SIDEWAYS EIGHT PROJECTS

Sittin’ back relaxin’, sippin’ sweet tea from a black tin left by the former tennant, a never has been.  Ice already meltin’ from the hot tea and summer swelterin’.  Waitin’ on a day that’s gone, or half gone, to cross the beltway and visit a friend who just moved to a ‘commune’ anticipatin’ life’s great things.  Someone complained to the county about me indirectly, and the old wooden furniture in the frontyard.  This stint and fresh start is hard. Not sure if you’re invested in the picnic table or the bench that hid in the shade the tree made in the beginning part of the day see.  I write away and decide today, if anything I have to say will ever make a difference anyway.  This generation is about glitter and twitter, facebook and only plusses in the gradebook.  A dismayed look, because they’re so damn busy, they’ve forgotten what it is they can hope for.  Everyone has a dope roar, and a fresh idea that they link up and sync up, while drinkin’ a stiff drink up to the brink of their cup.  My girl places a white bowl of salt on the table, and says that if I want, or if I’m able, I can add it to my sandwich and make it taste better.  But I’m so famished, I take a rain check for later, and thank her anyway for the suggester.  I don’t know how she does what she does, but I’ve learned to never doubt her.  I’m the angry shouter, but I learn something new everyday about her, and she helps remind me of what I can really shout for.  A life that’s about more.  More than look at me now, with nothing real that I’m saying.  More than delayed gratificayin’ and nay sayin’ playin’ filled with cynicism and hate when it is real hope for which the world’s waitin’.  So if someone from the county’s complainin’ about a rotted bench that is straining to stay up, decayin’, being an eyesore, around which no rich kids want to be playin’, I’m going to still focus on swatting the locusts with a little verbal hocus pocus.  Words do make a difference.  I’ve heard the words before from a different stance.  A different dance to a different tune.  I may be a different type of baffoon who today didn’t wake until almost noon because he stayed up well past two.  However, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God.  And if I, staying up late at night, fighting inside my own head, trying with my might to write something that might make a difference get that nod and that wink from on high, then its worth it.  I may not be the true source who was able to birth it, but I can be shown it is more than a cursed fit.  Its a blessed fit.  And you may have guessed it, as I suggest it, or already know that I’m a poet.  But to me it is more important to be a vessel.  Getting these ideas outside of my mind and my chest will somehow instill the will in the entirety of me to go on one day at a time.  She did this, he did that.  They said this, and I’m fighting my rhyme.  Wearing tattered sanuks and jersey shorts, with battered looks on the jersey shore.  I want more out of my life and through my life, and perhaps through my strife and elation, forced humility and anticipation, I may just be handed a key to the kingdom and a clue to the equation that has plagued men from the dawn of civilization.  What is worth living for, giving more, crying for, and dying to self for.  Love.  Above, below, to the left to the right and beside.  Outside inside, in our midst and across the great divide.  Within us to begin us, able to befriend us and end us.  Still and small to lend us, big and bold to mend us, beyond time and space to rend us awestricken and jaw dropped.  Able to make me smile with each drip of hip hop that has dropped from my tongue, even if I am the only one who has ever heard it.  If I stay up all night with the spirit beside my side it is worth it.  Standing on a makeshift stage resting on hardwood floors, it may seem hard to look for more.  Basement below, attic up top, trying to collect the drips that drop, to be able to take small sips from a cup that won’t stop until my hop becomes flying, and a break in the crying becomes ceaseless relying.  I aint preaching, I’m just trying to make a difference, even if just in one heart.  Mine.

The unrecognizable sidekick that the superhero takes for granted.  The blank mind into which the great idea was planted.  Being caught on tape, with means, motive, and opportunity.  Lawyering up to the point that you forgot you even met me.  You and me, we, are the same.  No hidden agenda.  No unnamed game.  Enemies of the same draft.  Friends of the same mechanic.  Allies with same tide that sends the coast dwellers into panic.  Signifying depth at a hundred and two degrees with fifty percent humidity.  The daily show posts ads that hint at the fact that you hid from me.  This is cupid’s city.  This is about love, but you can’t see it.  Hidden between the words, between the lines, are the fibers of five hundred count sheets woven from the blanket of love.  But I can’t see it, because its wrapped in the blanket of blood.  These wanderings into madness, make me feel as if I have had this nightmare before.  I might care if there was more that would finally be the end to it all.  But, the blessing that is the curse turned the purse upside down, emptied it out, and gave the curtain call for sometime in the next life. 

What if so and so is actually right?  The one who seems like the lunatic on the fringe, but who is actually kind of sweet in a rednecky sort of way.  What if he is right, and the ones we might look down upon will actually be kings and queens in the next goaround.  These what ifs can be damaging if one doesn’t spend a thorough amount of time reading in the good book.  Just what is that one book that is referred to as good.  Is it the Queran?  The Bhagavad Gita?  The Bible?  The complete idiot’s guide to 80’s television?  My wallpaper is peeling off only to reveal a hidden gesture of kindness in these words.  In these words lies the everlasting mystery of youth, forgiveness, hope, fulfillment out of emptiness, and love. 

