Day 18: About a Picture of Scuba Divers

This is death.
Pressure compounding organs infinity.

Sunlight streams in from above
muffled fingertips straining to reach the dusty corners
only the bubbles that alight on your skin
will make it to the surface.

So explore.
Explore while the sounds of wind and cars and sun and air
are muted out.
Explore, flashing bulbs to illuminate bright colors
only meant to exist in darkness.
Explore the cities below,
mountains of inhabited beauty.

Make this your reality,
to never speak again
to breathe recycled air as
bulging eyes stare back into
your glass restraints.

Circle down into the suffocating darkness
take a deep breath
and burrow into the sands
until your lungs are compressed
to force the last globules of air
out of your skeleton.

Then bury yourself further
and forget what you’ve read about
stingrays and the bends.
You’ve made it this far, haven’t you?
all that remains is the clear window covering your eyes.

Wait for the sea snakes to start nibbling at
your toes
fingers
hips
then lift your eyes up to the surface
looking for
just one ray of light.

Finding that the darkness is not
all-encompassing,
cry until your mask is filled with salt water.
Equilibrium.

Day 17: The Rescue

Alone in the parking lot, I watch my salvation disappear
in the back of a Volkswagen Bus.
Eyes of a forgotten color
stare
back at me through the rearview mirror and I wonder.
Wonder if maybe I had left a little sooner
to catch a ride or
had run a little faster to jump into the passenger’s seat.
Wonder if maybe I would still
be here counting the pieces of asphalt
to take my mind off the fact
that my rescue is gone.

Day 16: Weird into Weird into Weirder Still: An Attempt.

Ask me to marry you and I’ll say yes
leaping into your arms
a plastered grin
on a blushing face.

Ask me to marry you on a Navy carrier and I’ll agree
and paint the gray ship the color of a theater set
because I thought that’s what you wanted.

Ask me to follow you to Illinois and I’ll go
quite contentedly, even though I swore
never to visit that evil state.

Ask me to resign from my job of changing-the-world and
get all old and gross in the middle of a bayou
and I’ll agree.

Ask me to break the last bond myself and I’ll say yes.
Even though it’s probably not right that way.

This part of my map is blank and blacked out but
you seem to know the way so I’ll stick with you.
But before we leave for the next blob of
conservatism, let’s go somewhere else.

Let me take you in the snow
I swear the sweat dripping off into the cold crystals
that remind of street names I used to know
will relieve us of sins, forgotten and foreign.

Throw off your gloves before the fight
along with any cold toes or regrets you might have brought with you.
Shed your skin and I’ll shed mine
and let’s trade for a bit.

While I’m waiting for you to respond to this proposal,
dip your fingers in some of every color
and paint my lips with your name.

Day 15: A D-word

Your Name.

dropped into wide-eyed canyons
echoing off the pressured sediment
disappearing into thin air
it takes a long time to reach the rocky bottom.
Your Name.
whispered into the darkness at twilight time
draping off the sides of my mattress
the stitches murmured in a well-worn hoodie.
Your Name.
reflected in the deepest seas
in the islands we visit
in all the things I never got to say.

etched into the words I won’t forget.

Day 14: Dear…

Dear Ice Rink,

I know it’s been a long time since you’ve bitten your steely shards into my skin.
It’s been a while since I’ve walked across your tundra like an Eskimo explorer.
And it’s been even longer since I’ve fallen and you caught me, like the good hard safety net you are.
I want you to know that I saved all those snow piles I scraped off your surface.
I keep them in my freezer
sometimes I’ll take them out and chew them
a remainder frozen in time.
Alone in the venue,
but I’ve never felt so alive as when I was with you.
I still cry when I remember the time you beat the Ruskies in the winter of ’80.
I still cry when I remember the time you cut my friend Jason.
I still cry because Bassett Street is a long way from Bell.
51 million miles, in fact.
Ten years.

