What I Remember

The amber colored African rooboi is marinating the dry and hollow cinnamon sticks that are cracked into pieces like 250 year old bones
spicy slices of ginger floating like a bobber in the tea
We all sit around the table, that surely was handcrafted, because nothing here is done lazily
The table sits behind a large window that is like a magnifying glass to the world
The bullfinch go about eating and fighting
We watch the Irish sun peek it’s head from behind the gray clouds
Then we watch it retract and then rain comes down
It serves as a wonderful backdrop to our table time together
Everyone is lathering different condiments on bread as if we are evening out icing on a top layer of a cake
Reaching and passing items across the table like moves in a sports game
Chatting about our differences because we are actually interested
Each of us noticing how different we are
She speaks to me in English with a German accent and then speaks German to me and thinks it’s English, we laugh
He plays pool with me over a few Guinness and provides instructions on how to make the perfect fire
He explains in his Western Irish Accent that the heat source of the fire is it’s heart
I find it endearing that the fire has a heart and all of a sudden it’s alive
I slowly feed it small pieces of wood because I never want anything to die that has a heart
The day I left I cried. And now I see why.

The words come out over a cell phone
I don’t have to convey a convincing expression
No one can see my face except the drivers passing by in their car
I just have to say what I have to say in a reassuring voice
A voice that assures me that what I’ve just said was true
I believe what I am saying because, I can be convincing
So believable that I’m a believer, not a griever
I say I don’t care, I care more than I don’t
And I say a sentence out loud as if saying it aloud makes it go away
Like a chant copied from a children’s book makes it go away
I’m sad.
Not because I want to be there but because I am not
A melting of genes, a combination of skin
A gurgle, a word, a movement of a leg
Something that’s mine that I leave behind

Roommates

A shag McDonalds bag is the rug on our floor
In a few days I won’t live here anymore
Won’t live where I can stay up all night
Exchanging ideas and thoughts we have on life
Things that cross our mind from day to day
Expressions we had that we now can explain
They will be syndicated shows playing in my head
Shows that I love to watch while I’m lying in bed
Times that won’t happen anymore
Soon constructing itself to be history

Another Lost Art

The crisp piece of paper will never meet ink from a pen
There will be no beginning, there will be no end
Nothing to read later to bring a smile to my face
People will be forgotten gone without a trace
No personal touch on anything that can be recognized that a person ever existed
Who needs a stamp when the emails listed
Can’t dust for finger prints or see a finger print smudge
They’re will be no scratching out or mistakes you can not budge
No anticipation of something coming in the mail
You won’t be able to unfold paper and I don’t think it’s fair
Those extra steps taken sometimes mean more than what’s inside the envelope
Even if what’s written doesn’t make me laugh, even if it’s a bad joke
A chain letter or whatever it still took effort
Something I think in which we should find pleasure
Pleasure in the beginning or maybe the end or maybe in the body
Or maybe the color of the pen
The pen that you bought so you could write what you thought
To someone that obviously meant a lot

Skinny Dipping

Grains of sand hitch a ride on legs and feet
As I’m running to where Me and the ocean meet
I’m not alone either but I don’t care
This is the feeling I love and is why I’m running bare
The way I got here, just skin and hair
And I like it best when I just don’t care
The calendar pages make a ripping sound
As they’re thrown away, thrown out of this house
To remind you that it’s been a long while
Since I haven’t cared what pops in peoples minds…
There’s a freedom gene that grants a wish
Only on his own time when he’s not being squished
In his own world that sometimes seems like mine
he grants me freedom some of the time
And all though it’s only some of the time
It’s honestly just enough for me not to lose my mind
He leaves me after his work is done
He goes back to his world and I in mine
As I wait by the clock for him to arrive

Fear of Failing

She sits on the stool in the low lit room
While the ceiling fan chops the window in half
The window that’s across the street
That is really not cut into two
And with each gap in the fans propellers
you see that it is still a whole window
She is in a live picture
With a shiny black picture frame
With light that trickles down, down on her face
she is hoping that it is not shinning a spot light on the evidence of age
That lay below her eyes, that show her she is not immortal
And will be getting older with every day that passes
While she’s on the stool she’s nervous
And excited at the same time
It seems those two feelings always like to hang out together
Just like inseparable best friends
The girl starts to speak, her voice nasally and quivering
The thing that lets people know that it is her
Not a girl that looks like her
She wants people to like what she has to say
She wants to be listening to something worth hearing
And she wonders what are they thinking
What are you thinking?

Identity Crisis

Am I a banana or a plantain?
Will someone please explain
What is the difference between both of us?
Is it even something to be discussed?
Do I come from Brazil or maybe from the states?
Am I as sweet as I think I am, maybe I’m really tart
Are we identical twins, hard to tell apart?
Should ice cream be added and I be split?
Or am I something hearty, to be cooked and dipped
Does it even matter when our destiny’s the super mart?
I’m just matter put into a cart
To be used and abused, with nothing left to do
Go along with what’s going on… no room to refuse
The destiny that’s awaiting me is the same no matter what I am
Whether is to be spoiled and thrown away or eaten by a man

Aunt Dianne

Poppy seeds separated by flour and sugar just for me once a year
She sings happily while baking
Swaying from oven to cabinet then reaches for the phone
She says goodbye and returns to her song,
She sings as if she’s an actress and it’s 1935
Living in a black and white screen for all the world to see
It takes her back to when she was younger
Like a spirit resurrected from the dead
the musical notes drift through the air
She waits for Dean Martin or Cary Grant to sweep her away
So much of me is her that she will never be gone
Not in 50 years, she’ll always be in those songs
The songs that one day I’ll sing while constructing the perfect poppy seed cake

