Camouflage

Perhaps everything in this life happens as a breathing, an incarnate give-and-take that filters the world through contact with the palpable substance of things that we yearn to study the inside of and take our nourishment from.

And maybe this tendency toward arranging words to describe the participatory sensuality of this gifted state arises from a clever self-defense, found in the deep-seated desire to confess something very ordinary and obvious to ourselves.

Wonder

Perhaps saying yes to what's legible in any light cloaks the worth of great white shapes that boom and shout and throw gigantic handfuls of salty froth our way at the luminous center of our shifting reflection's black bull's eye.

Maybe everything around us has a question inside, and the answer may have something exceptional to tell us about marking time – as if walking outside to watch rain falling on a driftwood fencepost were a sight to be seen only once in a lifetime.

The First Experience (guest blogger Tess Pfeifer)

Perhaps the first experience shocks the being's brain and novelty is a momentary pleasure compelling us to revisit the first event like a fatalistic love we bore in our bone.

Or maybe first experience is a window to our capacity to love and renews that very spirit which, to anyone who is told, gives pleasure.

From The Mouth

Perhaps, while driving home on the freeway, the dentist happily meditates on the day she will perform a mass excavation of millions of toxic amalgam silver fillings and save humankind from a fate worse than watering the lawn - all the while envisioning a kinder, gentler world in which the painstaking construction of composite tooth-colored porcelain onlay, (which allows her to preserve more of the original tooth structure, by the way) will restore countless teeth that have been neglected over the years, worn by grinding, or broken with age, to an elevated level of wellness and health.

Or maybe the shot of novacaine not only numbed the left side of my mouth, but invaded my mind as well, sending wildly obsessive thoughts spiraling to the surface to play out in an infinite array of “what if” scenarios before freezing them…mid image…to be culled in a cascade of liquid ozone.

Everything Matters (guest blogger Meister Eckhart - Teacher and Preacher)

Perhaps everything which is distinguished by indistinction is the more distinct the more indistinct it is, because it is distinguished by its own indistinction.

Or maybe something is more indistinct the more distinct it is because it is distinguished by its own distinction from what is indistinct, leading therefore to nothing being as indistinct from anything as from that from which it is indistinguished by its own distinction.

Pronouns

Perhaps the acceptability of a pronoun presented in isolation will mirror how much difficulty we may have upon encountering her in a more realistic setting.

Or maybe pronouns, while avoiding the pitfalls of proper names, are no more than freaks of nature; sneaky critters oftentimes avoiding agreement while replacing, and before you know it the whole sentence is over and there we are heading straight for the placeholder of some vague idea rather than risk the host of associations potentially involved with what might sound fine to us but isn’t.

Astonishment

Perhaps astonishment is a fly arising from an act of my mind with little direct correspondence to what I really feel.

Maybe astonishment is the strange feeling of being referred to as a pronoun while in the presence of someone else.


Or perhaps astonishment is the green plastic stick that slips into the sipping hole of the lid to keep the hot coffee in while being transported on a bumpy road

Or maybe astonishment is my son’s pronouncement: “Why would I want to see a problem I can’t do anything about?”

My Disquiet

Perhaps my disquiet is a drumming rain which speaks to me of a trick of the nature of truth that in order to survive we must rise from the table where that child’s game of the troubled self is being played and turn our attention away from the shadow that slides across the white wall of the beautiful light we see by for no reason other than to ensure its own survival.

Or maybe my disquiet is to be found in images of fingernails bitten raw, a late night stomach’s unfurling struggle, the terrifying tic of the wind-up alarm clock voicing the darkened room into a narrow plank poised over the final moments of a blindfolded descent into a watery contempt for my own inspiration’s incommensurable value.

Happy Problems

Perhaps I write to discover the shock of clear words that best express the daily wonders, sentence by sentence, in mosaic glimpses of improvisation – playing life as it has never been played before.

Maybe each poem is a vehicle for better understanding what happens, a rearrangement of known elements of events unfolding around me, spawning a voice I don’t yet know, becoming a messenger onto myself.