Sitting in a sea of people
Still alone but at peace
I pierce the sky like a church’s steeple
Flying around me are flocks of geese
Giving off an air
That says, “Go ahead,
Look at me! I don’t care”
Feeding of each other’s energy
And seeking out or forcing synergy
Writers are truly desperate creatures. Who else would choose a form of expression so solitary and reductive? We despair because words can never truly be enough but are the means by which we best express ourselves.
Subconscious - the ideas are formed in the mind as they flow through a pen when it comes in contact with paper.
Music - a conversation with my body
Writing - a conversation with my soul
Full of hypocrisy - I love it, I hate it with such a fervor it becomes quickly apparent why I would be in such despair as to identify as a poet. Poetry is too serious, even when it is playful, until it becomes bad and a joke.
I need to stop being such a goddamn consumer.
My style shifts between Bukowski and some new-age spiritual hippy mumbo jumbo - I am a drunk, bitter animal who plays at hope and enlightenment.
Push through discomfort. To be comfortable is to have given up the fight. But I am tired of fighting and I feel like a loser. Is it better to power through until the bitter end, and ultimate loss, knowing I tried my hardest, or is it better to throw in the towel and admit defeat? Is one loss more bearable than the other?
In this world am I a lion or a lamb?
Finding delight and trust in the unknown
The high is wearing off, I’m coming down
My mouth relaxed to the smallest frown
The head aches, the mind is weary
My nose runs and eyes are teary.
Another day has come and gone
I feel quite exhausted but there is no yawn.
What am I doing with my life?
I have greater purpose than being a wife.
I have so much love to give
But the world is running it through a sieve.
Easily distracted by consumption in excess
(except for bullshit but here I digress).
I’m tired of feeling like I have nothing to contribute
(the statement above my friends will surely refute).
Not everything is worthy of my attention
What I’ve wasted my time on I’m embarrassed to mention.
Always looking for a real connection
Forever blindsided by slick misdirection.
It’s like I’m waiting for something to happen
But while I’m waiting the days, they are passing
This is an exercise in rhyme
Something slightly less simple and
Different from what I do all the time
Thoughts flow from the pen in my hand
These paltry poems might never be heard
But they are me, each and every word.
Not every moment is worth sharing
The best of them cannot be captured
Of the story I tell no one is caring
But if I tell it well you’ll be enraptured
I will keep trying, and practicing and writing
And eventually, I will write something inviting
Looking for the right syncopation
Frequencies in harmonic unification
In this random jumble of matter
A rhythm, a flow, a pattern,
A person with whom I can ramble
An emotional investment not a gamble
Talking together into the night
Laughing and crying when the feeling is right.
This person doesn’t exist as one.
The perfect human? There is none.
Learning and growing, the stretch marks are showing
The good and the bad are all worth knowing.
Compassion and kindness are constant reminders
That we can leave our resentment behind us.
Flawed perception in perpetuity
All we are is human, that is all that we can be.
Good and bad, light and dark are inside us
Any concrete definition becoming detritus.
We are defined by juxtaposition
Each one of us a walking contradiction
So before I go in any direction
My moral compass I will be checking
Whatever force guides this needle
My behavior toward it I will wheedle.
An unexpected moment to pause and reflect.
Somehow vacations always lead to neglect.
A temporary escape from everyday responsibilities,
the nine-to-five forgotten in a tropical breeze.
After days of indulging my belly is round
sugary sweets and meats abound.
My mind after inactivity has grown quite soft
thoughts of my daily commute have been taken aloft.
Now in that holiday port, a place chaotic and desolate,
the urge to drink is something I wrestle with.
How long can I keep the party going?
Find mental escape and keep the good thoughts flowing?
At some point reality will hit,
the vacation will end and I’ll feel like shit.
The girl looks up from “The Old Man and the Sea” and sees a car pull up, her mother is inside. This was unexpected and closing her book the energetic and sensitive fifteen year-old picks up her knapsack and slowly walks toward the dented Accord.
“....”
“.. Hi sweetie”
“Hey”
“Well come on, get in, I’m takin you to the house today”
“Does Dad know”
The woman lets out a sigh both grounding and melancholic. “Yeah, don’t worry I called him first. Now get in, I don’t have much time”
The girl gets in the car. “Got somewhere to be?”