The Cats

Hair crazy, eyes crazy
Time tugs on her face, trying to drag it down to the floor
Vacant windows to a house that’s empty
She plays with a string, amazed that it can be wrapped around a single finger
A finger that once didn’t have arthritis
A hand that once was used to carve and paint
She sits and waits to seep into the earth
Sometimes it is time for the time to pass…
She can’t escape and so she waits
People coming and going, hoping and crying
Making up their own story that allows them to sleep at night
Sleeping in a room filled with things that were hers
Things that she built that reminds everyone how the great can fall and will
This event we are watching will soon enough be what we become
And no one even bothered explaining to the cats that she wasn’t coming back

Buachaill Éireannach

The layers of what people judge us by are scattered on the floor
Sacrifice to the gods for a good time
The curtains defend us from sun reflected walls while we lay in bed
Putting together the fragments of the night before
I smile at what I chose to pick out and what I chose to leave behind
I do not resemble your other lovers
Nor will I ever
I am a rain drenched afternoon and you are the sunniest day
If only you could stay, instead of go away

Thrifting

I flick my finger through some gently scratched records on the floor like a rolodex. Trying to find who I know
I see bands and singers I don’t know, they remind me that I am still young
Young enough not to know how important they once were, before they were disposed of
“I still get to hear it was before your time“, how lucky am I?
I weasel my way in between plastic hangers of clothing and catch a whiff of perfume bought in the 50’s
Or recently, maybe she never changed her scent…
And I think, I think a lot.
I wonder where she wore this dress, those shoes and that hat
and was it the best day of her life?
Did she wear them while someone first told her they loved her or did she lose someone she loved?
Did she wear it for a day and then toss it away?
She might have been he, he might have been confused
And the dress verified exactly what he suspected
He was a cross dresser whoever would have guessed it

My World

I turn left at the duck pond to no surprise I see ducks
Some are night swimming, some sleeping with one leg up
I find that it’s beautiful yet beautifully strange and I wonder
How I thought they slept before this moment in time
I want to turn around and take a picture but that would be odd
So I decide against it and keep the tires in rotation
Like I am a dj spinning music
The music that makes me forget how long it takes to get from place to place
So I take a right and I’m almost there in my Flintstone mobile
I feel the tires rolling under my feet
A floorboard stands in the way of me and the street
That doesn’t matter I still always feel them moving as if it were because of me
I look up from my feet and see remains of water, compliments of rain
As I look at the football field lights I see something familiar
A painting I know
With every light from the football field it hits each moisture cluster on my windshield and gives me my own starry night
All that’s missing is a whimsical stroke of a brush and it would be complete
And then I wonder is Van Gogh still painting away
Is this one of his paintings? And I’m in it?
I laugh to myself at how deeply I think into some things
things as normal as rain and lights
And then I realize that this is my world and this is what I see

Thank you Bed.

I crawl into my bed where I don’t have to be judged by anyone
No thoughts need to be had just how long I should sleep
Forever I wish
But to be honest I won’t
Who else can you find that will never judge you?
No one. You can’t, that’s my point
And that’s what I like about my bed
It’s not living or dead and it stands on 4 legs
On the side of my wall where I put my feet when they’re hot
When I wake in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep
It doesn’t critique the way I am
Where I put my head, arms or legs
My legs that always embrace random pillows they find
taking some captive while leaving others behind
Even the pillows don’t tell me that who I shouldn’t be is me
There is no one to tell me that I can’t take the feather down and entwine and whined
Until they are all mine
I usually put on music and listen to a song
Or singer I should say
“Serenade me I ask” and they always fill the request
Helping me block out the thoughts that try to stop my dreams
The dreams that make my eyelids flicker at the seams
as I drift off to sleep…

A Poet

The light shines down on him and falls inside every mark of age on his face
Which in return outlines and illuminates his cheeks chin and forehead
He recites a poem about nature that sounds like every poem I’ve ever heard about every flower ever described before
He speaks with no emphasis, completely mono toned
It makes me wonder what he sounds like when he talks to an old friend
Blabbing on the phone
Does he ever get excited, heart beating quickly and speech fast
Proving that he’s human, that he’s not constructed of mechanical parts
Is he just a simple man that says what crosses the streets in his mind
He’s not simple enough because he still has things to say
He recites another poem and his voice still sounds the same
mouth forming shapes that he learned as a child
Half moon, circle, then oval… as he speaks the words come out
These letters that come together point out the differences of now and then
And they drift through the room in and out of everyone’s ear like an aroma

Adams Run

The smell of muscadines sliding under my nose and above my head
Across my tongue as they age, as I age
Inconsistent greens and neutrals, consistently speckled with brown
Theses colors collide as I roll the spheres around in my hands
Small hands made them seem massive once
They seemed to shrink years later until I realized it was me that had changed
Rows of them glowing in the sunlight, now imprinted in my mind
Me trying to find the one that has the most to offer
The easiest way to get rid of the stubborn seeds and work through the thick skin, still undiscovered
The seeds that surrender fall to my feet, meeting the place where they began
Greeting earth once again
And I walk over them wishing I could be under them again