Abraham, A Mild Moor

What does it mean?

2008-06-07T14:11:00.002-04:00

To see the white shining of miles

The deep-scarred borders in elder face

Bright shimmering, billowing in ancient style

Dress in landscapes remembered and paths retraced

Looking back

2008-04-27T23:37:00.003-04:00

How cruel nature's iron law
Alien to concepts of mercy
Destroy each man for every flaw
And retake fair Eurydice

Any wonder, then, the elder gods
Man made murderous, chaotic, cruel
Unforgiving of unknowing slights
To our fires adding fuel

Heroes were laid low, of old
Of old there were no sequels
Injustice meted out, I'm told
By those who had no equals

How else to grip
How else to grasp
That a good man's son
Might only last
Mere hours more
Because he failed
To paint with blood upon his door

And now justice we demand
Observe Lot escaping over sand
But for his wife
All journey's halt
Observe him leave
That pillar of salt

Other Shores

2008-04-17T11:02:00.000-04:00

Shackles broken of jealous earth
And carriage roars all farewells quell
Through windows witness weather's mirth
Now journey through, where tempests dwell

Silence below, weak waves goodbye
As winds you walk and clouds you ply
Jetstream journey as self you'll find
Soon over waves of another kind

You may be too high to see
But down below, waving, is me

Another sea another sky
Air sparks with myth and ancient lore
An elder land heaves ancient sighs
As you disembark through other doors
Blind am I, save through your eyes
As you set out for other shores

Shoreline

2008-03-03T17:41:00.001-05:00

Here they sat by ocean's spray
From fall of dusk to break of day
Calling out their lovers' names
Waiting for ships that never came

Though waves may crash and wind may roar
Still they wait on distant shore
Days add up to a painful sum
But someday soon their ship will come.

Home

2008-02-08T01:04:00.000-05:00

I built a world for you, my love
Full of everything you could dream of
Spinning, swirling, full of surprise
Step inside, open your eyes
See the rippling water blue?
Please feel free to splash on through
See the tree that's growing shoes?
Every pair is just for you.
Look at the birdies in the tree
You can have one, two, even three
For you everything is free
It's all for you, everything you see
I made the stars closer by a bit
And made them small enough to fit
Into your hands, if you just reach up
You can collect them in a little cup
Rearrange them way up high
Paint your pictures in the sky
In this world we both can fly
Don't be scared, you just have to try
See the fully-clothed dogs and cats?
Do you like their funny hats?
Our house is there, give it a glance
Imported all the way from France.

I built a world for us today
And even if you go away
Here I will forever stay
Until my final peaceful days
When I've become both old and grey
I won't fly then, I'll stick to the ground
Old men are meant to hobble round
And when I look around I'll see
(Albeit rather unclearly)
The hopes and dreams of you and me
The things I cherish most dearly
I'll keep a place for you my dear
I always feel as if you're near
I'll keep the table set for two
I'll be here waiting for you

And when I look around I'll see
You've come flying back to me.

Trick of Light

2008-02-02T00:54:00.000-05:00

Such a lonely thing is night
For bird and man and beast
Empty hearts and beds and nests
Eyes roaming toward the east
Seeking out the rising sun
For by some trick of light
Our sorrows are more eas’ly hid
By day both chill and bright
And in the dark the shadows creep
Wraiths sing their fearsome melody
And with all sound is drowned my sleep
Flooded with future fear and memory
For in the dark though much may hide
This we cannot do
Where might you run from fear inside
Before loneliness finds you?
I cannot abide the shadows thick
And sharp that my own skin does prick
In dark I am not whole
The wraiths chill me, pull me apart
Still the beating of my heart
They gaze unblinking through my soul
But then - but then the pale moon glimmers
This ray of light on soft sheets shimmers
Close at hand your sleeping form
In cold and dark: radiant and warm
And therein I invest my faith
And when I’m here I fear no wraith.

