It’s good.

But what’s it about?

            It’s about smelling flowers

                        whose perfume shivers the mind.

            It’s about being a flower

                        whose fragrance drifts freely

                                    to any who choose to smell.

            It’s about shootin’ the blues

                        like a bad-town stringy haired

                                    drug user lookin’ for a

                                                quick and easy feeling.

            It’s about eating diamonds

                        even if your teeth are gone

                                    because you didn’t floss

                                                after every full meal deal.

            It’s about flavorful spectrums

                        and what’s found at each end

                                    of the rainbow;

                                                like how many hot peppers

                                                            you can have on a hotdog.

            It’s about ugliness and beauty

                        or the way you might feel if

                                    you looked into the eyes

                                                of your child who intentionally

                                                            killed a younger sibling.

            It’s about the questions

                        children ask over and over,

                                    and the answers adults give

                                                to explain why, and why not.

            It’s about good stories that

                        are bold, and well told in

                                    books that are read twice.

            It’s about changes that

                        always happen but which

                                    never escape the ‘if-then loops’

                                                of history and human nature.

            It’s about billions of mirrors

                        walking around showing each

                                    other many lies and some truth;

                                                which no one believes since

                                                            nothing can be seen with

                                                                        our own eyes alone.

            It’s about never knowing

                        what another person thinks,

                                    or even what one person thinks.

            It’s about balance.  Impossible

                        ever essential equilibrium.

                                    Not like what keeps planets

                                                in motion, but more like

                                                                        how to sit on a teeter-totter

                                                                                    so that no one’s feet touch

                                                                                                soiled and solid ground.

            It’s about a black marble

                        David making love to Mona Lisa

                                    in the shadow of the Sphinx’s nose;

                                                while Ahab satellites search the

                                                            seas for the last white whale.

            It’s about being water in a

                        universe of chemicals whose

                                    combined purpose is to defy

                                                gravity for some space and time;

                                                            like the way a tree, or a building

                                                                        stands up from the ground, or

                                                                                    the way a baby cries and punches

                                                                                                it’s arms and legs upward

                                                                                                            after leaving the inner

                                                                                                                    buoyancy of its mother.

           It’s about knowing, or not

                        knowing God, and whether

                                    desire is the nose ring of

                                                humanity which we use to

                                                            lead ourselves to sin, or salvation.

            It’s about starting and ending

                        simply after wrestling complexity.

            It’s about an eleventh commandment.

                        “Thou shall cease to be human.”

It’s not finished yet, but so far it’s good.