“Huh! no I was told to get you home by 7:30 or he’d tell the cops I kidnapped you”
“Jesus!”
“Jesus a’int got nothin to do with it so stop callin him”
“...sorry”
“... no I’m sorry honey. I know I shoulda been by more often”
“Even once woulda been cool”
“I know I know I should have done a lot of things differently. But that doesn’t change the way I feel. I’ll always be your mother and will always love you.”
“...”
“See, your daddy and me - we will always love each other. But sometimes people grow apart and he couldn’t accept that and can’t understand why I had to go and so now he is angry at me. But I am not a bad person - I will always do good by you and love you no matter what he says.
Don’t let his thoughts poison your own - form your own opinions and feel what you feel inside.
Some people believe in doing no harm but the world really shows us we should do no harm except when it is necessary to protect yourself.
Hurting him and leaving him is helping us become better versions of ourselves in the ways only other people can show us. Love doesn’t always mean you’ll live together forever or have sex or have children together. But our love, we made you and that is a beautiful thing and if nothing else, bringing you into the world was the purpose of our time together and now that you’ve grown up so much it is obvious it would be better for you to see us happy and separate than miserable and together. He couldn’t see that, he didn’t want to let go, but I was never his to keep, not deep down inside in the way that means we can live together.
“...”
“Look, I know you’re mad at me but I didn’t just want to apologize to you - “
“THAT was an apology?”
“You’re right that was terrible... honey I am so so very sorry”
“For...??” the girl says, eyes starting to tear with anger.
“For hurting you, for leaving the way I did”
“Not. One. Fuckin. Call!”
“Hey, language!”
“No, you haven’t been ‘round! You don’t get to suddenly be a parent”
“...You’re right. I can’t go back and change things or make them better. I can’t act like your mama after all these years. But I aint gonna be your friend ever either. I brought you into this world and now I want to get to know ya. Be better. Be the mama you deserve. It’s gonna take time but I’ll work for your forgiveness until the day I die”
and suddenly, much sooner than they had both realized, the car had arrived at their destination.
I.
The old haunts of Kerouac and Ginsberg and the other derelict bachelor poets of the ‘50s. There is something to be said of the wood molding and the mirrored shelves of liquor combined with old photographs of artists and writers. Places like this used to be seedy before they became cliché.
II.
At what point does a good idea become kitsch? When it becomes accessible to the lowest common denominator of taste? Perhaps the most marketable design is the most accessible to the most people and therefore is average in terms of quality. Average as I understand is 50% of the potential of quality that which can be produced.
III.
There is something to be said of feeling like a tourist in one’s hometown (or current place of residence or employment). Sitting alone, writing at a bar in London feels the same as sitting at a bar alone, writing in the City. Is it being single again for the first time in so long? Maybe it is traveling alone again (the difference being that I’ve been here before).
IV.
”MODERN DANCING AND IMMODEST DRESS STIR SEX DESIRE: leading to Lustful Flirting, Fornication, Adultery, Divorce, Disease, Destruction, and Judgement”
V.
Maybe the reason those Beat Poets used to hang out here was because it was cheap and they were alcoholics. It is a probability.
VI.
”It is an interesting ending”
VII.
Sometimes words are not enough. Music, images, interpretation, are attempts at capturing an idea. How does one describe an experience, a texture, an emotion, with words which are reductio ad absurdum?
VIII.
If chances are only taken when they are presented, you’ll find the chances you take are limited and unfulfilling.
IX.
Sometimes I feel nostalgia for Caffe Med. It was a unique time and place with old writers, musicians, poets, artists, and hippies mixed with their younger counterparts, crust punks, and the nouveau-hip, “The Young Scholars and Intellectuals”. So many of us, once young, inquisitive, and careless have grown into lonely, overworked, and disillusioned adults.
The sound of a cash register
The shuffle of bills
The clanging of coins
A bell rings
And the next transaction begins
A momentary exchange
A fiduciary indiscretion
Black American Steel Jazz
at the Black Cat
“Reclaiming jazz as a Black American,
And you can quote me on that”
Y’all I need a jet to pick me up
It’s Google”
“All seven of them”
The crowd laughs
A trumpet rings clear and sonorous
The drums and bass and piano keep playing
Following the queue
A sigh of exasperation cannot be suppressed
What sort of tension does it relieve?
