How many chairs have we parked ourselves on,
side by side
in these 6,205 days of marriage?
Side by side at our wedding reception
principals’ offices
school graduations
courtrooms
funerals
new baby nurseries
counselors’ offices
new cars and
bars.

In lawn chairs
pews
rockers
couches
backseats and
airline seats.

The size and shapes of the imprints
we leave behind
changing over time.
The faces of others seated with us coming and going.

Always, we have tried to leave a trail of love,
like the slime of slugs and snails.
And for each other, an extra measure.

Tonight is a cluster of
Recognitions, remembrances
Mostly reminiscence
Which sift in the breeze
Gusting beneath the temporary
Tarpaulin tent

Backs are slapped
Arms embraced
Smiles predominate
As shiny faces and gleaming  foreheads
Illuminated by flashing cameras
Twinkle like fireflies displaying
In a muggy June meadow

Photos pulled from stained
Billfolds move from hand to hand
Displaying glossies of babies, graduations
Weddings and “The big catch”

Relatives, friends and officials
Find their place on folded metal chairs
For a wedding ceremony

Tonight has become a gathering

In my family mental illness isn’t a question of
“Will I or won’t I?”
It’s a question of
“When and how badly?’
Because in my family mental illness isn’t a question
It’s a promise
It’s a promise that you hope someone will break
And you realize that life after 20 isn’t a guarantee
Because it’s a question of
“Will I bury my parents or will my parents bury me?”
Because if the mental illness doesn’t **** you
It’ll be the cancer
Or the diabetes
Or maybe the heart disease
But in my family making it to 80 is something
Only two people have seen
And you learn to stop asking questions
And in my family
You learn to laugh while you can
And to smile in the rain
To drink while it’s legal
And to die at inconvenient times
Like before weddings
And graduations
And birthdays
And you learn to stop asking whose coming
And stop sending out invitations
And just hope someone is alive to see you
Dying

Began at dusk and led us here swiftly.
Along with the wind springtime
blew in new found forms of folly.
Invested in life vests to
rid the sleeves for my heart
To beat upon.
The moon show through
pale blue.
The air reeked of butterfly
winged exhaust pipes.
The ins and outs of
Seasonal rotation.
Life and death as one.
To illustrate landscape stretches
created from scraps of string.

Silence

Says a million different

Things.

Watching a multitude of human
beings from a distance.

I’m distant

from any sort of recognition.
What’s an honor when
the honor is expected
spread evenly among a crowd
of strangers expecting
Futures.

Silence

Says I’m as unique as
classes of identical robe wearing
shower goers;
As unique as uniforms.

Birds know no boundaries
when it comes to bravery
trying to communicate

something to me,

as part of me worries
for their safety.

Freedom is beyond me.

Intuitively,

Silence

Speaks with me.
She's telling me
silent was the bravery feathers
upon impacting the tires packed with pressure
ready to burst at the seems
silent was the bravery upon bursting at her seems
in the rear view mirror I see
wing feather constellations
painting a reality portrait for
me.

Silence

tells me selfishness

is the root of everything.
Silence

tells me mystery

is the beneath the X marks
of all the treasure maps I
painted repeatedly.

Silence
soothes
me.

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you

New birthdays new babi es
Marriages are graduations:
Promotions for bachelors & bacheloerettes

A new morning gone
I'm moving on, I'm moving on

A death, a crash, a disease
Goodbye Sparky, goodbye

Births followed by deaths followed by
Commercial breaks, cups of coffee and
back to more happy, happy
birthdays.

There is no place for me here

Where they dream of comfortable lives

Talk about football and weekend plans

Holding hands as they walk down aisle four

Split the grocery bill then drive home to his place

That will someday become their home

And oh how we wanted to travel and see things

Skydive, mountain climb

Travel to Africa, build houses, learn languages

And just be

But then that job offer was too good to pass up

And it’s so much easier to raise a kid with family close by

So we put it off for now

Just for now, for a little while

Until the timing is right

Until we have more money, vacation days

Then there was the new car, the college tuitions, and that trip with her parents down to Grand Cayman for their 60th wedding anniversary  

Now it’s graduations and grandkids

What happened to Africa?


