
Legs tangled
Minds a million miles apart
I ask if we could get lost together
She says I was gone long ago
Where did I go, I ask
You went looking for yourself
Did you ever find yourself?
She teased
No…only shadows
That weren’t even mine
Legs tangled
Minds a million miles apart
I ask if we could get lost together
She says I was gone long ago
Where did I go, I ask
You went looking for yourself
Did you ever find yourself?
She teased
No…only shadows
That weren’t even mine
2 hours a night; 14 a week; 60 hours a month
That’s 30 days a year we spend dreaming
I balanced stones in haphazard towers
On shores I knew I’d never see again
Over the average lifetime we’ve lived two lives
68 years bound by physics and 6 years a god
I’ve shown acts of kindness to strangers
Never knowing how deep into well the light digs
I’ve grown old and cast aside wonderment
Thinking a 401K is the single answer to all
I cast poems out into a world built of 1s and 0s
These mirrors in pitch black rooms reflect me
I’ve passed a baton to the next sorry soul
Pleading go farther and straighter than me
I’ve manned a lighthouse at the edge of reason
Guiding myself away from the siren’s call
Is lunacy the legacy?
We are all artists painting windows on cell walls
I’ve been a stone hoping for flat smoothness
That someone might skip me across dark lakes
I walk faster on this hamster wheel for a raise
So I can afford grease for ancient gears
I’ve danced to long forgotten songs
Wailing melodies buried marrow deep
Logos are your house’s sigil
A circle of protection made of blood-swishes
I dreamt of a family who welcomed me as kin
I understood home in the shine of their eyes
My brain is a blending stump
Softening the edge of mindless conscription
I think I need redemption
For some forgotten grievance
I think I need an apology
For a grievance I wish I could forget
I think that I think too much
And for that I owe myself an apology
The sun has set…a faint glow is what remains
I stand at a crossroads not knowing
Am I subject to physics, or am I a god…?
She’s the antidote
When the world’s getting to me
When the pressure has built
When I’m clawing at this birdcage chest
I tuck her love under tongue
So it’s hidden from the unclean world
So it dissolves slowly
Straight to the bloodstream
Unfiltered by the liver
Straight through the blood-brain-barrier
High as fuck I walk through my days
Hoping no one can tell
Knowing everyone can
This panacea is marrow deep now
Same place knowledge hides
That kind passed down over generations
Beneath ALL the bullshit
Predating language
Under the tongue
She was, to me, a fresh pair of glasses
The sun readying to retire
Contrast of shadow and light
Eyes adjusting to a stronger prescription
Until now it was as if the world was flat
A projection on a yellowed screen
The blurring of edges
As if my depression had lulled my eyes
But now—now!
The world has sprung anew
Her love…these glasses…have me redefined
Where once a tree was a cloud of green
Now it’s 200,000 dancing leaves
Trunk bark a thumbprint
An oak across a field seems at arm’s length
Even for this nearsighted introvert
Everything seems within reach…even love
When the sun’s finally set
And dreams dance behind my eyes
My new glasses remain perched on nose
So even in my dreams I find clarity
There she sits beneath a tree with me
Backs against a familiar thumbprint
200,000 hands waving from above
Applauding
The light in this room
Is bright
I furnish the room
With best intentions
A menagerie of dreams
Of aspirations
Memories framed and hung
From times almost forgotten
Or wished forgotten
But prayers persist
Scratched into flesh
Meant to fend off sins
But simply remind me
Of what I’ve done
Of what’s been done to me
I’d be more proud of track marks
Than these self inflicted wounds
At least busted veins
Would mean I loved something
Outside this godforsaken room
Even a real prison
Of concrete and metal
Would mean I had felt passionate
Enough to have crossed lines
Internal monologues so memorized
I mouth them soundlessly
Subconsciously
Unknown to me
I’m only reminded of their existence
By the indentation they leave
In the couch only I ever sit in
Behind the couch are curtains
I keep closed
The world is dark
My room is bright
So when I do peek
I’m always disappointed at my reflection
And immediately embarrassed
