With stars in my eyes
I look up at the flashing lights
The Ferris wheel I’ve waited all year for
And suddenly I am 7 years old
Riding every ride with no fear
Eating funnel cakes and drinking lemonade
I have no responsibilities
Life is perfect,
Oh what I would do to go back
there was a time
where technology
was still growing
and we believed
we could code our
way into this world
of reality
mixed with that place
we could only smell
through the heated plastic
whirring fans
of our made at home rigs
we saw the future
a vast cosmic forever
on black and green screens
over clocked video cards
a sleek cybernetic hope
I’m not sure what happened
but those dreams died
in the old machines
inside video game cartridges
jammed up in dormant
outdated code
we stopped dreaming
in a world of zeroes and ones
found dollar signs had blocked
our way through those peaks
of creative mathematics
so we die on the steps
at the feet
of what could be
holding tight to our
nostalgic moments
when we felt alive
Some days
Like today
When my body
Doesn’t feel like it’s mine
My hang nails
Have all been chewed
Down to their quick
My core is shakey
My brain is full
Everything inside me
Is completely rattled
Everything aches
My bones brittle
Hair in disarray
My eyes are heavy
I succumb to the weight
A nail biting hollowness
That leaves me feeling
Like a grade school kid’s scribbles
Crayon colored congestion
Straight in the center
Of my construction paper canvas
A hopeless display
For all to see
While the world mocks me
I bite off one more nail
And remind myself
Its all in my head
“You got this!”
Key, as if she were gold-embroidered
the perfect fit for the doors
she was carried through
but a Key that is not welcome by all
Kuh, like little children learning
the sounds of consonants,
some say, Kuh, as C is for come
make a language you were not born into yours
Tawn, deep brown skin, exotic
she is here from another land
sharing the same dawn as us
pretending to make hers look the same
Kiitan, what a pretty name
a little strange though, isn’t it?
Maybe close to midnight after playing
Cards Against Humanity isn’t the best
time to write a poem.
My mind moving in all directions
forbidden pots opened up and stirred
swirling with laughter and impossible images,
a table full of jokes and remarks
some of which later, I’ll wish I’d written down
one more night of Hindman happiness
knowing the best poems will come
when I leave with my head and heart
filled up with this place.
I’ve filled myself to the brim with chili
I fold into a familiar spot on the front steps.
It’s been dark all day
The day after the solstice,
The sounds of cars on the wet street sound different from inside my echoey wooden box of an apartment, plastered floor to ceiling with stacks and boxes of rolled, leaning and hanging canvas.
I gaze around me at the green air, feeling drugged, holding a lit cigarette under my hand so it doesn’t get wet.
I feel so proud of my Miyazaki-worthy outfit today. Green and red frog socks, yellow sandals, pale pink jeans, avocado green and white-striped pocket shirt, burgundy, cream, and brown plaid overshirt.
It is a weirdly cold end of June, Goldie says,
He’s tickled he gets to wear his brown sweater, just about anytime it isn’t sticky out. A frousy bit of drab, stretched down several feet, pockets bulging with heavy packets of paper.
Between poetry and thickly buttered bread,
I’m halfway between here and somewhere
A few things give me a start as my eyes fall upon them-
A chore I started this morning and completely forgot about finishing
“Save ya later, Begonia”
I sure get into a churn
flushing away the day
Carrying strips of cardboard here and there
Drilling holes with a screwdriver
Folding the new tshirts for market
Seeing how many clean laundry cubes I can squeeeeeze into the dresser, it’s all in the arrangement.
I put off putting those away.
An infection spread into my lungs before I knew it and it’s kicked me in the chest
I’ve been on a hiatus
From coffee and cigarettes
For three days the world has been a different color.
Gazing into the neighbor’s lilies, I see The Kitten’s face under a big low hanging lily pad (It’s not a lily pad but I like to call it that, as that is what it resembles), she wears it like a hat, she sure is a Totoro.
Everytime I look back she’s still there, just her head sticking out enough to see.
Even though I haven’t been smoking much, plagued as I am with mucous,
I keep hanging out in the yard, admiring all the littlest and the biggest plant and stone and ant residents. Occasionally I walk in the wet grass, between stints of heavier drizzle.
Very suddenly it’s night again, it seems like it came so early.
Another day, another symptom shows itself anon.
If I can’t sew the world together with the tender
tendrils of my heart, at least I felt it there. I reckon
for all the corruption and grief, the hurt and fear,
there is the tender monochrome of text to hold me.
On the playground as a kid
Standing in a line
Waiting to hear your name for the basketball team
High school gym
Five names have been called
Will you be the sixth man on the basketball team?
Only 64 teams will make the NCAA Tournament
The team holds its collective breath
Will they make the big dance?
Tonight’s the NBA Draft
Should you stay home
Or wait in the Green Room
For your name to be called
It will be
The Final Pick
She said
Why am I the only one
with just a mom all the time?
Everyone else has both
As tears filled her eyes.
And why are all the other girls
not always fighting with their mom
or stressed out like you are?
More tears.
But not just from her eyes now.
I sniffle silently, so she may continue.
Why do they all have big houses
and backyards
and don’t have to choose
one thing or another?
They go on vacations
and go out to eat whenever
And buy and do whatever they want.
The same questions I ponder upon
in times like these.
Then she asks an interestingly loaded one,
with acute irony,
but more so,
an irony within irony,
Is this all just karma?
Huh?!
Yeah. Karma. Like your car breaking down,
your phone messing up,
all the stuff I just said.
All of this.
Sigh.
My baby girl,
These trials and unfair happenings,
my dear,
are not in response to what we’ve given
or not given this world.
But a chance to learn.
What I do think,
I do think, having you and I be a team,
would be the best this earth,
God
and karma
could have given me.
The rest can go.
And now…
It’s what we do with these challenges.
I haven’t done very well lately.
I think I’m not learning my lessons.
Forgive my words
filled with fear & doubt.
Because…
we have less distractions,
we can more easily notice
the beauty of the helpers
and love around us.
Just like how I see…
you’re the first of your friends to notice,
comment,
and discover
pure beauty, joy and connection
to a magical sunset,
and details of the sky
Or run to nurture a hurt soul.
We can notice
because we have less than.
But. With you,
I have more than anyone on earth.
