Love

No, It's not that first kiss that's magical.
Nor is it a marriage of 50 years, about to shatter, more delicate than a glass vase.
Love is sitting next to people who would throw their inhibitions to the curb and sob their eyes dry with you.
They embrace you even when they suffer.
Love scents the air when the leaving is the most hated person in the room.

It's so silly. 4 letter comprise the inspiration for countless works of expression.
They are thrown around lightly, and are as heavy as an anvil.
Love cantors down the field, it's mane painting the wind.
When the last candle is blown out, she knocks you out.
You fall prey to her unstoppable power.
These people are your family.

Love starts in the throat, either with a word or a lump.
Happiness is not always at Love's side.
Love comes streaming down your cheeks
And for days she'll mock you, bringing your loved ones back in mere seconds.
It's logic that shows you these people are figments of your imagination.
Love drags you back, again, again, and again.

Love cannot exist without hate.
Sweetness is nothing if not for something lesser.
The hills and valleys glide under you, and sometimes, we need to know that they don't stop.
Roses would not be unless they had thorns.
A ripe mango, succulent and voluptuous, is not noteworthy unless there is a vapid, rotten counterpart.
Love's beauty lies in it's fleeting.

I miss you.

I love you.

Campspiration.

I'll be back in a few weeks!
Until then, my life will be wet rain boots, quickly scribbled letters, and late night pranks.
Wish me luck, and hope I bring back gobs of campspiration.

A Pulse

Beams of light engulf.
Booze, laughs, mingling in city.
Thud. There is a pulse.

The Timeless Letter

My mother wrote me a letter.

Then she folded it into two and then again. It was sealed in an envelope and all that was said couldn't be undone.

I read it before school, letting her firm instructions guide me; her reassurance embrace me.

I read it before camp. She warned me about mosquitoes, alcohol, pot, and unruly kids. She told me, even if I did get into those things, it would be for a while, and she would still love me.

I read it before that first kiss, it said good luck sweetie.

I read it before college. My mother warned me of unmanageable roommates, peer pressures, and loss. She told me I'd have fun.

I read it before my first funeral. It said to not cry unless you must, to wear black, and to be in silence. It said to make sure not to fall in.

I read it before my first shot. The letter questioned my judgment, strength, integrity.

I read it before my V card's time was up. It said be gentle.

I didn't read that letter for my second, third or fourth drinks.

No.

It had been more drinks than I could count.

I hadn't read the letter.

I read it before my girlfriend broke up with me.

I read it before I lost my job.

I read it before I went to rehab.

Mama, I can still smell the perfume you were using on the day you wrote it, and I can still see your eyes.

How do you know what to say at the right time?

I must have read that letter a million times and

I'll read it before I die.

An Instant

The snapping of an aperture.

The blinding flood of light.

That one second in time is gone, but it will always be remembered. 

Think about that.

Nothing is permanent, it can only be documented.

A lady jogging, ipod strapped to her arm, head cocked to one side. Maybe she'll quit exercise tomorrow.

A baby being born, the blood, screaming, and sheer joy. They are reminiscent and fresh in every parent's memory, yet only a picture can describe exactly what life was at that moment. 

An old man laughing; perhaps, for the last time.

Click.

I lived in the slums. 

There was no running water, no supermarket, smiles, or sadness.

Only survival. 

Life in that part of town was not life.

Even when I tried to look at the blooming lilies, their beauty escaped me.

Even the slim, buxom, or curvy woman's grace and lustful elegance seemed to dip quickly from my psyche. 

Not water, nor food; birds or stars would fancy my eye.

Why?

Because my children wouldn't see it, and I wouldn't see it again.

It was lost in time.

We're all lost in time.

There was an old man that lived not far from me, in the alleyway across and back from my flat.

He didn't have a name.

When I first asked him, he smiled toothlessly, and said, "Em names show ownership. Don belong to nobody, now, I guess."

He always wore a crimson scarf. It was the brightest crimson I had ever seen.

I was the brightest color, the only color, I had seen in my years here.

Or maybe in all my years.

I honestly can't remember.

He took pictures. 

Wonderful pictures.

He found beauty in my trash, in dirt, and spiders, and spoiled milk. 

He was in awe of crumpled notebook paper, rubber bands, and pizza boxes.

I would have never looked twice at these things.

Yet, somehow those pictures were the most amazing, wonderous, beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

One day, he gave me his camera. It was an old one, probably from the beginning of the camera. 

He told me this.

Everthing is temporary.

Them leaves grow from nothin to crisp and green and ripe, then they die and crumple and get yellow. Then it starts over again. We can't be too upset about things we can't change. Like the dyin of leaves and human and whatnot. We can change how we remember them. That's why there's this.

He handed me the camera.

As he walked down that alley for the last time, I held the crumbling frame up to my face, and snapped a shot of him from the back. Weeks later, after the film was developed, he was not in the picture.

After taking my first picture, I whirled around to see a world bursting with color and life.

But only for an instant.

Click.

 

Lightening

A boy sat on his stoop and watched as the world said what it may. With purple roaring energy, and rapid cracks of strength, and without rain; the world was silent. Purple was the boy's favorite color.
Crack!
It rang so clear.
So loud.
So bright.


So, he took himself by the hand, and the boy got up. 
He was just above the waves of mountains that rushed toward the lightening. He turned and walked the other way. He ran into the house, and pulled the screen shut behind him. He rushed upstairs with him head down, and his gears turning. 
He needed to get to this lightening.