That someone might see inside
So only ever just a peek
Then back to the photos
The menagerie
Tracing the indents in the couch
With calloused fingers
And like a tic
I tug at sleeves too short
To cover these scrimshaw invocations
I can’t drive this reoccurring thought
Out of my mind
That this brightly lit room
Is nothing more
Than the bioluminescent underbelly
Of a firefly
That if I peek through the curtains
At just the right frequency
At the right time
I’ll see a semaphore
Flashing back
And the indents in their sofa
Will be near enough to mine
I’ll know I’m not entirely alone
You spend half your life with your hands covering your mouth, muffling your screams, regretting the things you’d said
You spend the the other half kneading your knuckles into doughy temples wishing you had said the things you didn’t
We define ourselves in these moments of action or inaction and let those moments of blissful silence pass by unnoticed
We are hurricanes turned inside out, where the storm rages most on the inside and the calm is all around us within reach
Still pushed by high pressure and drawn to low, hoping the decisions we make steer the ship, but they’re ripples in slack sails
What you think is instinct is just the past echoing into the now, the eyes of a bully from school making distrust of a stranger
She spoke an uncommon and long forgotten phrase that the girl who broke your heart once used and flight wins over fight
Your favorite movie is a mystery that you can’t solve, as to why it haunts you, and it’s simply because it makes you feel at home
Your need to make sense of it all, the storm within, instead of just letting the peace inside, is your undoing
Your actions define you less in how you faced the storm and more in how you made every attempt to be the calm
This tug of war has no happy ending, as the very idea of reconciling the out with the in is a fallacy
The mighty ship you think you’re at the helm of is just a leaf set afloat by a summer rainstorm
The best you can hope for from your decisions, those ripples, that they are guided by love
That the inquisitive eyes of a newborn will see beauty in the way your leaf danced just before being sucked into a drain
Hopefully, this creates an indiscernible echo, a future instinct, where they choose love, as well
This dance isn’t self-sacrifice, it’s mutually assured destruction…between the world as you see it and the one you wish to make, but the dance is still beautiful
Of course the world continues on after the leaf enters the storm drain, but it’s changed, and the world as uniquely seen from your perspective, that world…dies with you
I mourn those losses by bringing in the calm and by dancing in the rain
Gifts are often more than we can bear
These connections
These sharings
These overlaps
This anchor hangs about my neck
We are now bound
And I am bound to regret it
Your honeyed breath
Your words of buoyancy
Where do I go with this
What do I owe to this
You give me a book
Now I must read, discuss and play fan
You give me a plant
Now I nurture/sustain and hide its decay
You encumber me and I feign gratitude
Gifted a hundred pictures of butterflies
And I just want to remain a caterpillar
Or if I do choose to metamorphose
I want it to be of my own volition
I want to owe no one—nothing
So when you fashion me wings
Of feathers and wax
I don’t fly high out of jubilation
I do it to gain control
I own my free fall
And I will build myself anew
From the ground up
Children change everything
A complete shift in priorities
Someone is counting on you
Depending on you
Their very survival
Most parents take this on
With pride
With resolve
Others try to simply make it work
Like taking on another job
Another checkbox in a list
Some will reprioritize
Putting the child first in all things
But hold onto some part of the before
Drinking with the boys on Friday nights
Restoring that old car
Or getting the boat ready in the spring
But most often
This change
Kills dreams
Aspirations
How can I possibly
Who’s time am I wasting
What’s more important
These formative years
That’s right…formative
What foundations are we laying
Be a good soldier
Be a good consumer
Be a good student
Color in the lines
Fit into the cookie cutter
That dreams are transient
That they should
Should
Should
Should
Be a good dad or mom
