Independence

Sweltering

The heat collapses into melody, baring souls no longer present. A wild memory appears. It is super effective. The mind establishes the Moria bridge, refusing to move or die. Shadows fill the stands, silently cheering.

This time, simply existing is winning. A harder game, when doing nothing seems the wrong move. The wrong love. Cross. Don’t fight. Don’t remember or look back. Quests no longer lie in the swelter. The other side of the pillow beats the south side of the sky.

Magic is real. It’s just hard to perform.

Antidote For Dessert

I could be falling down, never to return
I could be learning how to love myself
Treading on the waves that cancel each other out
Leaving just the water I walk upon

You were a good minus one sometimes
It didn’t matter which one of us left the other behind
As long as we’re together, eye of a hurricane
As long as we’re apart, overcome with inner calm

It could have been different, if I had been stronger
It could have had ripples forward in time
Dreading the pain that comes with separation
Missing the one I left behind

Perfect Moments In Memory Glass

This is about love.

I watched this movie on Netflix called The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, and it was amazing. Hit me right in the feels. At the end, it was talking about perfect moments, and I realized that I wrote a poem about perfect moments for my middle brother’s wedding – read it during the ceremony, in fact. It’s this:

Eternal Matrimony

I don’t care that you’re running
I know you’re not running away
I don’t mind the mountains you climb
I know you’re not just with me ‘because I’m there’
I don’t mind if you look at another
I know you’re thinking of me
I don’t worry when you’re gone
I know you walk beside me
I don’t care that I may never get everything I want
You are all I need
I’m not upset by the raging river of differences between us
The stepping stones of perfect moments bring me to you
I don’t worry about your past
It brought you to me, and us to this perfect moment
And from this perfect moment to the next
Though our lips part, still we kiss
Though our hands let go, still we touch
Though our eyes close, still we see one another
Though our voices are raised, still we whisper
Of perfect moments and perfect love

In the middle of the movie somewhere, she said she’d only be friends. He wanted more. Unrequited love. And I realized that the moment before it became manifest, the love he felt – the love I feel for someone – is a perfect one. It’s like love is a baseball that can be thrown around and used to play fun games, but the minute it’s unrequited it is like a baseball signed by a World Series winning team. Sure, you worship it, cherish it, look at it from every facet, but you never touch it again, for fear of diminishing its value.

Some perfect moments need to be felt by feeling the feeling of remembering the perfect moment, rather than feeling the moment itself. I’m afraid that reliving the moment itself will eventually make that moment like any moment, one of many, a drop in the ocean, a raindrop in the sky.

A raindrop falling from the vast sky into the vast ocean.

Instead of that one raindrop that causes me and the person I love to smile and laugh and run like crazy for shelter from the storm that just started, and then watching it and listening to each drop, none of them like that first one.

Sometimes an entire person is encased in memory-glass. You can’t go back, you know. You can only remember.

You Can’t Go Back

Idle twist with benefits, one, two, three. Desires that take thorns through skin, but never bleed. How many feelings does it take to get to the center of my soul? The world many never know. I may never know. It’s a secret that nobody knows.

Icicles form in summer skies dripping from my eyes. I am cold, and warmth took a holiday. Yet, I burn.

You can never go back. Ever. Back is a nuclear holocaust wrapped in plastic, so it’s toxic and can’t breathe, and skin ripples, and tears pour into wine glasses blood red so everyone can have one.

I revolve around a barycenter between me and the idea of you. Maybe it’s not the best idea I’ve ever had, but it seemed like a good one at the time. Shut up. Stop. Let me bring the center back inside myself and put it between my head and heart again.

William Tell Over With

A cornucopia of worldwide utopia, sending hope to both of you, betrothed to you. Caterwauling storms bring drops and clatters, stabbing through hearts into the heart of something that doesn’t even matter, and even if it did, where is it on the wind? Wind up and unwind, to bring pieces of mind to act as the stones one might use to cross the river of blues.

You can’t go back. When you do go back, it’s either a painful reminder to you of what went wrong, or it’s a rejection of what you once were, plural and singular, and you’re putting the ‘sing’ in singular.

Blood ripping through my veins, dripping out of hearts and coffee and goddamns

…you would say, in variants and versions and sequels, like war drums, because you had actually declared war against everyone. You thought everyone had battled you for so long, that you went through learning it, through experiencing it, past expecting it, and straight on to causing it. Certainty was the pillow you lay your head on, and correctness was the sheet you slept under. You had guns, and you had ammunition, but one of them was wrong, so every time you hit your target, and you always hit your target, there was a little bit of backlash – and there was always backlash.

I was never sure if I should take away your guns, or your ammunition, or stand back and bandage your wounds… but I was always sure you wanted me standing downrange with an apple on my head.

Bitter Cold, Bitter Me

She was here and then she left. It’s not like it’s even been that long, but I still feel alone. This snow, and this pandemic, both are so isolating and depressing. On the rare occasions I feel depressed, I want to reach out.

But I can’t. Because I promised myself I would never go back. No one from the past.

For various reasons, I have shed people. Some are simply ghosts, disappearing without a trace and me, with no energy left to chase them. Many are gone for cause, good reasons I think. Not being a friend. Acting out their pasts on me. Taking advantage of my good nature, which fills my cynical cup up just a little more.

Some I loved, or could have loved, if not for that one fatal flaw. Some for a plethora of fatal flaws, but who’s counting? A few didn’t care to keep talking to me, so why should I try? You know, that situation where you decide to see what happens if you don’t always make the first move, send the first text… and then you never hear from them again.

So be it. I’ll wait for people who want my company. They’ll be worth it.

The Coldness Of Dropping Into A Relaxed State

It removes me. Drives the world away for a while, and puts me into my own world. I learned it is better to envision than to replicate. Better to imagine and create from that.

It’s death and life. It’s between. To express a vision. To change an image. My version.

This Coffee Shop Is Disconnected

Will the carrot and stick method work when I want something sweet and I feel no pain?
You took it all away and left me with everything
A fantastic trick

Does it mean that everything is okay when I no longer hear the screaming?
With no sound, laughing and crying look the same
Silence is also an answer

It’s Not You, It’s (How Much You Don’t Do It For) Me

Binge watching you break my heart
Plot twist in season two
I’m cancelled without a finale
The rally’s failed miserably
I have too
Fringe mocking me mercilessly
Haven’t found all the pieces yet
Guest starring in my own story
I’m not the hero
Is there any part of me left