A Valentine

It’s not much of a rhyme

But it’ll have to do

Cuz here is the “why”

For all my “I love you”s

For not yelling at me

When I’m drying my hair

While you’re trying to sleep -

- a dragon in his lair

For thinking of me

And laughing real hard

When to China you sent

Farts in a card

For always being on top

(When we hold hands)

And not making a face

At my silly ring demands

Taught me to shoot a gun,

Say a knife I should carry

Just in case…

Things ever get hairy

On my fingers and toes

And strands of my hair

I can’t even count

The times you’ve said “I love you”
(wait that one didn’t rhyme)

You don’t bite my finger

When I stick it in your nose

And at the gym we make fun

Of all those silly frat bros

When you talk like a Russian

I get such a giggle

And when the spider beard attacks

You must try not to wiggle!

Give me hugs give me love

You have all of my heart

This path that we’ve taken

Was right from the start

(except when I broke up with you a month into the thing and you were rude to me and then we got back together but you still hold it over my head that I could’ve missed out on all this)

“Life is life”

This much is true

But it’s so much more fun

When I live it with you

I’ve got my cake. And a side of cookies. And maybe some cupcakes too.

Forbidden Prayers

The texture of the cherry wood pew comforts me as I begin to think of life and you dear brother. Red candle holders make me feel at ease as I begin to take out my Bible. My knees ache and crack as I try to kneel and bow my head. Trying to forgive you Tiger Woods is like playing games with the devil. There is little hope for you. You are stuck in denial; knee deep in unconformities and sin. I will pray for you. I sit, I stand, and I kneel for your healing and saving. My eyes draw shut for my prayer in a foreign tongue, and I praise God for the saving of your soul. But, I am afraid that you cannot be save my dear Tiger. You are not a child of God. As I walk gracefully down the aisle to light a candle for your condemned soul, soft whispers penetrate my ears like jack-hammers. “Is that you Lord,” “Yes my child,” the manly voice of Morgan Freeman whispers back. I am at ease when hearing his voice, the rise and fall of his breath brings peace to my mind. He tells me to pray for you, to light one hundred candles for you, but I seem to have forgotten my matches, oh and my lighter. Do I really want to see you in Heaven? Do I want to witness to you, you lost forgotten soul? After what you have done dear brother I do not know if I am even allowed to pray for you. Oh, but I must… Would you rather spend eternity in Satan’s circus, yes I think you would. Do not kid yourself, there are no peanuts and cotton candy there. Clowns shoot poison out of their breast flowers Tiger. The devil will fool you, you know. He will become your friend in eternal damnation. Brother I am telling you to repent, to ask for forgiveness. Your sin of choice rips thoughts of you through my energetic brain, you being gnawed to death in hell, and then being brought back to clean up your mess. Unforgiven souls of lust are sent to Satan’s circus. Wind will blow with hurricane forces to destroy you, the waves of dense sin will taunt your appendages like bitter wind in winter. Those poor women dear brother; did you not think your past would win this race? Dear Tiger of mine you will never finish first. The deep canyon like voice whispers again to me, “My child, you shall not pray for this lost soul. I will take care of my fellow black man.” I want to respond to this voice, I want Morgan’s autograph; but I must listen to my Father, and I must obey his commands. I have been forbidden to pray for you my brother. The Lord does not welcome you into his Kingdom. I will go to hell for praying for you. I pray for you Tiger. As I kneel for the last time, Morgan lights a smoke and blows a black cloud of disappointment in Tigers face, and my dear brother slowly descends into Satan’s circus…he gets to clean elephant butts.

我想念你

To begin with a cliché or two.....
I miss you so much that it physically hurts.
Being here without you is like living without a limb. or two.
I miss your smile. and your touch. and your stupid mustache.
I keep watching movies about finding love and losing love and the journey in-between that I wish we'd watch together and that makes me miss you all over again and even more.
But that doesn't quite do it justice.
No, what I really feel is much different from what people have felt and said before....
I miss you the way Mrs. Clause must miss Mr. Clause on Christmas Eve when he's gone all night.
If a zebra woke up one day and discovered that it had no stripes....that's what it feels like to go to bed without you.

I ache for you in the way that a painter with stage 3 Parkinson’s aches to create just one more masterpiece.

My bedroom floor is empty without your socks. and no matter how my day goes, when I hold that t-shirt close and breathe you in…..i cry.

If Adam hadn’t eaten that apple…..well I miss you more than he would’ve missed Eve.

Sometimes words fail me and the blunt truth of it is: I want to learn how to play the guitar so that I can play for you and I’m horribly unavoidably unexplainably terrified that you’ll tire of this waiting game and most days I’m not even quite sure why I walked through that airport and onto that plane in the first place.