They still go shopping

Together, sometimes

He pays with their credit card, she pushes the cart

They had a comfortable life

Your bedroom is a carefully preserved time capsule,
a tribute to a fondly remembered time long past.
Though I have visited this small square room less than
feels right since our once tight-knit group dissolved, it is
kept as pristine as a display about a foregone era in a dark
and cluttered museum.  The walls still stand wearily in that
same stubborn shade between periwinkle and robin's egg,
the only difference is one unfamiliar poster-the rest have
hung steadfast in the same positions since you moved into this
bedroom from the one next door many years prior.  In the
corner across from your bed, rests the desk you have
used to hold some of your most valued items for as long as
we have traversed the undulating cycle between friendship
and acquaintanceship, including the now-empty terrarium that
bravely contained a wooly tarantula.  Your closet, still noticeably
bare, informs me, through a smattering of neon yellow t-shirts,
that you are still employed for the same landscaper. As we pass a
meticulously re-rolled cigar between us, two old and distant
friends, my vision drifts towards the dresser under the plain
windows, which overlook your claustrophobic backyard.  It is,
surely, an Ikea affair, for though it has the coloring of mahogany,
the wood has the unmistakable sheen of faux; but what compels me
to gaze at this dresser is not its questionable quality but the years
of graffiti scrawled across its drawers and walls in the sort of thick
black marker that might give one lightheadedness if uncapped for
too long.  I realize, suddenly, that this dresser is our monolith.

I express to you my incredulity that you have kept this dresser,
of all things, for so long, as a wry grin splits my mouth in halves.
Too many memories, you say, a melancholy tone suddenly echoing
through the small bedroom.  My grin fades, and I look closely,
recalling in a bright flash a multitude of intoxicant-fueled evenings-
you were always in that black pleather computer chair, while
always I sat on the bed, squished between or beside the
on-again-off-again couple.  The exact words inscribed upon this
Ikea monolith, I realize, are no longer of importance, for they
are largely insensitive, pejorative, and crude.  These words are
the spirit of a fading adolescence wasted in suburban bedrooms
and backyards, or in city basements and roofs, spawned by
countless cases of the cheapest beers available, by handles of
off-brand *****, by bags of substances in every shape and
size imaginable.  I am staring at a proclamation of a girl's
promiscuity on this very monolith when you exclaim that you
would give anything to have a time machine, to go back to those
days, that they were the happiest days of your life.  Though
outwardly I smile and offer a noncommittal expression of
sentimentality, inwardly I frown, struck by a wave of pity.  

Halfway between twenty and thirty, I am no longer the shy,
hasty, or withdrawn teenager who spent hours cooped up in
a stagnant bedroom, ****** and bored. I can suddenly perceive
exactly how little you, my old friend, have changed, and I am
ashamed of my inability to say so.  But that couple imploded
years ago in a neon display, temporarily destroying all that
surrounded them; all of the satellites that orbited our group
have moved out of our gravitational field, some going off
to college, some getting good jobs, some moving to big
cities, some starting bands.  Graduations or birthdays
might bring us together for a few hours of drunken
reminiscence, we all know, somewhere, that we have
grown apart, while you hide in this bedroom,
a lonely hermit.

This room is not a time capsule;
it is a tomb, and the Ikea monolith might as well be your
headstone.

it's past mid September,
the modest gradations
(and graduations)
of temp and the indirectness
of the ever shifting sun
are not lost on the
the skin of the locals,
nor even the
summer sojourner, who
recalls the past rainy June,
and the "who knew that
winter lasted so long"
on this peculiar planet island land

the calendar dictates
that the obligations of the
living are fully recommenced,
and the avoidance of realities,
cannot be excused, refused,
but they go ignored for just
one more day, and the ever
more spectacular pastel sunsets
tease, "see what you will be missing..."

the  skeletons of beach fires
doused by silver beach sand,
are the last to say, we will still
be here, even though you've
hasten to where we have no
counterpart, and though we
will blend back to just being
sand and driftwood,
in time for what we the
inanimate,
loosely call next year,
but not remarked upon
any calendar in any ink
we can read...

