the way the parade used to be on tv

i guess what i want now, most of all, is the parade without the people

which is odd

i just want to see the balloons

please

but all of these talking people are in the way

their mouths

the dancing the singing

the selling, selling, selling

could we just have the balloons

please

spiderman and lucy and linus

and the ones i don't even know about yet?

OH LOOK

THERE'S ONE!

more please

night's bounteous song

the rain falling outside in the 3 a.m. dark

is so sweet on the mind

half-dozing, half-musing fingers move over the keys,

it is the slippery moment of reckoning.

whether to break for bed before the line bobs again in the wordstream,

or to abandon sleep altogether?

day 'comes precarious behind allnight bingewriting,

but sometimes merely to write up a thought

that was not born til the letters falling together

made it so

springs the soul from it's sinewy cage

and flings it up in the sky where it belongs

baker's man

well then.

that done,

shall we glance about at the world

outside these silly pleasures

and take in something for

the soul's humility?

perhaps to consider

the haitians starving,

eating mud cakes

of margarine, salt and mud?

or was that so last year?

oh yeah...that and a piece of fried chicken

i.

nothin prepares us so well for hope

than to breakfast on despair.

nothin prepares us so thoroughly for despair

than to eat bacon from high on the hog.

ii.

such relief finally to pull up a chair

to the kitchen table of heart and mind

to look at what we're serving up inside,

the soup du jour in the bowl of the soul...

then spoon and blow with delight

ah, my hat! my crow! my humble pie!

iii.

which explains so beautifully

the odd sense of well-being

to self-joust with

the right amount of cynicism

iv.

it's okay to observe these mastifications

and laugh as often as we find us sitting there

dipping snuff with such pleasure and thinking

my, my, what a nice coconut pie

held softly in the hand

hats

falling stars

dead birds

eucharist

picked flowers

humility

garden dirt

alms

tarantula

hope

time

mother's memory

rainwater

small moments

things left unsaid