Because you’re not with me and that feels like a frog that can’t jump, a universe with no stars, books without pages, pillows with no feathers, a pen that won’t write, french fries that aren’t crispy, a snowflake that won’t melt.

There’s no substitution for you.

& I miss you.

What I Remember Of A Political Struggle

It happened quite quickly. I knew what had happened as soon as it had. It happened in the afternoon. As commuters got on and off the bus at 1^st and Main I silently bled beneath my suit jacket. The bus doors folded shut. I went reaching into darkness for salvation, a pole, a goddamned pole to hoist myself up. I eventually stood welcoming back my vision. I pulled myself out of the void and back into a lifetime of daytime television. Two more stops and I’ll be okay. I’ll be back on my way.

As I stood there clinging with white knuckles onto the strap hanging from the ceiling I was overwhelmed with a sensation burden. Blood was seeping out of me and being absorbed in the woollen weave of my slacks. Light grey stained brown on an otherwise dull bus ride. I felt little pain from the wound. I merely felt my slacks getting heavier as they hung over my left leg.

We got to 1^st and Broadway. One more stop I thought to myself—fooling myself into believing I would make it. The commuters rushed about me in a blur, the bus doors folded back over the lights of escape. I looked out the windows, down at the girls passing by. They were in tight short skirts that made their hips move steadily like swells of the sea. One girl in a skirt had skin the colour of cardboard. She had short black hair that rode lightly above her ears. She had large pink hoop earrings. Time stood still as she walked past, grinning to her friend as if they both knew the agony of vile men. Time marched forward so did the girls and so did the bus. Like a whistle in the night; they were gone but echoed down the street.

I leaned against the pole. Commuters began giving me a strange looks, I must have been wearing quite a strange look myself but I have no way of knowing because I was lost. Lost in a de-railing train of thought. It was as though as my injury grew worse and worse, my thoughts became more frantic and desperate.

I recalled the mornings and afternoons spent drunk, yelling at passersby from my front porch; shotgun in tow. Then I saw before me the heroes, the commuters on that afternoon downtown Dash A bus. Naturally, I recalled the winters I spent in snow-filled valleys with snowdrifts as tall as a combine harvester. I recall looking down at my feet, thinking about whether or not I could march into forever with bare feet—they certainly have not let me do it in this temporary place. I for the final 30 seconds of my journey I thought about whether or not I should feel bad about all my dubious activities over the years.

I recall many things I did in my younger years I regret and am still embarrassed about. I look back at all the people that welcomed me into their lives only for me to burn the bridge as quickly as possible. I recalled my drunken, desperate, ineffective sexual advances at women. The things I could have learnt by sitting back.

If I had sat back, I wouldn’t be summoned to court like this today to defend the people of LA County. The bus arrived at my stop. The doors of escape folded open, the brisk October air rushed into the cabin of the bus. I slowly felt my way to the hatch. I burst through with all the force of my shoulder. I turned to face the courthouse. I took seven steps. I collapsed spurting blood from my mouth, hyperventilating, kicking like a sheep being torn from the clutches of existence by wolves. As lay there reaching into the void once again for a goddamn pole. Life, death, the bus, and the girls on 1^st marched into the Los Angeles Afternoon.

~First Draft.

Love,

Digress.

The Pleasures of Coffee

Produce, meat, and dairy,
rows and rows of nutriment,
meals the housewife is planning
planning to make her husband,
preparation for her husband’s death.
She meanders down each isle,
smiling and plotting.
Coffee is the last thing on her list.

Here comes the tornado,
destruction on his mind.
He’s ready to bulldoze
through her clean,
perfect home.
Her smile, it’s a fake.
She’s certainly grinding her teeth
dissolving grit into bone dust.
Her brain sending voltage flashes of the image of his death;
his long, awaited death.
The housewife’s plan is simple,
death by accident…

There is coffee brewing
with that fragrant aroma
filling the dense air with vengeful toxin.
Water falling upon the grounds,
filtering
trickling
down into that glass harbor,
waves of certain death.
She pours her husband a simple cup of coffee
black,
two sugars,
extra arsenic, for extra measure of course,
the poison hit the blackness as bombs on Hiroshima
death is certain.
The housewife prances to her husband,
dear,
sweet,
husband of hers.
She walks on water,
floating toward the kitchen
ready to start breakfast.
In the background the coffee cup,
it hits the floor.
I will be sure to clean that up.

As Twilight Renders

Lush blueberries ripe
ready to be devoured,
blue as the coast line.

Tumbled fire drifts
piles of color ready
splashing leaves in flight.

Stinging winter chill,
never ending, howling wind,
sunny days ahead.

The measure of spring
migrating salmon welcome,
spring has come again.