Loving you unconditionally,
Me

Day 13: 50 things I’ll never do – Part 1 of 2

50 Things I’ll Never Do

I’ll never set foot in Texas,
win the lottery,
smoke cigarettes (they can burn you!),
kill myself (how would I complete the list?),
have a home-town,
become a child soldier.
I’ll probably never starve.
I’ll never survive in the real world,
become and adult,
know my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather’s name.
I’ll never move to mexico,
get you out of my head,
work as a prostitute,
kiss Justin Bieber.
I’ll never see that shack in the middle of the Alps where we saw UFOs  ever again,
follow a boy to college,
follow a boy across the country,
follow a boy across the room,
love America purely,
I’ll never forget my soccer team,
go home again,
leave Africa,
speak German properly,
watch X-files without smiling,
and I’ll never forget the smell of that ice.

Day 12: Glass

Glass

1.

Some people look for happiness in all the wrong places.
They find it in love,
kindness,
good
generic emotions as bland as the white bread they describe.
I don’t mean to be pretentious here,
I find it in the smoky curls echoing cigarettes
the last bit of tequila-flavoured foam clinging to the side of a bottle.
the small piece of time between morning and night.
the sun coming over the mountains while city lights shine.
the ice cracks in a broken window
the frost forming on jagged edges
of glass.

 

2.

I’m trapped in a glass tube.
Not African, therefore not in Africa.
In here they make me eat every word I’ve ever said
force fed into my glass IV.

Sucked up into a future I didn’t plan for
I sit behind the wavy glass and scream
no one can hear me
it’s soundproof glass, you see.

 

3.

You know in Swedish they call it “glaas”.

 

4.

There was a time
when I walked through a cathedral in
Rome
Aachen
Amsterdam
it doesn’t matter.

What matters is the way the
stained coloured light played dappled shadows
on my eyes and hands

There was no religion and no hot waffles.
There was only those stained glass shards
breaking their sun over me.

 

5.

My mother once broke her foot
walking down the stairs
naked in a glass house
in a small Dutch town.

 

6.

There’s no glass allowed inside the campsite.

You can carry
drugs and
alcohol and
bright pink wellies and
bright pink sunhats and
in one case
a large pair of bright pink headphones for your baby to enjoy.
You can throw pot on a fire
have triple chicken fights
pass out and have
panic attacks.
You can fight and play bloody knuckles.
You can even get trampled to death.

But we have principles.
There’s no  glass allowed.
Someone might get hurt!

 

7.

I almost forgot.
I haven’t offered you anything to drink!
Here’s a tall
glass
of water. Enjoy!

Day 11:

Inspiration and motivation
spoken by Spooky and Sister
sometimes the only push into sunset.

They are my mother and father.
They are my lover
They are my fighter
They are my friend
They are my model
in every which way.

You found the truth.
So why do you keep crying?

Day 10: Dissonant Chords

dissonant chords
resound with such force
I feel as if reality has shifted.

This is about the night an old German woman
wearing a crown laughed at my
Oregon driver’s permit.
This is about the night I watched myself
from outside the bars
running in circles and
terribly afraid of
the future and
the past.

dissonant chords resonate
with uncanniness.

This is about the night the salt built up
pillars in my body
but no rivers flowed.
Not tonight.
Not here.
Not here where Orion is blind to the adventures of
teenagers
costumes stained with vomit and regret

This is about the night when
they stared at me blankly
through masks of sweaty
smeared makeup
and laughed when I told them
where I was from.

Day 8: Kingdoms

Here we live in glistening garish gated cities
Here it rains sweet beer and winters are ten feet deep.
Here I’ve fought and won
but there, I cannot undo the things  I’ve seen.

Here is home to licked leather
Here is glass life
Here the fish are striped for our amusement
but there, I still sense snippets.

Shaggy man commands his orchestra
under glow of fast food spotlight.

There will be no warmth
only corrugated steel existences
day/night.

Here we press phosphorescent buttons and set invisible watches
Here we donate money to faraway kingdoms.
They’re on the other side of the room watching.
I won, but memories have a funny way of
persisting.