Follow Through - a love poem

How do I write about something else,

when all that enthralls my mind are thoughts of you.

As you are away visiting family for holidays

I am constantly thinking on what that first moment

will be like when I get to see you again. How wonderful

it will be to get to collect you up in my arms,

twirling you around like we are in the middle of a rom-com

but with a more satisfying ending, and one that stretches

into infinity. How is it you could touch my life

so completely, me, who had guarded myself, and shut off

all possibilities of finding love, but immediately

realizing that you were too perfect to let slide by. I have

never been more happy for being weak in my resolve

I could have easily said nope, the odds are against me,

but every word you typed, and said, every smile spread,

scrunched nose smile created I was mesmerized,

my soul pierced with your beauty, and your intelligence,

I fell into your adoration, and gave you all of mine,

and it has never, never ceased to amaze me, how doubt

is never a word considered when it comes to fantasizing

about our future. I know me, I know my devotion, my loyalty,

my joy, and my stubbornness, and I know I can follow through

to the futures that I dream up, futures

that I dream up,

with you.

DISTANCE SONG - a poem/song with audio

Distance Song

VERSE 1:

Airport, baggage claim chute

a return place for our meet-cute.

the place that return lovers,

who rush each other,

to embrace one another.

CHORUS:

And I’ll say: Katie, Katie, I love you.

Don’t let the sun go down on us tonight,

Lead us home with your guiding light

Where I’ll say: Katie, Katie, I love you.

VERSE 2:

Wonderful you’re thinking on me

thinking of where we will be:

in one month or two months,

or one year or two years,

and so on and so on and so forth.

CHORUS:

And I’ll say: Katie, Katie, I love you.

Don’t let the sun go down on us tonight,

lead us home with your guiding light

Where I’ll say: Katie, Katie, I love you.

VERSE 3:

When you cry, I cry too

and when you laugh I’m laughing with you

To know your heart is as full as mine

and all great things will come in time

Through plane rides, and car rides,

and bus rides

I’ll always feel you inside.

CHORUS:

And I’ll say: Katie, Katie, I love you.

Don’t let the sun go down on us tonight,

bring us home with your guiding light.

Where you’ll say: Oh I love, you, too.

Male Assumptions - a micro-fiction (strong language)

The belligerent boy, named Warren, stopped his verbal assault on his best girl friend, and asked her if she was okay. He had been upset when he suggested that they sleep together, and she had been disgusted at the suggestion. He was offended that she would even think it odd, or awful that she wouldn't want to sleep with him. And, he didn't understand. Surely she had slept with his other friends, two or three of them, but two for sure and he didn't get why she shouldn't also sleep with him. After all, he was the nicest out of all of them, had been by her side so long, and knew all of her deepest secrets and harshest fears. So, why shouldn't she sleep with him too, at the very least he'd treat her better than the others.

Then she laughed, and then when he asked why not, not just once but six times and pestered her, then she got mad, he thought it rather ridiculous of her to blow up on him, and her answer was barely sufficient, because all she said was, "Because I don't want to, you are my friend. I'm just not into you that way." He thought this rather heartless, as if she should have seen how much better he was, but he took it as a strike against his physicality, or her assumptions that he would make a poor lover. He got defensive, and he hollered, and he got self righteous, and he said, "If its just sex with them, why can't it just be sex with me?"

And she simply said it would change things. Warren laughed to himself, for so long he had heard the words of others, how sex could either be something or it couldn't, if you wanted it to mean nothing but the immediate pleasure, you could control that, surely you could, and of course he would with her, she was his best friend. "It won't change anything, we just get along so well, I mean, you slept with Kirk, and he treated you like shit. Why did you do that?"

She shrugged at him, and slouched back in her chair. For they had been sitting in a Starbucks, and what had started as a light discussion, had erupted into shouted whispers. "Is this what you've been hoping for since the start, have you been harboring these feelings for me the whole time, undressing me, and hoping I might touch you, or suck on you, or let you fuck me?" She stared him down, crossing her arms, raising an eyebrow, demanding an answer.

He scoffed, because he was lying, and he said, "Of course not, don't be silly."

Lesson - a poem

LESSON

It is strange to think that you fall into abyss and can't think of anything other than how you got there, and how that pigeon holds you into a certain idea of yourself.

That you know nothing else than what is beyond your grief, but hopefully that only lasts a moment, and doesn't extend out infinitely in a million unhealthy directions.

Be careful how you long for things, especially when you present that you have not had them, and then make declarations of free thinking, are your thoughts really a result of understanding and wanting to help or are they wrought with the need to get inside someones pants.