forty years some tribe
tented in a desert, before
finding shelter,
we've counted 46, summers,
passed, neighbors, too, the
landscape  dotted with newer
arrivals, and we just cluck, like
so many others, at the longing ferry line,
those who walk on the road's wrong side,
the one or two remaining tradespeople,
who still call our abode by our predecessors
last name, wondering when, if we will make
that grade

so much more to say,
what we've witnessed,
what has changed, what,
thank god, hasn't

but the city wants its fair share,
of us, and our taxes true, so come
upon just another last day, and look
back in the review mirror, remembering
the first last day of many years ago...

When you die
People you will have never met
will give your family condolences

When you die
Spurned former lovers will
send delicate flowers

When you die
People will be summoned to
make you look beautiful

The way that you felt on nights
you enjoyed being yourself the most

When you die
Cautious children will cry
without ever learning
of your conflicting views on children

When you die
They might hang the church wall
with pictures of weddings
and graduations

When you die
You may not be alone

When you die
You might be the first and
the others will all follow

Having made no preparations of their own.

When you die
They might play your favorite song
or they might play a more "appropriate" song
as they lead you away
and some people will be scolding themselves
about forgetting where they parked

When you die
They may have forgotten that you didn't
believe in the afterlife
Quotations from Leviticus notwithstanding

When you die
You could be the the one who made
the most important impact on your daughter or son's life
You might have their life worth living

When you die
It may be to no applause

When you die
It may inspire your mother's gynecologist
to visit a church for the first time in almost half a decade
and feel genuine empathy for the rituals of human dignity
regardless of the tribe

When you die
none of your siblings may attend
the rain might pore on your last parade
and people might go home early

When you die
Everybody may just have a great time
heads beaming, shoulders high

When you die
It might be the longest day of Summer
with waterfights in the park near you were born.

When you die
You will have lived to see
all your ambitions come alive
Even if that penpusher "Reality"
explicitly states otherwise.

Sitting on a bus making a list
Of all the pretty words I know,
Highlights the hollow feeling
Like bells ringing without purpose
Ceremony for the sake of itself
Not like you

Not like funerals and graduations
Formality to induce respect,
Creating the environment for great emotion
The ability to change heartbeats
Bringing pride where there was
Unsteady satisfaction
The power of words together
Of language

You are my language
Not all that I speak or know
A culmination of my creativity
The end product of pretty vowels
Strung together to make
Abstract constructs
The idea that I can be somebody
Because someone has the faith that I can

You create the environment
For powerful emotion
For the torrent of pride and satisfaction
For the validation of my fears
For the seed of hope within my dreams

You are the comfort
When the day consists of
Dusk and dawn
Without the beauty of the sunrise
You are the reasoning
Behind jumping head first
Into waves of fire
Because you knew I could,
So I know I can

The clouds get darker every day

and the sun finds new ways to hide away.

God sends earthquakes, tornadoes, and floods,

fires that destroy everything that we love.

The embers burn brightly and we come together,

standing with hands linked. Our love is our shelter,

and I can only wonder if this is what He meant

to create disaster so that’d we repent.

We only heal when we’ve been broken.

We only cry when the wrong words are spoken,

but I think it’s beautiful that we’re learning to

cry like a waterfall at the happy things too.

Let the tears flow and the troubles fade

as we watch new beginnings come our way.

Weddings, birthdays, graduations, and more—

we cry, cry like babies, until we can’t anymore.

We read beautiful books, let the pages crinkle and fade.

We jump in the puddles and dance in the rain.

We make dandelion wishes and buttercup predictions.

We know our days are numbered and we are already missing

the days when we were younger

and the days that we were free,

when mistakes didn’t matter

and our world was drawn out with chalk on the street.

We knew we had it good, but it wasn’t until now

that I realized I didn’t need to be older to figure it all out.

You can only move forward, but you can always look back

at the colorful kites in the sky and the hot sand on the beach,

and be ready to take a little hand with you as you walk that path again

with the next generation that comes our way, ready to take it all in.

