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
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
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
Driftwood dreams washed up on foreign shores.
Sun bleached white.
Dismembered ghost limbs bobbing at oblivious heavens.
Would a corked bottle have been kinder?
Tossed is tossed though hope remains.
Acknowledge that part of me.
Jetsam.
That piece I thought you cared for, and in the caring kept it alive.
Atrophied petals drifting away in the slightest breeze.
Not dandelion seeds that dream of fertile purchase, but something destined to decay.
A mere reminder of what was once beautiful.
The red bled away and left a translucent skin…a thumbprint.
But beachcombers sift for shells and I am here in the land you left behind—hollowed.
The pieces that remain, that were always only mine, bring me no joy.
I look at the voids my decay has left and I long to be whole, or to be wholly gone.
I am left with nothing but phantom itching and sun bleached, driftwood dreams, that dance at the periphery.
If you do happen across these pieces of me, these driftwood castaways, fashion them with sinew into an effigy and burn me into ash.
Then I can ascend and serve as a beacon…a cautionary tale.
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
You’ve seen them after the accident
Flowers, stuffed animals, solar lights
A memorial for someone taken too soon
The glitter of glass on black asphalt
As above, so below
At first these tragic displays overflow
Friends, family, coworkers
Leave crosses, notes, stuffed animals
As time passes it diminishes
Until only a dutiful loved one
Stands roadside with fresh flowers
And a new set of solar lights
The hum of the passing traffic
Raising the hairs on their necks
The precarious nature of life
The uncertainty of a vigil
So close to the very hurtling weapons
That caused the death
Creating the emptiness
Now filled with trips to Home Depot
And Hobby Lobby
Do we leave a bit of ourselves in passing
Like haunted houses
Grandma is gone
But the smell of her cooking
The lilt of her songs
The rocking of her chair
Move in and out
Like exclamation points
On moments of longing
Does this happen roadside
To those left behind
When grass sticks to shoes
When tears mix with rain
When the lights flicker on
At dusk
Headlights illuminating this tableau
Do they wonder who will carry on
When they pass
Or if someone will do the same for them
We all grieve in our own ways
I know this
I want to buy a bench and placard
At the nature trails my dad walked
Celebrate his love of wildlife
I even spread his ashes there
Maybe making the flora greener
Which is the best we can hope for
A positive change from our leaving
Every time I pass a roadside memorial
I feel myself standing there
The longing
Cursing, perhaps, the carelessness
Of the driver of the WMD
I feel the loneliness in my bones
Someday I’ll stop at a florist
Leave a bouquet
How happy that would make them
Those passed and those carrying on
When I go I hope it’s at home
Surrounded by friends and family
If it’s my weary and clogged heart
That gives out
Go ahead and lay flowers and lights
In front of the local fast food restaurants
Leave a stuffed animal
In my dent in the couch
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