Enjoy the silences;
the waiting,
slow words.
Not having anything to do;
the leashed phone,
the unknown.
Bruises, cuts and wounds;
the bitter cold,
the searching soul.
The night without street lights;
uncivilized sights,
sunlit rooms.
Enjoy the world
as it was meant to be;
sober, subtle and unexplored,
because in the end
it will turn on you;
bind you in rope,
flood your eyes, your ears,
and leave you with no place
to call home.
It’s not trash, but it should be.
I want it to be,
but someone out there;
a memory,
would hold it against me,
that tangible though brief history
discarded.
as if it didn’t live up to
some archaic pedigree
that would otherwise sustain it
unto antiquity.
Is it not enough that we lived our lives?
Survived?
Survive still,
to store those moments in boxes
or lay them amongst the refuse
and save instead that space?
How do we value emptiness
against all the time that we’ve forgotten?
Here we hide our memories;
those lost, those forgotten
and those memorialized.
Most moments
will outlive their time-
processed,
so completely,
we want nothing to do with them anymore
but, the part of us that lives on-
in the brighter corners of that vacant space
will not be discarded.
Here we store them…
We place them in a box.
to cultivate dust and nostalgia,
for our future selves to discover,
swipe away;
trivialize.
Other events are so magnificent
they break the realm of time itself
piercing the boundaries of reality;
letting it bleed out
until its eyes dim
the skin pallid
fading
and we are faced with no choice but
to pack those away too.
here they rest patiently…
until there is enough room
for them to exist once again
or reality needs once again
to be reminded how fragile it is.
The fog that hides the day as night retires,
shades of sunlight grasping for purchase
struggling in undulating swirls,
hoping to find in ambiguity, some purpose.
The rising darkness from the depths of fire
billowing into the night to throttle the stars,
like open mouths cradling soundless screams
or the profound words of a dead man’s memoirs.
The way a tree feels when bound to expire,
stripped of all its lush extravagance
the machinations of a world that brought it life,
now turned to break it beneath those same elements.
The slow pyrotechnics of stagnant air’s attire
sustained in sanguine starlight while time drifts away,
held like the pot won in a game of marbles,
careful hands celebrating their display.
The decisions we unearth in quagmire
seeking more an end than a right or wrong,
transfixed by distant familiarity
the difference lost in the chorus of the song.
The way our histories resurface as satire
courage marred by fear, the bold now timid and pale
those truths that hide in the present revealed
once pitted against the rest and placed on a scale.
The thoughts that in twilight give cause to perspire
when the permanence of absence is paramount,
trickling through the cracks in our confidence
though it is only ourselves we need to surmount.
Water rushes forth
cutting through the landscape
tearing down trees…
In my youth
we would gather there.
That was ‘base.’
Some perversion in the soil
grew it awkward
and preserved it.
There was no other of its like
we’d count,
“One”
“Two”
“Three”
Turn and lay low any who moved.
…bushes, plants
gnashing at them
with a hurricane of white caps,
roiling top soil;
the mangled limbs of old oaks.
The flood consumes the forest
but is unsated,
cartwheeling down the street…
We rode our bikes,
cards in the spokes,
three abreast;
like we each had
a full tank of gas, no curfew.
some of us didn’t
and only went home
when no one was left
to muffle the night.
Taking with it loose sheets of concrete
gauging them out with the dead ends
of what once was a forest
only a few short moments ago.
As if on a mission
serving a purpose
the torrent sprints down main street
a feral beast of a cat
on the serengeti
ignoring all the buildings that lined its path
driven only to one end;
to take down the theater.
In the darkness
outside of time
fantasy becomes tangible
while reality falls away
like sheets of snow
from a hot tin roof.
Captured in that web
I am what I am meant to be
until the lights come on.
It may have been the first to go,
but the flood took the whole town
and discarded in its place
a lake
When winter comes
and hides it all beneath ice
we drill holes
drink til we are warm
and toss in a line
only once in awhile terrified
that we’ll pull up
some part of that old life.
His mind was
patch worked duct tape
on the seams of a yellowing couch
something that burrowed into the background
a body discolored like an old formica table
that would topple
beneath even the slightest weight
too often.
Discolored and unsettled
nearly balanced on a piece of cardboard
that must always be adjusted.
Each bruise is a decade of smoke hazed biker bars
lucid stupors of apologies or irritability
stuck to the bottom of this ancient surface.
Bright pinks and deep blues
now dirty and faded;
resigned
collecting what remains of life
as dust in falling will grasp at the light
spark like fire
shine like diamonds
burn like youth.
I would go outside today
if it meant I could play with my friends
if I could do more than wave at them
watch them drift off from my doorstep
getting further and further away
we’d choose whose yard would host the game
and recite the rules of play
then make up altogether new ones
and that would become our whole day.
But now, all of us stay inside
forgetting the rules, forgoing new ones
adopting only those from where we reside
an intensely smaller world
the density of a dead star preventing any escape.
From the window I can see where I want to be
I wave, hoping it will turn to wave back at me.
The snow finds a valley
where a swing hangs above;
an empty cradle.
Where the children are gone
the wind will play
rocking it back and forth,
Somewhere
a lullaby goes unheard.
Confronted,
I want terribly to fill that space
but a wrongness holds me down.
I don’t belong here,
not anymore.
After a time the road hides behind errant thoughts
an oasis of purpose beyond the skyline
just past the formless landscape in which I am caught
anxious sand etching the mind where they are confined
somewhere a destination waits for my return
decades away, or two hundred twelve miles by the sign.
Though the same vowels and numbers and stories were taught
the language we speak will never again align
casualties to the war of innocence still fought
despite knowing that both sides had long since resigned.
In the ashes of conflict, fragmented, I yearn
to take all those hardships and render them benign.
I can’t find the time I left in the past
but I can feel the loss
an intense emptiness
articulated calmly
nudity on display for a prudish audience
What is lost is not gone
there is still a place where it was
even now it takes up space elsewhere
encouraged to let it go
No.
I feel it still.
Grow Gray With Me 