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…?

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

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

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…

En Passant

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

Control

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

Commodity

What’s standing in my way?

Me

You practice saying croissant

While I practice saying thank you

And I’m sorry

When all I want to scream is…

I take compliments

As a toddler takes a booster shot

I follow conversations

The way a boxing commentator

Describes a 10 round flight

Finesse the points or swing for the fences

Or pretend to be good neighbors

As fences often are

We all say we want truth

But all we really want is OUR truth

When confronted with another’s truth

We swallow it whole

Hoping it doesn’t scratch on the way down

And that it doesn’t change the color

Of our shit

When it is done sustaining us

But remembering you

Never feels quite as important

As you remembering me

But remembering YOU

Never feels QUITE as important

As YOU remembering…me

But vampirism grants immortality

And ripples mimic wind currents

To the point we confuse words

With actions

Sometimes words are all we have…

Holding on

Unfulfilled dreams keep me marching on

The center is love, a heart, dangling before me

I am a donkey and it is the carrot

Only I have not aged as well as the dream

It’s keeps perfect time, pressing every step

Meanwhile my heart has cocooned itself for the long gulag trek

With years of self absorbed behaviors

Of buying into the “me”

Like a tree you could count the rings of fat surrounding my heart

To determine the age of my idiocy

This marching has given me strong calves and premature ventricular contractions

If only my dream was externally motivated

Something superficial

Swinging weights and drinking wheatgrass

Happiness measured in lean body mass

Fat is where the flavor is

A shark would spit out a fairly lean person

Perhaps muscle tastes like work

Fat tastes like leisure

A blubbery seal gives the shark an idea

Of what it must be like to stop swimming

I feel like I can’t stop swimming

I feel like Ice cream tastes a porch swing

What happens if I stopped swimming?

Like the shark I’d drown

Divining inspiration from dark waters

Making oxygen passing water across gills

But I’m a donkey chasing a carrot

I just don’t know if I have what it takes

The resolve

The skill

The talent

Am I enough for the dream

Is just having a dream enough for me

Is my heart cocooned for a reason?

Is it metamorphosing from yesterday

Into the heart of tomorrow

The one hanging from a string

My well worn heels synchronized

But will tomorrow ever arrive?

Or have I already drowned?

My march the simplest of actions

A living dead seeking the reminder

Of what warm, life’s blood still tastes like

Lean in

I’m so fucking happy

You’re not with me?

Here’s a joke to get you there

I’ll laugh the hardest

It makes it easier for you

But lean in

Listen hard

And watch my shifting eyes

I’ll laugh until I cry

I’m always envious

Of those who voice their pain

Who have no trouble bleeding

Each beat of heart

An arterial spray

But lean in

Listen hard

And watch hands limp at sides

This is just where they hide

I think—no…I know that if I start

I won’t stop until totally drained

Ready to be propped up

A formal way to hide

A much needed transfusion

Of formaldehyde

But lean in

Listen hard

Hands balled tight

I don’t even know how deep

The nails will go

I know there are limits

But is it a hardline?

Or does it shift by the moment?

Is it a mirage from heat off skin?

The glistening always moving away

With every step forward

But lean in

Listen hard

Capacity to reinvent identity

Means either all lies or nothing but truth

You can only describe the unknown

With commonplace words and terms

So I plumb this oubliette

With the span of your arms as rule

Because I could only ever trust mine

When I matched another’s tip to tip

But lean in

Listen hard

Because the mirrored fragments I steal

I give back with the only fingerprints

That truly promise identity

Lean in

Listen hard