Personal Frets - a confessional lyric

Sometimes I don't know how  much of myself is exposed when I choose to place it on a blog for the internet to read and devour. I am not sure what sort of teeth come out of the dark spaces of the net to see what I have said and find some way to assassinate my character. That I am prone to writer darker themes is obvious but that does not mean my mind is constantly in a state of detriment. In fact a good part of what motivates me is the compassion I feel towards the suffering of others, that I can do nothing for. I am constantly alerted in my mind whenever discord pries itself into the facets of my life and I see a world that I can do nothing for but to comment on with my crippled mind.

I do not know what asset I have in my mental frailty's. What anxiety will do to me when it chooses to peek its head around corners and notice that I am a chicken-shit for not take opportunity when it has come up. For feeling socially stunted while I sat terrified of living life, while at the same time eagerly wanting to live life. I do not know how much of my compassion can translate out when I have a hard enough time understanding who I am. For I have spent a great deal of time doing inner searches of my motivations, to look at what has led me here. As though I had an origin story written in comic book panels.

Attachments have been terrifying for me. My family has always been the strongest of these, set in stone from my birth, and I felt a sort of pity for those who either lost that support system, or never had it to begin with. But this is not to say that I have felt sorry for those who found their life for want of such things. For I am constantly astounded when against all odds they have climbed out of pits of despair, and discovered life despite the stacked deck. That i am lucky to have the support that I have had is always apparent. But here I am exchanging my attachment for my family, for a significant other that I do not ever want to be apart from.

Dreaming of tomorrow is scary, but not scary when someone appears to need you as much as you need them. That I am thankful she sees my fragile heart and saw something of worth, that she can look passed those fears that I used to have, and determine that I have the potential that I tried to hold onto despite feeling as though i fell behind. But, to myself I am also thankful. I am thankful that before I finally found my one that I was able to finish my studies, thus far, and to have finally done it, for myself first. That I had to come to my own path over these years, and discover my own route, before I could turn to someone else and ask to join their ride. I am thankful for her every day. I hope she always knows that.

But to know that my quietness may be mistaken for disinterest is beyond me. I choose not to talk often, because when I do talk sometimes it is too quiet, and not profound or clever enough, and I do not like to be thought little of. But mostly i just like to listen to people who like to talk, I like to observe more than participate, save for my with those im comfortable with, like friends, family and loves. I distrust easy, and I get vibes off people rather quickly that I have come to trust, but not rely on and have been ready to be surprised when bad vibes are proven good, and disappointed when good vibes are proven bad.

My mind continually wanders, and I do not know to what point I am making sense when I start to write a long-winded poem about nothing in particular. But I hope to find a point out of some form of madness. I just want to exist, and be happy, and I want others to too. When I balk, or sneer, or grow belligerent of leadership it is because of what damage I think they are doing to their populace, and to the psyche of fellow men to grow suspicious and plant detrimental thoughts, when at the end of the day most of us are just trying to grow and go, and move on and move through. And exist.

All I want is to give my words out as gifts to masses who might deem them worth a read, and to find my little slice of paradise with my significant partner and her beautiful kind and silly eyes. For holding onto laughter that is easily offered is a beautiful thing, and I hold her tight, and true.

A Fight on the Corner of Avenue and Street - a poem

A man waved his hand and demanded
to be picked up by a passing taxi cab
but the taxi cab demanded that the man
stand there and wave as a series of polite
escalations that erupted into violence
because one ended up spitting on the other
but I will not write here who spit on who
only that it ended with the cab driver
just fine and the man waving his hand
with a black eye and three broken fingers
and for the sake of his privacy I will say
the name of only one of the fingers
and that is the ring finger on his left hand.

A while later amidst a rush of co-workers
the man with the broken hand tripped and fell
and collided down the stairs but didn't have fingers
to grab the railing and break his fall. He found himself
lost to the wilds of his mind unable to move
or properly breathe without gurgling the air
like a babe.

