Haiku
My true spirit
alive…because
I am wild inside
To escape from the darkness;
I feel so fragile to begin again
as I experience the uncomfortable absence of life holding the dead corpses hand
the most important part of the experience is to just give in,
I want my heart to flutter;
I want my head to spin
as I stutter in the harmony, with a grin, of someone else effortlessly disarming me from within
We live in the central part of our old Kentucky home
The probability of the northern lights shining all the way down here is so very low
A geomagnetic storm made the seemingly impossible appear
Purple burned the sky aglow
We had no idea, sitting at the bar, laughing about hip-hop beef and asking each other, when you cut a sandwich, which way should the knife should go?
If I could go back, I don’t think – I know
I’d choose to keep sitting at that bar with you
The northern lights aren’t nearly as beautiful
As your smile
It’s my favorite show
You said
“they can’t be lies if there’s a lil truth to ’em”
and
I guess you’re right
but
that definition never felt complete
just like the thing you sold me as love
no no matter how much
“My cup runneth over”
with this so called love you pandered
it was never enough
to cash in
For the prize of
your attention
In the cacophony of carnations and cards,
Took 2 valium on the outskirts
of the sea of tranquility, tried walking
the moonscape of downtown asphalt—
craters and toxic dusts drenched in false neon dusks
around the splintered band stand—
with a skull full of animal balloons
(all my gurus are part-time clowns)—
It was tough sledding—
Their tongues licked clean the residue
of bad impulses ghosting cranial bone—
a lifetime of shortcuts through poison ivy, detours
down the road less traveled and its gauntlet
of blind curves and fresh tar—
then they hiss—the animals—
spider monkey, tortoise, tried-and-true dachshund and minx—
the balloons hiss, the hiss
is what you sometimes call tinnitus—
when a human head doubles as Noah’s ark
loaded down with illicit chemicals because the animals
all had to be sedated,
a few opiated due to the throb that blooms
from mandatory crouches—
otherwise there’s no way they would fit,
and you need every one to aspire to
that lit up lunar buoyancy—the sinewy syntax
of dollar store epiphanies transcribed in phosphors
and chemtrails,
but you fail to notice the vistas replaced
with exit signs, windows
hijacked to the landfill that smolders
perpetually just beyond your range of experience
and now every window envisions smoke
that the ants haul away—smoke as ellipses—
and your eyes scale over dull as pollen-clogged chrome
on an old junker elevated like prayers
on cinder blocks and dinged
with bug guts in ink blot stains.
On my train ride home,
a cat stares back at me from a distant window
—a big, fluffy calico that reminds me of my first foster cat
when I was nine.
He’s always in the same window,
and on the days he’s not
I try to decide if he’s gone altogether
or just for today.
We pass a house on the left
where there’s a family gathered around the dinner table
and each face looks exactly like my family
in 2008.
The mother and father still talk about their days
with genuine smiles.
The daughter and son are bright-eyed
and unaware of how quickly this time will pass.
Up on the right,
a stuffed dog sits diligently on a windowsill,
gazing out at me with beaded black eyes
that hold more feeling than they should be able to.
It has been there every day
for the last two years.
Untouched, perhaps unloved,
but never unnoticed.
Two stops before mine,
a young couple gets on.
An old one gets off.
They’re both holding hands
through the hustle and bustle of rush hour crowds.
I hope they never let go.
A woman across the aisle from me
checks her phone and smiles.
The man at the other end of the car
checks his and frowns.
There are silhouettes slow-dancing in gold-lit windows
to the song that will either be the first dance at their wedding,
or the tune that will haunt them both for years to come.
There are friends skipping down the street
laughing over an inside joke that’s been told a hundred times.
It will either be told a hundred more times
or it will die out and fade away until there’s no one
left to understand why it’s funny.
Down below,
I watch a black lab cross the road
and stop to sniff a bulldog.
Their owners pull them away and smile at one another.
They will never interact again.
I know this route intimately,
like the back of my hand
or the inside of my soul.
I can point out people and places and hidden secrets
along the brown line from Fullerton to Adams/Wabash
and back again,
like landmarks or monuments—
an all-inclusive tour of the things everyone sees
but never looks for.
Let me paint you a picture,
sing you a song,
write you a book
composed only of the things
I’ve taken time to notice over the years.
A patchwork quilt of city windows and streets,
of moments others have long forgotten
but that will stay in my mind forever.
The world has secrets
but it doesn’t keep them hidden.
They’re left in plain sight
if you notice and listen.