The abyss is wide, its tunnel vision, an echo chamber, where we bounce off our own thoughts on ourselves, and nod that yes i am feminist, yes i am progressive,

but what if you are not, what if the abyss has resulted in you only believing you are, because it is what you have been striving to be, but not where you are at yet, I say this is okay, for now,

but beware of your motivations, especially when depressed, when drinking, when angry, when anything that isn't your equilibrium because you expose yourself as a fraud, even if you are trying, be careful, on what you say as an ally, when just before you confessed to a need, and a want that seemed, rather too strong for the conversations at hand.

Do not despair your role in the abyss for I have suffered from loneliness before, but know that you are what you think, and you need to think different, not just speak it,

You need to look on your past and learn what you did wrong, and how to grow but don't ever assume that you are above the fallacies of bad men, because you may not be,

but to acknowledge how you grew, and how you learned, is not a weakness, some may abandon you but to say, I was never perfect, and am still capable of learning when i overstep,

and will not assume my new wave of thinking is the new way of thinking, and beware of friends who reinforce those things that are ill informed within you.

It is strange to fall into the abyss and lose your way in the name of progress but we all do it, and we get no where of assuming only the other person is capable of peddling bullshit. Look inward,
while you sit in an abyss,

look unaware, and grow, because we all of us grow, and are never just, grown.

An Order of Things - a flash fiction

An Order of Things

Gerald felt rather ashamed that he couldn't come up with a good name for his dog. It was a chocolate lab, an elderly dog, "on its last leg" as the humane society volunteer had noted, and Gerald had felt an immediate desire to give the dog a good final week, month or year. He had paid the fees, signed the papers and brought the dog home. Howard, his roommate, had felt rather betrayed at the idea that Gerald would bring home an elderly dog.

"You know my cat Sweeney had just passed away," Howard had said.

"I do." Gerald responded. He led the chocolate lab across the small two bedroom apartment, and let the dog get acquainted with the softness of his bed. Gerald could tell that the old animal had spent some time in a human bed before. He walked around in circles, prodding each of his four paws into the comforter before laying down slowly, with a deep and grateful sigh. The dog fell asleep.

"He's sleeping like a baby in there." Gerald told Howard as he came back out into the shared dining space.

"I can't believe you'd bring a already dead in the ground mutt like that here." Howard wrote bitterly in his physics notebook, a page from his jack-priced textbook sitting open in front of him. His eyes had met Gerald's only once before glancing back down at his pages.

"No one was going to adopt him." Gerald had approached the table, gesturing toward the bedroom even though Howard was paying him no mind and wouldn't have seen the direction of Gerald's hands. Gerald wiped his palm down his mouth, as if to give himself a fresh set of words, and then pulled a chair down and sat. "Why are you so upset about this?"

"I'm not. Not in the grand scheme of things." Howard tried to keep his eyes down on the page where his pencil lead scribbled out notes of mass, and velocity or what Gerald had thought were mass and velocity. It was all foreign language to him.

"You just barked at me, the second I walked in the door," Gerald said, his head tilted to the side trying to capture the top of Howard's eyeline, Howard looked up, Gerald continued, "So your cat died. Cats die. Dogs die. He doesn't deserve to rot in that jail cell."

Howard shook his head a moment, he scoffed a second, and turned his attention back down to his ruled paper pages, and set himself to start writing. He tapped his pencil twice against the sheets and tossed his pencil onto the table over his notebook in defeat. "Okay. Gerry."

Gerald sat back in his seat and waited for the onslaught of emotions.

Howard took a deep breath, pinched the bride of his nose, and obliged Gerald with a tirade:

"When Sweeney got hit by that truck, I nearly lost it. He was a young and vibrant animal. A saint. Sure, he pissed in your plants, and liked to track cat litter onto the counter tops, but that was part of his charm. I just, I see him all over, and now you bring a dog here. An emotional needy stray who needs our love as he passes on. It's like were a hospice for canines. After this one, you're going to want to bring another one in. I can't handle all of that death in this place, not right now. Do it on your own time. Let them die with you alone, without me."

Gerald sat back in his chair. He nodded in contemplation to the words Howard had spoken and he said in response, "Wow. Howie, you are one selfish son of a bitch."