After a day and half of the incident the cab driver
who had been feeling rather rough with the altercation
with the waving man, took a beer from his fridge
and sat on the sofa with his feet upon his coffee table
that he never had coffee on. He took a cigarette
from the pack in his pocket, and lit it with a zippo
lighter he had purchased from the corner store.

And as the cab driver exhaled his smoke,
the waving man welcomed his full body cast
and laid in bed a bit more relieved but no better for wear
than he had been the day previous.

The cab driver ate some lunch and commented
to his lover that he felt rather store on his cheeks
but this was due to him laying funny on his hand
in his sleep and nothing to do with the fight
that occurred in the streets.

A Random Tale of Woes - Chapter One - a web series

CHAPTER ONE - collision

It was earlier in the day when Wade decided he had had enough of his board meeting, it was earlier, many would point to that as the trigger for why he had proceeded to drive his car headlong into a bus full of school children, but in fact it was after that. In fact at the board meeting, when those in positions of authority had deemed it necessary to sacrifice common sense in sake of a monetary gain he had developed a sort of headstrong notion that he was a hero. As one corporate stooge sounded forth their plans to cut corners, and slash budgets, Wade felt his destiny flourish in a way he never thought it would. It could have been a savior complex, though to be fair Wade would never consider himself in the same league as a Christ figure. He would be one of those who did their job because it was their job to do, and to politely swipe away any time anyone decided on a moniker that resembled the word hero. But, he felt something resembling heroics coursing its way through his veins and he decided to yell it out. Slammed both palms on the table, and let it be known that he had disagreed with all the money-grubbing, all the lateral and vertical sacrifices that had embedded the manufacturers psyches with delusions of godlike superiority over the common workers. Work that he had once done, sweating and dehydrated in furnace like conditions, inside shops, and warehouses. He had worked his way up from the bottom on the romantic notion that he could change things. And, then there he was speaking up, letting it be known what his heart had always known, that this belligerent villainy could not continue.

Nothing much came of that. The board kindly dismissed him. They dismissed him from the meeting, from his office, out of the building. They had dismissed him from his livelihood. And as he tucked his small cardboard box filled with nick-knacks and name plates, and his physical portfolio, he felt triumphant. Invincibility surged through his mind. His conscience had been kept clean and he had forged ahead on his own path. On his way out the main entrance, the doorman nodded his farewell, for the doorman had always appreciated Wade, and Wade in turn appreciated him, and felt a shred of melancholy that he had never learned the man's name. As he was walking but a few feet away, he paused, and turned around. He sat his box of goodies upon the ground, and offered a hand to shake. The doorman didn't not shake his hand.

"Excuse me?" He said, as though Wade had spoken something that he, the doorman had not heard.

Wade looked down at his ungreeted palm, and smiled on at the doorman and said, "I just realized I never introduced myself. I'm Wade Gardener."

The doorman still did not respond. His hands sat cold at the end of limp arms. "Okay." His face became quizzical, and apprehensive, in other words, his face was covered in stern suspicion.

"Anyways, I thought it'd be appropriate for me to tell you my name, I mean why not, we are all humans aren't we. People. We all deserve respect."

The doorman no longer thought fondly of Wade, for years, Wade had nodded casually. Wade had stayed in his role as business suit, clothed in fine attire, and bustling in through the door, with a complimentary smile, and nod and in this moment Wade who was quite obviously departing and would likely never be heard of again was now giving way to some culturally appropriate form of small talk, and a too-late introduction. This was absurd as far as the doorman was concerned, and it smelled of superiority.

"I just thought, I don't know, it was a nice gesture." Wade let his hand go down, sensing defeat. He knelt down to pick up his box.

"Nice gesture. Nice gesture, sir, might be to slip a fiver in my hand when you head on into your fancy windowed office. Nice gesture might be to acknowledge that I exist, before you yourself are nothing at this company no more, but a body that once was. You don't get to be a people person just because you no longer sit at the table."