There is a frustration which manifests itself physically
But the conflict exists metaphysically
From where comes this discontent?
It is a privilege to find unhappiness in the drudgery
Of a life where survival is an assumption
But the world is crumbling around us
And everyone is climbing over one another
Gasping for air
Time ticks on but it is an illusion
It is a meter by which we track our lives
What is memory but time in perpetuity?
And our imagination a reality for our soul
On one side there are the quick and active - moving actively and reactively visibly and invisibly
The other, the meandering and Slow - a beat (or more) behind everyone else
On which end of this spectrum are you?
These people just now on the metro
Stood their ground, at the side of the door frame like some self-assigned gatekeepers and actively watched a stream of people walk between them. It was the strangest thing - having to push by the woman to get into the car when she because she wouldn't move out of the way or move further into the car. They just stayed - like their brains and blood had calcified
To me - there is no life in these people - no vigor nor passion.
It is as though they are turned off to the world around
In those waking moments
Lacking and unaware
Of the dangers and pleasures life has to offer
Are our lives ever really our own?
By being forced into submission of this greater governing body
We trust that those whose profession is stewardship and protection
Will not give into greed and delusion.
To them we are faceless - a single number among millions
Thinking of disappearing
Of going away, for a while
Not sure where to go
Or of how to be happy there
This place has much to offer
Yet I remain unfulfilled
The part that is missing
Is one unrealized
I am still discovering who I am
How am I supposed to know what I want?
I dream in 5/8
Of broken glasses
And wondrous places
Of deserted pit stops
Across vast spaces
The melody of my dreams
Is quick and shifting
One of these days I’m gonna leave this place
Pack up all my things and walk away
But what kind if space am I head toward
And from what am I trying to escape?
Maybe it is a part of myself and a person I no longer want to be.
The memories are too raw and fresh and not enough time has passed for my wounds to heal.
Even a warm sunny day becomes a source of sadness
As life continues along at a tepid pace
Monotony leads me to madness
And routine has dampened the spark in my soul
The next person who says "chinita" to me is going to get a punch in the face.
Some days I feel like a thing on display. A friend would talk of how people fetishized her. The main problem here being some people don't have the luxury of anonymity. In the people who are constantly faceless - the people neglected and actively devalued in society there lies a childlike demand for attention. Their very existence screams " Notice me!" And encounter with the dehumanization of these individuals forces our callousness.
I on the other hand, seek the quiet existence where people only gave me notice when I consent. I can't ever completely blend in with a crowd and part of me enjoys it before it becomes exhausting and relentless.
I can't completely ignore my feminininity
Drugs everywhere on my walk to work.
People selling
People using
The remnants of administration and digestion
The sellers look mean-eyed and are ever discerning, but generally non confrontational. Altercation with these types escalates quickly.
The buyers are meek or manic, depending on what they're buying and what they've been using. Different cocktails of uppers and downers - speeding up and slowing down time. All trying to escape something. All are chasing that blissful feeling of ignorance.
Users and dealers everywhere
Selling false perception
And garbage that does not ever really disappear
You better decide if you will be
One who looks and does not truly see.
Living in willful ignorance brings peace but a life without understanding is a life blind to honesty. An examination of the body must also be (an examination) of the mind.
All around me are eyes with no life behind them, no light. Not quite the cold dead stare of glass or porcelain, this lack of focus helps to understand how an eye is a lens. Glasses are lenses to help our dysfunctional lenses. Like that of a camera, the very quality of biological seeing is found in the structure of the eye and its ability to open and close - an aperture that adjusts to the amount of atmospheric light. If the eye is the lens, then the film would be the visual memory. A print is made on the retina in flashes of neurological light (electro-chemical energy to be exact). The difference between a person and an animal is the ability to take rewind and fast forward the film upon command. The difference between a person and a robot (zombie/computer) is the ability to extrapolate beyond logic and also the quality of emotions.
