Home » 2019 (Page 25)
The steps you take are big
where mine are small,
the steps I take are soft
while yours make imprints.
For now it seems that I am lazy
as you wipe sweat off your brow,
try to understand my empathy
for oak trees rooted to the ground,
and take heed in the soil, though I may
not make a sound, a drop of rain
breathing life, the only way I know how.
There is a blue jay
on a branch, in the sun
through blinds I peer,
whether he sees me
or not, I look back to the screen
then back again, he’s gone
his coat, blue velvet
my memory, strong
though perched somewhere else
I whistle his song.
Not one trouper builds a circus alone.
(I could go into detail about the intricacies
of setting up and breaking down a circus
but now is not the time or place for that.)
When a clown throws a pie
he doesn’t expect the trapeze artist to clean it up,
but she helps out anyway, knowing
that he believed in her, marveled at each step
while she danced on air, inhaling her courage from below.
lucky 13
31 but I see
the perfect representation
of what it means to free
that little boy caged
like a curse
relieved
in the back of a hearse
lucky 13, reversed
over time, it’s easy to see
at 31 years old
that boy was me
the clock and sun
read 5:51
like an infant I stare
where breathing is none
combing my beard
for wisdom or some
alternate side
of 5:51, where now
it’s 5:52
I know I couldn’t have seen what I saw,
but I know I saw it anyway.
An old man, waving, his hair as gray as ash,
his beard trimmed short, a weathered Yankee cap,
his eyes like magic eight balls, googling my senses
causing me to stop and turn, knowing
I’d imagined what couldn’t be. But the mind
doesn’t have to play by any rules
that aren’t of its own creator,
like those magic eight balls whose advice
never really did make much sense,
whose questions we never truly sought to answer.
An idea
fosters questions.
And questions
raise ideas.
Picked like peaches,
pickled and peppered,
in sealed mason jars,
upon dusty wood shelf
buried in a garage that smells
of gasoline, and summer.
Where as kids playing nerf
we never raised such questions
not having any idea
of the hungry beast out there
waiting, sharpening its claws
using our parents as dental floss,
grooming its teeth, and ready
for the day
it too, could devour our peaches.
the living
make the dead
immortal
gods
are born
this way
where in
life, they
were men
in death
their spirit, like
shadow puppets
used
by many hands
to spread the word,
grave men and grave women
only hear in death
because they can’t
listen in life
unable to fathom, that
gods walk among us
all the time.
The fears of men
are as trivial as
children, picking children in gym,
they never change
they just get bigger.
I take off my shoes
to walk in the rain
through thunder & lightening
it’s a damn Good Friday.
Words Of An Average White Male 