I learned today that in the Yankee Swap universe the term "Bring a gift valued under 25$" really means "Bring a gift valued at 25$"

No thank you, I don't want your crappy gift.

My favorite weather.com view....10 day forecast !

"Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits."

Robert Louis Stevenson

Walk to work, August 24th 2007

They are not waves on the ocean,
They are the ocean waving.

Man rides his bike by me from behind
carrying two coffees in a cardboard tray.
He had one of those perfectly circular
bald spots on the back of his head.
As he went around a corner ahead,
bushes blocking the view of his bike and
body, his head looked like a giant
sunflower with black petals and a khaki center.
I think someone is lucky to be having coffee
brought to them this morning.

We are not people in the universe
We are the universe peopling.

Than - 23

There once was a Boy
who cut his own hair,

I have seen him swim
in Canada bare.

His beliefs are courageous
and his friends are the best,

May your 23rd year
be filled with adventure
and zest.

Drove to Providence for nothing.
Boo Hoo Hoo.

A deer on the bike trail

I stepped off the bike trail
to watch the deer
about 30 feet away and
the most amazing thing happened.
Human endeavor,
the people on bikes,
roller blades
and running,
became time delayed exposure,
blurred by their motion into
a grey streaked stream
while the deer and I watched
each other.

What my dad said.

I called to tell him I was moving.
He said
"Congratulations, maybe this
will be the start of a new life"
Fuck,
He might be right.

Not in the manual

I have chosen to be
honest with my kids
about my personal struggles.
It is hard to do and
I hope it is fair.

Fathers' day 2007

My children are to me

like portals created by

black holes in the

space time fabric

of the universe.

Paths to the future.

5 guys shingling a roof.

Seven o'clock bright an early
they wrestled the ladder to get
up to the 2nd story roof.
Four in white tee shirts, with
some kind of work logo, and
jeans. One, no shirt, and dark blue
sweat pants.
All sat, starting at the peak, with
legs pointing down the slope
of the roof and scraping off the old
shingles. Worked their way down
the roof until old shingles avalanche
off and slid down a big plastic
sheet protecting the side of
the house.
One fetched a push broom and
that half of the roof cleaned off
nice and neat down to the wood.
Four sat in a circle, don't know where
the fifth went, and shared a joint in
the warm morning sun at 40 feet.

Beekeeper

Will work hives and go
Four Hundred years into past
for a flora boon.

Priorities

An attractive woman is

walking into the building

carrying a box of donuts.

One says "she is good looking"

Another says "She is very good looking"

I say "You think that box is a full dozen"

Moon on route 128

The sky in the east,

had started to turn that kind of

dusky purple,

framing the ancient,

ascending

full moon,

the color of

mastodon tusks,

and saber tooth canines.

Houses chapter IX

A mason came forth and said, "Speak to us of Houses."
And he answered and said: Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls.
For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.
Your house is your larger body.
It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? And dreaming, leave the city for grove or hilltop?
Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and like a sower scatter them in forest and meadow.
Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys, that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments.
But these things are not yet to be.
In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together. And that fear shall endure a little longer.
A little longer shall your city walls separate your hearths from your fields.
And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires. Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh.
It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.
But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.
You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.

Khalil Gibran

A Dream

Scott is driving his car

and I am in the front

passengers seat.

We are going to South Boston

to buy weed.

A giant brick factory

in bad disrepair

looms before us.

We drive between towering

brick chimneys. People

are milling all around.

I ask who he knows to ask

and he doesn't answer.

He pulls up behind a dumpster

crowded with trees. I am distracted

looking around and he buys it

without me seeing.

We slowly pull out and

work our way to the entrance

except now the ocean is sending

waves against the beach at

the bottom of one of the giant

brick leaning chimneys.

I say "That chimney is going to fall".

Teenage boys playing

football at Colt State

Park

No Coaches

No Parents

One rule - 10 Mississippi

to rush

Hut, Hut, Hike

A mad dash down

the crooked grass.

A hail Mary pass

full tilt, a leap at 45 degrees

off the ground.

Ball grazes fingers

and tumbles away.

He crashes to earth

and loses his hat.

Lots of high fives

and he jumps up laughing.