It's been a while since we've visited, but I'm still kicking, and I hope that you're doing the same.

Summer Reruns

He sits behind his eyes,
staring back at yesterday,
last week, last year,
watching flickering fictions
cross nicotine smoke screens
filtering up from his lips,
playing out obscure dramas
only he can see
and only he can resolve,
reruns of himself,
always in the starring role
but never the hero.

While You Sleep

I listen to crickets fiddle in the night,
scratching sorrowful tunes of lost love,
urgently calling into the darkness,
and when they stop to tension their bows
I listen to the silence, and try to catch
the gentle rhythm of your breath, imagining
what songs are playing through your dreams.

Like Idiots Finding Edges

It is a twenty-four hour road
looping back upon itself
like a child's pony ride
circling its center, and we
are strapped onto our little steads,
whimpering each time
the carny whips them faster,
whining for our lives
as we dig our dirty feet into the dust
to slow ourselves down.

She Is Going

She is going toward that place
that folds its arms around each of us
at the end of our journey,
and I stand in the gully
beside her bed, watching
the slow rise and fall of her chest
as she pushes through the battered gate
of a well lived life
to limp over the last few cobblestones
leading home.
Her mouth is dry with anticipation,
so I lift a glass to her lips
already aware that my offering
will be refused; her milky eyes are focused
on a destination I cannot see,
not on the comfort of her pilgrimage,
and the water will drip down her chin
like the trickle of a dying stream
in the desert.

Still, I cannot help myself.

My emotion tells me to weave
her fingers in mine to guide
those final steps, even though I know
she will drop my hand at the door
and leave me behind.

Falling Back

Falling back from himself,
he saw what he
could have been
if he hadn't spent
so much time
falling back from himself.

I Killed My Wife With a Butter Knife

*Note:  This is the result of a challenge that I could not write a rhyming poem in two minutes.  Yes, it's a bit goofy, but I think that it's also kind of cute in a grotesque way.

I Killed My Wife With a Butter Knife

Her blood was red
but tasted blue.
I put a little
in my stew.

Her brain was chewy
and kind of tough.
With one bite,
I'd had enough.

Her thighs were soft
and very sweet.
I decided that
I liked that meat.

I wonder where
my wife would be
if she were not
inside me.

Maybe I'm a cell phone failure

But

I will not spit my words into

a tinny tiny box and have them collapse

into digital impulses that ricochet

through your aural cavity, leap your

synapses, strain your neural connections,

and end up forgotten

when a simple smile and wink

will define every inchoate bleat

issuing from my mouth.

Calla Lilies

When he walked into the room
and saw, on the bed, her still body,
shrouded under crimson covers,
her head buried in the pit
of the calla lily pillow she loved
to grow her dreams on,
his heart stalled. Kneeling,
he brought a hand to her hair,
and traced the strands
with his fingertips, as if that act
might bring her back into his world.
He leaned in to smooth the skin
of his cheek against hers, felt
her breath warm the narrowing space
between them, and he was revived.

Touch Me!

Touch me!
Run your fingers over my face
and say, I know you.

Say, I know how you feel
when the unshed tears dry
but the residue still salts
the shredded skin of emotions,
prickling your wounds until
you scrape away the scab to reveal
the festering sore of a word
not spoken, an innocent comment
that slashed deeper than a knife,
the silly remark that grew
like a cancer with its memory.

Touch me!
Let your fingers linger on the scars,
exploring their invisible ridges,
until they feel like your own,
then say, I know you.

I love:

I love your nose
I love your lips
I love your toes
I love your hips

I love the way
our hands entwine
as if to say
I'm yours, you're mine.

Recycling

After he tossed the can
out the window, an immigrant
picked it up.

There Once Was a Man

There Once Was a Man

who looked at his life and saw a jigsaw puzzle
with pieces that didn’t fit into a picture that made sense.

Then,

someone told him to start with the borders and work inward,
but he hated the idea of being penned in, and besides,
how can one frame the puzzle of a life that isn’t complete?

