Nothing to see here

I see the face of a man
a pained grimace
with hollowed with sunken eyes
gazing through the tinted mirror

Death perhaps of youth? Perhaps–
his spry fondness of life
nothing but a scripted shake of the head–
optimism a mere cuss only matched
by the mythical mutterings of hope– he shivers, I shiver,
I stare deeper into my reflection.

I’m amazed, how I can read the years and
how they dance on, small blemishes and
scars–a flesh diary of
ghosts and missed chances, I’m left in
a harsh revelation:

I’ve gotten nowhere fast
but the heart continued to beat
even after being shattered and empty
the blood pushes through the void

carrying me to the tattered pages
reading and rereading onward
myths of spiritual freedom
as I’m tied down to the debts of
society, education, and kin.

I can do nothing but wonder what’s out
there, the red Colorado sands,
gaping canyon of the west, ocean tides calling
but I’m here stuck in the land
of the rising sun, praying
I’m not still here when it
sets.

The Vagabond calls out with
stifled wanderlust tears
I’m left just to write onward,

knowing long nights
and quick years loiter in the future–

either way, it goes on.

Yet Some More Last Words

Yet Some More Last Words

So many times
we hinted towards saying “I love you”
in fact (in the ignorance
of our youth)
we  did,
mutter it, yell it,
and believed it to a point.
(In wisdom I’ve yet to share
those words with another woman.)

I do question to this date
if I might have felt its
cold hands reaching round me.

or rather I might have felt
it’s securing warmth
pull way.
(It’s that much for I am grateful.)

I do continue to deny that
I ever was submerged in its
full presence. (And
clearly you weren’t
either)

We shared our feelings in artifacts
notes, pictures, paintings doodles,
(but not quite poems
they weren’t needed until
your absence)
and we shared in
innocent hugs, kisses, and
hands held
on buses
and in basements
and long walks on
school grounds.

how long ago
it was
and I think
of how much we have
changed.
The ticking of tocks
the three clocks
still ticking, but you never heard
them. (and never will)

Our words, vibrations
long since halted
by other words.
The warmth eaten
by other arms
and dissipating into
the universe of lost heat.
(Thank god)

To think it was me
who never said anything
(ever)
In silence
I was a wrong until
its death. I screamed
killing it even more.
Then again more silence
I’m portrayed as the loud one, but
(secretly first impressions are right)
I’m the quiet one
avoiding the eyes
that I so wished to be
gazing at. I blocked
out words that were so
lyrical I wished to be subject to.
That laughter… and I just
hid from it all in false silence,
my music.

(Believe me, not much has changed.)

I begged for peace
but never received  a settled heart
(I assure you the waters are not
being stirred by you)
I only can say although
there are still fragments
from your presence
they are long since dead
and the feeling has been long
since decayed.
It’s in journals and old boxes that replicas
have been stored and emotions
have been pressed for ages
saying,

“remember me
because it was I
who opened your eyes.”

So I sit here
reading the past
enjoying the present
saying thank you
with an open hand
for nothing more than a
shake and nothing more….

(but I’m still here
with ears and bound to the
promise to the world
that I  would never stop listening.
I sometimes say that this is my curse,
but really such promises
are blessings

even when it comes to poems
like this.)

Apology

Sorry for lack of poems I’m currently having a bout of binge reading. I’ll be posting again soon after a book or two or maybe three from now. Let me get drunk on words so I can refill myself and see what poems I’ll have to offer.

Jesse

How I Learned to Read

 

It was Thursday night practices
dusty basement that echoed
each note through the empty
stone walls of my church.

We’d have little books
of music in our hands
as about fifteen of us
would stare in the notebook
attempting to translate the
symbols into words and
match the pitch of
the piano player, or of
the kids singing on
a pre-recorded cassette
tape.

Slowly week after week
the symbols became words
and even the notes
became music. Our
ignorant minds were liberated
from disabilities of youth
slowly pushing our
way into maturity.

Then we would go out
in front of the congregation,
our high-pitched timid
voices would sing out the
words which now
I realize were actually
God.

Matches

Confession: I always keep a pack of hotel matches in
my back pocket for a conversation piece.

