They sit no more watching the clouds
Men with raffia hats and machetes
Women with weeding hoes and baskets
They wail no more like beetles
Naked children with dry bones
Looking hard like pine cones.

For this day, I’m grateful
A day is like a tree, it bears many fruits.
Open your heart and spend this day
in awe of the wonderful gifts that surround you.

I have reached the point in my life where I have lived more years than I have left.
I refuse to waste them being touchy, angry or resentful. My intention is to

live the balance fully.

I bit into a donut, an item on my “do not eat list”.
As I tasted it, subliminal messages flooded my brain.
In a split second I was totally aware of every feeling I ever had,
in all my years,when eating that particular donut.

Meditate anytime, any place. Be still, quiet the mind.
Relax – become aware of the in breath and the out breath.
Feel the calm engulf you.
Place the attention on your heart, feel the energy
moving through it. This is the energy of life.

Through the window, cars, trucks, sirens, street-lamps,
they’re all searchlights. They plunge deep into this room,

I exhale a fog of winter to warm my hands,
clear a black hole in the snow for a campfire
of one struggling flame, a memory barely alive
of someone I left behind. I move away,
watch its light implode like wind blowing out a birthday candle.

Pounding. Pounding. Pounding.

A shrill squeak, Quick go!

Body springs forward

Don’t think now,

do.

The vast but repetitive broken-record of human history being ransom-notes disguised as newspaper pages, black-ink blood dripping creases down a two-way mirror like dried mascara streams on a weeping woman’s face after she’s gone to sleep with her make-up on, 

Sunday School today Miss Hooker asked
how many of us wanted to go to
Heaven when we die and my classmates all
raised their hands, and Ruby McCorkle both
and I guess one of hers made up for mine
because I didn’t raise it, I’m not sure
if that’s the best place for me even if
I pray and and pray to God to forgive my
sins,