the things we do against all we can't

It's 5:00 AM, I'm on my bike beneath a teenage moon that's still wide awake from a night of heavy partying. His eyes blink drunkenly as I follow the beam of my narrow headlight. If he wasn't so hung over, he'd be doing a better job, or at least give way to day. But the sun will hurt his eyes, and he's in no hurry whatsoever to fall behind the world.

I pedal to the coffee shop with my goosebumps on full alert to the temperature of night. I stand at the counter, rub my eyes. "Decaf." She looks at me askance and I shrug. I take the long way home...stopping to window shop and sip the cinnamon off the surface of my Java. When I get back to the house I tuck myself away in the backyard...book of poetry, a flashlight, my warm mug. The moon yawns and slips just a bit...just enough that the world becomes silhouette, and I nothing but another black mark against the skyline.
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Easy Out

Ommission has a backward ease to it

you can't return
to the forgotten
once your footsteps
have hardened in clay

so we shrug

there's no power over yesterday
today
and no ruse to circumvent
error

Let us lie
at the intersection
of our parallels

(poem response to a 3 Word Wednesday poem. Photo showed construction of two bridges that ran into each other.)

All Arms

It's like we're legg-less
crawling up each other...
all bicep
shoulders screaming

the only ease
seemed surrender
on one side or the other
and strangely, I've white flagged 'em both

But ease never carried much promise

I live my life like a war
and each day a battle.
These arms have always been my strength.
Coaches would tell me to kick
kick kick kick
but I let my arms do all the work
'cuz I never really had a leg to stand on

I know this...
they keep holding on
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(L&L - Was a little drunk when I wrote this)
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Sparks

and when she lit him on fire it was like the fourth of July.

He hopped around like Brer Rabbit on caffeine

colored sparks coming from his ass.

She should have been horrified,

or at least worried

but she hadn't the skin for it...worn as her sediments were.

(response to "what you got?" That's all I had. At the moment. Just sayin')

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Heal Thyself?

The fact of the matter is, we all try to heal ourselves.

You are gauze, he is tape, she is stitches...

we take. we take. sadly.

But (and here we've come round again) we bleed out, and need attention.

It hurts to be the healer

It hurts to be the sick

and we've all been our share of both.

So empathy will be our bandage...and a modicum of mercy.

I have been the child with the cancerous childhood. I still attempt the surgical removal of every tumor. I have no blade. I grab your hand and poise it to slice. It's just the way of things. But I love you no less for it.

(comment to a post)

Photograph

I laid it in the sun
exposed
perhaps to watch it fade, or to highlight it...
I'm never sure
but I clip it to the post in the yard every day
watch the light do a slow roll across our faces
in no damn hurry at all.

It seems as vivid as ever
all that weather, yet still saturated with the hues of love and denial

I think the color releases only in pace with my eyes
and when they see their last
the sun bleached photo will take flight
a graveside dove.
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The Collector

I think one of the greatest things we do for each other "in here" is witness. Without judgment or even opinion at times, we witness each other in the minutia that gets missed. So much goes on between our ears, the unspoken growth and death that our fingers scream about on the page. We witness these things and press their petals into our scrapbooks. It's important to be so heard, and collected.

(blog post response)
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