Another ending

 

Another year

I’ll make more promises to myself

to remain faithful 

to the words.

Another year

For me to say: I’m still writing.

Dodging the work in favor of other 

activities.

I’ve been staring at the pieces of 

something

long enough

and hoping that the pieces

will magically transfigure themselves

Into a coherent 

Whole.

I know who I am kidding.

It is me, the one who is trying to be fooled.

I know what cures this disease.

I know it is time to stop sharpening the blade.

Time to begin cutting

Through sound

air

Various solids and liquids

ideas of all kinds.

Time to let the blood flow.

Let the blade fly and catch whatever is its path.

To do some damage, Devil please care

Please

Care

A baby is born

 

When my umbilical cord was cut

It rained pocket thesauruses in the

maternity ward hallways.

Fortunately they were paperback editions.

My father, curious about the sound, stepped into the hallway and was pelted by 3 different editions. Opening them, he discovered that the even number pages were all removed in jagged tears.

In that exact moment, an announcement was made:

“I birth the body electric!”

It was a voice that no one had ever heard before, a voice of spring and birdsong and Parliament Light Cigarettes.

Then, the noise of “Hey, lady, how did you get in here?” Followed by a sound of objects falling and static.

The nurse, a woman with wild eyes and long grey hair pointing at eccentric angles, was comforting my mother, who was holding me for the first time. “Must be a Tuesday.” She said.

My mother nodded though she didn’t understand what the nurse meant. My mother was, however, a little distracted.

My father stepped into the room. He was intent and paging through the thesauruses he pilfered from the hallway storm. “Did you know a synonym for arrange is array? I wish I knew more but then next page is ripped out.”

The nurse shrugged. “Last time it rained here, it was feral cats.”

“Well, at least this one helps us learn.” My father said, laughing.

“We all learned a lot that day.” The nurse’s eyes narrowed, her voice cold. Her arms pulled close across her torso, maybe in an act of self-love.

The room frosted over with the dull breeze of silence.

The thesaurus storm ended in the hallway. The sound of the janitor sweeping and cursing burst into the otherwise quiet room.

My parents checked to make sure I did not have a tail.

My brother was born in another hospital. 

Concrete Poetry

 

Rend pavement

Into the statues of war heroes

In unflattering poses:

Mid-war crimes unspeakable.

Crying to God to bring their dead loved

ones back as they contemplate the end.

Embracing a mistress for solace.

Picking fights with locals at a bar.

Cement retellings. 

Smelt gold

to forge a monument of me

and you in wartime,

in the poses of everyday life,

worrying about the little concerns

of tax return filing, watching or studying baseball team performances,

Or just sitting in general comfort.

Place us side by side, cement and gold,

at our finest museums.

Let it tell the story no one wants to tell themselves.

A Path Away from Requirements

 

I am living in the simulation and the simulation’s sole goal is to get me Old Testament angry so I will snap and ruin everything for the people around me but I’m not going to let it dictate my thoughts and actions.

I am aware of the shortcomings of others like I am aware of the sun’s gradual growth to swallow the rest of us and I have to tell you that it is not a comfort to see the way these two become a perfect Venn Diagram.

All of my energy is dedicated to keeping the ground beneath me firm and real and not a tear in the fabric of time and space and the remnants of fossilized hopes and dreams.

Please remind me that I am still able to do the things I need to do when I fall short of expectations and leave everyone else wondering how it all went so wrong and why is Leonard sitting there in the corner with his teeth chattering and mumbling about heat death?

Fill the bucket with water and watch it drip out of the hole in the side and keep filling it until the water runs dry and the dependents realize that it’s going to be a long summer.

Give me the fix to what ails us and I will drink my fill of it and then share it with other inquiring minds.

I have said enough but I wonder if any of it will matter after I finally close my mouth and let silence have his say.

Greek Tragedy in No Acts

 

Unsettled from the usual rigamarole

I opened the almanac to check what might be headed my way.

I found portraits of the skeletons of rats.

A portentous omen.

Perhaps I was to be double-crossed by

Someone 

from a long-buried past?

Perhaps, 

I am just paranoid.

No longer the warrior,

A reduction in sound.

A fragment of my initial splendor.

But then,

A cry from the backyard!

Onward, to Danger!

Cerberus, be warned!

My sword is still warm with the cleaving of small trees in my backyard

from this morning’s lawn care.

I am not so far removed

from glory.

