You Don’t See The Decay At First

Where I am From (again)

I am from warm hugs

From sweet child O` mine lullabies and a star wars bedtime story

I am from rowdy boys crowded around a bridge ready to jump

I am from puppies in a bin baying and crowding around a mother basset

I am from apple pie dreams and hands older than me and stories spoken over

Laughter and the smell of food cooking in the oven

I am from the morning

Warm sunshine smiles and daisy chain afternoons

Brothers with too tall bodies and too small sensibilities

Confused and wonderful

I am from a garage

Alternative rock, the smell of grease and men and fixing the problem

Pieces clicking together like a puzzle

I am from a field

Scratches bug bites and high grass

Scrapes and bruises falling out of trees and into fun

I am from costuming

Bright sequin, improbable characters, and laudable performances

Lines not quite memorized but somehow funnier that way

I am from competition

Racing past a sibling or cousin to get through the kitchen first without being scolded by that one aunt

To

Racing through the air trying to get to a ball just beyond my fingertips so I can pound it into the ground before it’s blocked

I am from a kitchen

Smells that evoke nostalgia in every southern heart

All the sisters, cousins, aunts and grandmother gathered in the kitchen with bustling mouths laughing as they cook turkey, potatoes and cranberry jam and the menfolk watch football and the kids play a façade of the game of the day

I am from elegance

Being taught table manners, learning how to walk in 6"s and how to do my makeup from a favored aunt for the prom

Learning how to be a lady

I am from vibrancy

Spinning sepia-tinged memories filled with stars dreams and sadness

I am from a field lying between my parents learning Draco, the dippers, mars, and planets chasing the sisters and running from Orion’s bow

I am from the stars

A new adult wandering the earth

My head in the clouds with lofty ideas, hopes, and longing to be the cause of change

I am from a promise

A promise to learn

A promise to live

A promise to laugh

A promise to cry

A promise to succeed

A promise to fail

A promise to be me

Nightmare Part 1

The most peculiarly specific smell of a hospital in Maine assaults my senses. I hear absolute silence, and then, frantic scratching. I am in a white room, strange stains surround me splattered on every surface, and I sit on a plain white bed, writing furiously in a leather-bound journal with yellowed curling pages, as I write the words disappear just before I can read what I have written. A man walks in, he is tall with darkish curly hair and caramel eyes, clothed in white scrubs with a yellow eye logo above the pocket and covered in the same stains. He takes the journal and leaves me screaming in anger and crying in fear. He deposits the journal outside the door in the visible hands of a man unseen. He trots over to where I lay, picks me up as if I am a rag doll, holds me close, and whispers in my ear It was a strangely familiar voice that brought back memories of days spent playing in the sun and lying in fields of wildflowers. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.

He softly brushed my forehead with his lips, set me down on the bed and left. As he closed the door I heard screaming, muffled gunshots then silence. Utter and complete silence, I called to him with my voice till all my voice was gone; and shaking I called to him with my mind. When there was no answer I accepted what had happened for he had not answered the call that only death can silence. As I left the door the tears would not fall, the tears would not come and the only escape I had was in sleep.

Have you ever watched the death of a soul? 

I’m not talking physical death, I mean knowing someone and falling madly in love with their passion and then realizing that passion has left when you see them again 

Their eyes are flat and dull 

the spark is gone

When exhaustion overcomes ingenuity 

when that which you had loved has faded 

Airports

There’s something romantic about airports

I don't mean romantic in the way of falling in love but in the way of how its an in between hub

airports are a stop from dream to reality

from sadness to joy

from missing to hugging

from chance to certainty

And as I sit in this airport, the day after the longest night I can’t help but wish I could sit in this moment forever 

This moment of chance, this moment of opportunity

I COULD get on the flight that I booked ahead of time and go to my planned destination

I COULD continue on with my life completely unchanged waltzing from plan to plan as some fall apart and some fall into place

Or I could not

I could follow my feet where they want to go

Pick a random gate, buy a ticket at the desk and board a plane to destinations unknown

See what I can make of life in this new place

If I wanted, the option is there for me to start completely over in a new place with a new name and a new purpose

Who would I be if I chose that? Would I still be me? Would a new name and a new place and a new job change me so completely that even those closest to this current version of the person I am wouldn’t recognize me?

Or would I surface the same? Would I have the same insecurities and personality? Would my music taste change or my the way I liked to dress? Or would I be even more me? Like a less watered down version of the me that I am currently?

Light

I saw the light of day begin to dawn

I watched the final rays of moonlight die

I’ve seen the end of life

And birth begin

I know when my frail breath will leave my lungs

"Sit down" she said

"Stop fidgeting" he reminded

"I swear if you don't stop MOVING" they threatened

until one day one didn't

The teacher didn't say "Sit down" or "Stop moving" she said "here, when you get bored or finish an assignment I want you to describe to me what you are going to do on the playground"

This simple kindness to a small hyperactive child turned into teams of paper preoccupation detailing the grand adventures of various heroes, heroines, dragons and ponies as they battled vicious creatures discovered new locales and made friends along the way fostering forever in me a childlike wonder for the magic of the written word.

we invented and perfected the idiosyncrasies of the odd art, we are odd and we are not 

but are the vibrant dread, a constant antithesis of all we should be, we are alive truly yet floaters in a world we did not design and we deign to love 

the universe of our creation we are forced out of by the necessities of those who have and always will persecute that which they know not of and all are naught to understand 

More poetry for you

A short one this time

I'm a Summers child

I sup on rays of dust suspended in oxygen and filtered through sunlight

My bones are simply vehicles for the green scent of life growing against all odds on a cliff face

The cold pulls the will to live out of me, away from me, like a sieve my pores turn to the gaping maw of winter as all the me-ness of me seeps out and freezes with the tulips buried under snow

it feels so disingenuous and false to be writing a personal statement about how I wanted to save the world when I am applying to a university that  contributes to those issues. The world is ending and I am passing my time by trying to put on the facade of a higher class than I am so that what, do I can fit in? so I can get a job? what the fukc is the use of that

It's hot but it's not too hot it's hot in that summer, carnal, sweet sweat and hard work smelling strong of sawdust and body odor way

And you only get it from working in the sun, sweat doesnt smell the same if it's a hike or just sitting outside or a workout indoors in the winter

There's some . . . Visceral about hard work sweat in the summer

It's original sin

A wet hot American summer

Adam eating "the apple" under a blazing sun feeling the sweat bead under his curls at the back of his neck at the same moment that sticky savory juice graced his lips changing forever how he saw the world

It's what the pope fears more than anything

Raw

Humanity

Unfiltered

Un fettered

Animals running flat out across a grassland under golden rays

Laying in the shade of trees older than their speech

All their warts and beauty on display for anyone to see

Drops of it, stories encased in wet salt hit the ground and color it dark in a silent plea for rain