6 x 9 paperback, 152 pages
Probably every
person around you
believes and will tell you
with great
assurance
that you must think
of others, compromise, do things
to make them happy.
It’s tricky because this is in
the vicinity of truth
and yet off.
You can feel it.
What isn’t taught
is that you already want
others to be happy.
That’s part of you
being happy. In fact,
you love it.
Oh, except
when it feels
imposed.
Sleep in.
Find your footing.
Eat the last
donut.
Don’t gather
wood for
the fire. Be it.
Advice for Me and Maybe You
a collection of advice poems
(selections below)
This thing you're doing
right now
it's called life.
What thing? This?
Yes.
In the Gospels,
the word
in the original
Greek that English-
men translated as “sin”
did not mean sin.
It meant “to miss
the mark” as when
in Homer, a spear curves
off target.
That’s all.
There was another
Greek word that meant
sin. It was not used.
Christ did not speak of sin.
He spoke of missing the mark.
He wasn’t fierce about morality.
He was fierce about turning
from error.
Be fierce about turning
from any thought
that says you are not loved.
We want to fall in love
with someone else and
we want to
have someone
fall
in love with us.
It’s always someone else
that we want
to love us.
Always someone else we want
to do what we won’t.
That’s like saying, “Come on in,
the door’s locked.”
You’ve been perhaps
wanting
normal people to like you.
Otherwise you think you’ll die
lonely and poor, because normal
people have all the love and all
the money.
But you are not normal and nor
is anyone else.
Say it a lot, until it just becomes
a funny sound—
Normal. Normal. Normal.
Normal, normal, normal,
normal, normal—
or a small, furry, burrowing,
blind creature.
You are not a straight rod; you’re a bent
and arching branch of the one
great tree.