Every work day I walk on the same streets because it is the quickest route. This path is not pretty. The derelict and dirty, sometimes the harsh fruity- floral detergent that the Clean City workers use when they blast away the feces and trash.
The loiterers are watching you walk by, even though some pretend you aren't there to the point of forcing you to acknowledge they exist.
If they behaved as everyone else they would feel even more invisible and powerless. They have also, almost entirely lost touch with their body and the desire to live.
When J- woke up that morning, he knew he was going to die soon. He had started every day for the last year or so with this feeling. The weight of his aged body had suddenly struck him and he knew it could only keep up a short while longer. Keep up with what? He thought to himself. The world turning he supposed. It was only natural - he was after all, an old man. He had come to terms with that years ago when the doctors told him he had to stop drinking, eating dairy, eating red meat, going to bed within three hours of eating, the occasional cigarette, and as he saw it, living a life worth living.
J- knew this thought was childish and stubborn but he also knew by the constant aching in his hands and knees and frequent yet percussive urination that he could ignore his age no longer. It would have been a merciful act of fate if he had passed with the love of his life whose mere presence gave him joy and comfort. She was stricken suddenly with a diagnosis that she didn’t even know to fear at her young age of 38. A freak case of cancer that was unaccounted for in her hereditary or lifestyle. He found love in a partner a few years later but forever was marred by an unshakeable understanding of his own mortality.
He rolled out of his sagging bed and shuffled along the hardwood floor to perform his morning ritual. Scratching his soft body he stood over the pristine porcelain bowl and waited. It would be a full 20 minutes before his bladder was empty although it may as well have been hours the way his mind wandered. He was used to the wait by now. Twenty minutes went by in the blink of an eye. A whole day really only lasted around 12 hours and each was marked by an overwhelming sense of repetition. Weeks were measured by visits to the Y and visits from his youngest, Emily, who dutifully and loyally helped him do laundry, pay his bills, and brought his groceries.
His breakfast consisted of a cup of tea (herbal as caffeine was banned along with anything else remotely stimulating), toast with butter (which he insisted upon) and an egg - one boiled in a batch a couple days earlier during one of Emily’s visits.
After his meal came the laborious task of getting dressed. His arthritic limbs were much more at home in a robe and sweats but Emily scolded him for his slovenliness and insisted he keep up the appearance that he was alive. “You can’t just sit around the house doing nothing. You’ll take years off your life doing that”. His clothes were well worn but not shabby. He knew he was lucky someone cared otherwise he’d live in his own filth until one day he fell down and wouldn’t get up. He didn’t really know why he cared - he thought to himself how easy it would be to find his end at the bottom of a bottle and be all the more blissful for it.
But still, he trudged on. His life lacked conflict. After time at the front lines, his wife’s own defeated battle, and living in an overall safe and comfortable world, he had nothing to live for, except his children. It was enough, he supposed, to delay for them the inevitable grief of dealing with his death. His bland meals suited his dulled taste buds. His small circuit was tailored to his limited mobility. His soft clothes were aptly matched to his aged flesh.
Despite an overwhelming aura of ennui. J- was not unhappy. He was too old to be unhappy, too tired. One by one his friends were dying, His favorite shops were closing, and his body parts failing. He had come to terms with his mortality a long time ago.
He switched his slippers with his shoes and prepared to leave the house. Another laborious process that was at the same time endless and instant. Today was one of his physical therapy days. The community center was a short bus trip away but he didn’t feel as at ease in his neighborhood anymore and the walk to the bus stop sparked in him an unusual inner turmoil. When did the sun get so hot? Where did all the garbage come from? And the chain link fences? Emily said that there were families moving in to the neighborhood and renting from companies that bought batches of houses. Nothing to be worried about - no violence that he knew of - an old man could still walk around at 3pm and feel safe.
The bus stop smelled like piss. Unfortunately he had to sit down. His aching limbs didn’t permit long periods of standing. He wished he could walk to his appointment but it was too hot and too far and he was too old.
When the bus finally arrived he made his way up the steps that had never before felt so steep. The bus driver nodded to him and was kind enough to wait for him to sit down before stepping on the gas. J- felt exhausted when he sat down and no matter how hard he tried, could not resist the urge to close his eyes.
