Shadows

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

Crossroads

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…?

New glasses

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

Unremarkable

When you close your eyes

Do I disappear?

When I exit stage left

Is my part played out?

The weariness of awareness

The algorithm of I’ll go with him

Am I just an angsty teenager

Carving FTW in my desk?

Am I a Myers Briggs for misfits

A Rorschach for depressives?

I think that I am just an ant

Self-sacrificed to bridge a gap

Those ephemeral spaces

Between obligations

When Pavlovian notification tones pause

And subsequent serotonin dumps seize

My words might remind you

Like a Jerry Springer rerun

That things could always be worse

This wonderful contrast

Makes your avocado toast pic likes

All the better thanks to my bitter

Like craving sweet after salty

But I’m just a palate cleanse away

From oblivion

Or is it a colon cleanse?

So push the handle down

Watch me spin round

The afterthought is just a trickle

Until the tank is full

Now go wash your hands

And it’ll be like I never existed at all

But for the briefest of moment

Words held charge

And action potential was achieved

The light

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

Mutually Assured Destruction

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

Icarus

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

Old

There’s a chill in my bones

That this springtime sun

Cannot reach

It’s a slowing of atoms

Approaching absolute zero

Of being 48 years old

Or whatever that means

The grass doesn’t shine

Like that from my youth

A fine layer of sediment

Has covered everything

Including myself

Something for the moss

To anchor to

Gravity is winning

As it always does

Will I rise from these ashes

Born anew

Or simply fertilize the thoughts

Of the next shift

The changing of guards

Over the hill sounds nice

Like the hard parts over

The struggle has ended

And momentum now carries me

But I must still take care

Each gravity assisted step

Could send me cartwheeling

When…how will I know that I’m enough

Take back

I step forward with right foot

Monkey brain chatter

Eyes darting to and fro

Buzzing in ears

Need to center

Calm

Replaying of conversations

What if I’d said

Now I’m 16 again

Telling my younger self

Just take the chance

Face flush

Sweat forming at hairline

The color red

Pulsing

The perceived evils I committed

Am I a bad person

Work tomorrow

Am I a fake

Will I be found out

This isn’t my dream

My son looks up to me

Am I there enough for him

Am I preparing him

Did I curse him with my psychosis

Hide the tics

Slow the stutter

Be normal

Send it out to the universe

Manifest

I’ve cocooned myself

In layers of antisocial avoidance

My metamorphosis

Will I gain wings

Where would I fly

Shut up and write

Turn off the 65” pacifier

Write the truest thing you know

Okay…I’m scared

Be that kid carving FTW into a desk

Do it for myself

Not for likes

Pink Floyd’s The Wall

My soundtrack for adolescent depression

When it’s too quiet I can still hear it

Mother, should I build the wall?

Breaking bottles

Piss into the void

Why does she always push away

Where’d that moment go

When we wanted to stay forever

Embraced under covers

Solace found in isolation

But this monkey brain

Tap the microphone

Adjust the levels

Ear piercing feedback

Echoes from missteps

Tiled hallways in cold institutions

Where is my place

My assigned seating

Switch the name card

To a seat near the window

Daydream your way out

Think of being encapsulated

Beneath the branches

Of a weeping willow

The wind shifting everything I know

Did I lock the door

Turn off the coffee pot

Did I do enough

Concentrate on breathing

Silence the chatter

Those words slipped out

Rewind the tape

Press record and do take 2

No matter what fork

The path leads here

The only thing you can take back

Is control

My mantra

Left foot steps forward

Scared

We’re all scared

Scared of not achieving

Self-actualizing

Of never being enough

For ourselves

For others

Of leaving no trace

Either now or in the future

Making a difference

Making ripples

Knocking over dominos

We bury ourselves in obligations

As a distraction

Even debt is a warm, weighted blanket

Like the commercial

Work harder to make more money

To afford more cocaine

So you can work harder

Only it’s not cocaine

It’s an anesthetic

Numbed we can march on

Into that last sunset

The only time the light seeps in

Is when you take notice of time

That you’ve been marching

Like this

For decades

And gotten nowhere

Even prosperity is a blanket

A good job that affords you things

Is still a job that wicks away the years

No matter how many trinkets

No matter how nice the trappings

They’re all just bars in the gilded cage

A cage that’s built to order

I think that the dream brings a freedom

That being a writer is a romantic vision

Having a room of one’s own

Creating worlds alone

That reaffirm my connection

To the very world I shun

That the words are seeds

Planted in the minds of the readers

That I gain existence in the sharing

That I obtain immortality

From the contrast of black letters

On white pages

I’m deathly afraid that writing

Will be nothing more than another

Obligation

A different kind of cage

Worse than that

That I’m not even good enough

For that cage

Maybe Bukowski is right

Maybe I need to go crazy

Or maybe I already am

Maybe I’m the most sane person on earth

Or is even believing in sanity

A form of mental aberration

Aberration implies a departure

From normal

What if normal, like sanity, doesn’t exist

Is knowing this the key to the cage

If the door swung open

Would we just stay perched

Afraid, because…

We’re all scared

Scared of not achieving

Self-actualizing

Of never being enough…