Click

2008-01-29T23:36:00.000-05:00

How long it's been since pen paper did meet
Where the scrawl? Where scratching sweet?

Punching and pecking
Machining our words
The unliving brain
Describes living birds.

Explore

2008-01-15T23:32:00.000-05:00

Through cotton candy clouds of white
Dancing through the new-formed rain
We see the source of the sunlight
We'll rest on wings of aeroplanes
With flocks of colored birds we'll play
Tell me where, we'll get away
With eyes closed in dreams I flew
Soaring, diving, holding you
And all you have to do is call
I will never let you fall

Picnic in Paradise

2007-12-30T01:44:00.000-05:00

You are delaying the inevitable. With every breath, every meal, you simply wind the clock a little more. But you know it can’t be done forever. Eventually the hands will no longer orbit the center, the gears within will rust, and the charming carvings wrought on the wooden frame will rot, first becoming hideous, then becoming nothing at all.

You feared death. You said that you didn’t even think about it, but you knew that wasn’t true.

When you were young, religion came easily, and you were blessed with belief in a beautiful afterlife. When the end of life intruded on your thoughts you were reassured by images of eating with angels; picnicking on imagined acres where wishes weren’t wasted and wonder was woven into wicker baskets to carry your sandwiches and lemonade.

But childhood and its perceptions were rapidly replaced by responsibility. The picnic became an invitation-only affair, and the guest list was exclusive. Places on it had to be earned. You were afraid that you’d show up with an apple pie you baked yourself, honest, and they’d turn you away. They’d send the other angels, with their cold, steely eyes. Stony faces with stony grips; you’d be escorted off the premises. And they’d confiscate the pie, too.

By your teenage years, it was not just a fear. You knew you were going to hell. When the bouncers toss you out you fall and fall, until you can’t get any lower. It’s awfully hot down there. If you’d brought ice cream for your pie it would have melted.

You wondered about all this. You suppose that some would have to be rewarded and others punished. Otherwise, why test people at all? Why not just let them all come and eat? But even so, the judgment seems strange. Why, from nothingness, summon souls for the sole purpose of denying them salvation? Why would the divine overseers create conscious creatures only to subject them to eternal excruciation?

Your cup was filled with questions and soon would overflow; leaving a stain on your soul that would never be washed out.

You began to grasp at explanations, seeking in vain. You think that perhaps each person gets what he deserves. Those who do good are justly rewarded while those do not are just as justly judged and found guilty. The lake of fire gapes its greedy maw, hungrily awaiting the sentence. But just what was justice? The Watchers above are all knowing and all-powerful. You know that they can see the future. Why, then, do they create men who they know will miss the mark? Why would they allow people to take the test when they had foreknowledge of their failure?

You closed off your consciousness to keep out the only conclusion you could come up with. But the human mind is a strange thing. If you try thinking of nothing, you will, without fail, have numerous thoughts, both random and ridiculous. The act of avoiding certain thoughts recognizes their existence. You could not run from your mind.

It became inescapably clear to you, seemingly all at once, though the ideas had been simmering on a low heat, stirred occasionally, six to twelve months, or until reduced, on a back burner in your mind’s kitchen. Where food for thought it made.

Those Beings above knew the game was rigged. They had stacked the deck against you. They knew exactly when, why, and just how badly you’d lose. They created you to lose and a select few would win. Cosmic beings, eternal, must get bored. There must be some perverse enjoyment to be derived from watching man’s struggling futility, watching him twist in the wind, and wither.

You try to think of nothing, but your mind brings up a thought: a mouse, running on a wheel, in a cage. He doesn’t run for exercise: mice are not vain. He cannot fight his captors. So he has chosen flight. He is doing the only thing he can; running as fast as scurrying can run. But his captors know he is going nowhere. They can observe with amusement or interest. In the end, running does not change his fate. It is fate, after all. Eminently non-negotiable.

The mouse depresses you and brings you back to what you were fleeing from. Your attempt to run got you nowhere.

