Posts for June 2, 2022 (page 4)

Well…, yeah.

Right.

That’s what they say:

You come close to dying

and you get to see your life

flash before your eyes.

Hey

hey

hey hey hey

cliché

cliché

cliché cliché cliché.

In my case

the dream voice

gets out before I know it

and the visions have begun.

What’s flashing in my eyes is dreams.

Flashes of dreams.

Real things,

yeah,

but as dreams.

From life,

yes,

but in dreams.

In my daylife,

I feel something.

I look down.

There’s a knife against my side,

in the soft place.

I’ve got two bags of groceries

cradled in my arms.

I look up.

There’s a tire iron

two feet, maybe three,

above my skull.

Tall masked guy with the tire iron,

short masked guy with the knife,

and a third keeping watch about six feet away.

High,

low,

and one away –

I think they teach ‘em that in prison,

or maybe they learn it in Black boy school.

So,

I’ve got two bags of groceries and a knife in my right side,

except I feel it in my left

where the knife went in

all those wake-up-screaming nights ago 

in the dream that I kept having as a boy.

They say you never know what you’ll do

when the knife’s in your side

and

there’s a damn good chance

they’re right about that.

Me?

I looked down

and saw the knife

and the grocery bags flew.

To be precise,

I ran

and I screamed

and the grocery bags flew.

Five or ten steps of flashing dreams

and it dawns on my body just before it hits my mind –

There

is

no

place

left

to run.

I stop,

I turn around,

I make small talk born of desperation,

I offer ‘em my wallet.

Watcher Boy takes it.

Knife Boy leaves first.

Watcher leaves second.

Tire Iron stays poised awhile,

decides he doesn’t wanna break my skull this time,

and runs away.

And the dreams keep flashing –

a brick,

a bus,

a jacket.

Cops come.

More flashing –

Mr. Jones,

Mr. Thomas,

Mr. Collins.

And

from somewhere deep inside

yet

somehow

somewhere very far away,

I hear myself – 

my voice – 

ask

the cop,

“If they didn’t hit me,

can I still say I was mugged?”

You’re inside the oil pastels
I stole from that old school
Before the summer of the end
Of our childhood in the suburbs 
Cause your eyes glistened 
That same dark sepia on the box
And I wanted to draw your face
To hang on my wall like a graven image
As some sick form of self expression 

You’re inside a trash can
Set alight on the outskirts
Of this dirty outgrown town
Cause I still wonder 
How many times it took you
To strike a match on the used
Math textbooks and The Velt
That summer when you burned
Them like the Bible or American flag

You’re inside the tiger-red daylilies 
That stand by my bedroom window
Like peeping toms, silent and swaying
Cause I wondered if you were watching
Me move around the empty house now
Undressing myself for a white screen
Or the voyeurs reading this

You’re inside my closet
Searching for some secret
Buried in the Church Camp t shirts
That I never grew out of 
Cause you knew that one day
I’d give up all of your secrets 
For nothing at all aside from
A bag of salt and vinegar chips

You’re inside my medicine cabinet
And right now you’re judging me hard
And you’re wondering what this cocktail
Of technicolor pills is meant to fix inside me
Cause you’re the thing inside me
That I’ve been trying to purge out
By writing letters you won’t read

I like to believe
you’d come back. 

That given
the chance
to run 
your paws
would bound
through 
backyards
between 
houses 
pause for 
sprinklers 
play with
the golden
doodle
around 
the corner
the farthest
you’d go
without me
before you
remember
peanut butter
spoonfuls
snuggles 
sleeping
in bed
and Abra’s
ten-year-old
voice calling
your name–

I like to believe
you’d come home. 

dust settles
onto everything

sweeping stirs 
it into dirt mist
settles onto
possessions

brush it off
art supplies  desk  bed
regardless of task
settles onto
my heart

A woman I have always admired

Why do cliches always end up being true?
I don’t want to listen when you tell me something
I could’ve told myself.
Things like, “love always wins”, and “life isn’t fair,”.
So just go ahead and rip my heart out while you’re at it. 

Have me cry over lines of dialouge on a page,
those lines you tell me will soon be dead.  
Leave me lamenting the love of his life,
who’s already suffered so much pain. 
I know why we do this.

This trade of agony.
I give you pain,
you give me fufillment
and vice versa.  
We’re shards of glass in a parking lot.

Wanting to touch each other, 
just for a moment
even though we’ll end up cracking even further
or getting run over
or trampled by an exhausted teenager’s oversizes sneaker. 

So give me the goods.
Bring out the first tear I’ve cried in a month. 
Kill me while you’re at it,
but we all know I asked for it.

growing up when we did
raised
by grandparents too tired
to do the whole dance again
ill equipped for the outside
inside generation with dual
imaginations fueled by the 
deep green hollows and moss
lined streams in the shade
of an unforgiving sun
with the growing infinite space
access through CRT monitors
and 14.4 mbs modems 
where we could tinker with code
and hardware 
like our fathers before us
leaned over and down into hoods
doing whatever they did
those long hours to the engines

our future was a black and pink
neon sky  with a blood orange sun
illuminating an endless road 
leading to some new place 

but something went wrong somewhere
and here we are
with less than our forefathers
pretending that we’re all just fine
sending our kids to school
staring at thier backs 
as they walk away 
knowing that it might be
the 
very 
last 
time
we see them alive

no one I know around here
got thier burning hot summer
with a promise threaded tight 
by a group of friends
doomed to split with age

the cards fell a different way
and none of us learned much
except that our parents
would never be like those
we watched on television

some of us have made it this far
thinking that if we try something new
that the story will change
knowing full well
that no matter what
the odds were never in our favor
and the ending is always the same
short, bad, and without dignity

Let the sword of decision bring clarity of thought  
                                               Look over your life, where Justice’s demands must be met    

Amidst the chaos of life, there is Cosmic order 
                                                   Cause and effect – from the past, you create the future   

Universal Law says that like attracts like  
                                                                                  With our minds we create our reality   

Thoughts, words, actions, hopes and fears  
                                                                                                        Made manifest, material   

Know that beyond the veil of transformation    
                                                                      The Universe will always balance the scales  

Night sky slathered on the walls,