Too Much

I don’t want to forget how we first met. Blue t-shirts, talk of how you hate this band.
Don’t want to let go of your words which resonate so loudly within my ears tonight, make their way onto top shelves of my thoughts and pick up pens with their melodies to write upon the pages of my memory.

I don’t want to let go today, of the ways you once whispered so delicately the hopes you had for the sky in the autumn mornings. The way you cheered on the sun as it rose or how your fingertips played with starlight against the evening sky.

I don’t want to forget the nights in which, somewhat like cream mixing with cups of black tea, the winter winds mixed with our exhales, our white flags of surrender to the cold.

I can’t forget the smell of dark leather bus seats, your closed eyes illuminated by passing traffic lights. Or the buzzing sound that street lamps make when you laugh beneath them in the morning.

I can’t see what it is that makes the earth spin around faster than cold carnival rides, empty subway trains or spoons in cracking coffee cups, because, presently, they all seem so much bigger than the world.

Dear Friend

Dear friend,
It seems like so long ago that I was counting the foot steps you took
To mimic them with my worn away, ripped-laced shoes. 
I will miss the days we spent in rooms, encased in white walls painted with music
Where it was not entertainment but a wondrous revelry 
To watch the notes and sentence lines like smiles float off pages, while you played 
in perfect time, melodies beyond my reasoning.
I will miss your eyes, bright green like grass that made me think of 
Old days in Switzerland and rolling hills in country sides at sunset.
Never forgetting the ways we laughed at coins stuck to walls
Or pictures in our heads. 
You would play Impromptu in C Major, and C would stand for things like
Courage, comfortable and care. Costly or contempt never came up.
Yet it seems that circumstances fade like hills and memories are washed away
as surely as they roll into the distance.   
And I can’t seem to hold onto them before they are washed into the horizon. 
What will happen to our days further down the shore
Is a mystery to me.
Time is like a supposedly-circular flower, moving and turning toward 
the sun but, every now and then, time’s edges seem rougher
Or more jagged than they seemed before.
But I won’t forget you, dear friend.
And I hope you won’t forget me, for I hold you deeper still than most in my heart
And wish you the best in the land of rolling green hills. 
       

Moments

Moments

In my head there are moments, moments stored up with my memories and thoughts of yesterdays’ shadows that were stolen by the sinking sun. Moments like photographs, stilled in nostalgia and held up by frail strings of thought as precarious as a déjà vu and as easily let go as the dismissal of the short-lived recollection.

 You see, there are moments so perfect, so lovely, so heartbreakingly beautiful in their stillness, that it seems as though they pause in the middle of reality. Every one has experienced them. They’re the view at the top of the mountain, slowly being revealed as you climb the steep slope, the short moment of peace after tears have run dry and all that remains is silence.

They are the sleepy car rides at sunset on the beach, when gazes fall to the person you love. When all that is heard is the hum of the engine and the golden sunlight paints their face with a warmth that seems it could never be stolen by shadows. When, in the calm quiet of observation, you look on at their drowsy smile as their eyes are lit to melted sapphires and you see nothing in that moment that is of the world, only that moment.

These are the moments captured in hearts, that are pulled out on rainy days, in times when clouds bigger than our thumbs cover us. The still-frames that fill the albums in our heads that we can flip through every time we’re caught up in the boring books of things we think we need to know. 

 I mean moments like eye-contact with babies, the loud, immature giggles you get from just looking at your best-friend from across the room. The moments when the bass kicks in at just the right time and all there is to think about is moving limbs and staying in between the ceiling and the floor. 

Instances that mean something, times when there is more to what’s happening than what’s happening. Times when dollar signs mean nothing more than the s’s in ssshhh. When thought fails to freedom of feeling. When the borders we set up in our minds and souls let go and we run thought flocks of birds, we dance in waves, we sing at the top of our lungs in convertible cars going at speeds faster than our reasoning.

 These are the moments in my head, the moments I can’t let go of, out of fear that I would become ordinary, that I would lose touch of the beauty that exceeds the stale reality of dusk. For to forget these things would be to lose them and who would allow shadows that pleasure? 

Friend

They say a dog is mans best friend, with fun and games to be had
But my friend is much more than a partner in crime, a buddy, a pal, a comrade.


He listens to the songs I write without a judging word,
The tunes and lyrics no one else but him have ever heard.


I strum till mirrors have gotten bored, till walls have had their fill
But my friend, he lays there, quiet eyed, I know he never will.