So,

he tried to match colors, and that didn’t work because
each glittering piece produced a unique hue
when he held it up to the sun,
and all of them blinded him with their brilliance.

Sightless,

he fumbled with the shards, running the tips of his fingers
over their jagged edges, hoping this sensory experience
might help him slip the fragments back into a picture,
but he’d forgotten how to touch and, in his imagination,
everything felt like cardboard.

Frustrated,

he swept the puzzle away, fuming at the idea
that he’d even considered the amazing events of his life
as nothing more than jigsaw pieces to be slotted together,
one into the next, to represent the masterpiece he was,
and so he sat, alone, pondering his existence
while the world walked around him.

And,

after a time, weeping, the man crawled from his stoop,
and began searching the dust for his scattered shards,
humble in the knowledge
of what the finished puzzle would portray.

Hoop Dreams

Hoop Dreams:
Let me just start by saying that I’ll break your leg if you laugh, and I’ll break both your legs if you tell anyone what I'm about to tell you. You got that? I have my pride. Do you still want to continue? Think long and hard about it. Maybe you should shut your eyes and be happy in your ignorance. No? You’re still here? Okay, you’ve been warned, so don’t go blabbing this to anyone!

As I grow incrementally older, it gets exponentially more difficult to maintain my svelte waistline. I no longer fit into the contours of my twenty something self. When I gaze at all those yellowing thirty-year-old photos of myself, I weep. My tears splash across those celluloid images, blurring the slim young man smiling into the camera, and I find myself asking how the bloated old man staring down at his prior self could have allowed this tragic metamorphosis to occur. And then, I ponder how to mold myself back into the beaming boy of my youth.

If you know me, you know that I’m a possessed man. Every morning I religiously pull on a pair of running shorts, lace up my shoes, and head out the door for a minimum of six miles on the road at a quick clip. You know that when I climb, I need the challenge of knowing success is not a given, that my feet might falter on the rock, that my crampons might slip on the ice, and that the fall might end in tragedy. If you know me, you know that I’ll go to great lengths to accomplish my goals.

And that’s why I just bought a hula hoop!

What? A hula hoop? One of those silly round things the girls spun around their waists back in the second grade? Hula hoops are for girls!

Yep, that’s what I’m talking about: a hula hoop. I bought a hula hoop, so get over it.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’ve got one of those little smirks on your face, and you’ve got this picture in your mind. You see a rumpled 59-year-old man out in the middle of the street with his stomach hanging out and sweat flopping off his forehead, trying to spin a stupid plastic ring around his torso. He has a determined look on his face, but no amount of determination can keep the hoop above his hips. Every few seconds, it clatters to the pavement, and he slowly bends down and picks it up for another futile attempt. It’s a shameful sight. You want to tell him to stop. Relax! You want to forget that you ever imagined this scenario. No one should have to walk through life with that image burned into their memory. But you can’t erase the nightmare.

So let me put your mind at ease.

Over the course of my journey toward a leaner, slimmer me, a friend from New York confided to me that she was a hooper. Not a closet hooper, but a real, honest to god, out in the open, public hooper. In fact, she said that she even went to hoop classes several times a week. Back where she came from, lots of folks hoop, and they have a whooping good time doing it too. She said her instructor dropped over a hundred pounds in a year, and she did it simply by hooping.

You can imagine the hope growing in me. It sounded easy. Why not try it? After a couple of hoop sessions, I’d be back to form. Already, I felt that old grin spreading my cheeks.

But that’s when she spit out the caveat. Hooping is a girl thing. Boys don’t do it. Not once had she ever seen one single man do the spin. It was unheard of and just wasn’t done.

My grin splattered to the floor. Every drop of hope dripped out of me and puddled around my feet. Now what?

But!

Here’s the deal.

After my initial defeat, I considered the situation. Why couldn’t a man spin the hoop? The internet said that hooping burned as many calories as jogging, and it toned the abs too. It said that hooping brought the average heart rate up around a hundred-and-fifty beats per minute. It said that serious hoopers often lost a couple of inches from their waistlines in their first month of hooping alone.

