The final stage of growing up is when we become the caretakers of our ailing parents, and sadly when we lay them to rest.

Man, have I been sick. Not as sick as the time I had the flu and in a feverish moment of dementia looked up at my wife, who is black and now my ex-wife, and called her "Mom." It was a moment of helplessness and innocence, which any other woman might have found endearing, but this woman snarled at.

There is something special about illness, not serious life-threatening illness, but the kind that does require caretaking and nurturing that one almost longs for, both the illness and the nurturing.

For the past four days, I've been pretty darn sick with eyes, ears, throat, and chest infection, taking antibiotics, and antibacterial eyedrops, drinking lots of tea, and maximizing my bedtime. I even took two days off work. And although I wouldn't allow anyone to caretake me, because I was contagious, I had plenty of attention from family and friends calling regularly to check up on me.

Thanks everyone. I'm feeling better. Now leave me the Hell alone!

The most serious problem adults face besides bills and having to take care of someone besides themselves is losing the child inside.

The games we used to play, such as skimming stones across a pond, jumping in a puddle and splashing around, avoiding sidewalk cracks, popping bubblegum, using a straw to blow milk bubbles, yelling "Hello" in a tunnel to hear it echo, rolling down a grassy hill, and more are all essential ingredients if we are to retain our connection to ourselves, and to the simple pleasures we garner from daily life. We must be willing to be silly and laugh aloud regardless of our age.

These are warnings my mother presented to me as I was growing up:

• If you hold your face like that long enough, it will freeze that way.
  
• You are going to drive me to an early grave.
  
• I hope your children do to you, what you've done to me.
  
• As far as you all are concerned, I'm nothing more than a maid around here.
  
• If you go out without a hat, you will catch a cold.
  

Passion is finding its rebirth as our government continues its War
On Terrorism in Iraq and becomes, itself, a terrorist government.
How many body bags will it take before we become concerned
that reports of our victories are recorded in pints of blood.

Strange things keep happening to me and I'm beginning to question my mental health. The letter "b" in books, magazines, newspapers, and on the web keeps expanding and contracting like the distended belly of a Biafran child, or a pregnant woman in a pre-natal clinic. I rub my eyes to see whether there's something in it like an eyelash resting like an aligator along the shore of my lower lid. Still the exaggerated "b" mocks me. My first wife's name began with this haunting letter, a ghostly remnant of a failed marriage. We might have had a child, but she chose to become a beauty pageant participant instead. Perhaps, I'll up my dose of Xanax, which reads the same backwards and forwards, and makes me feel safe any way I read it.

I've just returned from where I've been. I enjoy coming back home. Did Thomas Wolfe ever have a sanctuary that he lost and then regained?

I'm screaming to the world tonight.

But I'm whispering to you.

My Desktop 6-28-04

I do spend a lot of time here. My comfort zone lives in the depths of this desktop!

Thinking outside the box. If you do this too often it becomes more difficult to think inside the box. So the real challenge is how to seamlessly move back and forth without getting stopped at the barrier by border guards. And what if I get stopped at the border and I don't have my papers and I am mistaken for an "illegal"?

It's 2:16am. Weird brain activity tonight. As if someone's messing with my wiring. First, I realized that the answer to some academic question was: Old Martin and Lewis movies.
Then that this medium allows me to connect my mind to a million others even as I am plugged into God's voice sending me messages. But it could be much more serious. It could be that my toilet was speaking to me, each flush another transmission of information thru the water network. So that I might be heard by fish.

It's 2:04am. I just woke up from a dream. It was like tripping on LSD, my mind racing and twisting into pretzel reality. The answer to some great educational cosmic question: Watching old Lewis and Martin movies. Showing them to our kids. Over and over until they understand they don't have to fight each other to be happy.

And then Wade lifted his cigarette and said sagaciously, "Masturbation will always remain as my one last
bastion of solitary indulgence."

It was all panic: the marriage and aftermath
Pounding out a primal beat; some say voodoo stole his heart.
The requisite arguments against plunging into the icy lake
To save the lost mutt, might have been made
But his ears heard only her siren cries.
And that was enough to seal his fate.

I'm a summertime poet.
I'm a sometime poet.