Sepia
He still remembers crooked hair standing in the wind and eyes screaming curses into nothing
All the while his mouth stayed shut and his mind stayed closed and he tried to never sleep
The sound of heartbeats from his finger tips sounded like wrecking balls trying to tear down the empty buildings that were no longer homes to anyone but abandoned memories
But the laughter still lingered and gardens still grew
Putting an end to endless loves and saying goodbye to tortured kids who never really bothered to find out why everyone left them alone
The breeze can still bring a smile to one corner of his mouth when he thinks of the days where the heat was never enough to go inside and the sound of mumbled screams made him run even faster
There was a time when everything seemed fine because the sun was shining and there was beauty in heartbreak, being reborn into a picture of something perfect and unnamed.
Being silent and still for a lifetime meant not throwing away pure blood and it meant counting clouds in the sky instead of forgetting your face.
Unknown Persons
Strangers until an overwhelming sense of comfort and knowledge creeps into the bed every night and nothing is no longer new.
Finding yourself more unknown and as the time passes you are the only constant in tomorrow.
But there’s nothing to understand, to hold onto. And you sit all alone
You walk all alone
You stay all alone
Until it’s all that’s left to want
And comfortable strangers become ordinary strangers again.
Even after every thought and mannerism has been understood and can be copied to a T.
Strangers
You find yourself harder to figure out and copy and the things you say don’t even leave a trace because everything is so built up and words and actions are begging for breath, trying not to suffocate
Hoping to make it to someone else’s empty head
We never knew each other
We never knew anything
Winds
Where are the ghosts when I can’t sleep?
Pulling the skin off my palms and counting creaks in the walls
Watching invisible colors play tricks in the blackness
And the empty rooms in a big house keep the cold in so you can see your breath even with your eyes closed
I will probably always pay rent and never have an actual career.
Double-Stroker
My dad had a stroke.
He couldn’t talk, he couldn’t move
While they were switching hospitals I couldn’t stop thinking about how much and how badly this was going to affect my family.
After work I went to see him and he seemed great almost perfect, slightly weakened, a little tired, but there, fully.
Within the hour he got worse.
He couldn’t talk again and after two handshakes I couldn’t get a third out of him.
The nurses act like everything was fine and things slowly seemed to progress negatively.
I left fully expecting a call about something money related the next day.
But I lay on the couch all day with a cold. A worthless cold. And everything is going as it should.
He should be out in two days.
8:00 am. And he calls I barely here him and I feel like his phone isn’t work right, being that he’s in the hospital, but I think nothing of it and my mom is with him.
8:45 my mom calls and she said your dad doesn’t sound right I don’t know what to do you need to get down there.
“Where are you?”
I’m at home.
I take a shower, I drink some water and I get to the hospital.
His voice is raspy and small. Like a child with bronchitis. Another stroke within the lonesome night.
Doctors talk, I can’t think. I’m alone. I’m the kid. This should not be the position I’m in right now.
They rush him for an MRI scan and while I wait in the hall a man is screaming for help.
“Can you help me? Can you help me.”
He just has to use the bathroom.
The doors open. The “x-ray in progress” sign flashes off.
“We’re going to perform a procedure to get the clot out. We go in through the brain with a catheter and from there proceed to suck the clot out….could take up to four hours”
“What’s happening?”
“They have to get the clot out, they’re going to operate”
Blank. His face is completely blank. And he says he feels 100% fine.
They wheel him into a room and shut the door and escort me into a waiting room.
Ok
I wait in the waiting room surrounded by mournful criers and apathetic partners. This is not the place for me.
A man approaches me to sign some papers. I call my mother,
“Would he do it if it was his father?”
“In a heartbeat”
He places a hand on my shoulder, “he’s two years older than I am.”
Waiting til the women arrive.
My aunt is blonde now.
and I leave to pick up my sister.
We arrive back at the hospital. A lot of waiting.
Waiting.
He’s through. The clot is gone.
They’re sticking a camera down his throat into his heart to take pictures.
All clear.
Now they ultrasound his head.
Mild stroke. Some brain damage. Physical and speech therapy three times a week.
I’ve only seen my dad cry once. But he cried three times in the last day and a half.
So much confusion. He couldn’t understand what happened to him in 9 hours. So many procedures not excluding brain surgery.
It’s like looking at a 55 year old adolescent grade schooler.
He tells me he loves me. He means it.
I say it back. I mean it.
I never thought that my father’s life, in jeopardy, would affect me this much.
Seeing him re learn to talk and eat and move and become a father all in 1 second. The most real thing I’ve ever witnessed
The most humanized events flashing before my eyes.
The strongest guy in the gym
“a double-stroker,” he says and laughs a genuine laugh with a child’s grin and gives me “knucks” with an I.V.’D fist.
The strongest man my family has ever known taken down to applesauce and heart rate monitors. I’ve never been so worried and so reassured because he is the strongest, toughest, most calloused man I’ve ever known.
Burnt
Standing still drenched
dripping sweat
Dry heaving burning bourbon guts
Keeping my mouth shut
No one wants to hear it
Pale whites drying up and scabbing
Broken hearts are melted and never coming back
Falling stars stalking all the streets you run and hide to
But I just keep my mouth shut
I’m closing everyone’s eyes when my thoughts are reaching out
The sun is crashing down and burning up all my value and worth
I’m living on fire
Neverending flames and heat haunting all my moonlit halls
But we can wait for warm winter daydreams and freezing winter nights to make everything seem ok for just a little longer.
criminal
Defy the voice
hit the ground
shudder
footsteps roaring through your mind like thunder
the end is just under your thumb
spitting blood
clawing skin
suffer
the trail you leave is a graveyard of mothers and fathers
there was so much more to keep hidden in the pale light
stealing and catching tears of empty hearts
flashback
I was watching gods hands build a city in the light even in the dark it was blinding. the pulse beneath the bricks and steady breathing of the street lights could sing you to sleep or keep you up all night, depending on how you looked at it.
the faster i ran or the longer i waited i never saw anyone. no souls , lost or found. there was always a steady voice brushing against my neck. constantly turning around and going backwards whenever i reached a new street. sometimes i couldn’t find my way back to the ones that looked most promising.
angels and devils were living behind the beams of street light. waiting to drag me off from this “in-between”. i do my best to keep them at bay but now and then it’s not so easy.
i can’t remember what i was looking for, but i can always tell when i’ve lost something important. floating away down the gutters or exiting my mind through the glow of empty glass.
god spoke on the last day of building, but i wasn’t listening. i was too caught up in trying to be my voice of reason when all the reason was back outside this new city. i cant even remember where these roads started or how long i’ve been here. the only clear definition from day and night is the temperature of the wind.
i left it all behind trying to find the voice of god. but it spoke so subtly that i couldn’t see the signs. and now no one is looking for me. not that i can tell anyway.
Closed Eyes
His passion bursting through the fingers
Into a world created for the passionless
Floating and reaching out beyond the sight of all but his
Hidden behind closed lids and tired legs
Vocal chords stretched and strained and bleeding filling the pens in hopes to get the words right
There was always time for regret
Even behind closed doors
Of three rooms
In a world built for one
And it is passed down before the reading of the will
It can not go wasted
Bone
At the bottom of the big hill
The young are waiting to shed their skin
Swallowing flys
Building kingdoms between ribs
Counting breaths
Counting stars
Dried out
Breaking useless fists
and tearing apart the meat
Making it easier on everyone else
The skin is hard enough
