Jean-Michel Basquiat lost his spleen in a car accident when he was a kid.
What’s in the spleen, could the loss have made him prone to heroin, prone to sad eyeballs, the image of him alone in a bar on New Year’s Eve.
Life is a little bit like years turning a corner.
He painted on doors when he had no money for canvas
He went through doors and windows like he was building a house from within.
Footsteps rang like a heartbeat, paint scattered on Armani suits as the clock leaped like a high school athlete full of promise and bird seed bones.
We’re part animal part anima.
Part anime and part animal cracker
Playful and wandering through the molecules we inherited.
We are dunked suddenly in a gene pool and there are no life guards to warn us.
We have moments where we think we’re in a koi pond.
We swim as serene as the neon of gold fish.
I was once drawn to a goldfish at Junior’s Deli cause it reminded me with its swagger of someone I once knew.
It had this human expression.
I once was sitting in a car at a gas station and there was a dog looking over at me and nodding with the weight of the world on his snout and fur.
He looked at me with complete empathy.
There was no distance between us..
He seemed like he really understood.
Heads or tails, do we choose.
The coin of our life flips any which way.
Who knows how it will land.
We dive into life anyway, not exactly sure if the pool is full of ice panes, soft things
Or simply air.

ELLYN MAYBE, Southern California based poet, United States Artist nominee has performed both nationally and internationally as a solo artist and with her band. Her work has been included in many anthologies and she is the author of numerous books. She also has a critically acclaimed poetry/music album, Rodeo for the Sheepish (Hen House Studios). In addition to her band, her latest poetry/music project is called ellyn & robbie.  Their album, Skywriting with Glitter has also received high praise.