You cast about for substitutes to the capricious overlords of your nightmares. The complete absence of an Almighty seemed an attractive alternative. To hell with heaven. The upsides of this option immediately drew you and you declared yourself sovereign of all extra-corporeal commitments. You rid yourself of the test and the guest-list. You could have backyard barbeques aplenty, without angels, right here on the earthly plane. You concerned yourself with the lake of fire no longer, though somehow it stuck to the roof of your brain. It’s smiling countenance dripping with liquid fire, its mouth ajar, a one-way passage for everything except sound, for the screams that issued forth from the beastly lake were not its own but the cacophony of the innumerable. You tried not the think about it, but you know what happens when you do that. Luckily, such thoughts usually came up when you were asleep and followed the moon to her hiding place before you woke up. It’s hard to know what your mind doesn’t tell you.

You passed a good deal of time in the relative comfort of your knowledge of nothingness: that which awaited you after you expired. Knowing that you would simply cease to be after death, granted you a certain freedom, a license, in life. You couldn’t contemplate it because there was precisely nothing to contemplate. Or so you thought.

You don’t really remember when or what triggered it but you found your thoughts quietly creeping over the topic, like teenagers trying to sneak into the house after curfew. They always trip on something or stub a toe (big or little) or knock over a vase. In any event, they’d be found out. Your thoughts couldn’t keep quiet enough. Something was bothering you: your adolescent atheism was starting to show its age and apathy. It could not remain as it was.

You cast your tangled net into the wine-dark sea, fishing for an answer to life’s great mystery, hoping science might supply an apt auxiliary.

You asked the question of creation in hopes of finding truth. The origin of the universe, devoid of the divine, was explained thusly: the universe was formed through the cosmic detonation of a tiny ball of matter, since which time, you were told, the universe has been expanding.

You: “But wait! Where did the tiny ball of matter come from?”

Scientist: “It was just there. It had no beginning.”

You: “Just where? There was no universe yet…”

Religionist: “God created the tiny ball of matter.”

You: “Well, then where did God come from? Who created Him?”

Religionist: “He was just there. He had no beginning.”

You looked up the word “origin” in the dictionary, and decided that both answers were unsatisfactory. You still didn’t know the “beginning or starting-point”. The answers of science and religion were not, in fact, answers at all. Here were drinks that only increased your thirst, food that served only to malnourish.

Another thought struck you as you started to walk away, wavering between the equally unattractive poles.

You: “But wait! You say the universe is expanding, so it must have a size and an edge. So what’s on the other side of that edge? Hmm?”

Scientist: “Nothing maybe, an absolute void. Or perhaps alternate universes, or parallel dimensions.”

You: “So, basically what you’re saying is: you don’t know.”

Religionist: “Ooh, ooh! I know! Ahem: Heaven exists beyond this mortal plane!”

You thought about this. It seemed as though beyond the edge of the universe anything could exist, or nothing could exist. It seemed a lot like death to you.

You wanted to take a spaceship and fly. Leave this world and never return. If you went fast enough you might not age so quickly and cheat death long enough to see the edge of the universe. You pictured a pointy ship, one that would stab a hole right through the edge and drop you off on the other side. The second thing to do would be to burn the ship. There would be no going back. The first thing to do would be to unload your rations: apple pie and ice cream. It didn’t age either: hot and cold and fresh.

You could not spend all your time pondering the imponderables of the afterlife. There was, after all, life itself to deal with.

So you drifted some time, and sometimes swam in an ocean of uncertainty, until the River Styx you reached. It wasn’t time to cross yet, so you sat there on the beach. And as you sat you spotted something floating down the creek. It was your old fishing net that didn’t find the answers that you seek.