You are not so far removed

From Hell.

I will meet door. Air will meet face. Hero will meet villain. Destiny will be faced.

A story will be finished.

West West West

You don’t come to me in dreams

as much as you arrive 

when I drive the stretches of farmland

in the drier parts of winter.

You are beside me, pointing to the way the trees at the edge of the farms bend.

The paths away from the roads, dirt and asphalt both.

I used to look at you,

I’d see your crooked finger 

think that inviting smile you presented

was a covert sneer.

You became the fields and the trees.

I sneered at your lack of polish.

The clipped words. 

The anger you displayed when one of the farms disappeared for another development.

“This used to be a fertile place.”

I didn’t believe you.

I’ve been here too long, I think.

I’ve felt the backwards movement of things. Seen the way I move forward and the land slides against my feet. Fighting a current of ground, pulling me closer to something I did not want.

I Felt superior to you.

Known it in my ligaments and tendons that this was not the place for me.

There was too much I couldn’t say to you.

Fear that you’d see what I was thinking.

Better to smile and nod,

to dream of the day I’d leave these roads forever.

You, though. 

You had something in the way you spoke to me.

Some truth underneath the lilt of your broken words.

And you were persistent.

One day, long after I believed I’d be gone, I noticed

your finger pointing

beyond some bent or spent spot that blurred when driving by.

Pointing instead

to the unending sky

as we crescendoed

to the top of a green hill.

On a slow, sunny day.

Leaving the road, sunshine enveloping us. falling upward into its endless reach.

“All of this, is mine.” You said.

You waved your arms in large circles.

Your smile felt real.

And for the first time, while we continued to drift past clouds and into the an even greater space, I accepted

A truth.

For all of the things I was so sure about,

I knew that you were, in fact, 

beautiful

All along.

Something else

 

Like a broken saltine.

Impossible to get out of

The rug

And sofa.

Like the view of the ceiling when flipped upside down.

Where will we put our feet?

Like a broken clock’s stuttering minute hand.

Like wind.

Like a dream that I remember when near the water.

Watching the rapids and the flow of time.

A glimpse of what was something I never experienced

But still seem to know.

Like the faucet’s sparing drip.

Like the falling of leaves.

Like the sound 

Of feet, leaving a room.

Like memory.

Like now

Delayed: short poem

I am sure

That deep

In

Luxurious, cavernous walls

The truth

Shines.

History will absolve

Those who

Tried.

I am doubtful

We will

Notice

Any real effect

From said

Absolution.

It’s the thought,

Allegedly, that

Counts.

Trudge

Trudge

Over the gravel path.

Feel feet slide on uneven 

Pebbles.

Trudge

Through the muddy clearing.

Feel feet sink deeper

Below the grass line.

Trudge 

Along an aging wooden floor.

Feel toe catch on a nail.

Acquire splinters.

Trudge

Forward

Until you find

What you have been looking for,

Out there.

A friend, a job, an album, a mess

 We set up my drum set in your kitchen.

Warm, summer day.

Made noise.

The freedom of sound.

Creation without direction.

No tape recorder.

No microphone to pick up the sounds made.

Sometimes, in an afternoon nap,

The feeling comes back to me.

I begin to remember the patterns.

The riffs.

I try to put the model ship in the bottle.

A summer spent

In the trees of another season.

Dodging wasps

Poison from the ground.

Mornings before 

Another shift

Into the night.

Both the wolf and the sheep

Punching cards

To make minimum wage.

Sunrise meets sunset

melting between

Silence and noise.

No time for the model ship or the bottle.

But

I’ve consumed this old reliable

An artifact of the future and the present.

Comfort in something

Repeatable

Always a familiar path

But something ever new to notice in the layering.

This Cold Vein

Taking my weightless form

And drawing it to concrete

And the fog.

Maybe it’s the dim light of memory.

Maybe I’m guided by the Morse signals of the light out on the ocean.

Maybe, it’s my desire to be back into a moment.

The ones of magic.

The ones of monotony and the slow passage of time.

Repeatable and unable

To be Replaced.

Maybe I’ll remember

It differently later.

Is anything really the same

As we remember it?

Or, are we just playing dress up

With our thoughts

And wishing for what we thought we wanted

In the moment?

Dinner Party

 

“I can’t see ‘em fallin’ down my eyes,

so I gotta make the song cry.” -Jay-Z

Carrot Cake on the table.

Carrot Cake fawned over by guests.

