Sleep

I sat with the smoke encircling me and in the midst of the fog the over-powerful streetlamp made haze on my glasses. The wooden bench is aging and creaking when I sit. The orange rug at my feet is many days of dirty but I love the color more than when it’s clean.

I listen and wish I had words to change what occurred yesterday, and most of the yesterdays previous to that one. If only my sentences could be enough crafted to let you see into the speck of tomorrow I see, which looks nothing like yesterday, resembles it only slightly, because we’re still there. But the shadows have changed.

Can I recapture the days? It’s all schedules, and meetings, and inorganic times. The years behind us only seem to creep in when someone makes a crude joke. But the moment passes and then it’s time to go.

I miss the days when I wasn’t a stranger to me. But then I look again and the familiar grin reminds me I’ve never left home.

Could we sip a bit longer on the wine? I think if we just stop and hold the breath in and count its way out we might hold the moment longer. I miss its going.

Today, I held hope for most of the day. I held it in my hands and looked hard in its depths and poked it and shook it to see if I can find what makes it tick. Today it was solid and unmoving - though if I listened hard enough I could hear breathing.

Too bad it’s time to sleep. I don’t want to turn in. I’d rather hold out till my eyes close themselves and the covers over my head become the dark stormy sky and the flashlight I hid to read by is the moon.

The wine was nice and bittersweet-dry. I never like it sweet… it sits thick on my tongue like the bad aftertaste I know it will be. I swirled it around and around and then savored a sip – laid my head back and wondered if this could be it, the moment when I know that life won’t pass me by.

Goodnight.

poet again

it’s been a long time
i’ve forgotten how we fit
the contours of your shape
the way we flow
in and out
and the pieces of nostalgia
that fall into place
as the soft surface
meets the hard pen.

i say we crash it all.
drive off the road into the ditch
and feel the crunch of metals and plastics
meeting branches and rocks and weeds
if we survive, i say we run for the hills
and find a new place to hide
free from the paranoia that
people inspire.

we’ll keep the lights off, for a while
stare into the shadows and watch the
air move the dust
the time will rust as the pages decay
and the words will mean little
as the ink fades
and the context is lost to all
but the learned.

the story will live on outside
the reaches of memory
the trees will grow taller, and thicker
and the waters deeper
and the sky darker
and the wind sweeter
and the stars brighter
and i stronger
and then my simple song
will be myth.