I’m only a quarter of the way through this life,

not even that, at seventeen,

and I’ve already got a good idea

of where we’re heading to.

i can watch the
clock on your
dashboard
turning
backwards
the hands going
the wrong direction
it's rare to find a
analogue timepiece
in a car nowadays
even rarer to find one
that goes in retrograde.

and all i can think
about is that i'm not
happy but i'm more
settled inside

isn't it sad
to be living only
in hopes of your
expiration date?

yes
yes it is.

i'm missing last winter
just a little
how safe it felt to be
your shotgun rider
with that perfect and slightly
annoying thirty minute mashup

fifteen minutes there
fifteen minutes back
anxious to leave
anxious to get home
to get into another van
one that wasn't stifled

i was your
shotgun rider
for monday afternoons
and drives to craft fairs
the ball and our own
educational funeral.

(can we petition
to rename
graduations to
educational funerals?)

i miss the old days
when mondays were happy
not anxious
or empty

thinking back on it
we spent too much time
in the back corner booth
of the doughnut shop chain
up on the east hill outside of town
and the coffee wasn't even good

i wish we had just gone to the
grocery store and
got some of that perfect
creamline milk you never shake.

i don't remember
the day i looked
on the label of the
jug and read the date

and it very clearly
was stamped with an
expiration of next
september

but when i tasted it
it had all gone sour
and i wondered how
painful it could be
to throw milk
out early

so i'm leaving it
in the fridge
until autumn
rolls around

just thinking
about how sad
it is to be living
with the hope of dying

but don't people do
the exact same thing?

The table waited
For the father and mother
For the merry children
For a splendid dinner
Beside the fire
Where memories flickered
Of roast turkey
And hot cocoa
And a puppy emerging
In a bright parcel
Of red and green
The festive colors

The walls remember
Candle lit evenings
Where stories were told
Under warm blankets
The children would snicker
And laugh in glee
And excitement
As the mother kissed them
And the father said good night

The porch reminiscing
Bright summer days
Where the family
Played joyous games
And sang with the guitar

The yard misses
Seeing the children
In clean uniform
Marching off to school
And coming home
With tired smiles

And the rusty old car
Creaks his hinges
As he weeps
Remembering the father
Who polished and cleaned
During dusty days

And the curtains were weary
For they wanted to move
To let sunlight in
To recapture moments
When the family
Would chase each other
Around the house
Playing hide and seek
Shrieking and exclaiming
In happy voices

The old tree so ancient
Bent over the house
Missing when the son
Would climb his branches
And when in night
He watches them in silence
Camping under his leaves
Huddling each other
In warm plump arms
And when the tree
Peeks in the window
He would see the daughters
Gladly dressing up
For birthday parties

And the doghouse
The wooden old doghouse
Falling apart
Looks at the past
At a little puppy
Licking at his bone
And then coming out
With dozens of other puppies


And the dusty floorboards
Weak and brittle
Will creak at night
Remembering footsteps
Entering and leaving
The grandiose proud door
With a bronze doorknob

And a chandelier would clink
When the wind passes
Filling the house
With flashbacks
Of a new baby
Of graduations
And weddings
And then of noise
Noises of fun
And laughter
And giggles

They cannot remember
The blind day
When everyone vanished
Not a letter of goodbye
Not a wave of the hand
No words no memories
Nothing
Sadness and peace once again

They all sighed
As the sun vanished
In the edge of the neighborhood
They all wept
For the old wood
In the middle of everyone
Waiting for the family
The sad dining table
In ashes and burnt chairs
The table waited

March 6th- we start talking
9th- we meet
Fast forward to the 17th and we are dating
I love yous every second
5 months later we're getting our own apartment and we've been talking about marriage for a while, at a year

Two years together now- I watch her tear up as she says her vows

The future holds a baby
A house
More children
Graduations
Anniversaries
Retirement vacations

Laughs, tears, screams in between and I know that
In the end I'll be able to rewind
A month
A year
A lifetime
And know that
Your hand was the one I held through it all
Your kiss on my lips every night
Your smile every morning