Carrot Cake sliced, with reverence and dexterity, in preparation for sharing.

Carrot Cake screaming

In horror.

It does not know what it is supposed to be.

Carrot Cake wonders, amid the searing agony of knife fall,

Am I a health food?

What monster sat in their kitchen dungeon,

Fusing vegetable with cake?

Screams pitch and swell in the dining room. Screams the revelers are too distracted to notice.

Why am I here?

Was I forged just to leave the world wailing against the gnashing of teeth?

Why do they smile, mid-bite, as my soul slips away?

Carrot Cake is distributed.

Carrot Cake is savored.

Carrot Cake is dead and gone.

The revelers leave. “Dessert was delish!”

The room falls silent. The trash bags come swirling out. Obstructing light. Laughing with a hidden purpose finally revealed.

Now, the paper dishes, cast off, crumpled, and forgotten, realize that their sly winks to one another,

This fool, Carrot Cake. 

A coward until the end!

They, laughing with a gentle scorn,

Will not be saved either.

Commands

Look here.

I’m over your nonsense and I’m going to probably have to hit you in the face when you don’t listen to me telling you otherwise.

Listen.

It’s nothing personal, but you need to shut up, yesterday. I don’t want to hit you in the face, but we’ve got rules around here. I’m not going to be the one to start going against time-honored tradition.

Hold up.

Please stop crying. We both can’t be crying and I’m not allowed to stop. You’ve got to be the bigger person here. I’m not allowed to tell you again.

Leave.

And get me a tissue box. Then, stop doing what you’re doing forever. Trust me. I know how things go here. You will too eventually.

Delayed Again: Survey Says

I.

We’ll say that today is looking good. Delightful bursts of sunshine interspersed with casual rain showers. Highs around 73 and minimal humidity. Heaven will likely fall from the sky.

II.

I’ll need to show them some paperwork to prove I am who I say I am. Routine, I’m told. It really shouldn’t be this hard to get a body anymore.

III.

Come on, like you really want to know? I’m probably going to see what everyone else does and go from there. 

IV.

I’ll give you 3 fish and a candle. Go to the woods and shout your dead Great Uncle’s name. That should cover your needs.

V.

I really want to know about you. Well, not really, but let’s say I do. Yeah 

Delayed: Best Friends

 Didn’t get to this one yesterday, so here’s NaPoWriMo Day 17 on Day 18.

I will be too much for you and the others to handle to handle.

I will scream “Cake!”

I will wear a cape with the number 88.

Profanities will be shouted after my name.

I will be the best investment your family has made.

I will roost

I will be scared of small objects

I will be the anointed caregiver.

You will cry at sad movies in my memory.

I will bark at all intruders.

I will outsmart all humans

I will shake uncontrollably.

I will hate the gun shots and the fireworks and the sounds of rural living.

You will learn I’m gone, on a bus around strangers, via a phone call with your mother. You will break into a sense of cosmic grief. Your friend will come and sit next to you and rub your shoulder. The woman next to you will give you a dirty look. At least that’s how you remember it.

We will all

come and go

So quickly.

Cut rate Sonnets

Today’s prompt was a curtal sonnet-11 lines with the the last line being shorter.

I won’t pretend to ascertain the truth.

I believe in the words of my father.

To work everyday, to not be a bother.

To own my misdeeds and the times I’m uncouth.

Revisions of facts for a greater purpose.

All insistence aside, remain observant

For defections, despite words that are fervent.

We all set aside what is right, all in service.

To a higher power, but we don’t know it’s name.

The power unbidden, too bold to be tame.

Say it in jest, the meaning’s the same.

Golf Clap

There are two types of people:

People who golf and people who don’t.

I am the latter.

People tell me I’d love it.

People are lying to me and themselves.

A hole 300+ yards away.

A metal stick in open fields.

Copious sunshine?

Fine-motor skills?

Multiple hours?

Bird names?

This is a recipe for the “world’s most impressive tantrum.” 

Flipping golf carts

Bending metal into enthusiastic animal shapes.

Clouds of expletives hovering like a mushroom cloud,

Scattering vulgar damage.

I am not precise.

I do not like collared shirts.

I like shade.

I like my adversity not on full display, a spectacle for others around me.

I don’t like pretending to be interested in what other people do.

When I meet my maker

I will ask them:

“Why did you make golf?”

They will reply:

“To show the world that many would prefer Hell to Heaven.”

They will be right.