98/365: while the coffee maker churns

dancin' in the kitchen
while the coffee maker churns
              and burbles
no idea why I'm happy
enough that I have to move
other than I'm alive
and it's a new day.

97/365: a man alone

A man alone
walks deep in the night
on a city street.

No one sees him -
this is not of consequence.

It is in the nature of men
to be alone

walking deep in the night.

96/365: a visit

Sitting at my desk
I suddenly started singing
a wordless melody -
a dirge like song,
with a oddly hopeful up tone

It seemed for a few bars
that I was intoning
notes I had known my whole life,
yet these were not my notes
but the notes of my grandmother
in house-Polish,
the Polish only spoken in western Massachusetts
among the older folk
before they laid down.

My wife asked what I was singing
and like that,
the notes were gone.

95/365: creative act

It is the morning
and all things are possible
as our souls
return from being a part
of the astral plane

where the madness of dreams
is real -
where articulation is
a creative act.

93/365: My Special Glasses

When I put on my Special Glasses
you can see yourself in the silver reflection
of the round disks that cover my eyes
like coins for the dead.

Nothing can be hidden
from those lenses -
all your secrets are laid bare
as you look into the place
where my eyes ought be.

With my Special Glasses on
you might assume I have X-ray vision -
like a cross between Freud and Superman
I can see everything buried and hidden
behind your smile.

But you would be wrong.

My Special Glasses are mirrors
on both sides,
so while you think you see my face
set in judgement around your sins,
eyebrows raised, mouth tight,
you see a different kind of reflection.

91/365: an operational definition of obscenity

The body's rhythm is out of sync with the mind's desire -
it's 5:57 on a Sunday morning
and there is no reason to be making coffee.

90/365: 3rd dimension

I'm cruising down the highway,
connecting two points with the shortest
possible distance.

It's a juxtaposition of events next -

Journey's Don't Stop Believing pops up
on my iPod and I crank the volume.

It's the blaring over the mini-van's speakers

and the dawn just about to happen -
a red rim forming over the treeline.

I crest the hill and for a moment
I'm convinced I only need to pull back
on the steering wheel
and my little van and I
will begin to lift off.

If this were to happen,
I would bank left
into the rising sun,
headed toward new beginnings
and possibilities.