A wedding celebration
in the antebellum Hay House
for two friends newly allowed to marry.

Fred Schneider takes to the dance floor.
Mike Mills performs “Nightswimming”
with students from the McDuffie Center for Strings.

I’m standing by the crudités.
Groups drift
back to the dance floor.

I’m left with a colleague
from another department.

“You’re difficult to get to know,”
he says.

“I know.”

“I’d really like to get to know you.”

I’m caught short.

While the dancing continues,
we go sit on the front steps.

I learn others have discussed
this distance.

I thought listening was the gift.

I thought withholding
was generosity.

I’d never considered
letting yourself be known
is also a gift.

Years later,

five strangers gather
under the barn loft stairs
at the songwriting retreat.

Mandolin. Acoustic guitar.
A vocalist.

And two tuneless writers.

I’m sitting at a keyboard
I wish I knew how to use.

We’re all collaborating,
scribbling furiously,
voices overlapping,
pointing at instruments—“yes, that!”—
as disjointed words and melodies
find their match.

The Hay House resurfaces
in the chorus:

“Let your voice be known
The gifts and wounds we share
Let us know we’re not alone”

As the song comes together,
my fellow writer’s lines get dropped.

She quietly suggests
adding a verse.

Her voice isn’t heard.

I stop the room.

Her words become
the bridge
that completes the song:

“The joyous union of unknown friends—
What was broken now can mend”

Maybe
I’m learning.

I felt Zen
as we went around the room.

I felt at home,
trusting whatever came.

Others catalogued insecurities,
described decades of anxiety,
outlined sacrifices to the muse.

“I’ve been practicing
with Just This,”
I told Linford as an aside.
“Just gave a talk on it.
We make ourselves miserable with
all that we add.”

Three hours later —
still waiting
for the muse.

IKEA, IKEA.

We just went in for containers and frames
and walked out with four large boxes
for one bed.

This is the second Saturday
you’ve taken from me.

The first, given to the store.
The second, to assembly.

You almost ended my streak.

Not my marriage, though.
Rose caught the flak.

We lost most of the day
making the room
they’d been told to make.

So many components
to a captain’s bed.

Right now,
it’s me in pieces.

It’s been almost a year
since we said goodbye.

But days
aren’t the right measure.

Our goodbye wasn’t
the passage of time.

It was the passage
from one existence
to another,

a world with you
and world without.

The end of an epoch.

I think often of the earlier landscape.

There were no fault lines,
no major earthquakes.
Just drift.

Sometimes it felt
like we were staring at each other
across canyons.

People of different lands.

But that connection was always there,
even when it felt buried beneath oceans.

We’re still Pangea.

In your absence,
I see you more and more
in the very shape
of me.

How many scuffs accumulated
before I stopped parking
in the farthest spot?

How many times did I drop the phone
before I stopped putting up with
the Tonka case and bubbly screen protector?

Leila was devastated when Rose
scribbled over the notebook
she’d saved since high school.
Now they’ve filled
many new pages.

Insight breaks slowly.

But then Caroline told me
she learned of the classic Buddhist story
when a friend busted her lava lamp
and proclaimed, “Already broken?!”

Though she laughed,
I felt a little sting
that he’d stolen
her opportunity
to own it.

As far as I can tell,
we’re all experiencing life
for the first time.

We think we have some things figured out.
Give it time.
Certainty unravels.

Still
we expect more
from each other.

As if age, education, status or temperament
make life any more linear.

As if we’re not all
making our way
across uncharted terrain.

	after a line from Gregory Boyle

Let’s build a monument,
a cathedral
on this spot.

Let’s mark 
the overlooked places.

Let’s mark

the spouse boiling water in anticipation
of the partner’s evening tea,

the parent waking early every morning
to make a hot breakfast,

the barista greeting
every single customer
with the same smile,

the patient cutting through
the hospital-room anxiety
with a well-timed off-color joke,

the friend sitting quietly
with one lost in grief.

Let’s mark

the foster parents welcoming a child
who may never trust
anyone,

the family serving at the soup kitchen
and the hands held out,

the grandmother taking her grandson
to the voting booth,

the dad, abused as a kid,
now putting on makeup and a bonnet
for the tea party with his daughter.

Let’s build a cathedral to this,
right here.

Stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic,
frustration boils over:
“Ugh! This traffic!”

Her friend replies,
“Sharon, honey, we are the traffic.”

How much life have I spent
waiting and critiquing?

Waiting for friends
to ask.
Critiquing
their inaction.

Waiting for my wife
to notice.
Critiquing 
the distance.

Waiting for church and sangha
to welcome me.
Critiquing the communities
I wanted to join.

Meanwhile,
I fail
to ask,
to notice,
to welcome.

Can I be the friend,
be the spouse,
be the community

I want others to be?

Someone has to be.

I was called a weed.
Then came the cleanse.

Now monarchs can’t breed.
Humility, dear friends.

Please.

Whose sadistic, asinine idea
was “a poem a day”?

As if the muse can be scheduled.

As if creativity were one more thing
to measure, check off, gamify.

What even is a poem,
besides something keeping me up?

When does compression tip over
into aphorism?
When does free verse become
prose?
Am I being prosaic?

I don’t even know if I like poetry.