And knowing that you’d find the truth out soon you packed your wicker basket with pie and plastic spoons, and flung the net into the sky and through the holes you saw the stars twinkling at you from the edge of the universe. The net hit the water, sank below, and at dawn, just as the stars were being snuffed out, you dragged it in with what little strength your weakness had left you. At first you thought you caught the stars for on the mottled shore the net lay twinkling bright, a blue tinged white. Breathlessly, with gnarled hands you opened your gift. The net was rough and cut your fingers but you opened it nonetheless. Within, in the cool gray mist of the morning, you found what you had been seeking.

Shrouded in the net, you found your answer.

You wondered briefly whether you’d found it too late, but no, now was the right time. Armed with your newfound knowledge, you knew there was only one thing left for you to do.

Slowly, deliberately, you sliced up the pie and ate a little piece in tiny bites, making it last. You tried to taste each individual flavor, each ingredient, but the pie was more than the sum of its parts. The whole defied classification.

As the day wore on you sat content in mind and body, looking out across the calmness of the river. A mist hung there, clouding your vision. You noticed a strange rippling in the water and the pointy prow of a small ship poked through the misty barrier that separated worlds. It was Charon, the Boatman, here to ferry you across to the other side. In short, he was here to kill you.

You offered him some pie, and he came ashore hesitantly. He took two steps toward you and then three steps back, back to his boat. You thought he had changed his mind about accepting the pie, and started to ready yourself for The End. But just as you were getting up, he returned. Tucked under one arm was a checkered sheet, and in his hands were sandwiches and ice cream, balanced precariously. You ate two sandwiches and Charon produced some lemonade. Sitting, tranquil, by the riverside, you had dessert. After dessert, you died.

Dessert was delicious.

The Break of Day

2007-11-05T15:36:00.000-05:00

The mustard-colored machines arose from their slumber, groaning and grumbling like children waking up for school. Daily these machines were resurrected to bring histories to an end, so that other machines could build new ones. Multicolored leaves crackled under their treads and the sky was cold, gray and unforgiving overhead. The machines contemplated none of this as their handlers led them forward. The day’s work was about to begin.

I don’t see him anymore and haven’t for some time. But I remember. That’s all there is left to do sometimes. His room is just the way he left it, only now a layer of dust obscures the lines between objects. He would have hated that. He once told me that the deserts of the world had once contained villages, cities, civilizations even, but all had been swallowed up by the dust. Little by little, the dust would build up and eventually it would swallow up the last traces of someone’s world. This, not Noah’s deluge, scared him.

People would return from decades-long adventures, faces worn and ruddy, lips parched, and souls alive with tales of heroism, but they would not return to the tears of friends and loved ones, or the cheers of imitative youngsters, or the jeers of those who never left. The travelers would stand, lost in every sense of the word, until the dust claimed them too. Or, they would move on. He used to tell me that in old stories there are always seemingly ancient, weatherworn men, who make the bar at the inn their perpetual home. Though scoffed at and often incoherent with drink, these men had been heroes, he told me. They are the travelers that moved on, the ones who lost their real homes.

One day, he said, he would gather up the beaten old men from all the bars, pubs, and inns he could find, and give them all shovels. Together they would dig for their homes in the desert, they would find the place where they belong, and would see all the people who had been waiting for so long, under the dust, for their return. One day.

There was no one to dig his room out of the increasing dust. I can still make out the discarded wrapping paper from an old gift, lying crumpled and torn in the corner. Maybe I only see it because I remember it was there. Maybe if someone came in and looked around they’d see nothing there. Just dust. Another thing nobody would notice: a carpet of get-well-soon cards on the floor beside the mattress. I can’t read them anymore, but I know what they say. He read them to me. If that imaginary visitor walked in, he would walk right over them. His shoes might remove some of the dust, but shoes can’t read. Only he and I remember what the cards say. The others will have forgotten by now. The day he left, I didn’t know he’d never return. Maybe he doesn’t remember anymore either.

