Commentary on "Our life is Not a Movie or Maybe"

What business of mine is this?
Your gilded lies, your golden wrist.
How could I have nerve enough
To wrestle with your narrative.

The story lines lack suspense
The characters have folded
I’ve been using your heavy edits
As sturdy, yellowed bookends

This life you have written down
Is steeped in ancient lore
Everyone knows happy endings
Are as real as fairy tales

The Page Says "yes".

This blank page is getting me down
I’m starting to lose my calm and collected
Cool. I’m sweating in a panic
My clothes feel too tight and constricting
I might be going insane
I might be falling in love
With these words as I type them.
Are these the words and phrases that
Are going to define me?
Is this the therapy I need to move on?
I continue to ask questions to a less and less
Blank page.
Which, doesn’t help since it
Cannot answer my delusions
And cannot make me grander.
Do I put myself in these situations to
Fill up blank pages?
Am I really talking to a full page
Of my own thoughts?
The page says “yes”.

Keep The Waves At Bay

Sitting with coffee in hand
Examining the day
Feet deep in sand
Keeping the waves at bay.

Watching the sun work
It’s way through the sky
Higher and higher
As I just sit by

I listen for your foot
Steps, slow and deliberate
While I work though the root
Of what keeps the waves at bay

As I sit by
As I sit by
I keep the waves
At bay.

Scotch for Steve

I fill the glass with ice and slowly add scotch to the halfway point.
I watch the ice settle and slowly become one with the warmer liquid.
Sitting back I examine the glass at different angles,
the world becomes smaller through the glass.
It spins my vision into multi hued shards of light.
I can now let go of the day and let the night reclaim me.

Sayin' Goodbye

We made our way through the wet grass and sat down by the water.
I smiled watching the water rise higher and higher.
I felt like it would wash over me, wash me clean.
I held back my tears; you should see a stronger person than this.
The lightning illuminated the monuments and the water pulsed higher driven by sheets of rain. We sat frozen in time refusing to acknowledge its passing.
The rain fell faster and you held me close trying to quiet my shivering body, so close I thought I might break.
Looking down I could see pieces of me floating away in the turbulent waters. I knew if I tried to gather them back up I would only fall in the water and be consumed.
I let them go and held on to what was left. I knew that this night would soon be over and time can’t be held off.
Soon I’ll be looking out over another body of water.
Maybe I’ll still be thinking of you, but maybe there will be someone new beside me.

Daily Drudgery

This is my day:
9:15 am. get to work. Play on Facebook for an hour.
10:15 am. My boss gets in. I pretend to work.
11:15 am. I do a few minutes of work dispersed between games of scrabble online with friends.
12:15 pm. Sweet Lord, it's almost lunchtime! Yes yes yes yes! I eat something at my desk and wait for 1:45pm.
1:45 pm. I leave for the gym and work out for an hour. I get back at 3.
3 pm. I do about an hour of work or look like I'm working. I tend to walk around to kill time.
3:45 pm. I go get a coffee, maybe get some food.
4:00 pm. I rejoice in the fact that it is almost 5.
5:oo pm. I get the hell out and re-energize. On the walk home I fantasize about quitting my job and moving to france.

Repeat Mon-fri.

Alaskan Memories

My memories, once fresh, grow hazy and dark. Is everything as I remember or a product of my imagination. It doesn’t seem possible that just a year ago I was walking, waist deep in snow, to work.

On occasion, I would run late because the bus would have to stop for a moose in the road. Some friends would cross country ski to and from work. People from the “Outside” ask me, still, if I lived in an igloo. Sometimes I tell them I did.

Never in my life have I lived somewhere where the mountains surround you at all times, where the wind whispers tribal secrets and the radio plays native music. Alaska truly was another world, one that I was lucky enough to have touched.

The summers are short and fleeting, but beautiful in ways that I cannot describe. The winters wrap themselves around you completely and choke out the sun. On a day after a snowfall all you see for miles is white, even the horizon is coated. It gets so cold your hair freezes and becomes white, car doors freeze shut over night if not tended to properly. You can get so cold you feel you will never be warm again and there is only one road out of Alaska and it takes you to another country before you can get back into the States again. Alaska is what fairy tales are made of, or what they hope to one day become.

Cracking Knuckles

Cracking knuckles


sliding hands across
bare skin
you can see
im barely breathing.
I couldn’t get an intake
of breath
you robbed me of that
when you entered the
room so dramically
quite aware you were
putting on airs.


Everything ive ever wanted to
Ask you flew out the window
With my words
And my courage.
Everything in my head
Is streaming across a marquee
In uppercase letters
But the light’s gone out
And I cant seem to read
Anything on the screen.

God and Coltrane

I found God the other day.
Saw him in the music isle between country and rock and roll.
I found God in the music, through the notes.
Almost missed him in the tempo change.
My pulse beat right in time with the staccato of Coltrane
From the loud speakers.
I should have known he’d be a jazz man.

Blush

I’ve been holding onto the something between us that defines us,
Makes us blush.
Makes us real.
What if I let it go?
Where would it go if I released my grip?

Our identities are tied up in “things”
What we do is what defines us
What happened to what we stood for
Defining us?

I just wanted to get one thing straight:
What is it that defines you?
Because it’s not me,
Not anymore.

