Lessons in Leisure

She spit on the floor
demanding a confession,
tossing dead-rose vases
and half-empty liquor bottles

towards my shrinking composure.
A life well lived is a life
worth living I thought to myself
as glass shattered inches

from my head.  Then I imagined
my own past—the girl on the floor
of a friends parent's house,
one in the park after midnight,

and one whom I could never name
at a random University party.
It's the American way: get laid,
get paid.  But this story is off;

she had done no wrong
I had not done myself.
And these days are filled
with old decisions: to honor

thy Mother and Father; do not
cheat, steal, or kill. Rules
passed down through generations
who still stumble upon the lessons.

She was remarkable in her leisure,
holding fast to some Arthurian legend
where the guise of life's macabre
could never exist.

Swaying of the Willow

Here I am, time-stilled,
the procession of marriage
halted halfway to the altar,
rose petals firmly frozen in air

and I am lost within you,
without you. The pigeons sent to find me
were lost too amongst the willows
swaying in the seasons of change,

the crows nestled on their perches
waiting to revive, or devour.
Though who is to decide:
a God of reason or repentance.

We are all equal beside the willow
and the crow, where sand ceases
to flow in the hourglass and we are left
with our own devices and maladaptations.

Yet even still with broken timepiece
the seasons do not stop to wonder
whatever did happen to the man,
or the crow, or the swaying of the willow.

The Secret of a Feather

Picture credited to Shannon Freer

They will tell you
the best way to see through
darkness is to keep moving.

One step at a time.
Defeat the beast—for eyes
to focus through strobe black

up the spine of an elated
conscience, shun shadow
and pluck the feather

of a crow which seeks forgivness.
But residue resides, an offering
able to burn white with light,

hotter and brighter
than eyes can withstand.
And there will be a choice,

sound of caws from altar rafters,
demanding confession,
or redemption—

a spiral that will never be
forgiven nor whispered—seven crows
a secret that never will be told.

Unhonorable Discharge

It's times like these loyalties,
I feel, are a waste of time.
A trusted friend once said to me,
"Honor is in the dollar kid."

Once spoken, it is hard to retract
a statement so bold and unbecoming.
Though he often blurted random
movie quotes - a localized version

of tourette syndrome if you will.
It probably took an obscure
pathway in the brain to vomit
such vile wordplay from his lips.

There is no green in my wallet;
it must mean I am honorless,
though to pay homage to anything
these days would be akin

to shooting fish in a barrel.
What does one worship when
the world respectfully declines
to honor the nature of humanity?

I guess he had it right:
a greenback, gotta get that paper,
bling bling.  Of course in order
to get that bling today it requires

the use of unhonorable tactics;
once obtained you may buy
your way in to life—to humanity.
What then becomes of those

who knelt down and hoisted you
on their shoulders to ascend
in rank and stature?  In these times
we move backwards instead of forwards

to measure the character of a man.
Those coming from the bottom pay
their loyalty to those who once
helped to rise them above, a gilded

and infectious way to view the workings
of the world.  As we rise, like Christ
on the cross, to be resurrected at the top,
we are reluctant to feel anything but disgust.

We spit the world back out, dry heave
until the violent entrails of our
becoming make their final escape
from within us.  Herein lies

the loyalty.  The loyalty of upchuck;
to feast on the famine and regurgitate
the fawn.  An honorable discharge
to the underdogs who managed to shine.

A Backwards Dance

A tepid glance from across the bar
draws me in; I block it out
willingly, instinctually.

There's no need for conversation,
our eyes met and told our story
like playing a record backwards.

Tracks that skip and moan
at different intervals
reciting an untuned melody

which somehow managed to force
the needle in such obtuse
measure to play the tune correctly.

It's strange to say, for me,
when two hearts align,
it could be for the better.

Yet I am reluctant to wind
the phonograph any farther,
lest I be responsible for the dance.

The Lens of Life

I'm speaking through a lens, looking through a lens - it's how I picture the world—through a lens.  My Grandmother claims when she sits on the side of the dinner table facing the patio doorway she cannot see the person sitting across from her.  She has cataracts and describes it as though looking at a silhouette with fog in between.  I reconcile this to driving down a dark and winding road at night where the fog dances in the trough of curves and oncoming headlights mask traffic into black boxcars passing by.  I see this through the lens of my eyes - without cataract but with fog just the same.  Sight - an obligatory sensory phenomena that I obtain and hers wanes, like my hearing—completely deaf in the right ear, as the lenses of her eyes are laden with steam.  These sights and sounds, all heard and seen through a lens - a lens of life:  the lens that captures thought and emotion in a time and place.  I once took a photograph of a lamp post with the words "Trust Jesus" painted white with a drunk hand and in the background was an accident with police, fire, and rescue services—I thought: how ironic.  Just a time, and a place, and a scene, and my lens, leading to a thought, a feeling, the sight, the sounds, all captured on a tiny piece of film, a silent shock to my hippocampus slowly forming a permanent neural connection that will indefinitely affect me in some way, shape, or form, for the rest of my existence.  These shocks, however severe and reoccurring, wiggle themselves through the prefrontal cortex, changing us, shaping us, into some being, some identity that we consider a "soul", guiding us, preconceiving our judgments and our actions, never without a second thought—it would be unwise to test the limits of the human brain, hitherto, it may lash back at us in force:  in psychological impairment, mood or multiple personality disorder—schizophrenia.  To label us "damaged"; to throw us into the lion's den to be tested and broken—at best given one last chance to retain that one singular piece of humanity we were able to hold onto until the end.

Shades of Gray

All I am is cold,

cold as the curve
of granite formed of a face
from forgotten times,
dead in the chill of winter.

Lost in a darkness
of dancing diamonds
beneath a blanket to sheathe
the surface of a testament
to a time of surrender.

Deprived of thought,
viscerated to feel numb
rather than blinded,
I see all shades of gray
in the shadows of my statue.