Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Laertes.
Pick up blue bonnets and daisies
While the sun is shining and there’s space in your basket.
In short time, those flowers will whither
Along with the bright light of your sister
Along with your joy
Along with your carefree student days
Along with your studies
Along with your innocence
Along with you duty.
Now – it is all spread before you
A meadow full of possibility.
In front of you a blooming stalk of hope
Smell it
Stroke it
Take it with you.
Eat the petals if they’re flavorful;
Later, they will be dry and dusty. Take it. Take it.

What doesn’t say Polonius?
The man can talk a blue streak.
Even more so when he says he’ll be brief.
That’s the time to get yourself a cushion and a beverage because
You’re going to be there a while.
Some people are like that.
Some
You can ask how they are and get your expected “fine”
Others
Will take your question as an opportunity.
They will tell you the story of their day
From the moment they woke up
To this present late night moment.
They will not leave any part out
They will tell you the color of the train and what
The conductor said as he opened the doors.
I once dated a man like this.
One night on the phone, I decided to see how
Long he could go on without any encouragement from me.
I restrained myself from even an “mmm” or a “yeah” and 45 minutes later
He paused
(for applause)
before asking
“How are you?”
I probably said, “I’m fine. And actually
I have to go.”

How much of this leave is his?
What percentage of my wandering
Belongs to my dad somehow?
He gave me a bit of the leaving at least.
Passed back to my mother on Tuesday night
Or Monday, life is a series of goodbyes.
See you Thursday
See you Saturday
Be back soon
Which he did.
So I also got his returning
Along with his leaving.
I have his willingness to quit that crappy job and also
His willingness to return to it.
I have his going, his coming, his breaking, his repairing.
There is also his ability to leave while remaining in the room.
I got that too.
I have his leave, his stay, his return, his departure, his welcome his
Goodbye
His longing
His surrender
His love
His hope
His heart
His
His
Mine.

Ask and you shall receive
Except when you shan’t.
Mostly people say this as they’re giving you something you were just asking for.
It’s almost always a small joke
One that lives in the tiny coincidence of itself.
Sometimes it’s hard to ask.
Sometimes because you’ve asked a million times over and not received
Sometimes because you couldn’t confess to what you truly wanted
Because you hope that she will read your mind
Because sometimes it feels like she can
But years of asking and asking wears a man down
Til he does not ask
And he does not receive.

Hand to mouth
Head to heart
Father to throne
The hand feeds the mouth,
With the most basic movement
One of the first we ever learn –
How to turn our head toward the hand
That holds our food
How to lift our fingers
Upward in the most efficient arc
Bite
After
Bite
After
Bite.
But does the head serve the heart in the same way?
Does the head deliver sustenance
To our longing hearts?
Does it give us relief?
Does it find ways to make us feel the love we want?
Does it bring us ideas that satisfy our questions?
Does it touch us with thought?
Sometimes
Sometimes
I suppose I long for a mind that would feed my heart
So reliably
That would sense my hunger and provide just the thought to satiate it
But my mind seems to prefer to make problems
And solve them. It likes to say “Yes, but. . .”
And deny my feelings.
Sometimes it plugs its ears and sings
“I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you. Can’t you see I’m trying to get things done!”
But my hand, yes, my hand
Will reliably
Get that piece of bread to my mouth and it is,
Of course, my mind that makes that happen too.

How much would I love to anticipate
What you want?
I’d give you mango before your lips made an mmm
I’d touch you in the place you would point to if someone asked where you hurt
Before you could ask for violins, I’d have them
Playing just the refrain you’d request.
Even the secret parts of myself that I don’t show to anyone,
I could whisper them to you
Even as the question was forming in your mind.
I would, I swear, if I knew ahead of you.
But ask anyway. The asking is a door I will walk through for you.
I’m standing in the frame
I go in or out
At your request.

My voice is often lost in reason.
Lately I find myself speaking uncomfortable truth to power.
When I do, sometimes I have to push my voice out
Past my own warning system
Past the loud chatter in the room
Past the thought of “This could get me fired.”
Past my desire to please. And in that journey
The voice is lost and if it comes out, it comes out rasping.
Sometimes I manage to get heard anyway, then power finds a way to silence me after.
Power says “Thank you for that thought.” And then quietly brings in a supervisor to do my work.
Power says, “What an interesting point!” and then takes back the job it offered me.

Speaking of reason is a risk
But so is swallowing it.

You can tell me.
The thorny
The crazy
The dark truth
I have heard many of this sort of thing
I will listen
I won’t judge (if you tell me in earnest or suffering or pain)
Honest words are received and respected
I will not advise
Not unless you ask me to.
I will receive
I can receive.
What is’t?

Betty told me a story about a suit, sent through the mail.
It was a suit for her husband, I think.
He was working in Burma.
She sent it from England and somehow
This suit
Traveled around the world
Through the post and she couldn’t get it back
Nor could she get it to him.
The suit became as well traveled as the Italian woman
Who sent it and the Eritrean man for whom it was intended.
She told me this story
When I first moved to England
Before her husband died there in Burma
Before she had to fight to get his body returned to her in England
Before the sending and receiving Became the nightmare that it became.
This was before his coffin finally made its way to Heathrow
Before it pulled up in front of her house
Before the choir of women wailed behind the hearse,
Making the most heartbreaking sound.
This was before he found his final resting place
In the ground of his native Eritrea.
I wish I could remember the story of the suit more clearly.
I wish I could remember where it ended up
How it finished its journey.

Hey man
What’s up?
How’s it hangin’, brother?
I’m down with the kids, yo.
I speak their lingo, you know.
Give me your hand.
We’ll do one of those complicated handshakes
That all the young people are into
Hand, fingers, elbow, etc.
I got it.
Don’t think of me as your boss;
Just one of you,
You know – a man of the street,
Of the people.