There may be mermaids under the wharf, there may even be a man in the moon, ah but Vincent time is running out, I hope you get yourself together soon

Yoko Ono, Austinsville, VA

a few lines from Charles Simic's notebooks (The Monster Loves His Labyrinth)~

Once again, I find myself on the North Pole. I have no sled, no dogs and I'm dressed for bed. You ask me if I'm cold? Of course I'm cold, you idiots.

I traveled over some bad roads in my childhood. It's no wonder I have a few loose screws.

I remember a small boy saying in the lull between two waves of planes during a bombing raid: "I want to go pipi, Mama."

Riding on a sow, holding on to its ears and shouting, "Out of my way chickens!" Did I really do that?

I like to hear a happy tune played sadly.

The new American Dream is to get to be very rich and still be regarded as a victim.

Did solitary strollers whistle past graveyards in Cotton Mather's time, or were they as silent as the graves?

Old woman stammering excuses to the pigeons for frightening them.

"God has a plan for America," the preacher on TV said just as you came to bed carrying a bowl of cherries against your naked breasts.

At the tanning salon on Route 9, Regina, the Pizza Hut girl, lies naked with shades on.

The magician folded the sheet of paper with my question over and over until no trace of it was left in his hand.

I remember my father saying, "Let's have another bottle of wine so that when we rise from the table we can feel the earth turning under our feet."

It happens that a cricket enters an abandoned house at the end of a road rarely traveled to sing as the night is falling.

A sign in Alabama. Love Power Church. Music and Miracles.

M Ward "Vincent O'Brien"