"No, I quit. I mean, I was fired for speaking up."

"Well, what in the hell did you go and do that for. Seems to be a man just sits in a fancy suit, especially one who don't buy them to expensive, who seems to be coming on up from the bottom might be aware what hard work he done, and you just go and toss it all out like that. What a fool you are Mister Gardener. What a fool you are. You want to do good, but now you aint got no means to do the good you intended. May Lord have mercy on you. Sir, good day." The doorman nodded, and Wade scoffed at the rebuke.

Wade thought it opaquely ridiculous to assume his sacrifice should go unnoticed. Surely his wife would understand, his kids. They would see the principle. He had often spoke to them of the why's and how's of being better for the sake of your fellow man. To pull off the crown you wear and to give out the gold for the less fortunate.

He collected up his box, and turned away, but immediately turned back to the doorman who would not look his way. That courteous smile available only to the other people who walked by, and in and disappeared into elevator bays, and stairwells. Suddenly, Wade felt small. He turned away from the door.

When his car later collided with the school bus on a divided high on some back country road, he hadn't planned on it being a bus that ended his life. Wade felt rather embarrassed at what the doorman had said, and as he tried to figure it out in his head, if his choice had been right, his distraction kept him from noticing his exit until it appeared and disappeared in his peripheral vision. So, he kept driving, and then pretended that he had been too distracted to find his exit, and he kept driving, and he kept going. His fuel tank had been full, and he drove straight on, and found himself without an expressway, on some divided highway devoid of barriers, just a thin layer of grass that was easy to verge over.

The trigger then was a revelation that what he had done was foolish. Giving way it all, Wade realized meant that he would be concerned with finding another path, he would have wasted some struggle of his life, for one moment of glory. A failed triumphant moment of righteousness that amounted to little more than a passage of gas out of the bowels of time. A silent exclamation that proved he was a good man to no one but himself.

He vowed at a certain time, about the time his gas gauge dinged to signal it had mere miles to go before being emptied that he would end his life.  As though lazily guided his hands turned the wheel slowly to the left, and the rumble and rough conditions of those mounds of grass caused him to shake, and his teeth to shatter, and the yellow bus came upon the hood of his car with a sudden crunch. Knocking half of its body into the air as one tired came to crush the head of Wade Gardener savior of the board room, master of corporate ladder climbing, fool, and husband and father of three.

The bus driver, Rita, a twenty-one year old mother of two rambunctious four year old twin girls was flown off from her seat so that her head struck against the window at her left side, and died instantly as blood rushed to drown her brain. The kids aboard, aged five to ten, survived with minor bumps, and simple recoverable concussions.

Abernathy and Cecilia sat at home. Unaware at the random chance that had claimed their mothers life. They wouldn't know why Wade Gardener had decided to crash into their mothers bus, and the conspiracy theorist would declare aloud through soapboxes that he was some wall street punk in love with money so much that when he lost it he gave up on life. While they had the latter half right, in truth, the first part was much simpler.

The girls would be given to the system, and that was where their journey would begin. As randomized with happenstance as the events that brought them there. And maybe if they grew up to believe in fate they might have thought it some grand design but they were much too clever to believe in set-in-stone ideals. As they grew from four to seventeen, they took it up on themselves to believe more in chance than fate, and had developed and alarmingly acute romanticism with luck.