We can never forget love.  Ashes to gashes.  Dust to trust.  We stare at the headlines, and our collective psyche begins to bust.  Welcome to the motherland, or fatherland depending upon your pre-existing bias.  Let the cold waves lap on the shore of your overcaffeinated mind.  Let kindness seem novel rather than common.  Not common in the anti-spectacular way.  Common in the typical behavior of the world as a whole sort of way.  Can the bunker that is safe hold enough room for all of us?  Because, if not, the war needs to stop.  The clean water needs to increase somehow, and mouths need to be fed.  Otherwise, there is going to be a whole lot of dying.  A whole lot of crying.  A whole lot of why the fiddly frick was this necessary that is asked by a handful of people who are meek on the Andes somewhere, with dogs who still howl at the moon and pretend they are wolves.  This is love.  Read between the lines.

Warm puppy breath across my ankles, belly up, legs extended with toe nails like small tacks.  I lie awake after four and half hours of sleep, seemingly able to relax.  Light grows in the room as the sun over the blue-greens begins, in the distance, to rise.  The roosters are crowing while it is the indigo, not to my surprise.  The fan is unnecessarily blowing, and a dirt bike later comes up the road.  The simple life I love in another visit to the farm, a day or two before fireworks explode.  Friends all over the country, friends all over the planet.  Most won’t see the limestone outcroppings, third hill, the animals, or the granite.  What was hell on earth for me for many months, has become somewhat of an oasis now, as somewhere I believe God winks and smiles.  A change of heart and attitude, with a fresh start and Sara B’s ‘Many the Miles’.  The puppy doesn’t have a name yet.  My energy came and went.  This game of life spent most of what I had, with not much that I still grasp.  Time takes its toll, we reevaluate goals, and humility looses the clasp.  When I dream it is brief and incoherent.  When I pray it is usually short and sweet.  I want the still voice to know when I hear it, and my empty words to be edit, select all, delete.

Will I read the books I’ve already bought?  Will they simply accompany me in my next moves.  They won’t fetch a price, but the idea is nice, and my time spent doesn’t prove.  I return to the puppies’ breath.  It is real and it is now.  In some way that is enough for today.  Somehow.  Driving with music will be done in the AM.  Harper’s Ferry perchance by night.  Why am I among those who continue to do wrong, while trying to justify it as right?  I ask to be taught and then despise when it happens.  I am like a stubborn child pushing his plate away.  But I digress, I learn nevertheless, and puppy breath suggests a decent day.

Ageless wisdom just flew over me in a very fast plane, and didn’t stop to rest on my head.  Once I seem to believe I have it, I keep lying awake in my bed instead of resting as I should. I will sleep soon, or perhaps just when I am dead.  The things we think become what we drink, as we drown in the mindscapes we tread.  Go with me on a journey.  Anywhere.  We can stay here if you like to dream but not move.  So long as we are moved to tears from children’s laughter, the third act will make the entire play worthwhile.

This is my confessional.  A page that won’t be read.  Rather than dusty wicker like webbing of form that resembles a net in a gothic church somewhere, I throw my thoughts into this web, and let it stick.  Thoughts and dreams persist and faith rides on high singing with the birds unknowing of the words, and yet moved by the tune.  I can put everything that is within me outside here and make sense of it as I read it through when I am done.  I am one with it.  It wants to reside within.  It causes that spark that screams to be heard at 12:45am in the silence of summer air.  This is my calling.  I try to fight it because of the pain that it brings, and yet it is the only thing that consistently makes my heart sing.  A chord with notes.  A chord of wood for the cargo boats to light the pyre and follow it to the horizon.  This is my net work.  I limp to the plate and swing at the fastest pitch that comes my way.  The breeze hits my face and I know that I can sing by myself.  The spirit hears me and tests my heart.  Always coming up short, but always enough, because it is all that I have.  I am fishing for a bounty.  I’ve allowed myself to be caught, reeled in, consumed, overwhelmed, and blessed.  Not bad for the full course of one unsuspecting evening.  I confess.  I dream and I am imperfect.  I want peace, but all to often seek a lesser way.  The path of least resistance and the path of greatest reward seldom cross.  But, when then do we may stop and see signposts of many a generation who have come before us, and root us on from the stage we will one day leap to.