A symphony jolts,
water covers endless sand,
footprints disappear.

zhega ma

From loneliness you learn how to be alone
From laughter you learn how to smile
From the poor you learn how to give
and from children you learn how to grow

The time has come, sir wiggles said,
to talk of many things -
of tears and noise and rhythm bands,
of why the shower sings,
and how does hope expand itself
and lusting after rings

To the lips belong the sounding board
to the eyes belong imagined things
and to hands belong the mysteries
that brought you here and now
shaping, dreaming, always weaving on the loom
for hands, you see, are intimate
and contain more than this room

choose blue for his eyes and a mustache to frame
choose yellow for the shirt and her giggle kept in a jar
choose sand to walk on and green grass for naps
choose hearts that beat and need and hurt
take nothing more than you'll give back

you ask for a connection, between these wand'ring musings
"there's no more here than betwixt scallywags and kings!"
you'd cry
but i do quite wonder,
were you to relax your white-knuckled grip on that imagination you bridle
couldn't we, kind madam, dear sir, be slightly more than similar?

Trying to come back

An exercise i tried before writing something new, turns out it was better than the piece i wrote:

Halfway hallucinating happiness on holidays,

Hanging on hyperbole while holding for a better day,

Hopelessly with happiness we hate the honest undertones,

Hereditary homicide is flowing through my monotone.

Infiltrate intangibles while understanding impotence.

Investigate insomnia while living in the present tense

Indulgence interferes with independent after thoughts

Implicit indications that my mind is clearly lost for thought

Judgmental jealousy is justifying jubilants,

Jeopardizing joy by the fact that it ignorant.

Tomorrow comes again

This morning I was watching the sun rise and preparing to change lives
red and white lights flashed by and my ears were assaulted with a waaaailing
being emotionally raw I felt
consumed
with the tragedy that a fellow daughter, lover, believer, or brother, had just encountered
and I realized that I had been shockingly numb
to the human condition

how many times do ambulances annoy us as they scream by

how many prayers do we forget to whisper

how many breaths are taken without appreciation

how often do we neglect comforting the fathers and husbands and sons left behind

how do we survive without living

I'm going to remember to love believe fight cry forgive pray sing try learn venture promise laugh need decide kiss change dare escape move expect run dance fall demand want give play...
because that ambulance could be coming for me
next

This House

This house is empty and echoes remain

unplugged

It snuck up on me,
that lyrical twisting and entwining and somersaulting
Suddenly it was poetic
and I admit, abashedly, that I was not thinking about your lips
for a moment
I was forming rhymes and thinking in another language
I was seeing wildflowers and exploring treehouses and wondering
at the beauty
of a honey bee
you stole away my fear (took it from my slippery sweating palms and hid it away I mean)
and exchanged my breath for imaginings of...of...well
I guess these things have no words to them
except
the simplest of language, as in
the THU-DUNK THU-DUNK of a heart (anybody who's ever felt it knows it's more than a THUD)
or a tingling toe
or the gaaaaaasp of escaping oxygen the moment before audible laughter begins
or a flight of butterflies as they migrate
s
o
u
t
h

Entitled

Nobody really knows

The pain she feels when she goes to bed

The things we see when it's all in our heads

But I know

I know

I know.

There's just too much going on

And there're so many people to please

She thinks she'll just hang around some more

I've got to go

to go

to go.

She calls on me in the darkest of nights

The shadows cast keep the memories alive

There are so many secrets I could tell

But I won't

And I won't

And I won't.

Take what I need for my disease

And tomorrow I'll be back again

This is the life she knows I regret

But I can't

I can't

I can't

Turn back

~Note, Letter, Smoke Signals, Text, Email, Tweet, or Myspace Message; Phone A Friend.

Bullocks,

Digress.

Chasing Women

Sweet birdy,

"Can I call you?"

"Yes but not now, I'm still finishing a pint"

she calls anyway

"Listen, I'm still at the pub, let me ring you back in five."

20 minutes later

I arrive home.

"Hi birdy. How are you?"

She hammers on about her ex-boyfriend

The things he's been doing

Asks my advice.

I don't want to hear it

I don't want to give any.

"Listen, I'm going to throw up.

I'll text you in the morning."

I climb the stairs

Place my head in the bowl

and release.

I wake up fully clothed

Feeling a little too much

Like Bukowski.

~Just a dood.

Love,

Digress.

Night of Nights Day of Days

Another sunset on this city,

Your memory melts

Into overexposed evenings

Spent drowning in gin

But Every time you walk

Through that doorway

I cannot help but see yesterdays

Breaking like restless dawns

Tomorrow is a shadow

This city is a tornado

The horizon is hopeless

Mirrors reflect hell

Memory recognises nothing

I awake from a nightmare

With two options

Stay or go

~Will this turn sweet?

Love,

Digress.