So it's been forever since i wrote some poesia. fiction wasn't as fun.

Dream

I once had a dream that I died a million times
it was not so much terrifying
as interesting,
waking up thick slow
adjusting leisurely to death,
or maybe it was life.

Flames that heated the sun, the first.
embraced by a ring of fire,
leaving in the same position I came,
huddled and stupid;
screamed fear and passion.

Another, in a hail of bullets,
still, resigned,
reasons unknown
during an Indian summer
in the backwoods of a southern town.

Once, warm and sound asleep,
hearing aids on the bed side table,
hand’s skin tented where my granddaughter
pinched it six hours before.

Another, halfway through a chicken wing,
barbeque sauce smeared across both chins
and around my neck where I clutched
when I first felt a catch.

I had a dream that I died a million times,
no repeats except the end itself,
some bloody like revolution,
others as subtle and insignificant
as pigeon shit on the biggest rock
in a deserted part of an urban park.

It was not so much terrifying as interesting,
delightful even, unexpectedly beautiful
like finding pink skin after picking a scab,
the spring of a newly freed ingrown hair,
freedom, finally, from that spinach
stuck between those back molars.

I remember my tenth birthday,
crying about two numbers instead of one,
thinking, this is IT, double digits till the end
feeling the weight
of a million dreams in one death,
beautifully unexpected.

Currently Listening From a Basement on the Hill By Elliott Smith see related

Between Tab and W

It’s easy to get lost among everything else
Sitting in my designated corner,
Shadows of fingertips
left and right
Above and below
pushing warmth I rarely touch.

Easily forgotten
With space that stretches oceans
And better known alphabets
That permeate every word
and steal attention,
Vowels especially.

Maybe if I had less curves,
More angles and sharp edges
I’d have something to be said.

Or if I had more functions
I’d have the opportunity to shift,
Change meaning at will,
Be whatever you needed.

You glance my way every once in a while,
Hover and waver
then I feel the warmth,
burns swirls of fingerprints

Insatiable

I wait for you to come back,
But it never happens soon enough
It leaves me hoping,
Wondering whether or not
you’ll slip on the way to tab
And remember where I am.

Currently Listening The Hour of Bewilderbeast By Badly Drawn Boy the shining see related

I-80, Bay Area

The road is slippery on either side of white dashes
but the Californian sun has already turned your hair honey

blonde like the wheat fields we ran through when
our families visited Indiana in the summer of 1993 – the same year

you got tennis elbow and complained about it for
weeks on end. I never much liked tennis, was never very good

at hitting the ball. You tried to teach me when we were thirteen
at that park down the block from your house. We jumped the fence

and wiggled under the barricade with the graffiti grape vines, marks
of people who “owned this shit” before us. I can remember you

trailed fingertips over the fading red letters like an off-hand comment, the same
way I push my palm over your skin, except there is nothing off-hand

about it. The hair on your arm is darker than the curls surging like an ocean
from the open window and I imagine wheat strands that smell

like Pacific salt, and wonder why the sun has not taken the time
to think of your arm hair as I have done.

Currently Listening Legend of the Wu-Tang Clan: Wu-Tang Clan's Greatest Hits By Wu-Tang Clan see related

Sequences of the Past

 
Remember that one summer when we threw
red water balloons from your fire escape
onto people walking below?

When Mrs. Shaikh saw us and told your mom,
her face like hell,
you took the blame,
I got off scot-free.

Remember that time at the 52^nd Street park,
when I broke my arm
after that kid pushed me off the slide?

When you realized what happened, you were
so angry, yelling, screaming, swinging.
You cried when they set my cast.

Remember that one day in February
when you convinced me to skip English
and drive out to the beach?

We drove with the windows down, singing
“I’d love to go back to when we played as kids,
but things changed, that’s just the way it is,
things will never be the same,
that’s just the way it is.”

Snow covered the sand but you ran through everything,
dark eyes on deep ocean, hair like trailing fingertips.

You screamed obscenities and laughed like a madman,
handprints from your cartwheels
buried in the snow till twilight.

Do you remember those things? Memories
like sesame seeds on bread,
and spaces of night between streetlights.

If not, I can always tell you,
how things were, how things are,
maybe someday we can meet up
and remember how it went.