Wynken, Blynken, & Nod

I picked up these little guys yesterday from Romancing the Stone and promptly named them Wynken, Blynken, & Nod -- I've always loved that poem.

It's Ours

there is always that space there
just before they get to us
that space
that fine relaxer
the breather
while say
flopping on a bed
thinking of nothing
or say
pouring a glass of water from the
spigot
while entranced by
nothing

that
gentle pure
space

it's worth

centuries of
existence

say

just to scratch your neck
while looking out the window at
a bare branch

that space
there
before they get to us
ensures
that
when they do
they won't
get it all

ever.

a plausible finish

there ought to be a place to go
when you can't sleep
or you're tired of getting drunk
and the grass doesn't work anymore,
and I don't mean to go
to hash or cocaine,
I mean a place to go besides
the death that's waiting
or to a love that doesn't work
anymore.

there ought to be a place to go
when you can't sleep
besides to a tv set or to a movie
or to buy a newspaper
or to read a novel.

it's not having that place to go to
that creates the people now in madhouses
and the suicides.

I suppose what most people do
when there isn't any place to go
is to go to some place or something
that hardly satisfies them,
and this ritual tends to sandpaper them
down to where they can somehow continue even
without hope.

 those faces you see every day on the streets
were not created
entirely without
hope: be kind to them;
like you
they have not
escaped.

Charles Bukowski

We Had Him.

Beloveds, now we know that we know nothing, now that our bright and shining star can slip away from our fingertips like a puff of summer wind.

Without notice, our dear love can escape our doting embrace, sing our songs among the stars and walk our dances across the face of the moon.

In the instant that Michael is gone, we know nothing. No clocks can tell our time and no oceans and rush our tides.

With the abrupt absence of our treasure, though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone.

Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him.

He came to us from the Creator, trailing creativity in abundance.

Despite the anguish, he was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived -- and did more than that.

He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him, whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.

We had him, beautiful, delighting our eyes.

His hat, aslant over his brow, he took a pose on his toes for all of us, and we laughed and stomped our feet for him.

We were enchanted with his passion because he held nothing -- he gave us all he had been given.

Today in Tokyo, beneath the Eiffel Tower, in Ghana's Black Star Square,
in Johannesburg and Pittsburgh, in Birmingham, Alabama and in Birmingham, England
We are missing Michael.

But we do know we had him, and we are the world.

[Dr. Maya Angelou]
[read by Queen Latifah @ MJ's memorial here]