Find a nickel pick it up and all day you’ll have good luck?

Her knuckles rapped the door. It gave in like a scolded child, opening into the room. She stood there in its wake as if she were the new door blocking the world from this room.

“I thought so.” She floated the words into the room and listened for an echo back. She picked the only book with a well-read spine off the shelf.

“Are you drunk?” There was her echo.”I thought you had a liver problem.”

She looked up from the yellow pages mid-tear, “Roommate to roommate? It’s a living problem.” She ripped another page and held it up to the light sneaking through the doorway. It was a list of residential numbers. The “W”s.

“These people are connected to these ten digits intimately. I, a complete stranger, know their number now. What do i do?” She turned the page over and spoke as if she was addressing the people directly through their phone numbers. “I can call them and say, ‘Hey, I have twenty nine dollars that I’d like you to have. Just tell me. Is this a miracle? Good luck? Random act of kindness? Are you thanking me or on your knees sending thanks to someone who had no hand in this. I guarantee you. I chose you because I have this book and I have your number. I’ve also got twenty nine dollars that aren’t mine anymore. They’re yours.'”

“One person’s miracle another person’s kindness?” The echo again.

“It’s junk and treasure.”

“See, there’s a point. If I see a penny and pass it up, does it lose its luck?”

“Why aren’t there lucky nickels?”

“It can’t lose its luck if you don’t believe in miracles. Do signs stop meaning if you don’t see them? It’s like a fingerprint scanner that doesn’t recognize your fingerprints. It says you don’t exist, but there you are ten fingers ten toes breathing the air some kid in Africa could be using over you, and more efficiently, too.”

“So what? You’re the lucky penny at the end of your chosen one’s numbers?”

“Chosen one? I’m not saying whether that penny – or nickle – has luck instilled in it or you take luck from it. But if you pick that penny up, you’re going to choose one or the other.”

“Any chance you’ll pick my number from that book one day?”

“Do you believe in luck?”

Ozymandias

I have come to realize in the past months that I find no greater peace of mind than in watching the snow fall.
I have come to find something stirring,
some humble majesty, some humble joy in letting
the snowflakes lift me beyond the pavement upon which I stand into
Another beautiful day worthy of raising my eyes to the sky,
away from the pavement, away from the earth.

I forget the cold, the sting of melting flakes upon my neck and cheeks
I forget, only to remember days of clearer, less tranquil skies,
sunsets where you and me and everyone we used to know sat in broken circles
and gushed our loves and dreams to everyone, everywhere
and anywhere out of the world
while the band played Waltzing Matilda.

Perhaps it’s one of those things I never noticed–as a young man from Southern California, a change of seasons, for one.
Like the still-warm day in October when I finally realized it was autumn
and my flip-flopped feet sifted through the first scattered leaves upon grass
Like December as the snow fell like October’s leaves
and my booted feet fell through layers of fresh snow
with the most satisfying sound

Like February as I walked upon fields of ice
and stood under the shadows of trees,
branches still mockingly clinging to leaves brown and frail
which yet survive, sneering at me
even as I stare across the desolace
and dream of Ozymandias.

I’m alive when I dream. Tell me when I can go home.

I can’t think my thoughts when Vista damns creativity with 11 point Calibri, day over night over double spaced monotony.

In journalism, paragraphs are key. The holy grail of journalistic success, all you need are paragraphs. One or two sentences to express a statement of fact. Kyle Leerie, 23, died when his car crashed into a tree. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Not, the tree was Oak and Kyle’s accident woke up a family of blue jays. They flew away on impact.

For some reason, I had myself convinced that blue jay was one word. Last night, when I dreamed, it was like a premiere screening of my subconscious. I see the previews every waking hour. When I am alive in the day I fear snakes and dirty shoes and food poisoning. I fear these things in the back of my mind. I think Man the Staples guy is cute. But I don’t say cute out loud, I barely let my thoughts think it. Instead I think, no he is attractive. He smiles well. Like there is happiness to gum-tooth-grin at once in a while, though maybe it’s only in the Staples on Lancaster Ave and only when he’s around.

At night I have break through bleeding of the mind. My dreams are everything I think about quietly, pushed way into the back row so no one – let alone I – notice and call on them for answers. When I dream, my brain flips around. Back of my mind is the front and the front the back. Now all those fears and quiet thoughts are here. LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME.

I wake up to the incessant beeping of a truck in reverse. I hate that noise. Reminding, reminding the world that the truck is moving backwards, backwards in space and I wish backwards in time for then it would not be outside my window beeping through my pillow and into my head.

I was 24 when my mom was born.

The first thing – past the uterine walls – they see is the bright clashing wallpaper. Ducks and llamas sashaying across a green background. The screaming follows.

The slightly dimmer scrubs and white gloves distract few from the repeated duck and llama poses. The artist undoubtedly thought This, this will properally usher the babe into humandome. Don’t tell me llamas and ducks aren’t stimulating. Oversized bills, exagerated cuddleability. The babe is lucky.

Countless mothers disagree. Semi-lucid, surrounded by the frolicking wallpaper. This, this is my child’s welcome. These hands, these walls. You were born in a manger of sorts.

The official document marking the birth hangs at the end of the bed. It’s clipped over the hospital charges. The line that asks Name extends across the page, intimidating. For ten minutes there, until you were cleaned and I held you, you had no name. I felt your lips, your toes, your kidneys. You existed among llamas and ducks.

contacts.

