Small pieces of pride and shame scattered all around
how about you pick them up
and put them in a hat?
There's a guy in the subway playing a million notes a second
totally oblivious to everyone
somewhere there's a concert hall
where they're hanging on every word
Not really sure who is talking to who.
I have a few dimes to spare.
The cabinets are not so bare.
Yet here I am busking
because meditating with the muses
is far too rare.
Well the rivers were running downstream and the hill was bending toward the sunset
then the night was coming and crickets were chirping
the earth was going around the sun like a slingshot
and then the morning arrived
its eerie stillness hung like the edge of a feather.
Then the fog was lifting and the heat of the day was settling in
I was leaning on a leaf gleaming in the sun,
being a water drop not quite set yet,
about to fall, for, due to gravity, suspended I could not remain
I was ready to tip topple over like a drop of rain
Due to the drought
the cracks in the dirt were wide open, like the mouths of those who blame.
Water I am, and fall I may. I am not rain.
Yet I know
although I'm made of dew-- to the scorched earth I am all the same.
close my eyes and stare out at the Atlantic Ocean
once again.
I have watched the British
and the cavalry,
the slavery,
huh
and the parades.
This year, I sighed.
Gun shots rang out
but it wasn't minutemen.
A bird flew by
its right wing straight
its left wing bent
and it went back into
its cage, after flying free for fifty years.
I tug at my dress, this old thing—
a French robe
made when the world smiled
and Romantic ideals of democracy
were the rage.
Now, I just sigh and hope
for better days
for everyone.
Irony is in my backbone
yet in my stern face
I still try.
Him and I were in a practice space. There were no windows, just guitar amps, bass amps, drums and cables covering the floor (and about five people crammed in). Meeting the band that I was going to sing with, I was looking at each member of the group, then I saw him. He had on a blue suit coat and smiled. I felt at ease immediately. He introduced himself and joked about not being able to turn around. We laughed a little and I said, "I feel like I've seen you before somewhere."
It could have been at a music club, because I was a sound engineer at a venue in town and worked with many bands each weekend. It was possible he was one of the dozens of musicians I had seen performing...among all the blaring music and clinking beer mugs. It was reasonable to presume I had seen him, and now just recalled his face.
He paused. He stood straighter. "You know, I get that a lot." He leaned in closer as he picked up his guitar, and shook his head with aplomb. "People say they think they know me, like all the time."
I laughed again, this time like a nervous piccolo.
"How odd," I said, "maybe you have one of those faces, like a mutt," thinking his features could be a collage, copied, pasted and rearranged with the rubric's cube of genetics until his nose looks like a friend's nose, his eyebrows like an uncle's eyebrows, his cheek bones like a teacher's cheekbones. Perhaps his face was a mix of all faces.
Plus, he was bald, which made his face stand out even more. A unique face, I could insist I'd seen before, yet could not say exactly where or when. He noticed my pause.
"Well, I don't know if my mind is deceiving me, or just failing me," I said.
"Those are two different things," he laughed.
The rehearsal continued and I stole a sideways glance.
It got me thinking, thinking about him. What about a man who everywhere he goes, people think they know him? They say, 'who are you? I've seen your face before.' Wouldn't it seem strange, even if he traveled to a place he'd never been, people would recognize him, and he could essentially never be anonymous? Everyone would think they already know him, yet know nothing about him. He would be known yet unknown, recognized but never confirmed. He would never have a clean slate, yet the chalk marks would be impossible to read, he would be an identity in orbit, hanging on a thread of a memory. His face was never new, just forgotten. Yet he could always take heart in causing a burst of familiarity, bringing forth a smile, then a question. What bubbled up was the difference between recognition and knowledge, curiosity and familiarity, what would it be like to walk those lines?
Music filled the room, and we rehearsed the song I had come to sing, each lyric took my full attention. The electric guitars were ringing in my ears on the way out.
As we parted ways, I waved goodbye. "I'll see you around," I said.
I racked my brain but could not remember where I had seen him before.
Or, I suppose, if I had seen him before at all.
At the coffeeshop where the torrential downpour fades the streets outside
into covered up dreams and the water runs across the ground like liquid bedsheets
folding and refolding as they tunnel into the sewers and drains
I sip a sip of dark liquid, it's acidic on my tongue.
The pals next to me speak of addiction, their conversation bubbles up
like a boiling pot just before it steams
and I eavesdrop while sketching in my journal.
The woman at the counter has a T-Shirt that says
The Death Penalty Kills Innocent People
I ask for a refill and I have a five dollar bill
Then I go back to looking out the window
and checking the Doppler.
On the edge of the world where doom meets daylight
and soft roses bloom amidst twisted thorns and jackrabbits
foaming at the mouth for bee stings while
honey soaked apothecaries roam in robes
Do you hear
On the edge of your nose, where the light casts shadow
and the twist of your lip heaves a smile to the heavens
for a moment
Do you see
On the edge of her ballet slipper
as she rises and struggles to maintain the position
that doubts fester
like sores among the lepers in the brothels of Bangladesh
where she mentioned in hushed whispers that her
phone was off the hook
when you hung your jacket in the hall
and the door swung open
blasting music into the street
Simon says it's time to seek your medicine
you've been led within only to find
the edge
of the landscape, where sunlight stretches into the horizon
and the grass sways and bobs with the wind
where the long tile floor echoes and exhausts itself
into M.C. Escher patterns into the blinding light
of infinity
you're on the edge
the edge is in you
the edge is in me
The phrase I lately like the most is "I don't have to...______, I get to ______."
Kind of like the gift is the present, but not nearly as cheesy.
I have long wanted to do a series called "Ripped from the Notebook" with writings well, ripped from my old notebooks. This one is kind of stunning with some neat imagery...
it was a police officer standing on the cement, his
shadow drawing a think black line in the heat
For what on earth are these times, our men, yet to be born
born jumping through hoops from their mother's wombs
to the moment in which all men are free
the moment which
the blind horse jumps from the rafters
into the reflecting pool
three stories below
where women are waiting
with outstretched hands
waiting for a wetter god.
Standing there in pajamas, she left me
much sooner than she should have
as I feel the earth like a horse
heavy and crumpled
and unable to lift myself up
they had to harness me
and carry me over the city like a hot air balloon