He didn’t always talk to me. Nobody else ever did. But after the accident he did, though not right away. At first he had plenty of others to talk to. I would hear red and black cars eagerly pulling into the driveway, the hustling, murmured excitement of friends doing something nice together and being quite proud of it. They would burst into his world, laden with flowers, candies, metallic balloons, and cards. They told stories, joked, smiled, laughed, frowned, and cried when the occasion called for it. They studiously ignored the refuse of their previous visits, strewn across the floor. They avoided mentioning the accident or the fact that the other had not survived.

I learned a little about the accident from hushed conversations they had outside his door. He and the other had been the only ones in the car at the time. Outside his room, they took it upon themselves to bury the other’s name. In dust, perhaps.

Eventually, seeing that their efforts had little perceptible effect, they would file out and troop back to their cars, leaving in eager silence. They resolved to try again next weekend, or in a couple of weeks. Eventually only one ever returned. It was her duty, she said outside the door. This was her mantra. The wrapping paper in the corner was from her. She would urge him to try to stand, to try to walk, but he would not stir himself. She pleaded with him to return to normal. He said he had never been there before, but he might like to visit it sometime. He told me later that that was all anyone could do.

She would try to comfort him, make him feel better, and try out various promising techniques to get him to snap out of it. She did not have a clear understanding of what ‘it’ was. By the end of her visits she would either rage at him, or weep, or do both at once. The last time I saw her she raged. When she slammed the door, the cards on the floor shuffled around like scared children, unable to decide which direction was safest. He got out of bed then, I remember. He hobbled to the window. I’m not sure if the look on his face was caused by the pain of moving. When he made his way to the window, he watched her get into her car and drive away. It was a dead-end street and he was at the dead end of it, so he watched her drive the length of the block. He was like me then; he could only see her until she turned the corner. He did not have the strength to return to bed, so he stood staring, propped up against the window frame, watching the corner for hours.

He said later that she drove off not just to get away, but because the car’s responses to her would be predictable, would be what she wanted them to be. He said that that was why people invented machines and got so upset when they broke down. People were too unreliable.

After that, when he was well and truly alone, he would talk to me. When he sat alone in his room, I was the only one he could talk to. At first he spoke in unintelligible fits, but his anger subsided and he began to talk. I never said anything, of course.

Once, he tried to explain to me why he couldn’t go back to his old life. He was eating rationed portions of canned food that the others had brought him long before. He had enough to last a long while, but rationed it to delay the day he would have to leave. I wish he had done a better job of it. He left all too soon.

As he ate, he told me that when he was younger, he always imagined saving people’s lives in order to win their friendship and love. A masked gunman would enter the school, attempting to end someone’s life. He would take the bullet aimed at the girl next to him. The sound of sirens and alarms would scare the gunman away, but the emergency response would not arrive soon enough to help him. As he lay bleeding on the cold linoleum floor, his class would gather around him and the girl he saved would take his hand, would hold him and cry, not caring that her pretty clothes would be stained with his blood. She’d tell him that she’d never forget him, and she’d always love him. Though he lay bleeding and dying, for that moment, he would have everything he could ever want. He would die with a kiss upon his lips. The police officers would enter the room, survey the scene, and remove their hats out of respect. People would admire him and be proud of him. His story would be told.

He never imagined that he survived because he thought that then the love would fade. He would be himself once more and no longer a fable.

But things had changed now, he said. Saving people was a burden. It was his doom, something he felt he had to do. He still imagined saving people. From muggers, robbers, soldiers, animals, he saved them. Not for love, not for memory, but to lift the burden. Maybe, he thought, if he saved someone he could forget it all and go back to the imaginary life of happiness that he never really had. Maybe if he saved someone he would be set free and could find that life for once.

He would watch for danger from his window, but danger never did oblige him. He knew he wouldn’t get the chance. There was only one person he really wanted to save now, anyway, he told me. He didn’t say who that was, but I think I know.

When the cans of food ran out, he still did not want to leave. He waited for it to rain, and said he would leave when it did. He told me he always liked the rain, especially when it was warm and heavy. He said that the warm rain came when the sun was so hot that it started to melt the sky. He said he used to go out, in his other life, and drink the sky, walk through puddles of it, and splash in it without any shoes on. You only got a chance to do that to the sky when it melts, he said.

