Gray Go The Thoughts

Every thought is the same
It might start with the shoes
And end with the dark night of the soul
Or a student who flew off a cliff outside of Seattle
But the colors are all there, bright or dim
Maybe black and white, but generally gray
Gray go the thoughts, like soldiers 

Sprinting across the pitted distance

Between boredom and terror, their only weapon, words

Some thoughts lean into dismay, or are
Cuddled into the chest of your father

And yet, they all smell at the bottom of your disposal

Its rot always there for you to reach in

And don't forget
How to forget
About that

Make the thought lofty, like the birthday cake you are making for your seven year old
Frost it up without regard to health
Or climate change
And especially what lurks
At the bottom of your disposal

Just put what is real on the cake
I mean the thought
Kick its ass with authenticity
To the ceiling of the cave
With candor like cavemen
Discussing their slow death from disease

Let the thought run away from you forever, unleashed
The fur of which shimmering

Black or white or gray

Bunny Mind

Once more, I've counted the stones on my patio
And measured out this season's branches of peach, cherry and pear
Again, I've contemplated the slow growth of green
In the water of the bird bath
And only now lay eyes upon a bunny a few feet away

We assess each other's risk
Before I keep down in my unsettled journal
It stays deep-staring into everywhere present
I envy how alert it lasts, how the eye
Takes the whole evening in, through the black marble portal
Of its bunny being

The dim light is enough to manage words
While its faint  heartbeat barely creates at all
Wondering with bunny mind, I'm pretty sure
My friend is meditating between the compost and the Buddha
Fondling the very core of a peaceful universe

Most definitely, he feels how lucky this patch of grass
Holding me aloft on this first Fall night
Safe from owls beside this man-being crossing and uncrossing his legs
Scrawling whimsically with a stick in his paws
Whose chest heaves with breath and eyes fretfully dart

Heavy, this three and a half pound brain
Hearing the crickets' raging agony
And not the still hum of our short and cacophonous lives