An Epic of Misinformation in a Snow Laced Wonderland - a poem

Shortly after autumn a sense of urgency came down from heavenly places
in the form of snowflakes as big as fists, and demanding a place atop the soils
of our planet earth. As it froze the ground, and iced over the trees, initial speculation
consumed dispatchers that this was indeed end of world. Sled dogs were taken to sleeping,
napping, in almost-comas as constant weather allowed no time for typical rest,
and training season had begun. Snowmen hung up their coats, and hats, still smoked
on corncob pipes, and picked at button noses, and slowly sludged into puddles
around warm and sizzling fires. Boots were used as ingredients for soup, despite
many being made out of imitation leather, and the people who ate it found their bellies
laced with poisonous chemicals that were emanated upon boiling. A point some tried
to raise was that it was only possible to survive if motor vehicles were parked,
and kept idle, but many of the population deemed it necessary to give their automobiles
some air, and constantly took them out for walks, free from leash, and safe to collide
into all the passerby's.  In the end all the presidents men failed to put the world together
again, because they were not ruler of everything, only spokesperson for one set landmass
consumed by everlasting frost. How the rest of the world fared during the perpetual
blizzard was not easy to see, but order was given to use televisions only for light source,
and so brightness settings were maximized, and audio tuned to lowest settings,
so all that was seen was static that imitated whiteness of carnage outside. If other colors
happened to poke their noses out, the white was quick to smother it, like pillow over face
of those who didn't want to depart so soon. Soon sledding was banned, and fun of any kind
was determined detrimental to the studies of exchange students who wanted nothing
more than to be in freedom lands. That children were taken to ritual sacrifices is not surprising
as parents demanded they turn off their game stations, and forced them to stare
at blank walls. Eventually, the snow stopped and what was left was memories
that could not be quelled with a taste of antidepressant, but were constant reminders
of how during the worst time, the people chose to eat each others chances,
and let out the bottom end a slush of misery even worse than the trudge it took in snow,
to get to the end of the block, to check the mail.

Enigma Megaphones - a poem

Repeat after me,

This is not my ending, I do not want to be finished with this story
and actively rewrite your pages.

This is a simple thing to perceive,
more difficult for people to believe,

But in the end many people are stuck glued with adhesive absolution
that their particular story is written in ink, tattooed into the skin
of their history, and their future.

For what use is prophecy if ultimate endings are determined by futile
gestures, a bigger paycheck, a lucrative advancement for sexual favors

and the people are peddled along, geared and oiled in school
in sanctuary to peddle like bicycle chains the tools that keep economy running
and all the kings men said lay down and die for money grubbers
to have their cake and eat it too.

Repeat after me,

This is a defeatist view of opportunity snatching predators
whose prey is feeble and necessary to achieve social stability,

This is obviously detrimental to bottom dollars but the longer story
is told in chapter and verse, and demands attention for scripture

is often laced with sage advice that is good to consume, and better to digest,
but do not get caught up in hypocrisy, for it is hypocrites who hold better
chain and whip and wish to tarnish ransacked villages,
which never get a leg up before next attack.

The ending can always be changed, but the typist speeds through
with homing missile fingers and clicks and clacks travesty onto pages,
from beginning to end, from opener to finale, as final curtain closes,
and the truth sets no one free.

Repeat after me,

Collisions are avoidable only if no one is rushing to run you over,
as long as the lane is stayed in and no one drums along and deceives us
to head-on collision.

For the sake of saviors, listen to the pleas of smarter men,
and understand that we, us, them, those, are just as dependent as the ant
is to a clump of land.

A Brief History of the Human Race - a poem

If we took a trip across timelines,
those long-winded straight-a-ways
that delve and turn about and introduce
us to people of all persuasions at the epoch
of civilization, or to the detriment of technological
advances, or advances of technological
innovations, we might determine a frosty
sort of chrysalis where mankind, determined
to survive it, had to adapt in a sort of evolutionary
trajectory, parting with the slingshot and picking
up a revolver pistol in hopes to out maneuver in murder
the fellow on other side of border lines. Property
separated by imaginary lines that run parallel and perpendicular
to the accumulation of ideology, but within confines
of map fortresses it is shown, on timeline, on 24-hour
news cycles, that mankind tends to branch out within its own confines,
seeking exit, like a natural occurrence, seeking to break out
like a baby breaching birth canal, and erupting into world,
and perhaps a bit more messy than those
natural inclinations of human body.

