To write is to call
and pretend that you don't care
if there's an echo

Time to go outside
To face the darkness and cold
It's time to go home

Unforgettable
You keep coming back to mind
You're still lingering

There's something about
my listening, my loving
that draws people in

Sometimes we're hurt most
by the things we wrongly think
of as protections.

1028

I can't stress enough
that stress is an inside job,
he writes as he sighs

I want a divorce
From the me that is not me
From my dark shadow

Personality 
sometimes seems to be the force
underneath it all

"Love, Love, Love"

Who doesn't want love?
Not me. I don't not want love.
Oh how I crave love.

Ungently we row
making an uproar upstream
not so merrily 

Who it is matters
And how he got there matters
And I can't forget

1022

I don't play football
But I still worry about
Damage from my work

What we've sent away
we have sent away and we
must own what we've sent

Questions old as hills
matter to us the most when
we're the ones asking

I leave myself at
the wind's merciless mercies
and get blown away

We are all alone
meaning each one of us is
so all of us are

Would that it weren't
If perhaps it wasn't real
Then I would not feel

What does one person
ask of another except
love and loyalty?

* 1015

I wish Emily
were here and could but help me
To my nest again

*

And having said that
I will unsay what I said
and say what I mean

With oinks and screeches
you knock me down to my knees
beast from my belly

You curse me as worse
than I ever feared I was
but you'll run your course

You are far away
And I guess, yes, I sent you
Maybe, i wonder...

A friend once told me
"If I was you I'd be sad."
And then I felt sad.

I spend life writing:
writing off and writing in,
casting my ballots

All that we have is
the stories we tell ourselves
or so I've been told

This room's elephant
is starting to interfere
with my mental health

For Choni HaMeagel

Feeling for Choni
longing for community
conflicted, of course.

* 1005

Poems can be hard
They're like people in that way
Not easy to read.

There are no words for
existential loneliness
though I just used some

Entitlement is
not something that anyone
has coming to them

The Bee Gees wondered
how you mend a broken heart.
Start to live again

Reeds bend in the wind
Because of this they don't break
May we be like reeds

I wonder if G-d
Finds it cute how we think that
We are in control

Help me breathe a breath
and know that it is your breath
from creation's kiss

Is loneliness love?
Neither she nor her absence
Only love is love

By The Waters of Nachal Dovid

Is the secret that
there are no words in water,
is that what it is?

How the water flows
as it tumbles over me,
speaks a true language

No earth and no stone
can take a waterfall's place
or shout its whisper

When the crowds moved in
tp picture my sacred place
I had a mixed mood

I miss my mother
in every crevice of life
and at the water

Mom once heard a speech
about how it's water that
relaxes us most

I wasn't sure if
I should come here again now
but there are reasons

I love the Kotel
maybe because it's solid
but I miss this flow

G-d please please bless me
in my most private moments
to sense the water

Here in the desert
a waterfall hides and seeks:
We've found each other

Water and poems
don't have room for linear or
literal moves

By The Waters of Nachal Dovid

Is the secret that
there are no words in water,
is that what it is?

How the water flows
as it tumbles over me,
speaks a true language

No earth and no stone
can take a waterfall's place
or shout its whisper

When the crowds moved in
tp picture my sacred place
I had a mixed mood

I miss my mother
in every crevice of life
and at the water

Mom once heard a speech
about how it's water that
relaxes us most

I wasn't sure if
I should come here again now
but there are reasons

I love the Kotel
maybe because it's solid
but I miss this flow

G-d please please bless me
in my most private moments
to sense the water

Here in the desert
a waterfall hides and seeks:
We've found each other

Water and poems
don't have room for linear or
literal moves

Dad just said to phone
"He doesn't say very much."
Wonder who "he" is.

I see pain in him
Though he says all the right things
I hope he gets to vent

984

"Journalists' haiku"
some kind of oxymoron
like a silent scream

Ten On Not Driving

I mention driving
and you say, "Hm, interesting,"
And ask and ask more

Because I don't drive
you wonder how I function
using other words

I guess it makes sense
that most people find it strange
that I'm not like most

There's a kind of kind
that not only doesn't mind
but likes that I'm me

The me that I am
sees things one eye at a time
That's the way it is

And yes, not driving
is an unusual thing
in our small circle

And the city thing
is just a line that some say
Untrue, anyway

It makes sense of me
for you to frame it your way
Re-work what I say

I bless you to see
with depth and with perception,
with the kindest eyes

Now I'd like to pray
for none of us to lack drive
and also to see

Our isolation
and our connection are but
a thin line apart

Do contradictions
keep me from falling asleep?
They do and they don't.

971 (but who's counting?)

