The silver spoon rusts, and caring
departs the farther we find ourselves
away from life.

Poverty is our oldest friend, it is the
state infants find themselves in—
need to need, day to day, all five
senses supercharged and alive,
You used to care!!

To get that back you have to go back,
or forward march if in April you
find winter breezes alerting you
to change for the better.

Bill Murray in his Groundhog Day
learned to care, unlearned his stance
learned on the outside looking in,
resentments formed early in childhood,
defenses raised against abuse.

Our best defenses become our worst
defects as they sit and fester, or worse
yet grow and mold over and over
the petri dish that is Time.

The dust settles for a moment in
hospitals, jail cells, homeless shelters
or repeated groundhog days…

It becomes clear we must change. Not
to something new but to something old:

Back to our childhood selves, the infant
that with five senses cared! Was alive
with every movement, curious,
hopeful, asking—honest.

We learned to care, and then the day
turns and we can start over, begin
to live the adult life with childhood
spirit—Congrats, if you see this

The Whirlwind

You wake up in the middle of it,
Grease is the word haven’t you
heard, trying to learn “cool” at
the same time as “nice”—

Which is greater?

Moving, shaking, the dance
begins your mind is aching from
the:

Dreams you have all alone in your
room, matched to the: cold reality
of all the things you can’t do.

Nothing way-out or indigestible
would be if something like a Higher
Power you could hire even at a young
age see;

Something goes on and on, and it’s hope—
and it lives between your room
and your path. Cool wants you
in his refrigerator, is lonely for your
food.

“Nice” is all around, seems too easy,
so you keep looking, sampling
misery like all the other flavors
at your local bar, fake ID’s checked
by fake boobies, all working out
at another local hangout: the gym.

The whirlwind whirls on and on with
hope, be careful not to lose sight of
will as you declare “self-doubt” at last
as your E.R. check-in diagnosis, a
mononucleosis of all those frozen
wishes trapped by cool in that Fridge.

We open up at last, one day, shake
the frost and enter the nice warm
rays of nice, decide to be nice is
the best dream, and something
universally we can do!

Warm now, calmed down, we know
how to play hard but also how to
sit down, read, write, relax—we smell
roses in the warmer air of care,
pass them along to others, reaching
back to Cool without getting burned,

We hope. We Hope

Ballads of Spring

All these songs, in love—yes!
It’s good. Young love, the power,
the potential…

I wouldn’t know I was drunk.

But I remember what I wanted,
and humbly hope you’ll get it, if
you are young enough to waver
between the waves of right and wrong,
law and breaking it.

If you think it may be no big deal
to fail, you run with the “cool” ones
(who are often sick), escape the truth,
those true feelings of wanting to
be with her.

Your life is incomplete, wading in
this wall of rhyme, Longfellow
reminding us: be a poet in the
strife, if not at least:

Be true, and live a really good
life.

If alone you try at this you will
fail utterly if you be like me:

You need a Higher Power now;
grab one even if only fifteen