But, if our caravan departs off timeline we meet
the ends of space that baffles many, but people of faith
have an idea of being, of all-seeing, all-knowing,
others do not, they rely upon the good-nature of most
of human beings, for despite worst tendencies of sensationalism,
humanity is good-natured, and others say earth herself,
as though goddess of sand and clay, is fixing to take
care of herself, and we are minor coffee stains on her parchment,
a paper play, written out in frantic words about hurricanes,
and tsunamis, and mad-cap ways that man, woman and child
have contributed to turning up the thermostat, and the father
who demands knowing who did it, who orchestrated
messes.

If we go back though, to today, we take all of our dreams,
and all of our aspirations, and we deposit them here upon this earth,
in this garden, and we hope they sprout seedlings
that may populate further, a timeline, sprung up with factoids,
tidbits, and quotes of all we have accumulated for today,
for who knows what insignificant things we might do,
that may grow forth into significance and warrant a place

in our history books.

Breathe Through This - a poem

Quietly walking along pathways into a Georgia sunset you can see the red clay

sprouting out from the earth, flooding the grass, and if you are like me, from a place

north of us, in Michigan, where snow was recently littering the earths, you might

not take notice of such things, with an inability to stroll in shorts in seventy-plus degree

weather. As sun lowers itself on the horizon and sky is taken into orange

hues, a simpler view of time is delivered, a freeze of the chaos that viruses produce

in the assault on screens, and social media pages. As spring encroaches just as viral

infections do too, and a groundhog never gave mention of this in its predictor shadows

when it was taken by scruff on its neck those so-many-weeks-ago.

To stroll serendipitous in a southern state is a unique experience in itself, while anxiety attacks

foreclosed on any ideas of travel, yet here I persist in my adventures of romance and education

and hopeful occupation. As air feels satisfying breathed deep in to nasal cavities, but pollen

rebukes me, and warns of allergy season, but that quiet, warm, and calm notions of nature

leave me falling slowly into the truth that we shall be fine. In God given atmosphere, clearing

up as we horde up all around the world, and pester each other for rolls of paper towel, and squirt

bottles of hand sanitize and wipes to disinfect, we can see on a stroll, on a walk, that there is still

a world about that was built to exist in beyond four walls of our castle confines.

Waking to a knowledge of humanity banding together, mostly, for sake of humanity is comforting,

more so than a notion of getting sick, and struggling with balancing acts of how to be safe,

and sane, and normal, when normalcy is lost, but it puts it all into perspective, as we sacrifice notions

of being typical in our everyday. But a walk, among red earth, is possibly serene enough

to seem heavenly, and a view to chaos is peppered with views of peacefulness, as a new normal

is born in all of us. If to distinguish our flames of fear we need pray, meditate, or sleep, let us do

those things, for we have all the time to panic, but very precious time to appreciate a home cooked

breakfast we haven't had in ages, cooked by our own hands, or hands of those who love us,

report your time in your calendar and remark, just how much you can get done just by shutting

off the noise of misery that emanates out of media megaphones.

Cry Wolf - a poem

On other side of door is entrance to an unpredictable prize
one that smells like, looks like, and must be like, for indescribable
is medicinal way to conduct user to interface
with prizes that they might not want to take.

That it is like such and such, and we should recognize
indeterminate methods that might pinpoint this problem
to a select place among rabble that demands prize money
be commissioned out and on time for whoever so demands
it.

On other side of doors is answer to age old questions,
such as that, such as this, such as those, or these
and we as a people are predictable in our conceit
that we do not care to listen to reasonable words
but would rather attack with rash panic.

That is answer that must be catered to, select meats
to feed masses, but littered with political rat poisons
and zeitgeist meandering, and pandering to views that reflect
deepest fears, and worries that might filter out of mind
as osmosis might do in symbiotic assortments of cellular bypass.

On other side of door is another door, and another door, and,
and, and,

nothing, obliviousness, as sky is falling,
we are all chicken little.