So, he found the keys to his mother's car, a sedan, and jumped in the driver's seat.
The car had been parked outside, and he started it. He drove all the way to the lightening.
When he got to the lightening, he saw something strange. It was not purple at all, but whiteish. 
He wondered...


The boy wondered if the closer you got to the lightening, the more white it would appear. So he just stood there, in the middle of life, and looked the lightening straight in the eye and said softly, but sternly, "You lied to me. I came here to see purple, not white." 


I can tell you one thing. That boy saw a whole lotta white. 


A boy sat on his stoop and watched as the world said what it may. With purple roaring energy, and rapid cracks of strength, and without rain; the world was silent. Purple was the boy's favorite color. This time, it was just a different stoop.

Ode to Summer

Like a soft wind,
laced with lilac aroma,
and freshly trimmed grass,
summer breezes in quietly,
yet she captives everything one.
Summer means lazy hours
on the hammock keeping a lax vigil
on the cardinal's nest
in the adjacent tree.
She drags me to the beach,
and we sit until the sky's bottom falls out,
and we get sucked into the vast sky.
The cool sand under foot, and the
black waves beckon.
We just lie there; head to head on the sand, gazing up.

Summer brings life to the world.
In summer, flowers are found
in brown bowls; such simplicity
inspires us.
Summer is like a perfectly crisp apple.
Holding its waxy skin,
stalling that first, immaculate bite.
Just as the first ray of sun
 brushes your face. It is an invitation
from nature to come and play.

Summer is a beautiful woman with
long, blonde hair and a naughty smirk.
The whole world seems to melt around her.
Yet, she makes the world look so much
better than it really is.
She runs up to you, not
saying a word but jumps
into an embrace.
A surreal day in the Shopping
District, and night at the beach.
She leaves you all too soon, without a
goodbye, only a kissed skin to remember her by.

Summer is the bridge between life
and death; green, bursting buds and crisp
yellow leaves. She is life.
The feeling of looking at the calendar
and seeing more than half the summer
still ahead is summer itself.
To going barefoot.
To ice cream trucks.
To pink lemonade stands.
To lazy days.
To pleasure.
To summer.

Your Title Here

A iron drop fell on my windshield

It was liquid metal then, shortly

after, it froze up, and still won't come off.

I have tried scratching,

scraping,

yelling,

Magic wands, 

and prayer.

I can't just get a new car, or a new windshield. 

No one can.
You can turn the car into the junkyard or smashed the windshield with white knuckles, and clenched teeth.
But not get a new car.  

I was driving and a bomb exploded in front of me.

A zooming piece of shrapnel wedged itself into the iron drop.

It would have killed me.

An iron drop fell on my windshield.

But, I could still see the sun.

My Suitcase

It's already 11, and the moon's face smiles at me.
Dinner has long said goodbye, but a crumb of a roll still mingles with an iota of wine on the corner of my lip; unnoticed.
My excitement fills the room to its brim, bubbling out.
The light throws off the coloring in my painting, and it's time for me to pack.
Revealing select hangers of their cloth burden, and checking how many 3 oz bottles I can bring in my carry-on, my eyes flit from task to selection.
My contracted pupils extracting the parts of my life necessary in the next two weeks.
Heaps turn into piles;
Piles undergo riveting inspection;
My life is condensed into a few square feet.
I'm leaving what I know, shaving the edges of my comfort.
After a half-eaten breakfast, a silent ride to the airport, and a rushed kiss goodbye, you, my suitcase, are all that connects me to my past.
You become my only constant.

Now, my clothes are no longer neatly folded, but strewn about within your walls.
My own saline tears cannot break your shell; they were not meant for you. You are coming home with me.
I step into my house.
It will takes some time for it to become my home.
I come bearing gifts, remnants of my late reality.
An origami bird, that has stayed here the whole time, at my side.
Her wings are tired from flying, yet she did no work.
I zip open my suitcase, and she flattens into a single sheet.
The bird that was so real yesterday, is just flimsy paper today.
I can fill up the space in my room anymore.
Did I shed piece of my self, because it never felt this way before.
Maybe I have too much, and there isn't enough space in my room.
It doesn't feel like me.
My fingers type sluggishly, my pills stay in their bottles, and my dogs look at my like an origami bird, fragile, and inconstant.
All that is proof that I was once a part of this house, this family, this life, is what was saved by my suitcase.

Infinity

What is infinity?
Is it the answer to 4 divided by 0?
Is it in the graces and curves of our human bodies?
Is it love?

Is infinity mine to spend; to use?
Is infinity knowing that some kid died innocent, without any pain or loss?
Is infinity seeing the city lights at night, pride for your city swelling in your gut?
Is infinity a side ways 8?

Is family, together from their various abodes for the first time in years, infinite?
Is strutting your stuff, knowing everyone's watching and envious infinite?
Is feeling something infinite?
Is hearing the harmony of two flutes or violins infinite?

When I say goodbye forever, are we infinite?
When I say goodbye fornever, are we infinite?
When I take to those walls I've built so meticulously a wrecking ball, and let all of my tears, laughs, blood out, are we going to be infinite?
When I dance, pretending to be Bob Fosse, am I infinite?

When I look out the windows of the plane and see the sprawling city vista, will it be infinite?

Infinity is.
Exactly what, we have yet to discover.
But, that's an infinite quest.