=Dean Young on not taking life too seriously=

How little it all amounts to.
So take comfort, you're just a blip,
an anomaly, datum to be discarded,
negligible as a chorus member with the sniffles,

your totem animal a baloney sandwich,
your life dismissed without a trial,
so stay awhile, whatever burns inside you…

you don't belong but don't worry,
you won't be there long even if
it'll feel like eternity….

So praise the flicker and the power
even though it abbreviates us ash.
Better to dash than never go at all,
the error is not to fall but to fall
from no height

=5 card draw=

=mail art from Richard Canard=

=meditations on K.=

=Any Questions?=

From an upstairs window
I watched my father
run from the burning house. He carried
with him two bottles of booze,
a rifle, a stuffed parrot
on a pole, not much,
all considered. The baby blue Bonneville
backed out of the driveway 
into thin air. I went back to bed
but I didn't believe in it anymore.
As I was saying earlier, one problem
with the aquarium is you cannot
turn the channel and the carnage
is relentless. That's two problems
but we're having a sale today,
no extra charge. For some time now,
a small muscle in my right eye
has been failing. Everything is twitching,
like it's been trying to outstare me
and doesn't want to blink. Looking up
there's a field of pale, long-necked creatures
with flat featureless faces
swaying autistically to unheard music
in the void whenever I ask, "Are
there any questions?"

=Book recently read=

=envelope art=

=Meditations on K.=

=Legend in My Mind=

I'm recalling his spectacular suicide
and his amazing resurrection only moments later
as someone six inches taller. His expertise
in Chinese history was world-renowned, not to mention
his personal friendship with Jesus, who he could call upon
at the drop of a hat, and often did, to yank
him out of many a dicey jam, the Last Stand
at the Little Big Horn comes immediately to mind.
What was he thinking when he killed the family dog?
Who knows? But I'll tell you one thing for sure, 
no man could grow a faster beard. His ability
to summon wasps, his retinue of can-can girls,
his wizardry with salads and astral hieroglyphics
remain unsurpassed. So what if he could never find
his car keys? Once I saw him climb a ladder 
propped on nothing. Instead of dying like anyone else 
when his time came he moved to Houston.

=James Tate on how to deal with pain=

You have to imagine that your pain
has become something else, a pet of some
kind, a little doggy, and that it follows
you everywhere you go because it loves you
and wants to protect you. It is there when
you get up in the morning, it goes to the
office with you, it goes shopping with you,
it even goes to the movies with you. It is
the most loyal pet you have ever had.