Your Mama - a poem

your mama jokes were fashionable for a season
but still we persist in telling them and insulting people because
there is nothing more than nothing to do but to say your wrong
for your mama to be so rash in assuming that people just don't get
the name of the game and the game is insults, because we cannot determine
the world to be so mass produced.

listen to words that people say the way they insult the people
with whom they know nothing about. like, for instance, your mama so something,
but they do not know just what your mama has been through, or your papa
or anyone for that matter.

lets get ready to jump down the throat of all the people
who seem to benefit with rifting the world open,
ripping it to shreds, and thus determine that there is no exit
sign among this mass panic of busy words.  This is how we believe
we should be. But, what are we after the nonsense filters out.

Pandemic - a poem

COVID-19, a bit of sickly news that trickles out nicely
every time someone sneezes, and the Karen next to you wonders aloud
are they sick, will they give that to me, while she pesters
retail workers who have no pay for being dismissed, and bosses
who refuse to allow his workers to concentrate on health,
and do their part to avoid spreading viruses. Why she is out at all
if she be so paranoid of contracting a flu-sickness is beyond
any one else's comprehension.

COVID-19, college students compelled to return home, or to a house
though who can be sure what awaits them back there, and international
students trapped on foreign soil, unable to step foot on native land
because of lock downs and travel bans, and what awaits them as they
sit in a minimally run college campus land run by whats left of those
who haven't tucked tail and ran.

COVID-19, ill prepared for because ballooned, poorly tanned, "successful"
business man couldn't guarantee an amount of money for disease controllers
to combat, and have preparedness. Tossing about his responsibilities as a political
football, and failing to catching, continuously fumbling, and shaking hands
with stricken leaders, and we all wonder is this what might take down a world
leader, and an election cycle coming to an end, and trash keeps trashing
the world.

COVID-19, cancel sporting events, cancel live studio audiences, diminish gatherings,
close down everything, so that medical personell are not overwhelmed, for they are
overwhelmed, and most susceptible to contracting a virus, and we wait, with nothing
to distract us besides our familiar shows on television, what will come next,
for we expect some worse behavior as people begin to panic and judge eachother
because of race, and the curious case of coughing.

COVID-19, afflicting fatally the elderly and immune-deficiency populations,
so that smart ass so and so's can claim its okay for them to parade around in the streets,
and drink, and party, and stick tongues down each others throats, not considering
what their lack of common sense can cost someone a few doors down, or a collection
of someones half way around the world. Yes, we will survive this, but be smart,
be clean, be conscious of the rest of us, be best selves, in worst case
scenarios.

Nonsense Lyrics - a poem

i wonder aloud, silently remarking to everyone of no consequences, that my existence
is plagued with a mind that wanders back and forth over hot coals, and topics befitting
family quarrel. when the sum of the parts are added for the sake of enormous multiplying
effects. as the whispers heard on school playgrounds, by bullies shouting at others like me
and so I keep it turned up too high, the heating system, the way sweat drips to pools at my feet
because nervousness is as accustomed to be as breathing.

I wonder aloud, oblivious to the fact, only sometimes, that I am completely fine and am not contributing
anything terribly obvious to the detriments of mankind. yet, I cannot breathe properly without
inhaling a magnitude of worrying vapors that leak out of drainage ditches lined with sewage
waters. that is to say, in a way, away from this place, that I am ultimately, in a sense, a sensual
being determined to breathe freshly into the fabrics of my clothing, like pores opened in skin
that dribble and plop down in beads upon sandy beaches. making no sense is part of the prognosis for the drained.

but lo and behold before me, angel gowned in miracles, and i am light footed as I prance upon the graves of my skeletons that are freshly uncrowded from my closet, and unearthed never again,
but exposed so that heavenly body can see what holes possessed. Yet, ethereal spirituality gives me a contact high, and makes the goose pimples of my flesh more prominent, and as they lay me down to sleep,
I make demands my soul they take.

