Complaint Letter

Dear sir,

I'm afraid that when you were singing "You've Got to Move" last night at 3 in the morning in a way that I was just too moved. The way you were singing it, and enjoying music from 60 years ago, I could just tell that you were enjoying life more than me. You really sang the shit out of it. I could tell you were fucking boogieing on the other side of that goddamn wall. You woke my wife up. So I guess don't do that again.

Love,
Your Neighbor

Living Room Scene of a Couple

HIM digs hands into couch cushions, as HER nuzzles head into HIM's lap. She surfs the waves of his gently rocking leg.

HER: What are you doing?

HIM: Looking for change.

HER: Change?

HIM: I'm thinking of whisking you away. To an island. Where it's warm during the day, and cool at night. We'll build a hut. And make a fire

HER: And babies?

HIM: I'll fish for them.

HER: And I'll forage for berries, and teach them to read. (beat) Now, let me ask you something. Will this island have turtles?

HIM: Uh huh. (beat) And turtle soup.

An I Believe Speech

I believe first and foremost in my own humanity and respect everybody's humanity above any label they have been given. I believe that everybody varies from one another enough to justify a nuanced understanding of how they need support, and how they'd like to experience life and how they can undergo change if they'd like to. I understand I don't have to be loyal to people, especially if they cause you harm, but I also can't see anybody as a problem above and beyond their inherent worth as a person. Not bigger than nature's or the law's worth in them. Your problems are always less than you, and an infinite amount of solutions exist within you. But they will be corrected over time, at a plodding pace, and it turns out your habits are going to mean more than anything. Are you going to be kind? That is the question that sits atop everything. That question sits atop the structure of many other questions, such as, are you going to take care of your body? do you know how to care for your mind? Are you interested in being awake? Can you rest at night? Kindness is determined by both your habits and your ability to tune in with what's important. And this ripens on a vine over time. You more often have feelings like, "I get it!" "Or this is going to happen and I'm going to react this one way, but there will be a next moment and one after that, so just get through it hot stuff." When you can say that to yourself you have gotten a good deal closer to sincere kindness. Not like those people who are just kind because they can't stand being seen in this life as being anything but kind. Well, everybody starts off there, but kindness doesn't end that way. There are never two instances of the same kindness -- it is wholly unique. It is a nutrient that will start to run through people, and age them in ways with all sorts of pleasant variables. how they notice stuff, or how well they sense the needs of other people. It's like when you're a teenager and you first start to notice how much people talk about objects. Sometimes if there is something wrong with them, adults will sit around, for example, a sprinkler watering a sidewalk, and try to attribute some history to it. How this happened, what the intelligence of the guy was, and depending who you're with, make reference to his ethnicity. If it's all guys you would have a better chance of hearing about the ethnicity of said guy who made a very controlled decision to point a thing spraying water on to the cement and in to the gutter for the next 45 minutes. And he said yes and signed off on watering the sidewalk before the city council. Everybody jeered and it made the next day's blogosphere. Maybe you should just take a picture and put it on social media. Hashtag it the best and hope for the viral outrage of six hundred thousand people who could be doing something so much better with their lives at that moment. I mean, we all do it. But kind people do less and less of that kind of stuff. They have nothing to be afraid of and so they go outside. 

Single Life Spans

"Right now I’m just spreading seeds. Some may sow and many will not." He told his friends such.  With Wisdom. Loudly. And his therapist too. Lonesomely. She understood. Actually.

Secretly, he thought, "I'm a withering seed, somewhere out there, underground and quite probably in my own backyard. A seed that just isn’t taking to life." Well, last night contained a happy sprout who descended hither to have a talk with a seed and its leaking life.

She informs him in a supremely private space that she is taking to life. She is indescribably bright. She dances and smiles often. And then she gives the losing seed a really big cuddle about the hard truth. That he isn’t quite taking.

She says she is flattered. She says he is sweet. She notes the scent of plum in his dry humor and his ability to dance so no one feels comfortable. The causes for thinking so. For being nice.

“I’m already married," she says.

"You're a rare bird. I'm glad I asked."

The dying seed will receive instructions in an email about what to do with his decomposing matter. Compost and pension plans. In a few generations time, the seed will take its experience of not taking to life and dare to become a big thing and a beautiful thing. That will touch the sky, as sentimentalism would have it. All humans will rejoice in its presence. It shall run $3.95 at the local drug store. Just you wait.

I really hate to tell you the ending so impulsively, but this seems like the right time: We win. We are all butterflies aging faster than rocks, but slower than single life spans. We're spasming and breaking up. Waiting to get nature's number done on us. It's a cocoon we don't even know about yet.

Crawling for now, we're getting together. Maybe not owning the day, but definitely the night. Like last night. A big win.

I can actually dance. I can actually hear no.

The night was 74 degrees. No jackets needed. You can either wear pants or shorts. Dirty sneakers or hiking sandles. I never know how to spell sandles right. And you might never be uncomfortable on a night like this. But I tend to think that I will. And when I dance, I hope that you might be too.

And let's not hold back. It will take the damages of war the same amount of years to heal as it took to fight the fucking thing. This is a simple and hard truth that most people don't want to face. That is because it might take another human history for people to altogether stop killing each other. I'm talking about taking to life. In just two-hundred thousand years.

This is the type of news that has to be broken to you by a dancing underground smiling sprout. After delivering the hard news, with shiny whites, she will add that it should start today. The not killing. Starting today.

Her lips look firm and her voice sounds the same. And I leak and I crawl and all no's become yes. "Just you wait."

Order of the Roses

They trim the Tyler Roses at the Capitol.
Down to nubs. Every February.
Just a week short of the holiday.

That holiday, a few weeks passed,
fell on the side of mercy.
At least this year.

I continue to nose in on them.
Nothing to smell. Yet twice each day.
A loyalty previously unknown to me.

What I've begun to notice,
as workdays stumble into March,
is the first thing rose bushes grow back.

Their thorns.
The stems, now smacking with assurance,
sprout leaves next.

Asking the sky -- expectant and green.
Hearing the answer -- blushing reddish.

The order of the rose bushes:

• Fierce necessity
• Sway and be patient
• Expect that brilliant day

The order I have been craving.

So I amble in a serpentine pattern back to my desk. 

Fixing my gaze on the Four O'clock sun. 

And all the while, setting expectations.