We have 
wanted to 
for years 
to wear 
a silent 
bell saying 
this is
what we’re 
and finally 
after all 
of that 
on they
go quietly 
whispering to 
others see

There is much 
I don’t know 
I never pretend 
that I do
I am vulnerable 
and I’m exposed 
to jeers and 
taunts from those 
thinking they do 
but arrogance has 
a very ugly 
underbelly teeming with 
hatefully mean bile 
interesting how insecurity 
keeps one apart 
from the rest 
who humbly admit 
that they don’t 

It is 
easy to 
be when 
one is 
first but
when one 
is last 
the grace 
of being 
there is 
one’s only 
reward for 
last is
the only 
place for 
the love 
of loneliness 

And now in
this the very
smallest of things 
I’ve found it
hidden no tucked 
deeply inside one 
of my many 
cubbyholes fashioned from 
years of discarded 
disappointments and incomplete 
relationships holes dug
and drilled into 
the very trunk
making trenches which 
now appear as
lines on my 
face and placed
deeply therein trinkets 
trophies and treasures 
tiny little teaspoons 
of dollops desire
squirreled away many
never to be 
found just forgotten 
except this one 

Some days 
my mind 
and heart
woefully disagree 
and my 
soul waits
drumming its 
fingers checking 
its watch
and rolling 
its eyes