Self-Defeating Prophecies - a poem

A compliment goes a long way to incite a rush of love to the brain,
but what do you do when you can't forgive yourself a moment
that transpired when you felt inferior for your compliments. That the things
touchstoned on your soul culminate in iterations of refusal,
that you are doomed to repeat your sins because the holy ghost
passed on you for doubting the air you breathe. Seem counter-intuitive

and is for the most part, but the battered shore does create opportunity
for the pecking of sea birds to collect and swallow down the gullet
and digest whole those things that are most sensitive to your disposition.
That desperate times and desperate measurements are taken on fragile
hands, and feet, and eyes, and toes, and as the millions of microscopic
bugs eat at rotting you are seldom safe from deceiving yourself

that you are a worth a moment of loving. Compliments are not a cure-all
for the insensitivity one has for oneself as past transgressions are gunshot
wounds that were never cleaned, and a bullet still fills your blood with poison.
So, storm clouds send lighting strikes to that metal garbage embedded in deep
tissue. Take the buses home, and dream of silently ending everything because
of the pain you continue to cause, but won't because you always want to believe
you can do better, but do you ever do better, and the sound of absolute silence
is more deafening than the pain of being who you are. So you take compliments

as comforting stuffed animals, like teddy bears, and her soft touch is a tourniquet
for your bloodied wound, but you still don't know if the rot on your mind will ever
clear up, no matter how hard you try, and you know it is good for writing out willfully
all those wistful and painful things you can think of, but what is it about good times
that makes you fear more than they will come to an end, and bad times will replace
them like storm clouds encroaching on a vacation intended for sun. When walks in rainy
streets is paramount for clearing the screaming in your head that you are not enough

for the compliments that are paid you. Talent is something that you have, but is it
worth all the times you've caused tears to flow out of eyeballs, and do you have it in you
to be better, and not stuck, for you are always stuck in an ebb and flow of tide pools,
its okay to feel scared, but when you are constantly scared do they think that it is
how you will always be. God said let their be light, but he meant it for the sun,
and it was so, but not for the human soul, as Eve bit pit deep into forbidden fruits
and so doomed the human race into this dark role, but even if its not believed so,

the stickiness like gum under a dinner table surface is there branded on your soul,
and at some point you blame and blame and blame your fractured brain for being lost
to anger issues, and anguish issues, and absolution issues, because you cannot absolve yourself
and your writing is begotten as this constant war to come to terms of who you were,
who you are, what you want to be, and what you never got to be, regretting and regurgitating
the last sensible thing you thought you knew. And as mother bird feeds baby spit up
cornmeal so goes that I continue to speak aloud the curses that were spoken on me,

but I try, with help of loves, and help of medial sciences for psychological relief,
and my soul wants to cry for who knows better what I have been through and how hard
it is not to feel inadequacy fester inside that bullet hole, self-inflicted, and demanding
an answer to how to be better, and always striving to be better, even with broken legs,
and fractured fingers, and lost direction, the climb is treacherous, the climb is steep,

the pool at the bottom is littered with sharks already high on the taste of your blood
but you persist because of the way she smiles at you, and you know you are okay, you are
better than the sum of your mistakes, and you believe her when she says your worth it,
and you believe her when she says forever, and forever, and forever,

but you also know you hate to see her cry,
and maybe you can never full forgive yourself
for the mistakes of hurt and anger cast upon myself
but seldom does someone look at you with wholeness
the way that she looks at you wholly.

in effect, to sum it up,
breathe deeply,
and forgive yourself,
because you are not the sum
what was learned,
and you can become a sum
of something,

something that resembles calmness, even as storms rage, for even a hurricane has an eye.

