If matter lasts forever and its energy endures,
A piece of Caesar, one of them,
May march right through your pores.
If not an Emperor of Rome,
Then one a bit obscure.
The largest point – is anything
Quite ever truly yours?

I think this covers why it is that simple folk prevail.
Within the scope of character
A hero wags his tail.
Or maybe its resistance swells
When bravery goes pale.
Regardless, in our marrow
Flows the willingness to fail.

Let’s face it: some things precious override the risk of death.
Those things you cannot live without
If nothing else is left,
Are worth the time and effort;
Every single, painful breath
Is justified by righteous pride.
Rewards come after Death.

Since you asked
My thoughts have paused since you asked
Since you asked I noticed your
Fingers started to repeatedly, quietly
Compress and decompress the buttons
On one of our kids fidget toys you’re
Putting away

And I’m washing dishes, hunched
and
In the window over the sink I stare like
my reflection seeing the
reflected me getting
Everything I’ve always wanted
And I don’t know if there’s a word for that.

I don’t know if there’s a word for always
touching when we pass eachother
But since you asked we haven’t moved
So I’m standing in the distance
readying for your hand
to touch anywhere
I don’t know if there’s a word for knowing you’re feeling that too
but I doubt it.

“You know you’re not broken? That you don’t need to be fixed?”

A koala, a mermaid (and octopus too),
Met fast where the waves kissed the still shore anew.
The koala with fur, silken, shaggy and fine,
And the octopus, a knotted-armed tangle; all… nine?

The mermaid, excited, with froth on her face,
Tried some steps on the sand, while the others took chase.
Octopus (with a stumble, a fumble, a reach),
And koala kept step, toe-by-toe, ‘cross the beach.

Through days of bright sunshine and nights of dark blue,
Koala’s ears held to the mermaid’s soft coo.
The octopus, shifty, inspected his shells
A horde he kept secret within silent swells.

But the tide did turn rough, and the octopus sighed,
His arms hardened, heavy; his spirits untied.
The mermaid, at once, brought her arm from the dark
And presented her OWN prize, an octopus mark.

His eyes became foggy, he smiled in shame,
And showed her his mermaid, (location the same).
The Koala, no longer being tired or lost
Enveloped them, tightly, permeating his frost.

In the final verse, finally, the mermaid embraced
The koala (contented) and set a clear pace
As the octopus, trailed, (her tail held in the blue)…
…A koala, a mermaid (and octopus too).

I feel in my bones that music lives,
That melody is timeless – old and new.
But what if consciousness is one
And being One – the same?

Suppose all song is nothing more than breath
That animates. The finger touching finger
From the power to the fore!

Think hard of it! If notes and chords
The artist thinks he makes,
Are nothing more than every bit
Of happiness and grief
Committed to the measures
In the everlasting Scales
That serve as mordant score
For all the interludes we live.

This truth would then explain the riddle.
How is it that the face of tragedy
Always stops the tune?
Whence comes the silence
When we undergo the heat of Hurt?

What if? What if? What if?

What if the ringing anthem never stops –
It’s just that hearing faints away
When moments of adversity storm in.
What if? What if? What if?

What if the music lingers long
And plays as loud and strong?
But we in helpless haplessness
Can feel only what’s wrong?

Then music then is life,
And life rings on and touches hearts,
With strings and keys and melodies
And never stops nor starts.

I guess, really,
stuck isn’t how I would have
ever described it. Because
we were kids with our friends
when we went on our first voyages
in the car and then
we meant everything to other people
but even then
the sky would look purple over
nuclear plant when we came back
to town
and I always told you that even the sunset
could tell your favorite color
and the chemicals in the clouds
had nothing to do with me
noticing
the reflection in your eyes
looked like the earth if the green was
brown and the ocean
loved you like the sky. But
then we only meant everything to other people…

…we talked and the orange that lines
the hazel in my eyes turned more and more gold. But then we meant only everyone only to only other people.
So it wasn’t not nothing
when the wind whipped
through the window down 113 to 63
We didn’t know we’d buy out first home there
Down a nowhere street where
The creeks around flood all but this road liken you never seen before

Like the sky met the ocean for the first time and said, “let them live every day over their head”