On the other hand…

I’ve improved more by moving on
than by trying to perfect that one piece.

Some of my favorite pieces
arrived when I had nothing
and just wanted to go to bed.

My sangha knows more about me
from 50 short poems
than from hours of dharma talks.

Even my wife is getting to know me better.

And

I’m noticing life
more.

I think I’ll sleep a little sounder tonight.

You want desperately to be accepted
into Denver School of the Arts.

You write your script.
Recruit your friends.
Shoot your film.
Fret the interview.

No.

The next year,
the cycle repeats.

By the third year,
your desperation grows
in proportion to 
what you think is
the unique hell
of middle school.

That need drives you
to think
and think
and think.

Thirty minutes from the deadline,
you’ve completed a quarter
of what you need.
Mom makes you submit it
anyway.

Resigned,
you do the interview.

When we get 
the acceptance letter,
you ask,
“Are they crazy?”

No.

They saw real you.
Not projection.

The more I age,
the more I feel like 
Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella.

Passionate screeds,
followed by
“Oh, that’s very different.
Never mind.”

Outraged by the way a friend responded.
Offended by a remark.
Righteous anger at that policy.

Then
I realize
I misheard
or was missing key information
or ate something and got a good night’s sleep.

Never mind.

So I hold back,
try to be humble,
not overreact.

And fear I’m also at risk
of becoming Neville Chamberlain
or the frog in a boiling pot.

Maybe if I ignore it,
it’ll go away.

It’s just a little vexation,
a little violation, 
a little degradation.

Day after day.

Until I’m numb.

Until we’re boiling to death.

If wisdom is knowing the difference,

I feel so far from wise.

Dearly beloved,
we are gathered here 
to say goodbye

to the death of Irony.

Like Irony itself,
rumors of its death
have served us well.

Helped us point out
the hypocritical,
the tone-deaf,
the absurd.

But Irony is tired
of its eulogies.
Of being mistaken
and hearing about it.

Like Buffy,
it’s died so many times.
It’s saved the world
a lot.

Let it rest.

The deceased is survived by
Earnestness,
Audacity,
Coincidence,
and its many cousins.

And Alanis.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests
you try harder.

Long live Irony.

Regular use of mindfulness may cause

suppressed emotions to surface
confrontation with your bullshit
inability to feel self-righteous anger.

Not recommended 
if you’re in compartmentalize and GSD mode.

When combined with writing,
mindfulness may create an obsessive habit
of noticing.

May increase awareness
of anger, anxiety and monkey mind.

In some cases
symptoms may temporarily worsen
before improvement.

Side effects may include

vivid living
loss of unnecessary drama
diminished self-obsession
unexplained ease.

Effectiveness depends on regular, uninterrupted use.
If you miss a dose, take it as soon as you remember.

Stopping early may cause symptoms to return
and can contribute to resistance.

Intended for long-term maintenance,
not acute symptom relief.

You may mistakenly conclude treatment is ineffective
while actively experiencing its effects.

Do not compare your progress to other users.

Takes a lifetime to reach full effect.

Them that’s got shall get
Them that’s not shall lose
So the Bible said, and it still is news
— Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr.

Why do I waste time
when I most need sleep?
I’m too tired to sleep.

Why do I crave junk food
when my body least needs it?
I feel too lousy to eat well.

Why do I avoid
what’s most important?
I care too much
to act.

Sometimes
the spiral turns the other way.

Sometimes
love, presence, connection, intention,
meditation, movement, diet, writing, sleep
become a flywheel.

If only knowing were enough.

Practice takes time.

It takes time.

¯\_(◞_◟)_/¯

“Shots fired!
Shots fired!”

Screams.
VIPs evacuate.
Dinner guests duck.

Except you.

You’re finishing your salad,
dammit.

What do you know that we don’t?

Maybe

the chances of shots reaching into this room 
are infinitesimal.

This is the safest place to be,
surrounded by law enforcement.

Maybe

this is all staged,
part of some grand conspiracy.

Maybe

you just don’t care.

Que será, será.

I want to shout:
“A table might not stop a bullet,
but ducking can avoid a stray one.”

Maybe you’ve seen it all before.

Maybe you just don’t want
to get your tux dirty.

God,

grant me the wisdom
to know the difference
between equanimity

and giving up.

Fuck you.
You’re not even from here.
My ancestors were pilgrims.

I have no idea who’s screaming at whom
or what it’s all about.

I’m not happy that Rose has to hear this.
I feel sorry for the recipient of this outburst.
I’m embarrassed
to be part of this.

I imagine even the pilgrims
would be embarrassed
and wonder when irony died.

Apparently,
the non-pilgrim had spoken to this
kinsman of pilgrims
in a way he didn’t like.

So fragile,
the white male ego.
“Snowflake” was always projection.

As much as my 
id and superego are conspiring
to fill me with fantasies 
of a Tarantinoesque speech of righteous anger,

I’m more deflated than seething.

I know my judgment,
my diatribes, real or imagined,
my embarrassment
and my silence
won’t help.

Mr. Pilgrim Progeny
is clearly not well.

Like so many of his compatriots.

Like all of us,
to some extent.

I’m firmly in the
not knowing,
the bearing witness.

I wish I knew how to move toward
wise and loving action.

For now,
I’ll try to be
peace

and remain

in this bardo.