Anxiety & ADD Tea - a poem

do you hear slow hums that attract attentions of worker bees
so that a buzz goes along with a hum and a drum comes to bang
beats out against ears that are softened to sounds of conundrums
how the hum-buzz-drum bangs at edges of brain space as if fluid
inside conducted sound to pressurize messages out but multitudes
of hands are collecting it as it leaves to drift endlessly into open airs.
do you, ever think, and answer is, yes, often ever thinking is the cause
of pains that come with busy bees, humming, drumming, and other preposterous
predicaments of overactive minds, even when shortly ago smiles
were plastered on face, smallest twig added to piles of kindling
may fester the humming to become more similar to strumming secluded
to nearest receiver in ear canal, not in tune to drummer beating
but guitar bass, botched as though garage band enthusiast forgot lessons
may have been needed to fulfill criteria of playing, and so accompanied
by a warbling soprano who reaches two notes to high to sing. High-pitched
notes, humming along inside your head, with busy bees buzzing, angry
drummers drumming and strums of bass guitar too quick, or too slow
but never right speeds, and warring soprano, battling to reach sky clouds
beyond rims of outer space. Outer spaces, devoid of sound, and nothing
was ever causing madness inside your brain that was right in front of you,
but rather just yourself, sitting in a puddle of half thoughts, that all want attention
and if one can picture non-music of that place, one might consider themselves
able to understand money-less street performance that goes on behind
closed doors of minds eye, windows to brain matter exploding with over-activity,
that can be silenced, but may just need to let out. Brace oneself for explosion
because it will come but it is not directed at anyone, but just a way to release,
like a tire too full, or a balloon too full, or a bowel too full, and as cup
of tea is jostled too and fro it will spill over onto floor and on neighbor shirts
but once reaching its destination will be fairly full, full just right, full
enough to leave room for cream and sugar, and that is where you want your
mind to be.

Rejected Arguments - a poem

REJECTED ARGUMENTS

If the brutish fish fights the quality control of his stream,
then, will we even bother to ponder the idea that we destroyed
the hope that it had, as salmon seeks to spawn, seeking only
to continue the reign of its species, delayed, detracted, destroyed,
because we couldn't care to stop the world from warming
and didn't bother to turn the thermostat down.

If the penguins all went on strike, in their fancy little business
suits, and were bothered to ooo and aww at their waddles,
would we be more inclined to turn off the water, what if seals
agreed to never eat another emperor again, and polar bears vowed
never to feed on another flightless bird, maybe then we could
bother to take a log off the fire place.

If the spaghetti fingers of sea anemones in the great coral
reefs could bother to grip our wrists and clown fish demand
some answers for what we had done, would be be more inclined
to stop our bomb drops, our factory farms, could we be bothered
to consider that maybe the coral reef growing chalkier might
be reason for alarm.

If human beings were relegated to drift on a piece of iceberg,
a life-raft-glacier that kept them out of freezing waters, but reduced
in size as the sun beat down, and the waters got warmer
because the currents got hottter, would we be inclined to surrender
our automobiles, our jet plane flights, our factory emissions,
would it help us to be floating fatally over a family of starving sharks,
or maybe we'd be more inclined if in addition to floating our hands
were bound with plastic pop can rings, and Pringles cans secured
our hands.

If by some chance we had to carry the product of our carelessness
on our shoulders as we struggled to swim away from dangers,
we might be left to consider that maybe we should have approached
the problem a little differently. Or maybe we would be content to close
our eyes, and swim, and hope for the best, with a thought
and with a prayer.

Appreciation - a poem

sometimes my language trips me up,
as a million thoughts stream out of my mouth
at any given time and the sky is thunder-struck
to open, and there you are, all beautiful and strong
and my words a mumble of incoherent babble
that i hope expresses in some fashion the way
i feel when i'm with you.

the way your dancing catches my eye
and guides me over to you and your eyes
and how they delight in the movements
that seem to come second-nature, like a language
studied, and you fluent and knowing
and there i am mumbling out something
sputtering out words, and trying to sway
to the beat, but you, you are fluent, and fluid
and your movement painted with concision
and I could swear i'd never appreciated dance
more than when i see you appreciating
dancing.

the way you say my name all sweet and delicate
and humorously depending on what the occasion
calls of it. and you call me, i pick up your phone call
and i anticipate, with a skipped breath, that hello
to come to me, unexpected in mornings, or evenings,
the way you chat with me until your ready to fall asleep
or before, when you want to catch up on your show,
and i'm thankful that i get to hear your voice
at all.

the way you touch my hand just because you want
to touch my hand, and draw circles with your fingers
over my fingers, and lay your palm on mine,
and nothing has felt more secure, more safe,
and the way your hand feels as i draw the circles and lay my
palm over yours, and give you my touches, and
how an embrace, full of both arms when i first see you
after not seeing you, and when seeing you guides
me to collect you up and hold you.

