Dig in

If you look hard enough
you can often
find things that aren't there.


November PAD #19 - suspicious minds

Whenever we walk

through San Francisco streets
or bump and bumble
down Chinatown allies,

my inability
to walk a straight line
becomes ever so clear.

I trip over my own
feet or zig-zag down
the sidewalk pushing you

into parking meters
and piles of poop.
Thanks for standing by me.


November PAD #21 - whenever (blank)

Your mom's an Asian fruit

We giggle in grocery aisles
bantering back and forth like
14-year-old boys.

Durian, dates and double entendres
are our weapons of choice --
lobbed at each other

like melons, clumsy and graceless
and exploding awkwardly on impact
. . . that's what she said.


November PAD #22 - fruit

Kerouac Alley

On the road
through San Francisco
I think of
Jack and Neal
and the adventures
we choose for
our own lives
and those we
share them with.


November PAD #23 - travel

Homecoming

He's grown, it seems,
in the few days that
he's been gone. They
do that a lot at 15.

He smiles and leans
against me so I can
nuzzle him like a little
boy. "I missed you."


November PAD #20 - best ever

Enough

You should have stopped talking
five minutes ago.
I get the point already.


November PAD #12 - excess

The kindest gesture

You overreacted.
We both know it's true.
But I let it pass.
I've done it too.


November PAD #13 - a kind poem

A cold front

The frozen food aisle beckons,
promising ice cream
and bliss in a box.


November PAD #14 - deadly and dangerous

Treasured

We laugh like
kindergartners exploring the
playground as pirates,
seeing the world
more clearly with
eye patches in
place than with
the grown-up glasses
that we wear


November PAD #15 - love

Guts

“Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along."
- Rumi

It's not as if there was some gaping hole,
like an intestine spilling through a flesh wound,
before you walked into my life.

But when you appeared

it's as if you'd always been in my innards,
the guts stuffed inside me that I never thought twice about,
without me knowing it.

Today

I stand in the hallway
and see the
mountain of boxes, the containers

of a life that I
wish I didn't
have to unpack just yet


November PAD - Day 1 - procrastination