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.