New Year's Eve
2 minutes to midnight
1 minute
30 seconds
20 seconds
10 seconds
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1

It's a new year
But it's a scary year
Every year
It's just been back to the same thing
Back to school
Back to friends
Back to boring

This year,
everything is changing
Back to school
till May
April showers
Bring high school graduations

4th of July fireworks
Fade into freshman year
of college.
College
I've always dreamed of this
But it's so close
And I want a redo

Because it's been
almost a whole year
since you left
and I sit
and think of you
everyday

We were supposed to do this
together.
But you left.

-r.y.s

Flying kites in a spring breeze
Practicing until you can hit the ball with ease
Whole team shows up for an unscheduled practice
No memory will ever top this
Playing in the mud after a summers rain
Running from a bully that is so vain
Chasing after boys to give ‘em a kiss
No memory will ever top this
Graduations here and graduations gone
No one will remember our graduation song
But you know what I’ll miss?
A memory to top this

It is a beautiful day in my world.
The sun is shining, my skin is glowing,
Everything around me sings into my heart
In red, yellow and orange.
The world is playing me a beautiful song, in the perfect key,
And I wish I could save you.

I wish I could save you on days like today,
Days that are worth all the fight.
On days that chocolate tastes even sweeter than the day before,
And every hair on my head falls into place,
When I have all the answers to every question I ask myself,
And all of my thoughts find correlating words,
I wish I could save you.

There are days that make me so happy to be alive,
Days I know don’t come very often for you.
And on these days I pray for you.
I hope that one day the tiles in a new place won't make your skin crawl,
And I hope you’ll go to your grandchildren’s graduations without feeling unsafe.
Because no one can hurt you here, not with me around.
I spend these beautiful days hoping that you’ll make it to your next.
On my favourite, most rewarding days,
I spend the night wishing I could save you.

But it’s always the hard days that get me.
On days that make my stomach turn before I even leave my bed,
I think about what it’s like to feel this fear persistently.
When I wake up woozy with unease for no good reason,
And my body is too heavy, my heart is too weary to brave this world,
I think about how it must feel to always feel this way.
And I wish I could call you to tell you I’m too scared today,
Too scared to appreciate all that lead up to this.

But I live with innocence that you never had the privilege of having.
And I want to save you.
I want to absorb all of the things that you feel into my body and suffocate them with my love.
So I don’t, I don’t call you and I don’t tell you about the pain in my heart because yours is bigger,
So much bigger that it envelopes me,
Covers my mouth and pulls at the pit of my stomach.
On these days I wish I could save you out of my own selfishness.
Because I want to call you,
Want you to tell me I’m safe,
And no crying.


There are days when everything falls apart,
There have to be, or else how would I learn to put it back together?
You told me there are some things that can’t be fixed,
Like the traumatized mind.
Because you can’t fix your brain, only learn to live with a broken one.
I could listen to those words as many times as you repeat them to me,
And I know you will,
But I will always want to change them.
And I will always want to save you.

Fear of it all,
Not knowing when to fall,
Working so hard for far too long,
To have it all go wrong,

Fear of alpha,
We Made scenes,
My ******* is biblical,  

I was flung from the clouds,
For clapping louder than thunder,
He casted us out,
For tugging at his crown,
Because we challenged a throne,
That failed to fold,

Here and now,
Hand selected or arrested whatever’s suggested,
As long as there’s a mic,
I’ll take the stand,
And play witness,

Groping the book oh so popular with hotel nightstands,
And before your bailiff,
I’ll promise my honesty,
Give you false hope, in my sense of loyalty,

Fearing you all
You believe I love to fib,
That’s what you teach your kids,
So do you see the guilt gushing beneath my skin?