Fireflies

An old romance grows stale
In the hills above Hollywood
The relationship fails.
Dancing on hard wood floors.
He’d make her blush,
His words hit a vein.
She’d start to stammer,
Whisper to hush
They were on the same plane
Of thought—fireflies
In the night, blinking lights on the inter-state
Trying to find their way home,
She’d sigh, reminisce.
Our storm no longer insulates.
Fireflies in a losing battle
Of inner fire.

I could make a pretty poem

I could make a pretty poem
And mold it into something
With line breaks
And stanzas

Maybe it would win prizes
And be misunderstood
It would have to have a clever
Rhyme scheme

It would be about real life
But with a twist
Maybe about me drinking my
Morning coffee and reaching an
Epiphany through the swirls
Of mocha in my mug

Oh, it would have alliteration and
Maybe some consonance. I could throw
Some big words in for good measure
Like “narcolepsy” and “prescription pills”

Maybe the latter is what I was on when
I ever decided to write a pretty poem
With line breaks
And stanzas
And complicated rhyme scheme.

righteously

Walking away was the hardest path
But, always, my path led right back to you
Farthest I got was around the block
I turned around not knowing what to do.

Lightning lit up the walkway
Rain poured down from the Alaskan skies
Thunder stormed our paths
But in the end it was you and I.

You and I
It seems to be
You and I--
Righteously.

Knowing time is ticking
I cannot watch the clock turn
I took it down off the wall
Afraid of holes it would burn

Into our already fragile time.
But your secret smile makes me forget
That now is passing to then
Knowing we will leave without regret.

You and I
It seems to be
You and I--
Righteously.

Today turns into tomorrow,
As the present cannot last
But it leaves a sadness behind
Soon today will memory’s past.

Tonight, tonight, I can hold you in my arms
Time will stop tonight or at least slow down
We can keep life at bay here in your bed
Tonight, tonight, time will stop, time will slow down.

You and I
It seems to be
You and I--
Righteously.

Temporary

This back and forth is making me sick.
I can’t sleep--lest I wake up and find you gone again.
I could’ve sworn you were right next to me.
Falling in love felt like a test of wills.
Mine against yours.
Who could hold out longer?
Lying next to you felt like I was lying to you, and you know I’ve never been good at lies. I’ve been frantically trying to finish the words I am writing for you,
there’s always one that doesn’t fit the rhyme.
Trying to force the mold only works for a short time.
You did a number on me, like I knew you would.
Could I fault you for something you told me in advance?
I guess I tried to forget what you had said.
You let me in only to close the door on me, one foot in.
Watching your “High Art” unfold across the screen made me think I could never be that for you.
You told me “temporary, temporary”,
But made this feel real.

Give me shelter

I watch my tea steep
It gets darker and turns the
Water into something else
Entirely.

I am glad for my time
Working in the Shelter.
Knowing that my time
Here means change.

Not just change for the
Women enduring abuse,
But change for me to
Have seen this "life".

My life has changed,
Fluid, turned from one
Image to another.
Not unlike my tea.

My tea tastes like hope
The colors of change.

Nada

When it comes down to it do
You swim or sink?
Give it a good try before
Giving up.
Throw in the towel as you
Throw up your words
As defense
Or a delayed
Poem
Of broken down
Curse words.

You learn to edit and
Mold these
Words
With a fancy education
Or a thesaurus.
Turn your pain into
Roaming melodies of sound

When you shiver
You realize it has
Nothing
To do with the cold
And everything
To do with the smooth lines
Running through your
Overheated mind

Smoking Gun

Smoking Gun


Here I am
Back where I started.
This starting block is worn
And the starting gun misfires

Quarter life crisis
Nicely sums up
Nothing
Of what my life has become
Or where
It is going.

I’ve slipped off the worn
Starting block
And I am swimming
Naked through
This blue pool of life.

I left my clothes draped
Over
The smoking gun
And swimming soundly
Naked as when I
Was born.

Fall

The cool breeze runs its long fingers through the branches. The tree dances back and forth and scatters brightly colored leaves to the already dense pile beneath it. The wind holds moisture- a promise of rain in the near future. The sun light glints off the dry leaves and nearby wood smoke floats upward and disappears into the darkening clouds. Children laugh nearby and the sound drifts along lazily. The brilliant yellows and burgundies of the sunset are reflected in the color of the fallen leaves. They crunch and whisper as an old man walks his dog along the path. He makes his way slowly--his dog’s tail swishes against his pant leg in a steady pattern. He and his dog disappear over the hill. The sun is almost gone now - the clouds coveting the last rays. A young couple walks just as slowly as the old man, but they are savoring the walk. He has his arm around her waist; her head is on his shoulder. He whispers softly in her ear as they pass under the tree. Startled- a gray bird takes flight; they look up and smile as it fly away.

Monday

The traffic whirls by as I slowly awaken to the noises of suburbia. I flex one foot at a time and slide the blankets away from my body. As I stretch I think about all the chores I will have to do today and how I want to get away from suburbia. Life whisks by so fast that you only get a subtle hint of nostalgia a taste of what has past. My tongue is sweet and bitter all at once as memories fall away. This morning I hear only what I want to hear—the alarms been ringing for hours. I’m sure my roommate has been up since it first went off. This is the day I leave it all; this is the day my memories here end.