the way you dream of future possibilities,
the way you think of all the tomorrows
the way you aren't afraid to share with me the fears
in your heart, and the way you walk me out of my
own doubts and fears, and help me see the light
shining out of your green eyes,
the way you smile, at me, and stare
or when i stare and smile, and you say, what?
as though you don't know that I am in awe
with you.

the way towards our growing romance is lined with evergreens.
plants for all seasons, strong and withstanding the changing
and passing of the seasons, underneath the minor disagreements,
and the passionate heartfelt hopes, there is a foundation
of communications, where we opened our ears, and opened our mouths
and spoke deep, and listened well, and took a moment
to ponder what we, each other, you and i had wanted and said
yes, yes I truly madly deeply want that too.

the way you are impossibly perfect for me,
and the way you say i am perfect for you,
and the ways that each new weekend,
each new moment of clarification sprouts forth
another branch to hang our memories,
and our affections.

sometimes my language trips me up,
but you guide my words thru funnel into your heart
and you let me use them and refine them and speak
my language to you. my fluency in rhythms, and sounds
to highlight that which might sweep your feet,
and i am happily devoted to you,
endlessly devoted to you, taking great pains
to let you know, what your happiness
means to me, my sweet, sweet, beautiful
priority.

Debates Before Dinner - A Micro Fiction

Debates Before Dinner

Roger felt the urge to tell Amelia that she was wrong, but he kept his mouth shut. He turned the steering wheel, his hands firmly at ten and two, and arrived in his driveway. There was a tension in the air as Amelia waited for his response, but he didn't say anything. He wondered if she'd stay that way until he said what he was thinking, but she didn't.

"What do you want to do then?"

Roger didn't think the question was quite that innocent, after all they had just come out of argument on where to send their four year old for kindergarten, and while Roger felt a private school could award their son with a better education, Amelia felt it would alienate the child from diverse experience.

"I don't know what I want for dinner. You obviously don't want Italian, again, and that was my choice, but you didn't sound to sure that's what you wanted." Roger took a breath realizing he had unloaded his response in one breath, without any air to consider his tone, he was sure had come off rather rash, and abrupt.

"I didn't say I didn't want it, again, but you're right, having it, again, would be too soon. You know how your stomach gets when you eat pasta, you have a gluten intolerance."

"I do not have a gluten intolerance." Roger realized he sounded more defensive than he had meant to and he didn't one-hundred percent believe his own statement, he shook his head and took a deep breath, "Let's just do what you want to do?"

"You always pass it off to me. You always want me to make the choice for you."

"Because," Roger stopped, closed his eyes, considered his answer and said, "You will end up making it anyways, I said Italian, you said we already had that, which is fine, though I don't think there's a rule about eating the same thing two days in a row. I said I wanted to sent Walt to that private school uptown and you said you didn't like the atmosphere, so."

Amelia unbuckled her seat belt midway through Rogers rant in anticipation of her retort, she turned her body to face him, "Wait, when did this come back to Walt. You said you didn't mind sending him to public school."

"We aren't talking about that, I just meant it as an example, like lets just talk about dinner." Roger unbuckled his seat belt and went to open his door to leave.

"We weren't talking about that, but apparently its all, connected." Amelia wiggled her fingers in the air to emphasize the magical implications of connectedness. "So, we may have been talking about dinner, and not getting Italian food, again, but apparently we now are talking about Walt."

"You think just because you took an education class in college, and learned the dangers of charter schools, and their segregation, implications, or racism or whatever, that you know all about every single one of them, but the truth is, whether we like it or not public education is gutted, its dead, dying, gone. It doesn't award the same opportunity."

"Oh my god. That's why."

"What?"

"Because of people like you," She sits back with mouth agape, "Because people like you abandon it, shut it out, adopt the bullshit, because of people like you."

Roger scoffs to himself at his wife's absurdity, "I'm not the bad guy here. I just want our kid to have all the opportunities he can have."

"And i don't? You're so full of shit Roger." Amelia lets out an exasperated sigh as Roger stares stoically ahead, she opens her door, eyes still locked on him and steps out of the car. She slams her passenger door and opens the back door.

She leans in and unbuckles little Walt's seat belt and takes him out. "Come on sweetie, lets get you cleaned up."

"Hey don't forget his blanket," Roger says as he opens his door. "You know how he gets without it."
She keeps walking toward the front door, and Roger opens the door to the back seat and collects the knitted blue blanket his mother had made for their son.

He shuts the back door.

And follows them into their home.