by George Quasha

Touch fear.
The world is holding back.
The garden wants us back in.

The nearest thing to spirit is warding off.
Hold the focus slices time to the present instant of shape.
There are more tones per thought happening in a given view than believed.

An image forms in building the lingual ark.
What is the syntax of this moment telling me what this is .
Book is the context of unattended indication now coming to bear.

A new angle flips the view still viewing.
The air fears for us crossing the flesh.
We’re the only one here.

Mind following the flipped coin comes open at every angle.
Every word tells its tale but alone it’s godly mute.
Telling shows you how your mind means, meaning as you do.

Nature is about to think in me when changing belief changes the body.
I think moving and body reflects movingly.
The natural side is this side side by side with its other side, along for the ride.

The dream is the other side of the thing now happening.
Creation goes all the way down and back up again.

Believing what you see gets you through the day and then goes stray.

by Charles Stein

you were on a little jaunt to your
sleepy
nearby
country cabin
hide-away

with your guard down

in the rain

and it “found you”

attempting to rouse yourself
through its actual rousing of you

potable ideas

to drink you down
until all that comes to appearance as you
assemble yourself
seems tinctured with their affordances

and it’s dawn

of everyday at once

so you can do anything

by Charles Stein

If there is going to be
civil war
it’s a matter of inventing
what compassion
is for
when you find yourself astonished to be sitting
smack inside of one
of the combatant camps — it’s your war
too—
   no conviction
strong enough
to put you on
the outside of it

•

coconut monk
in no-man’s land
accommodating
escapees
from both worlds,
having had enough
of being right
and the struggle to preserve
not values — not yours, not theirs—
but existence itself: that’s your side of
the inequality — the other?
you cannot even say it
in a form the “enemy”
would recognize — the rift
is that inevitable, the times
that
Bad

by Charles Stein

we were sitting in a circle
and passing the smudge stick around
so each might expound
in an orderly manner

and as each talked
our “listening”
listened itself
into being
and vanished
when the talking
that comprised one —
albeit the talking
of the “other” — but you get it:
there is no other
talking
under this umbrella.

Only talking.