Sometimes I just stand outside of bars,
malls, shops, restaurants– whatever

and people, male or female, will ask me,
“Do you have a light?”
and then with a quick swipe,
a pop, fizz, and the lingering scent
of sulfur, an amber glow
of a lit cigarette sparks
a conversation.

Sometimes these strangers talk politics
(interpretation on American rights)
others Religion
(amazingly touching quips about God,
or sometimes fierce, yet understanding criticism
of the lack of)

Quite often about their work,
children, love, or even
unfortunate marital problems,

and sometimes, just sometimes
it’s about completely random shit
(like the “ehhh” sound turtles make when they screw)

I follow along being pulled into a
playful, yet dark realm of conversation, tip-toeing
the edges of trust between strangers, as we
slowly shroud ourselves with the mystic,
gentle, albeit horribly brash, comfort of empathy, knowing
we’re all human… we’re all human…

Depending who you are, that’s
either a beautiful or terrifying thing,
or possibly a little bit of
both.

Eventually then stranger will usually ask me,
noticing I’m just standing there playing with matches,
“hey, do you want a cigarette?”

I just tell them, “no thanks,
I don’t smoke.”

They start to laugh as they take
another drag of a cigarette and
I continue conversation

possibly catching up on baseball scores,
talking about my dog, chattering about forest fires,
rambling about that one who got away
(an unavoidable topic if drunk),  or
maybe even debating on what point
strangers can be considered friends–

So we talk on, two strangers,
now friends inter tangled in a symbiotic
mess, weaving a tapestry
of conversation, the smokers and I,
captives to our addiction
destined to be there while full-knowing
we’ll probably never meet
again.

Loneliness; another morning poem, but this time with Cheerios

Loneliness

This morning I ponder about
how many poems there are about
loneliness as I slowly
eat my cereal

Usually they focus on a
lost lover or possibly
an absence of any lover
at any time.

My spoon goes in constant
slowly shoveling Cheerios
into my mouth.

Quite often you’ll hear
about being lost in a crowd,
miss understood, or
even about late
nights eating away
at the delicate soul.

Right now, I’m perfectly
content, milk flowing my
my mustache and
soft hum of my fan blowing
in the fresh spring air.
The last thing I want is
to hear anybody’s voice, or for
to disturb my lame contemplation about how

How wonderful life can be.

Yet, I can say that in my youth

I’ve written quite a few of these poems
releasing little sensations
of depressions like some it’s
the fecal matter of the
soul– and there, another
word (which I’ve used twice now)
that’s often used with
loneliness. Soul, not
to be confused with :sole” which
actually means a form of singularity.

It’s funny how coincidental words can be,
I can’t help but laugh to myself,
at my own lame jokes until
a sense of loneliness comes over me.

Although, no sad or even self
related.

I’m left with one cheerio in my bowl

sole soggy “O” is pleading me to eat
him and put him out of his misery.

I reach down with my spoon to pick him up,
but he dissipates into the milk–

a lonely death,  indeed.

I pour his remnants over
my satisfied lips and
contemplate calling my mother.

Another Morning

Soon night became day
and the restless moved on
shuffling to continue
the work week.

I sat down at a table
and drank my coffee as
the cool spring wind
greeted me from
a slightly cracked window.

I looked out the window.
“hello, morning. what a beautiful day”

I couldn’t help but notice
the flowers blooming along
the fence in the yard,

or how the gaunt
trees were slowly
bursting with bulbs of
green–

soon they would live again.

I could hear my neighbors
cars starting as they flowed
through the work week, pushing
forward with ghastly expression
and overdrawn ambitions,
poor chaps.

I then decided to move
my seat to outside, and
under putrid scent of
exhaust I could smell
the heliotrope peaking through,
the spring.

Then the sun then said to me
“Good morning,” and the
day embraced me as its
own.

Another Easter

Another Easter

The little old ladies
wore their easter bonnets today
as they walked up the side
walk towards the church.

I was wearing two day
old blue jeans
and a t-shirt
drinking a morning
coffee.

It must be easter.

Little children were outside
early screaming, some of
them showing off a new
kite other stuffing
their face with chocolate.
I flipped through the channels
and caught glimpses
of golf and baseball replays.