So hard to define

I guess that's what makes her mine

My anxiety

Music Haiku

"Music to my ears":
that applies to lots of things
Most of all music

Instruments, like mouths
combined to play and to sing:
"music to my ears"

Art and science too
sounds ordered in succession
having harmony

I used to recite,
"Music soothes the savage beast,"
trying to calm her

One way to rise up
above these words of this world
unsilent music

As the music plays
the overused word "healing"
begins to make sense

Prompted and Inspired by Haiku Horizons

Caps By Accident

WALKING ON WATER
IS SOMETHING WE CAN ALL DO
YOU JUST BUILD A BRIDGE

A different basement
One of middle age not youth
A deep, profound place

963 *

Something about dreams
I enjoy them but not the
waking up from them

My heart and my sleeve
I need to care for them both
and separate them

Changing one middah

is harder than learning Shas,

said Rav Yisrael

I'm beaten up and
you should see the other guy
but know that he's me

Make space for someone
else's insecurity
to interrupt yours

Remember

via Haiku Horizons Prompt

It seems to me that
it was the space between us
that made and broke us

I keep forgetting
that people don't remember things
the way I do

It's not memory;
things that happen stick to me
like barnacles do

Things stay in my mind
as if they're happening still
is that memory?

Maybe I can learn
to remember differently
and less painfully

It's hard to forget
but maybe if I forgive
I'll remember hope

Will I remember
late in life as I do now?
I wonder and pray

They are mean to me
but I need to control them
I think of my thoughts

Beautiful beyond
beyond being beyond words
this beautiful bond

The phenomenon
Of doing just one more thing
Is what makes us late

I own some pet peeves
And I feed them every day
I should let them go

A spoonful of hope
Something I wish to imbibe
When life tastes bitter

947

"What is reply all?"
it seems this writer's asking
all thirteen of us

Rest Haiku 943-946

My foot catches on
before the rest of me does
so I trip and fall

Yes, there was the rest
and there was a creation
of Shabbat itself

We each need to pause
to cease our work or movement
to rest and relax

Can we ever rest
with mountains behind mountains
that need to be climbed?

Prompted by HaikuHorizons

Life's a dialogue
between our various selves
past, present, future

941

I am the author,
not a character you wrote,
in my life story

That line about cracks
being where the light gets in
captures where I've been

It bothers me when
you're not listening because
you're a therapist

Skip Haiku

Light springy skipping
Switching off hops on each foot
I dream of this joy

Go from point to point
Disregard what intervenes
Skip when you need to

Ricochet and bounce
like a stone on a river
both light and heavy

Leo Buscaglia
skipped about and played with leaves
till his end of days

With Gratitude to Haiku Horizons

Our thoughts guide our eyes
Much of what we view are lies
Watch your thoughts, be wise

How is it we pray?
Timing ourselves by the clock?
Or with our soul's breath?

Match Haiku (929-932)

Matches go out fast
A candle's flame lasts longer
Oh let's be candles

I'm scared of matches
The little cardboard book ones
and the blind date kind

Above the surface
and below, we are two ways
We need to match them

It's like in tennis,
playing both sides of the match
that's how I live life

Thanks to Haiku Horizons for the prompt.

Say that you see me
if you see my poetry
then that's what will be

927 - A Swing Haiku

Breathing with the flow
Riding the swing, not pushing
Living the moment

Thanks to Haiku Horizons for the prompt.

Sometimes I feel like
I can hide but I can't run
And I have to run

Haiku of the day
aren't always written down
but they still exist

The outer dramas
of our lives can distract us
from our inner pain

Cat Haiku

Prompted by Haiku Horizons

On a hot tin roof
she prances, and then she jumps
and lands on her feet

Don't think it's the cat
but once someone got my tongue
Truth is, I miss her

Sometimes I sigh long
and I want to hide away
curled up like a cat

My year in ninth grade
the year of "Year of the Cat"
"Don't bother asking"

Materialists
are those (in philosophy)
who say, "Never mind."

Not out and then in
Strongly embraced all the time
A life of love lived

The core foundation
and the source of all service
Is to own your role

Our date is marked off
on an aged dark calander
set aside by death

915

I almost never
travel in a taxi cab
except when I do

914

Every day's a flow
of opportunities that
challenge us to grow.

Blessings for my friends 

Grow from me again, again 

As they often send

912

We communicate
Warning and surrendering
with red and white flags

LATE BREAKING STORY,

YOU ARE READING A HAIKU,

THOUGHT I'D LET YOU KNOW

You find some clues and

Feel you need to look for more;

That's your biggest clue

Spend Haiku (905-909)

You can spend it all
till even you don't remain
and others won't change

I spend lots of time
following old, false beliefs;
it's too expensive

Our lives are on loan
and we spend them as we please
Please G-d, not alone

We spend life living
interwoven episodes
we may choose to see

We think it's money
that is the thing we spend most
and it makes us poor

And then we end up
where we never thought we'd be
again. Again. Sigh.

903

Real feel temperatures

 make me wonder what is real;

is it what I feel?

What truly exists?
Not imagined or supposed
Bonafide, for real

Can real be ideal
How to balance what we feel
Should our brains appeal?

Normal is someone
You don't yet know very well
a stranger told me

Some relationships
Precede their new beginnings
By many a year