Witness to havoc,
The day we set Heaven ablaze,
In the name of Adam,
I promise your honor,
We fought for the liberation of Eve,

But that isn’t what Father preached,

Hand in the prosecutors,
With another on the switch, guess who the defendant is,
Decadence is looking for a conviction,  

The anti-Christ’s came before the Vatican,
He’s of your genetics,

It’s inconsiderate,
You even preached providence,
It’s inconvenient,
To find out your scriptures of full of ****,

Fear of it all,
I was on the sidelines,
And Casted out,

Knowing too much for sainthood,
I tinkered with the watchmaker’s minutes, and was flung from the clouds,

Envious of humans,
But opposed to walls in Eden,
I’ll caress scripture with my finger tips,
I’ll recited your rites of pagans,
And pander to a judge, jury, and all the slaughtered lambs,

He tossed us out,
For tugging at his crown, and falling out of line,

Just a sheep counted before sleep,
But we woke up,  
When we assaulted the Angelic Order,
For fear of it all,

From incubation to graduations,
You’ve been suffocated,
Socially lacerated,
Incapacitated,
By a genre of gimmicks
Governmental deliverance,
Poisoned pulpits of pretenses,
Symbiotically capable of lethally extorting martyrdoms
I watched him rip that rib
  
Fear of you all pulling the plug on me,

I’ve worked so hard for far too long,
To let you lower my corpse,
Beneath entitled toes,

Never finding unity,
Only your sensual weakness for a delusional *******,
Detrimental martyrdoms,
I challenged a throne that refused to fold,

Fear of Alpha,
He casted me out,
To where the brimstone never burns out,  

Foaming at the brainstem,
Unhinged with a taste for their *******,
Fear of you all,
Those that surrendered to bliss,

Now you get my fear of it all,
The day I set heaven ablaze was my ultimately reckoning,
Ignorant because being different required intelligence,
Only now do I see,
Only fools challenge divinity,

A keg stand takes three dipshits,
I challenged Alpha.
Of Beelzebub’s breed,
Falling out of line,
Feeling Gabriel’s heel,
Teacher’s pet had me by the throat.

i didn't understand half
the words he said
and i don't understand half
the words you write

michael jackson
and waylon jennings
wrapped in a paper towel
"papa would be proud of you"
scratched in the back of
a children's book

it's the oddest thing
to no longer miss
someone who's been
gone so long

an odder thing to sit
in silence on your bed
with the fitted sheet all pulled
off the side next to the wall
feeling your best friend's
little sister's scratchy blue
nylon mattress rub
up against your sore feet

and open card
after card
after card
filled with glittering
words of praise and
monetary gifts

and then read about all
the things about you
that people think are
worthy of mentioning
and you start to
see a pattern

"thank you for serving"
"humor"
"creativity"
"imagination"
"let God lead you"
"keep rapping"

(thank you
and by the way
i don't rap only
occasionally slam)

it starts to feel like a
bulletpoint hallmark eulogy
like you've left your body
and are reading about someone else
reviewing all the better
more visible parts of yourself
the parts deemed loud
enough to be acknowledged.

and you start to see
what's lurking off
the edge of the card
and the words they didn't write
the places that you
went wrong

the question marks
behind their eyes
wondering why they
haven't seen you for two months
why your hair is a different color
why someone else is in your seat

and the semicolons in
your stomach
when you realize that
you've made a mistake
and even with all the hurts caused
you've still got a family out there.

i'll say this
when it comes to
graduations and funerals
you find out who your friends are

the people who matter
will show up in the end.

am i mislead in thinking
that sometimes people
don't say everything they
think or feel until it's too
late because it takes a
loss to make them realize?

he wore it
like stripes
and patches earned,
stitched to his chest
with needles through flesh;

...from amazing face at birth,
fresh, with cheeks to cash
and grow into
something valued like
commitment  or blue chip stocks

something his children
could latch on to

that's my dad...

like medals and awards
and highlight pictures on the walls
of foyers
and family rooms

like gates to
the family's estate
swinging free of debt
for generations
next
and beyond...

something his children
would embrace
not erase

like foul stains
on childhood memories
in the making

like the illusion
of traditional ties
and vows

like graduations
and weddings
missed
and new births;

...to the lifeless face
of another casualty
of addiction;

cheeks pale like ashes,
cashing
only dust

~ P  (Pablo)
(8/4/2013)