Tonight as I lie here in your bed without you, I’ve decided, wide eyed, to write a poem about you.  You laugh and the world laughs with you.  You cry and the surroundings fall silent and hush to conform.  You smile and light wraps itself around you.  You try to lie, but look down at the ground and give away your call.  That tell of an honest heart, of a lovely warmth that dares to be scared, and hide inside.  Bubbling over with a rich energy that seeks, and procrastinates, and hesitates sometimes.  Yet giggles and jumps, and dances and sings at other times.  I sometimes forget what I can miss.  I often miss the mark while trying to draw again.  We hurl birds through the air without a care and laugh as the world crumbles around us.  Help me rebuild the castle and open doors that were once locked windows.  Belief can be sharp.  Passion can be tangled and intertwined.  Trust can be golden.  Laughter can be infectious.  Eyes can lift an entire body without the presence of touch besides the gentle squeezing of a heart until it speaks the tongue it thought it forgot how to use.  A muse and a chief.  A relief from abuse.  A thief in the night asks us to choose.  Win or lose we are here now, and nothing in the past can be changed.  I am estranged from versions of myself I once knew well.  They vie for your attention at the ball.  Dance with all of them, but choose to leave the party with the gentlest and calmest of the bunch.  I have a hunch you might just be glad that you did.

I can feel you.  I can feel the pressure as you arrive, and the release as you leave.  You attempt to peel the layers at your leisure, unable to thrive, unless others cease to believe.  But, I can feel you.  The tiny fibrous hairs on the back of my neck, the dilation of pupils, and a stilling of my heart.  An empathy for the widespread despair which lacks a look-out deck, a few scruples, and a willing start.  There are no horns, save the paintings.  There may not even be a grimmace or a wink.  Each book with care warns against the unrestraining and malice in the thoughts we think. 

Yet there are at least two sides to every story.  I can try to love my neighbor and my enemies.  I can try not to have enemies in the first place.  I can try, amidst the push and shove to stay the course, and still end up in the worst case.  It isn’t me that is good or great.  It isn’t you that wouldn’t wait.  The bell tolls and waves kiss the shore.  And you couldn’t hate the smell of souls who wish for more.  The silence gives clues that the heart cannot redirect.  And the chaos of the day gives way to night.  The one we pay keeps wanting to collect, and the brink of dismay lives grave to light. 

I can feel when I say that I do not wish to feel.  I can see when I know I do not wish to see.  Collect the pieces of my peel, light them, taste them, and shine my core.  Give me a hint of the amazing dish to be.

wandering far from home, only to return with fresh eyes and see the landscape anew.  A tourist that is a traveller’s companion to himself with a heart that has been shaped by hope as well as disappointment.  Take a moment to refresh the page that covers your lids like a sandstorm in May, and see if looking someone in the eyes becomes more difficult.  I cannot believe how little I follow the teachings that I believe, and how far I am from being the good samaritan.  Plagues and tragedies torment the world and I do nothing but act selfishly and slowly.  Give me ears to hear the voices you would have me hear, and eyes to see as you do when I need them most, without being blinded before children, and limp before races.

It starts with a spark amidst the dark, spoken poetry and random kindness, adding plugs to the end standing for the ignite switch we all need.  We all breathe, we all bleed.  We all need to move and be moved whether in pages or across counters, in conversations and encounters.  Lively richness attempting to ditch this sense of a false self for the sake of the real underlying fundamental principle.

I know I should be asleep at two-twenty-four, yet where I came from doesn’t match the time frame of where I am, and where I am does not match the time frame of where I am headed.  I hope.  The idea of heading to a place that is outside of space and time, where rhyme is spoken and sung, and words are flung through the air with great care, but no hate, and we can wait forever and a day regardless of the way one walks or another may say what he or she has to say.

I know I should be asleep at two-twenty-nine, but the shivers up my spine are beyond benign, without being malignant, they are ecstatically indignant, and I stop to think that right now someone, somewhere is just waking up and making up their excuse already as to why they are going to have a bad day.  Thoughts become things and the heart that is hard today wants to sing, but it is afraid to be booed off the stage again, and be filled with rage again.  The anger comes from a wound that was once love.The hardness comes from the formulation of a protective outer layer that wants to tear itself down and be open to the wind blowing.

I know I should be asleep at two-thirty-five, but I am alive and well, and safe and sound.  My plane touched down on the ground without incident, and a hidden hint I whispered that’s a bit irrelevant still echoes in my ear.  I may fear things that don’t leap to mind right now, but I don’t feel as though I fear anything or anyone at the moment.  I find rest in the inspired spark, a flicker in the dark, a timely remark, and the thin layer of air between the trunk and the bark that can’t feel the bite of the cold air.  I care, and I am sorry that I care, but I do.  I remain cold on the outside, and inside I am a well of emotion and conversations that have been forgotten by others whose mothers never knew the impact they had. 

I am saving the best for last, hoping I don’t run out of gas on the overpass, or at work, or in class.  I believe that it can be done differently by a handful of brave souls who dare to stick their necks out for the sake of love.