One day, the sun did overheat. Droplets of the sky battered against the window as if they wanted to be let in. He left. I watched him walk to the corner, turn up his face for a taste of the heavens, and continue walking.

I have watched that corner for many years.

There is nothing else for me to look at, except the slowly rising dust. I wish I could have gone with him, but of course I cannot. It is the great ‘if only’ of my existence. He told me that everyone has one. He was the only one to tell me anything. Like the people in his imagination, I will miss him, I will remember him, and as long as I still stand, I will love him.

Their engines were now warmed up and roaring, having shaken off the chill of the previous night. The mustard-colored machines began their task, erasing homes all along the street. They would be replaced with the future. The last house on the dead-end street was finally torn down at the end of the day. It had been abandoned for some time. Construction wouldn’t begin until after the winter, and, over the ruins, the dust began to settle.

For now

2007-10-28T11:34:00.000-04:00

As I read the foregoing I see
only the bad.
The sad
little man searching for solace
and peace.
The least
of us who fears himself, fears
what he will become.
The sum
of his life, his work up to now
is naught.
And he's caught
in a tide that will pull him inside -
he'll pay to get paid with the best of his days -
for the rest of his days.
I say
it won't happen, that it won't be so.
I know
that my resistance is only token.
I, too, can be broken.
Anything can and everything could
but should
that be?
If you and me we look and see
outside our cave beyond forest's trees
we'll see...
We'll see...

We can be free.

And if we can, we should.
But how?
For now
'tis enough to see the good.
For now...

Sunflower

2007-10-14T18:34:00.000-04:00

Bright white sunlight
Falling flecks of gold
Land in dewdrop dreams
And stories seldom told

These petals, this stem
This beauteous form
Grew in petal-strewn meadows
Wide, wondrous, and warm

On moonlit nights
When I cannot sleep
The flora still
Awaits the light
And secret keeps
Beneath the hills

There indeed secret hidden stays
Sought out by bright vanguard of day

One lucky morning
As I unluckily wandered
Luck furnished sunflower
And sunflower I pondered

Beauty was the truth
And life of the flower
And the truth of beauty
Filled my thoughts for hours.

Time to Mend

2007-10-06T04:12:00.000-04:00

How I wish that time would bend
So these times would never end
How I wish the fates would lend
Me but a moment more with you to spend
I implore the daylight not to end
The sun to cease its winding ways to wend
But though time me from you does rend
There will always be time to mend
That parting pains me not I do not pretend
But I shall return from where time sends
And I shall to your sorrows tend
And I will be here, in the end.

Memories

2007-10-01T18:48:00.001-04:00

Here wide awake I lie
From dark to daylight's gleam
Come and look into my eyes
And see the dreams I dream

I dream about the past I've seen
Pain-strewn paper drying on table
One-piece peels from tiny tangerines
Weaving my muse into my every fable
Seeking stars in a field dark green
And ever-returning to the gables

Nachos baking in oven often
Watching movies on bed or couch
Borrowing lotion for skin to soften
Hop onto my back as I crouch

Scrabble and risk though never the winner
Studying for exams and writing essays
Eating out or in, together for dinner
Play music from a movie based on a musical play

Pleasant presents wrapped in tissue flowers
Three words that escaped as I lay in bed
Cut hair in bags, shaving in the shower
Scrambling eggs and toasting bread

These dreams they do cheer me,
But, alas
Never again may they come to pass

I remember the future
And my memory seems
To tell me you
Live in my dreams

Just Wait

2007-09-29T11:02:00.000-04:00

Shined shoes, haircut, clothes picked by hand
Like fruit from trees
That hope to please
Time passes by, he understands
Fate’s sometimes late
Just wait, just wait
Revisit past meeting times and places
No light, no cheer
There’s nothing here
Searching for familiar faces
Just looks of stone
He’s all alone
Wandering past the buildings grand
Emptiness there
And no one cares
Shined shoes, haircut, clothes picked by hand
Like fruit from trees
That no one sees.

