there, there.

there's always a siren singing you to shipwreck.
stear away from these rocks. we'd be a walking disaster.

just cuz you feel it doesn't mean it's there.

there, there. why so green. and lonely?
heaven sent you to me.
we are accidents waiting to happen.

A Dream Within A Dream.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, whom deem
That days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore less than gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Or a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is that all we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?


-Edgar Allan Poe.

A Ritual to Read Each Other.

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider-
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give- yes or no, or maybe-
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.


-William Stafford.

breakfast with the beatles.

state of mind.

Wait, do you see my heart on my sleeve? It's been there for days on end, and I've been waiting for you to open up. Yours too, baby, come on now. I'm just trying to tell you how I'd like to hear the words roll out of your mouth. Finally say that it's always been me.

But, despite the truth that I know, I find it hard to let go and give up on you. Seems I love the things you do. Like, the meaner you treat me, more eager I am to persist with this heartbreak, running around. And, I will do until I find myself with you.

i promise, i'm not okay.

 for all the wounds that are ever gonna scar me for all the ghosts that are ever gonna catch me.

regrets and mistakes, they're memories made.

another poem.

Look: no one ever promised for sure
that we would sing. We have decided
to moan. In a strange dance that
we don't understand 'till we do it, we
have to carry on.

Just as in sleep you have to dream
the exact dream to round out your life,
so we have to live that dream into stories
and hold them close at you, close at the
edge we share, to be right.

We find it an awful thing to meet people,
serious or not, who have turned into vacant
effective people, so far lost that they
won't believe their own feelings
enough to follow them out.

The authentic is a line from one thing
along to the next; it interests us.
Strangely, it relates to what works,
but is not quite the same. It never
swerves for revenge,

Or profit, or fame: it holds
together something more than the world,
this line. And we are your wavery
efforts at following it. Are you coming?
Good: now it is time.


-William Stafford.