MISSION STATEMENT

One day all the stray

and unspoken musings

will come into fine focus

like the light of the sun on a dry leaf.

They will ink themselves across a page

left to right, left to right

with a grammar, a syntax

and a rhetoric that moves like

the hooves and nostrils of a stampede.

This is a sentence you will write.

How much longer

can you put off writing it?

How much longer

can you keep us from reading it?

Make today be the day

the censors are silenced,

the day you dispatch yourself

as the emissary of a statement

only you can make, a mission

only you can commission.

PLACEBO

Encapsulate it

any way you can.

Call it what you like.

The casing doesn’t matter.

If it enlightens and enlivens,

ignites a fire inside,

and connects you

to something greater,

and mixes well

with your own chemistry,

then take it.

Pen your own

prescriptions

as often as possible.

Become your own

pharmacologist,

your own

goddamn dispensary!

Be the patient and

practitioner at once.

PAMPHLET

Whenever faith

is torn from your hands

and your mind

becomes the monster,

go out into the night.

Let the hillside cradle you.

Let the blossoms and the stars

surround you with their safety.

Let the night be the pages,

the affirmations,

the Daily Word you seek,

that no one, no one

can ever take from you.

Not ever again!

PHOTOGRAPHY 

the silver

in me

is the silver

in you

let’s get out

of the way

and let light

do its thing:

discover

it can draw

CURIOSITIES

Put all that eludes you

in a shadow box.

Arrange the accumulated enigma

into an assemblage,

like the ephemera

of memory,

like cuttings,

deadwood and thorn.

Fix it within

the case. Hang it

in a gallery

for all your acquaintances

to see. It will be though

the conversation piece

no one talks about.

The auctioneer

can’t auction off

imagination,

so how can your guests speak

to what's not theirs to know:

the secret desires

and strange curiosities

nervously collected by another

once upon a time.