Waiting for Shopping Wife While in Coffee Shop

Weird little Jewish man with nonsensical cap
Hipsters walking casually smirking
Ugly woman with make up caked on
Young people having desperately important phone calls at separate tables
Teen with disinterested grandma blithely chatting away
Young boys in shorts and tee shirts mixed up with boredom and joy
Bearded young father wearing dress looking ridiculous
Cute woman ignoring stares
My beautiful wife arrives
Time to leave

I Walk in Dreams

I walked into a dream yesterday
Pelicans watched me
I saw a sandstorm and magpies
It all happened on the bus
As the driver swerved
Barely missing the marigold patch
Sadness begat gladness
From there things took a strange turn
In a pleasant off-handed way
I left the dream
Only to plunge into reality
A burning bush of adjectives
The swirling dust of hopes
Wistful nights on the veranda
Forever in the wind
I walk in dreams

My Second Cousin

I have a second cousin
Her name is Rihanna Kowalski
She still wears braces
Though she is 17 years old
My second cousin
Whose name is Rihanna Kowalski
Likes to dance at parties
She has a dog named Harvey
My second cousin
Whose name is Rihanna Kowalski
Excels in all school subjects
But she really likes science
She wants to study astronomy in college
My second cousin
Whose name is Rihanna Kowalski
Is an avid bike rider
She obeys all traffic laws
This is one of the reasons I admire her
Also, like me, she enjoys movies from the thirties
My second cousin
Whose name you by now remember
Is pretty darn cool
Everyone likes her
Also, she has an unusual name

Late Morning on a Saturday

Happy lesbians doing chores outside their house
A man wearing flip flops despite the foggy cold
A couple canoodling on a bench
People waiting for table outside a busy restaurant
Browsers and buyers in a bookstore
A middle aged woman with a pretty Shih Tzu on a leash
A bicyclist patiently waiting for a light to change
Me walking home purchases in hand — content
A car stops for me as I cross the street
No one home as I enter the house
I dissolve into a million rays of today
The fog outside is thick

Love Hurts So Good

The exquisite pain of falling in love
The heart variously soars and aches
The melancholy pause
I read the weighty words of wise men
And women
I reach for the next moment
It’s never there
Now always usurps the future
While making sport of the past
And so when I met her it all changed
Conventional thinking unraveled
The horrible ecstasy of her absence and presence
I had to spend eternity with her
My unworthiness like a ball and chain
Stumbling, shambling, rambling
But eventually
We mated and forever were
Humbleness finally pervades
The love is still so painful
Because it is never enough

Buddha

I contemplated eternity on the angry road
Until the clouds cascaded from the mountains
Where angels danced with the rain
Nirvana escaped me but I persisted
The rolling road widened in suffusion
So I strolled though the Dharma
Peeking under footballs and dancers
Until I found the plywood confusion
The road was wet with memories now
My amble heightened by wisdom
Meditating on the beatitude
And there the journey ended
Awake again from good Karma
So now to dance