Have their 2.3 kids
Balance their checkbook
Tuck some into a 401k
Perfect attendance
Buy the latest and greatest
Poetry is a phase and not a need
Be a creator of needs
A dutiful cog
In a widget factory
Who knows…maybe Disney
Next year
For now, practice assembling
A perfect child
Blindfolded
On a cot
You could bounce a quarter off of
Formative…
stsitra meht ekaM
Make them artists
Involve them in your dream
Teach them to love language
Form
Movement
Music
Teach them independence
Self-soothing
Self-entertaining
Self-reliance
Share your joy
Share your love
Of humanity
Of humanness
Trade WiFi connectivity
For soul to soul connectivity
Don’t feel bad
For spending time on expression
For asking for 5 more minutes
To finish that poem
Teach beauty is equal to duty
Maybe you’ll achieve your dream
Maybe they’ll learn to fight for theirs
Formative…
In my youth I used to play chess
I never really took it all that seriously
Never joined a club
Didn’t think about competing
It was just a game
But it was a part of me
It was a distinction
Of mine and of that long ago era
A Queen’s Gambit resurrected it
A phantom limb I’d forgotten even existed
And now I feel a spectral itch
Where no appendage should be
This set my head on tilt
How many other limbs
Did I let atrophy along the away
How many withered from neglect
How many were purposefully elastrated
Is this pruning a part of growing up
Does getting rid of the weak ones
The distractions
Make the stronger ones even stronger
Or just give us more time to focus
On the ones that suit our faculties
Do we know the right choices were made
When drawing became difficult
When fingers ached from guitar chords
Did we opt for an easier route
One we felt we had a better chance with
Of obtaining fame and fortune
Or do they simply resonate with our souls
Maybe they worked best at catharsis
Who knows
Maybe they’re never really gone
Maybe these phantom limbs
Are nothing more than neural pathways
All laying dormant
Waiting for a spark
Which could be anything
A movie that has you feel a cigarette
Between index and middle finger
A habit you kicked years ago
A song that makes you weary
From pulling all night cramming
For a college course whose ideas faded
The sound of rain on a tent
And you look down at hands twitching
They’re twisting ropes into a clove hitch
When merit badges meant everything
But the fascinating thing of all this
Often this body memory is subconscious
And the electricity dances and fades
In a dusty area of the brain
Frog’s legs attached to electrodes
Dance a do-Sa-do and allemande
The smell of a gymnasium is faint
Like when she smiles at you
And you feel a pulse of warmth
Your body remembers being loved
And now you itch for more
We fool ourselves
You’re either building sandcastles
Or your shoveling snow into a snow bank
Whether for fun or drudgery
The waves, the sun—time—takes all
The most indelible mark we make
Is our non-biodegradable flotsam
The little green, plastic shovel
Buried in the sand
The cigarette pack wrapper
Tossed while taking a shoveling break
This is the void that peers back at you
That nothing endures
That the space between
Between nucleus and electron cloud
Between the you, you are
And the you, you think should be
Between the moment we are born
And the lonely moment we pass
Their value is all the same
It is everything and nothing at once
We stand at the precipice of a black hole
Our thoughts trailing into a stretched line
Thinner and thinner
Mesmerized by our own gravity
Not unlike how chickens are hypnotized
Just before their heads are lopped off
That line drawn in dirt
Giving the chicken a sense of extension
That it never feels in the day to day
What comes first?
The numbing or the day to day
Do we anesthetize to handle
The doldrums of lather, rinse and repeat?
Or do we become number
With every shampooing we perform?
Does it even matter
If the end result is the same?
That long walk into the night
That sense of loneliness buffered
With bandaid purchases
A new phone for unmet career aspirations
A big screen TV for feelings of isolation
Consumerism is self-medication
The moments that matter
Are forgotten in the haze
Of the dopamine afterglow
Like pictures never printed
Digitally stored on devices
Password protected into oblivion
More flotsam
Our only sense of immortality
But…we fool ourselves