Everybody's someone's special something so long as you want it that way. Handclaps are always happy, so long as you let it be. Inside us all is a little bit of nothing, so beautiful it immerses us whole. Your mind's got you trapped in the box, thrashing at packing peanuts. Come out and smell the sun, come out and bless the day. The world needs more of you.

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There's a cowboy that lives just outside my apartment and I hate him. He wears a kerchief with rugged dignity and has long committed the crime of patricide in his mind. The girls stand around him in a sexual halo and I stare at my boots in the closet.

There's a physicist that panhandles at the Hess across the street and I hate him. He knows all the answers up to ten years beforehand and never worries about the futility of it. I do long division at the window and envy unaware freedom.

There's a buddha that lives in the back of our brains and I fear him. His promises of silence are too pure to be true, too honest to break my electric tether. When persuasion rises from the heart and not your green-grass yearnings, it's hard to find a quiet spot to listen.