Romantic Gestures - a poem

What is it about a kiss on back of hands that sends soul into feelings of placidity,
that solace that no one else is capable to give with even best self-help guides that are in existence
by the most award winning authors. It is a mystery wrapped in enigmas that hearts
can be calmed when lips touch just below knuckles of a hand, while driving, while sitting,
while laying down on a bed snuggled up and hoping that tomorrow delivers this same
assured way that happiness can exist in simplest of gestures. Where momentary
ideals are seen to expand towards infinity as though on wings of falcons that swoop
and dive to rhythms of sea breezes among other fowl that paints skies with muted movements
of wings. How time seems to erase tension that encroaches upon hearts just because a loves
lips have sought a connection with back of palm.

It is in that way that a thumb rubbed against back of hand that offers a comforter
of security, heavy for warmth, but not persistent in a way that pushes down feet into quick sanded
beaches, where suffocation is imminent. No feelings are wonders, as their digits touch
flesh of fingers, in little circular rotations, as much as what a finger is capable of producing.
There is a security in having a hand taken in a hand, that solidifying of human to human
connection, especially when distance keeps souls and hearts apart, and only words are fit
to print, and no amount of wanting will create a feeling of pressured fingers. As their thumb
makes massages on your hand, how is it that simplest of frequented gestures might
cease screaming tears that are fabric of panic attacks that create anxiety ridden fuel for worrying
minds. For truth is often that simplest gestures are carriers of significant weight.

And then to return back to those feelings of lips, but on facial structures where bones set out
placement for cheeks that they say are sweet, and kissable, and then rewarded with loud
and continuous loving upon them. How chubbiness is pushed in, displaced when their face
is pressed inward, and a smack of lips heard about, unabashedly, unashamed of what someone
might see or hear because they are proud to be loving on you. They are building their budding
affections, and showing a uninterested public that heart feels fully, truthfully, not in worrying
fashions that they should be ashamed of showing it. And you stand full smiled, and heart skipping
rope to beats that pulse with latest love song tempos because every chorus of angels is in their
voice, in that wet sound lips make when they kiss upon cheek. When they tell you you are beautiful
because you are not sure you heard that before from another human being, and you might take a chance to tell yourself that this is true. That you are beautiful,

and they are beautiful for saying so.

Third Grade Rejection - a poem

I was in third grade when I confessed my love for a fellow classmate.
This was a mistake that I would apologize for when my classmate,
whose named started with H decided this news was fit for divulging
a number of tears. She streamed them down her cheeks, and gave
to teacher the news of her distress. That I a young boy in the third grade
had admitted to having a crush on her. I apologized profusely to this
news. I had to apologize for having any feelings at all, and I suppose
that continues on to this day, though not as bad as ever. Back then though
standing in our line-up to go indoors, talking to my close knit friends,
one of them a cousin about my secret admiration for a girl my age,
in our grade, and in our class, overheard by another girl nearby,
who shouted it at the top of her lungs for all to hear. Maybe it was
that everyone heard that I, Aaron, was having childish romantic feelings
for someone, that resulted in Miss H having to pout and scream that I would
ever dare to feel them towards her. That it had become public knowledge.
But, maybe it was the start of the feeling of my own inadequacy's,
that I wasn't much of anything to feel anything for, and it would be awfully
terrible to date me. Not that dating was something that a third grader
really knew anything about, except as fake imitations of what they thought
dating was. For, certain peers of mine had paired off, became couples,
in the simplest form of the word, barely even holding hands, and never
even kissing, at least I assumed so. Just a status symbol being practiced
on the way to being an adult. However, me potentially wanting to be paired
with H was the horror story of someone else's narrative, and I perhaps
internalized the narrative that I was not much of a catch. Feelings of guilt
permeating through me, and apologizing that I felt anything at all. Giving
a false explanation that I only liked her as a friend, which was a flat out lie
from my young heart. This is not an answer to a riddle of who I am, only
an observation that I apologize a  lot for having feelings, and being me,
that I can't remember a time when I didn't. This is something to be worked on,
and to continue to pick at, and rewrite the story that I have internalized
of my own roles of inadequacy. And to forgive my third grade self for apologizing
for having feelings, just because someone else reacted unfavorably.