My Friends Are Dead

Created: 07/07/2008 2:48am

My friends are dead. And, of course, I don't judge the dead any differently than the living. Most of us have had the same dreams, the same hopes, the same thoughts of wonder during the frostbitten night. I sometimes find myself back in my room, peering out my window into the snow drifts, moving like desert sands, pausing only when they knew I was watching. The clearest night outside sang a song from the sky, from the stars, with a comet rushing climax, shattering my boundaries, rattling my deepest self with a celestial magnetic current.

But that comet was only for me. And when I saw what I saw, and when I felt what I felt, not a word did I speak. No one likes to be the shortest kid in the class, or the fattest, or the ugliest. If one could keep personal traits in a pocket, safe from all the tunnel-visioned youth, we would all look the same. And I looked the same when I was able.

Horrible dreams make mince of what I had tried to realize. Though my friends had always been ahead of me, pushing out harder, faster, with more ferocity, with leaps and bounds into the responsible world of the successful citizen. My appearance changed so slowly; the same, I'm the same, nothing to offer the window shoppers. It would be nice to have a customer.

And so they drifted away, even the loyal ones; or I left them. They would probably claim the latter. And I would agree with them, until many years later. Many years now when I see them sometimes, come back from the abyss. Sometimes they notice me, but not usually.

We all make a choice at some point. To kill or be killed. To run or stand firm. To carry the stone. And when the time comes, we find out who we are. We find out where we stand.

And I found that I stood alone, with nothing to stand for, and nowhere to go.

Leaps and bounds became inches. The ferocity became hopelessness. The gazers turned to stone. And I turned into a fool, for thinking I would ever be like them; for looking for the flaw in the sapphire; for looking ahead with someone else's eyes. Change washed over us all without effort or action, and it pushed us away, out into the current. And alone in the dark current, I made a frightful discovery....


....I could swim.

Comments: 3

A Call from the Sky

Created: 07/13/2008 9:28pm

Her voice cascades across the landscape
The sun sinks low beside me
Shattered dreams and stolen secrets
How much longer will I cry for this world?

And I realize there is no place left to go
I am here and
My life is beautiful

The clouds stream down toward the horizon
Waiting for me to follow
Waiting for me to realize and stop stirring
When will I stop stirring?

I've played this out so many times before
Driven the same road
And I run and I run
And my shadow stands still

Comments: 0

Static Blue

Created: 07/17/2008 3:37am

and so I drive
brushing the air
pulling the light into my eyes
under the endless blue

the children walk
swinging their sticks
laughing and jumping they scatter
filled with the infinite blue

a shift of the wind
a shift of my head
and the sky shimmers and sparkles
above my eyes
a half-hearted retreat
and all I see are walls of static
a world filled of white noise

the blue is creeping into my window
and the cool heart
rests beside me in the darkness
and I'm tired of the ringing in my ears

Comments: 0

The Other SiBLING

Created: 07/21/2008 6:45am

Volumes of knowledge drip through your fingers
And are quietly funneled back to the old woodshed,
overgrown with weeds and broken out windows,
smelling of aged, water soaked timber

And from there I observe you
With every glare
With every sound
With every head-humming sound and heart-thumping sound
You are mine

And I consume you
With your empty perspective
And digestion is hard,
like the truth of a well worded insult
So, I dredge the pit where the acid is weaker
I hoist up the carcass onto the dry throated deck
The flesh picked clean and with eye sockets empty
I gaze deep and see what I was searching for

The same building blocks, the mortar dissolved
Personality swept away like sediment
And now we can no longer be apart

Like a lost lover, I pull you from your sunken grave
Clutching your brittle ribs
Dragging you off to the darkness
Spitting venom and cursing myself for killing you;
For watching you die,
For making us both suffer...fractured and silent

Comments: 0

Ashen Light

Created: 07/23/2008 3:37am

Surely there must be some sort of heaven for you

Flower haired and feminine
Heart so full of empathy
Hushing the sobs of the weary and broken
Resting each head upon your breast
Quieting them to sleep in the soft glowing twilight

Surely there must be a place for you...

With soft white feathers
That fall from the sky like snow
With gentle kisses and whispered reminders
of the pessimists saved by your sparkle

Where the wind sings your silver song of legend
of reckless love
of selfless compassion

Where your calm eyes
Are filled only with beautiful landscapes
The pink of your lips in the sunset
The warmth of your smile in the night

You are everything beautiful
That is woman

Comments: 2