Regret tastes on lips
Like poison that can’t forget,
And I think of it.

 

When you see someone live,

You are already in love.

You remind me of someone I used to love.

I saw you,

Wrapped in sunlight,

And the curve of your cheek,

The cut of your jaw.

I shuddered down to my bones.

And confronted you on accident.

Relief and disappointment

When you were not her.

So I brought you some wine,

And cracked a joke,

And then watched you walk back

Into the sun.

Omelets of original sin.

Which came first?

Pre-creature sacks of protein strands

Sentenced to death because of their

Potential energy to live.

The good lie

To just get by,

But scramble too hard and

The potential is gone,

 

Like letting the rust

Come out of the sea,

And breaking everything

In the machine.

The sun set before I could watch it.

The tide receded before I could touch it.

The wind played dead before I could catch it.

Love turned away before I could identify it.

And life continues,

And time won’t stop,

And the Earth will turn,

Until I try to contain it.

I’ve lived in the haze,

I’ve counted down days,

Until I could qualify time.

I’ve run through the maze

And blinded my gaze

So I could ignore the extra time.

But now that my shoes

Are all warped, worn through,

I’m forced by the gods to collapse.

If only for a moment or

Minute,

My leathered feet teach me what it means to be

Tired.

I’m panicking

And my electricity went out

But my heartbeat still thumps

Without my knowledge.

Do you ever hear rabbits in the walls, but when you look for them, you realize that you’re outside, and you’ve been outside all day, and you think,

“Oh, I’m outside.”

Happens too often.

Where do the rodents go?

How do walls make resounding echoes, yet continue to not exist?

Am I asking the right questions?

It must be from feeling trapped?

---

Struggling to get a grip on the edge of a boat that I’ve relied upon for years

To pull me forward and out of the waves, but the Captain is

Insatiable

And says, “Set sail for the storm, my boys!”

If only I could hear or see with the salt water in my

Eyes and ears!

I’d relinquish this grasp and float gently

On the water

Back to shore.

Vibratory,

Like washing machines without timers,

My mind shakes

Back and forth

And onto topics sans worth

Except for what I give them

Accidentally.

At first a movie, then pure mirage,

With slippings in and out of

Plot and infrastructure.

What’s the direction?

What’s the Ethos?

Who am I?

I could tell you a thousand names

If only I had more tired.

There’s a bug in my ear.

Somewhere out on the linear path,

Before we turned old,

My soul realized that it had come

To where the media seer had told

Of coming-of-age and

The way to fit in,

So he threw away his toys and friends

And wore better-fitting clothes,

Drank clearer water and ate cleaner foods,

Shaved his smooth face and said

“I’ve been to the highest mountain and through

The deepest pass, and now I know what it means to laugh.”

And Fate began to cry,

Because no one had asked her what she saw.

How I’d given up on mud and Mother’s love,

Created a character from television and radio

Much braver and more stupid in regards to

The most important things in life.

Music left my blood

As quickly as it came,

That one summer night

When I fastened my first song

To the fret board of my Father’s guitar.

---

Now all I see are memories

Of songs completed and sang

To groups of strangers who

Applauded lightly and silently

Wished that they could do the same.

---

I must admit to you that

I feel an emptiness right where

The songs used to fill.

The echo chamber in my chest has

Emptied once again.

---

I tried to run and live a tune

With asphalt and tar and

A new person to call “you” when I sing,

But still there is nothing in there.

And sadly, I must strive to start over

With an empty fretting hand.

let’s write a poem:

T:

I pulled apart the curtains to pull apart myself

S:

I stayed behind the windows

I stumbled through the pages to stumble through myself

 

As I felt the pages unfold, and the flipped through the leafy gold

I wrote how I had become

I silenced the thoughts of the other ones

 

But they didn’t leave

They pitched tents just behind my temples

Intent to stay awake

Making shadow puppets on the canvas

 

From the flames of indian dancers

and real-life prancers

They celebrate what I watch

Because life cannot be taught.  

 

But I still scrawl notes and diagrams

Draw flow charts and histograms

In corduroys with coffee stains

As neighbor boys trudge through the rain

 

I’m a boy masquerading as a man

A mask parading all over town again

Only a crack between flesh and fake

My insides all slumber, cannot fall awake.

 

So I’ll invest in insulation

And expand interpretations.

 

If I was more or less

This or that

Then that would that be it?

Or would it still be like this?

 

But specificity was never my strong suit

and productivity is for the unmute.

So I’ll settle for not knowing more than nothing

And relax in the throwing of time into something

Click.

 

Clack.

Change the ribbon.

No ribbon.

Buy a ribbon.

Change the ribbon.

 

Pick.

Pack.

Empty your bag.

Fill up your bag.

Throw away your baggage.

 

Strap around the right shoulder.

Reach with the left.

Can’t grab what’s left.

Loosen the strap.

Reach with the left.

Sit back down, lean forward.

 

Consider for a second.

What to think first.

Is left the right choice?

Or in some way, the worst?

For I am a bag.

and a typewriter with no ribbon

A tree without leaves.

A thinker with no inhibition.

 

Fill me up,

I’ll latch on to you.

Change me,

I’ll mark myself.

I know you see what was,

Or what will be,

But not me

Now

 

My tinted glasses

Put shade in my eyes.

My shadowed soul

Seeps from my seams.

Because I blocked my windows

With curtains of iron.

So pull apart my curtains.

And pull apart my sins.