Soon enough the easter bonnets
started walking back to their
cars. Mrs. Gilbertson, nintey-something,
walking strong on shaky legs saw me in my window and

waved at me while showing off her toothy smile,

“Happy Easter!”

I waved back from behind my window.

I then wen back inside and sat down
to the flashbacks of morning communions
when life revolved around Sunday brunches,
and I always woke up to a freshly ironed
shirt my grandma picked out from me

excited to learn something new about
the bible from Sunday School–

back then the Bible seemed more fascinating
than scary.  I shudder now with the turn
of every page to count the sins and misdirections
our society has taken.
I go back to the TV flipping through rich politicians,
sitcom re-runs, and finally to a
preacher shouting “Smile for he has risen.”

I turned off the TV and went back to
bed and wondered

where it was I fell.

A night indulgence

A night indulgence

Questions of right and
wrong– I plead the night
the uplifting sin that hides
the stars– my ceiling
housing the indulgence
she’s my, my– no
I’m her personal Casanova
at her will slipping in a–
rather not in a bed–
our coffin caught in pseudo comas
questioning– both of us– is this
real asking “what are we doing?”

Sunny skies out but
the moon linger behind
blinds. Eyes
glowing everything but light
in binds that blind– lips shut
and lips pressed sounding
darkness desperate
each other another check for step
towards hell, another
we scream out the lords name,
was it in vain?
I may not have seen it
but we did feel it, but actually
we don’t care– at the moment we are unaware
cause we’re so tired were fighting
to breathe
fighting to think
but we fail at that
we just collapse
accepting that ceiling
as our sky. In the end
it’s all good but
maybe (just maybe)
not exactly right.

The Living versus Dreaming

The walls are cracking as the paint is peeling
little chips lead infected with hints of madness
scatter the warped and wooden floor
like the bloodied bodies of fallen comrades
at war, and I’m left trapped and tapping my toe
rocking in a stationary chair screaming
in a helpless drone hoping that
this month
will soon be over.

Ok,ok, ok, I’ll stop my over exaggerating,
my ill-conceived tempts of embellishment
and poetics, but
I am certain that I’m falling closer
to an uncertain madness. I miss you,
that’s the certainty.

Your voice, though not forgotten,
only echoes through memory weaved
imagination and late night dream sequences
your laugh, only a vivid ghost,
rests on my mental visions porch step,
thank God for all the past jokes and
captured giggles, but they seem
not to be enough, a tease, an addiction,
a simple sip of water, for the
dehydrated. I miss you, memories and
self-written text are not
enough.

Yes, my sanity seems to be growing thin (I know
I know, I’ve said this all way too much.)
Will I fall for fate of self-directed murmurs
and wild thrashing and uncontrollable temptations
towards the dangerous and crude? It’s possible, but
highly improbable. (There’s more chance of
Eros’s misguided arrows being real.) No, the sanity
I’m claiming is the guide light, that dotted line, I’m suppose
to follow, but instead I ignore and continue sleeping.
Day in and night out my eyes are closed grasping
hold to what ever ghost wisp through
my synaptic impulses from which Morpheus scribed,
dreams of fictional fantasies like

long walks, donuts, Florida
Late nights, hidden tickles,
unavoidable giggles, and even talk
of Pluto, teddies, and puppies too.

Alone at home, left as one
man laying in a solemn bed, I awake
only to remember dreams aren’t
suppose to be better
than reality, even though right now, undoubtedly,
they seem to be. I miss you. When
dreams out way the presence of happiness
in current existence, that’s when there’s
a simple flag waving up in the air. I surrender
Apollo, you can start moving the sun and day
a little quicker because I’m sick and tired
of being under utilized, over slept, and
in turn excessively tired. I’m left feeding off
of blissful memories, but please, don’t
let them be the lone life source that keeps me
surviving,writing (basically the same thing).

Only so much reflection on your satin hair, you angelic
warmth of personal glow, and your other
countless “Princess” compilations
can push me to write so much (even Orpheus
had to live in order to write), but life
flesh, blood, bones, and spoken words which carry the
personality and keystone presence is a far better
lover and a muse than those
synapses firing off  fantastic,
albeit fictitious,
dreams.