Mornings when clouds seem brighter now than the night that has long gone
I awake to find him by my side, all night he stayed till dawn.


We walk along the empty paths and he is sure to guide my trail
Even when I see beyond him, he leads my feet from fail.


Never too tired to stay awake and keep me safe and warm 
From the monsters in the giant box that growl with threats of harm 


And when tears have wet  my saddened face, he kisses them away
Whispering things like love and joy, and ‘my friend it's all ok.’


There are times when he is the only ears for the shouts of my frustrations and fury
And he listens close to every one, and doesn’t blame me for my worries.


My dog, my friend, is my closest ally, in him I will always confide.
Because I know that he will always be there, bad songs and tears aside. 

Red.

 

These red dust streets rise up in clouds of mysterious shapes and colors, moving and raging like the imaginations of the children who raise them with their barefoot games. Like the boys red t-shirts, ripped and torn, they are thin and fragile like dust clothes on their backs.

 These red-painted, peeling walls lean into themselves, just as uncertain of their strength as the family inside them. And the paint is as faded as the mothers love for her husband, the love that she never truly had. So long ago she danced under the falling pink rose petals in her tattered, orange dress and felt the embrace of her new family around her but felt nothing. So long ago, like paint, she too was put against that wall of hopelessness, left out, overlooking her days in the sun to dry, to wither, to fade.

 Bright red fruits that shine in the fruit stand on the corner are plump and fresh, the prize of the children who run from their villages to retrieve them. They smell of sun-ripened sweetness, and the spices alongside them are like the racing heartbeats of stallions on the hottest dessert days, with their shadows, at sunset, on the burning dunes.

 The red drums and strings of the men, who sit and play their music for hours, beat at paces and rhythms that weave their way into your chest and heart, take your feet hostage and move them away into lands of freedom and soul. They feel it, and when you feel it too, they smile.

 Fires in the houses of the town bring warmth and a feeling of home to the shacks they abide in, if only for a moment. Their heat dwells in the most popular spot in the house, and looks, to shine its’ golden light on the faces of the ones surrounding it.

 These thread-baron blankets are red, and they are cold. But the wind doesn’t need a color to take the life of the cold, crying newborn who just wants to grow old.

 Those drops of blood that were spilled in our town were red, the blood that was spilled when they came and told us that our innocence was wrong. But the red blood that seeped into these dusty streets was no less innocent than theirs.

 These red clay city walls feel, to me, as thin as cardboard. But they are so much harder as I race against them, my whole weight pushing toward my future. Freedom is a horizon on endless golden desert sands, but it’s strange how hopes of outside worlds and dreams beyond these walls can be broken as swiftly and surely as a shard of red clay falling to the dusty ground.

Pages

I have a story. My name that was woven so carefully through my yesterdays hangs precariously alongside my heart, swinging smoothly with every grandfather clock beat of my life and my words.

Each evening my eyelids fail like sunsets, drooping to cast hazy, distant, orange hughes on yellow houses in sands as white as the calling starlight. And as I slumber in reminisce of the day I hold behind me, my captive, my ransom. I fail to catch myself when dreams I beheld of innocence and truth fall to meet the strife I have gained. Memories of the ones I held dearly, laced between and stitched within my thoughts, become to look like patterns of longing and birds with broken wings.

They read my story. They looked on, even when I announced its' unimportance, they prayed and they laughed and they wrapped up their opinions like children in my life, my decisions, my mistakes. But if it's my story, save your regret for rainier days of your own. Your monotonous tears for people in cloudy days.

I have a story. The pages of which I have yet to revise, to edit, to rewind, erase, regret. Your sympathy is no good to me. For tell me when has one used sorrow as a pen? Regret as paper? None.

As for me, my pages are written on hope, on longing, on passion, strength, courage, life and tears. On justice and war, and peace and strife and all the in-betweens. Yes, save your sympathy, for it has no place in my story.

Glow Stick

Glow-sticks, where does the light come from?

Shake me up.

In magical warm colors, they illuminate the paths on warm summer nights.

Tread on me.

Burning like a hot day in the very middle of July or August. Popsicle?

Bite me.

Soothing like sensitive teeth toothpaste.

Brush me.

Warming, safer than candle light or camp fires.

Blow me up.

Bright in the allusion to a cigaret bud in shape and essence.

Light me up.

Fun like a good joke shared over hot chocolate and spana cepeda.

Crack me up.