psychology

June 23, 2019

WHO WILL BE KING?

Tell me what you see, he says,
and be as precise as possible.
I suppose I see exactly what you see,
we are looking at the same thing,
at the same time, so how can it be
any different for me then you?
Are you seeing through my eyes?
He smiles, for if so, I’d like you
to get out of my head immediately,
it is already too crowded in here.
You have a pondering look, you probably
want to know why I would like
you tell me what you see.
See, I have only one working eye
and in the kingdom in which we find ourselves,
that hardly makes me King.

June 20, 2019

OCCLUSION

After the stroke
he couldn’t remember
much, was the woman

in white who bathed him
his wife or someone
he slept with once

before he had gotten
married. Monogamy
was a word that he

remembered, though not
its meaning, or why he
had sworn to abide it.

When the aide brought
in the flowers, they smelled
familiar, like the odor

of capon slowly boiling
on the Sabbath stove.
He heard the concerto

small radio tinny, but it
sounded strange, gut
of cat sawed across strings

crying out against
the injustice of it all
and the chair against

the window, was it one
he sat on at the edge
of the stage, bowing

to the audience as
Mozart’s crescendo
still echoed in his ears.

First appeared in the May 2019 Issue of The Broadkill Review
June 4, 2019

DETOUR

He always wanted to take
the scenic route home, it
didn’t matter if it took longer,
he probably preferred that
and he rarely commented on the scenery.
It was more that he didn’t want
to get where they were going
and the scenic route was guaranteed
to take longer and with luck
they’d get lost once or twice along the way.
He’d be fine when he got there,
it was about the arriving, and the leaving
both of which were abrupt, and abruption
carried with it the fear he would
never again find the peace of place.

June 1, 2019

LIKE DUST

We are obligated to carry
memories, and as we
get older, the burden grows
ever heavier, we bend
under its weight, knowing
we dare not lose even one
for once cast off, the weight
is carried off like the smallest
feather on a storming wind.
Soon enough it is we who
Will become the burden
that others must carry
and we hope they will
willingly shoulder the load
lest we become the excised
dust of a forgotten stone
grown over with weeds.

May 11, 2019

EDGY

It is a precarious balance, really,
more an exercise in tottering and teetering
than and standing still.
Some prefer stasis, others,
I included, find it leads inevitably
to a loss of energy, to an entropy
from which it is difficult to escape.
I don’t walk along the edge
of the precipice, but I do peer over
amazed at what lies below,
that I hope to never see up close.
It is a precarious balance,
but one that can be maintained
if you just close your eyes
and sense what actually lies
around and beneath you.

May 10, 2019

PHYSICS

She is seven, going on some much larger number.
She believes in the tooth fairy.
She believes in the scientific method.
She believes in vegetarianism and ecology.
She believes in helping her parents
and was doing so when she found
her baby teeth in a small bag in their dresser.
She no longer believes in the tooth fairy
but she does believe in economics. And physics.
She told her parents that she expected
five dollars for each tooth going forward,
or her brother would learn something
that no four-year-old ought to know.
She believes that leverage is a key
principle of physics that every child should master.