Tempus Fugit

2007-09-25T23:35:00.000-04:00

Enigmatic and inexorable, immutable and often inscrutable, few things possess such power over the human psyche as the perception of the past. Remembrances, often half-forgotten, and usually less-than-half-true, confront man as friend or foe, evoke emotions from regret to rapture, and, notwithstanding all else, act as the motivator behind most of man’s machinations.

Man learns early on that mistakes cannot always be corrected, that actions cannot be undone, words cannot be taken back, and, in some cases, the results cannot be reversed. Adam and Eve cannot re-enter the Garden, reconstitute the apple, and replace it on the boughs of the tree with a note of apology most abject. Orpheus cannot return to Hades with promises that he really will not look back this time, and ask for another chance to rescue Eurydice. Alea iacta est, and nothing can be done about it.

The oft-overwhelming feelings that accompany reflections on the past, chiefly regret and its accessories, anger and sadness, are made doubly potent by man’s own impotence: he cannot affect the unalterable. Man directs his actions toward the future, but always with one eye on the past, one lung breathing its air, one ear hearing its voice, and one arm wrestling with it. Man’s future becomes a means to address, confront, and overcome the past. Bygone deeds become man’s ultimate judge. And the present? There is no present, only a point where past and future collide. This is where man makes his home.

Time Capsule

2007-09-13T02:47:00.002-04:00

This is not a blog. It's more like a letter to myself. Why am I putting it online? Well, we may be more similar than you think, you and I.

What would it feel like to set out on a journey only to forget where you were off to? I wish I had that feeling, but I haven't forgotten. You can't if you never knew to begin with. I'm not lonely or sad. Not scared. Definitely not fat. There is little that explains how I feel, and so I write these letters.

There are different mes. A bunch of them: like we're some collection of fruit umbilically linked to a branch. Our cord is made of time and space and chance. And Choice.

The past mes are mad because of all the time I've wasted, or depending on which one you ask, because I haven't wasted enough. I don't really like them. When they're not lying to me or keeping secrets (always with their secrets) they can be fun. Funny, sometimes. Usually, though, they interrupt unannounced, like a travelling salesman, or that bored sad lady who calls asking if you'd like to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime magazine subscription opportunity. (I wouldn't, thanks). They're upon me suddenly, peddling regret. They leave me a bunch of free samples.

Future mes are even more varied. I won't describe them all, but maybe one of them will sometime. There's one in particular I'm worried about. He seems unhappy, and I'd really like to help him. He's working, you see. He's got a job that pays well, a wife, a small family. His wallet is full of affluence. He wakes up each morning after not enough sleep and proceeds to drink too much caffeine.

Muffled goodbyes, a peck on the cheek, her sweet, sad smile. He's going to be working late again. Big client, big case.

No time for the eggs now. Into the sink they go. The in-sink-erator does its work and the eggs become something unrecognizable. A shapeless mulch residing in the garbage disposal unit. The eggs would join other meals that he'd been unable to. And there's something else glinting beneath the mealscum. The dreams I've kept safe for all these years.

Pondside

2007-09-04T10:05:00.000-04:00

I seek the quiet of the manmade pond
Nature’s display, displayed for Nature’s son
Artifice, our final tenuous bond
Why win the world and cage the world we’ve won?

They pile rubble high into the sky
Of themselves they stand in awe and wonder
But you and I know what it means to die
Life, unlived, will burst their lives asunder

The bitter chill cannot force me to wake
My soul is given over to the blaze
The things the windswept world will never take:
My warmth, and sleep, my dreams of unseen days

You seek the safety of the manmade pond
Though nature did not carve her rocky bed
This old man, of life, grown much too fond
On pondside sward of green he lays his head

Though all there is and all I am may break
Some things the windswept world will never take