My life is pixelated, populated by unfathomable faces, persons unknown.
All day I walk around looking at shoes, hanging my head like it’s chained to Hell, avoiding eye contact as if it conducts a new strain of the black plague.
Perhaps wondering, pondering the self-censored cardboard cutouts that frump into and out of my life morning day and night.
Ask me what she looks like, what she wears. I couldn’t say.
Remember her? Him? Them? It?

Vaguely.
The back of my mind works overtime to keep meaning at a distance. Glasses are my brain’s way of saying Don’t Look Now.
I don’t. Without the tinkered lenses everything geometrizes into the basic shapes. Lamp-ish, bed-ish, friend-ish. With glasses, things get complicated.
Pixels, black boxes over faces. Whatever it takes to show you that I’m not the friend to cry to. My shoulders are too low too broad too water-resistant.

### 

The nutgraf clearly coincides with another L word Funk. I’d like to slap some fictional characters around, and then maybe start with my future self. Stupid things clamor to cram my horoscope yet I still run home to fortune cookies at night, not sophisticated enough to chopstick my rice, not desperate to get drunk and dial for extended metaphors i can’t afford.

###

Sweats

I don’t know any rules about these things, I feel bad for posting my crap but it’s all I really have. Enjoyed making this character, more detail on it at the bottom of post.

Stop, adjust and check your mirror
Avoid your muse if you still fear her
You need to slow down before you burst
In joyous spatters of hate’s disintegration
But even for an end that’s not the worst
Because you’ve only just met anger’s elation

And now you’re getting better
Getting better, getting better

When your highs are low
And your lows only reach lower
There was no way to know
That this was the door
Upright downside up on the floor
Could you ask for anything more?
The windows in the ceiling
Open up onto the walls
Why the hell aren’t you reeling?
Do you even hear the calls
Left over to try and start you feeling

Free yourself, they’re only clouds
Dust yourself off and run away
Before you’re caught up in the shrouds
Of some pitiful fool’s despair
Embrace the feeling,
Embrace the healing,
Of cutting away all the excess flesh,
Because sweat’s thicker than blood
Until it evaporates, slowly

This was the door
Upright downside up on the floor
Do you want anything more?
The windows in the ceiling
Open up onto the walls
It’s just a fucked up room
Stuck in a fucked up room
Staring at a fucked up moon

Gasp for breath, expect your death
And it will only avoid you
Your interest makes it shrivel up
In it’s pitiful despair
Embrace the feeling,
Embrace the healing,
To try and stop being who you are
The torn cuticles shredded and mangled
Representing, symbolizing the hart on the string
That followed the only way to the river Lethe

Because this was the door
Upright downside up on the floor
Do you want anything more?
The windows in the ceiling
Open up onto the walls
It’s just a fucked up room
Stuck in a fucked up room
Staring at a fucked up moon

Hold onto your life, you must remember!
Does it mean so much to you now I wonder?
There’s a change that will come about!
But you’re headed the wrong way don’t you know?
That you can not reap what you sow
If you forget where your field was, leave it behind
Reap nothing and rape nothing
Want nothing and shed your skin
Delicate rose of flesh and sin
Be prepared, I’m coming in.

In through the door
Upright downside up on the floor
Do you want anything more?
The windows in the ceiling
Open up onto the walls
It’s just a fucked up room
Stuck in a fucked up room
Staring at a fucked up moon

’cause your highs are low
And lows only reach lower
There was no way to know
That this was the door
Upright downside up on the floor
The windows in the ceiling
Open up onto the walls
Could you ask for anything more
Than everything.

Started at 10:40 ended 10:50. I don’t normally force rhymes but here it seemed to work out ok,  (with the door and lower if you missed it) I also don’t normally use language in my poetry but this seemed appropriate. Anyways, enjoy/comment whatever you want.

Mask your Spirit

So try and dismiss that you’ve been remiss
You couldn’t recognize the lies, or wouldn’t you?
Now you lost, stay, accost me, you’ve been crossed
Twice and again, now it costs too much for you
To pay with casual nonchalance
That seems to only help you use ignorance
Wrought cold dark iron cooled by taunts
Built in the burning wick of the seance
Formed in a life with no more jaunts
Because you gave ‘em up when you donned this mask.

Try to stay on task
Just stay on task
Don’t you dare to ask

the land before time.

Maybe there were dinosaurs. Probably sea cucumbers and Christmas tree needles. Only in the land before time there is no Christmas. There is no twenty fifth. There is just time. getCurrentTime() >> 997345463746392384684575730475730573785026346590 <time units> have elapsed since “startTime”. Why thank you, ambiguous pendulum for maybe something useful. What I really want to know is: why Not?

Upon the Platter Rested Two

Two whales.  In Buffalo and Mustard.

Did we overestimate ourselves?

But even as we finish up the bits, there’s something just left  enough for the scavengers to come calling, but not enough to hold them back one more trip to earth.  Vultures fishing for the leftovers, like the dregs, cleaners, Untouchables, bottom feeders, but there isn’t even half an ambulance to chase.

Fallen Egret’s Regrets

I started thinking of this at first as a simple light response to the latest note by Seth and Allison’s latest entry. It grew from there as I self reflected in my copious backstage time during rehearsals and had an interesting experience/story. Since I write by talking in my head, or aloud if nobody’s around, I feel this is a bit better with the actual voice, especially the ending. I’ll record maybe Wednesday when I’m alone. I really should start carrying around a recorder with me everywhere since I think/sing a poem almost every time I’m walking around and so many with potential are lost. Sorry it’s so long, it began as a quick response but grew and I have problems stopping,cutting myself.

What do I regret?