes to my finger tips,
and the slight acrid stank above my nose below my eyes.
Amber liquid amber light amber feeling.
Hey, that’s better, right?
Yeah.

I saw a play — a musical — on a rainy Superbowl Sunday. The theater was half full.
It was about a girl who spoiler alert killed herself. Good grief. A kick in the stomach from this beautiful creature
who didn’t want to live anymore.
And the actors singing about it under the lights
with brave and ardent faces.
I didn’t want it to end.

After the play I walked past a bar.
“There are no TVs in here, just humans” proclaimed a sandwich board. I looked in.
Yeah there were humans in there,
hunkered down, dry, murmuring confidentially shoulder to shoulder.
I wanted to talk and be heard and to listen and to lose my only self in the selves around me.

And I almost went in.
But remembered the girl who chose death
and walked in the rain to the subway instead.

Here are some little known facts.
This is a moment you will only experience once. So is this. so is this. Each moment gone, never returning.
Each next moment that’s about to come, never experienced before, until it too is gone. And so on.
Et al, ad infinitum. Except not.
I wish I’d taken latin in high school so I’d know what the latin is for on and on until ____.
Until not on.
I remember seeing Paul McCartney interviewed in the 60s, asked what happens after one dies.
“Nothing, you just conk out.”
The answer was seen as somewhat scandalous as I recall.
The plainspoken lack of belief, so foreign to Americans at the time and foreign to me also.
Conked out, like an old Hoover or a rusty buick overtaken with weeds.
So flat, plain and blunt.
Rick Rubin says that the Beatles are proof of the existence of God.

I googled a bird. Such a high pitched descending 3 notes. TWEE twee twee.
I heard it every day, every morning, outisde my window.
Lo I did google it
I googled the ____ out of it.
But I didn’t turn up what it was. Every bird I discovered was a different bird. Jerking its head around on youtube, about to sing about to sing until there it goes, unleashing its own shrill chirrup.
but not the one I was after. Elusive silly twee-ing twitting thing.

I cant see what it looks like, it’s too small and hiding in one of these magnificent trees which by the way are the only thing that keep me sane here. these beautiful towering magnificent otherworldly alien twisting gnarling ancient ever-young beasts towering and shooting into the sky but also just staying there. Because, you know, there is a vast system of roots like blood vessels shooting also and twisting and gnarling underground. but wait they’re breathing life into the air. thanks trees. oh yeah but anyway the trees are

hiding and housing this thing that I am googling.

until one day. I notice that I haven’t heard the high-tweeing bird. in a few days.
As quickly as I noticed it I un-noticed it and as quickly as it was here it wasn’t.

And so haven’t googled it and
I wonder where did it go, is it coming back,
and what did it sound like.

I don’t usually take or post pictures of my food. In fact, maybe I never have. But I made a really good batch of red lentil stew tonight so I’m breaking the rule. It’s not the first time I’ve been tempted to post a picture of red lentils. I eat a lot of them. They are really hard to mess up unless you burn them. You can’t really overcook them (unless, you know, you burn them) and they cook really quickly, unlike regular lentils (wikipedia tells me red lentils *are* regular lentils, only de-husked). The shops around me, many of which are Pakistani-owned, sell a lot of them so I always have some on hand.

This stew had lentils, water, tomato puree, lemon juice, and a little bit of garlic powder. I didn’t add salt because the tomato puree had salt already. I simmered it over the lowest flame I could get on the burner for close to two hours and it turned out perfectly. I added some spinach at the end which quickly steamed.