What was I waiting for?

Was I a man, or a mouse caged within the acceptable constraints of society?

So what if only women hooped.

That could change.

And where was the man who’d bring about that change?

I looked down and saw his feet in my shoes.

Ten minutes later, I walked into the local Sports Chalet, and walked out empty-handed thirty seconds later. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t carry a hula hoop up to the sales counter, plop my card down, and walk out while everyone stared.

I was nothing more than a mouse, a rodent, a damned attic dweller condemned to the darkness of my prejudice!

At home, Sweetie calmed my damaged psyche. She nodded, patted me on the head, and suggested that we both return to the store. I could explain that my purchase was for her, slam my money on the counter, and march out with my head held high.

And we did just that.

So, if you feel any seismic waves shivering through the ground, don’t worry. It’s not an earthquake.

It’s me, spinning the hoop.


Now that you know, don’t forget my warning: I’ll break your leg if you laugh, and I’ll break both your legs if you tell anyone.

Crystal Cove: January 2012

A cold ocean breeze blows through my clothes as I walk
across the sand, sandals in hand, alone in my thoughts.
Empty beach shacks cluster on the bluff above,
leaning their splintered, bleached bones into the wind
like arthritic white-haired men bent over open graves.
Hopping along a broken fence rail, a murder of crows watch
me through bead-black eyes and mock me with their caws
while waves foam over my toes and urge me toward its depths.

It is an old moment that I know well and welcome often.

Up ahead, a woman sits on the beach, alone, sifting
handfuls of sand through trembling fingers, smoothing
tiny grains of memory into the shape of a mermaid.
Its perfect lines make me stop to remark that it’s so beautiful
there must be a body hidden within the layer of sand
that she’s sculpting, and she looks up from her work,
her eyes moist with the grief of stricken mother
and replies that her daughter died the day before.

For an instant I stand stupid in the sand
and can only mumble my condolences
while she gazes up through a glaze of tears.
Then she returns to her work and it hits me
that the tide will rise and wash her mermaid
into its arms, and it will disperse into the ocean,
but the perfect image of her daughter
will never dissolve from this mother’s glistening eyes.

Mentalmorphosis

Mentalmorphosis

I’ve never heard anyone say they wished they were dumber. Have you? In fact, I’ll bet there’s not one of you who’d refuse a few extra points of intelligence if they were thrown your way; I know I’d be first in line to catch a fistful. Or just imagine, reaching into a paper bag and closing your greedy little fingers around a nice, yeasty gob of smarts. You could roll it into a tiny ball, pop it into mouth, swallow, and voila, you’d be the smartest kid on the block! Of course, if it were that easy, we’d probably have about three hundred million Albert Einsteins walking around the U.S. polluting the air with theories of relativity, thermodynamics, and quadratic equations. But when it comes to brain cells, you got what you got and that’s what you got, so just accept it and be happy. Right? Well, maybe not.

That’s why my pulse surged when I read a magazine article suggesting that certain activities might actually raise my IQ by as much as twenty-one points. Why, that’s just about double my current count! I’d be almost as smart as a dog, and I’ve always yearned to live a dog’s life because they’ve got it made, at least every dog I’ve ever fed. With that in mind, I figured it might be wise to read on.

Scanning the first couple of paragraphs, I saw that the article listed thirty-one ways to get smarter, things like learning a new language, eating turmeric, reading Shakespeare, playing music, mastering chess, things that required you to exercise your brain, things that necessitated being a smarty-pants, things that didn’t fit the Levis I wear. Already mentally exhausted, I almost stuffed the magazine in the trash when my eyes drifted past the brain strainers to less stringent methods of training the brain. There, nestled in amongst all those nasty little brain expanders, was the real destination of my search, the alchemy to change mush to grey matter.

You might shake your head when you read this (I’m only relaying what the article says), but after sifting through all thirty-one suggestions, I’ve decided to adopt five or six from the list. If following a formula of almost three dozen exercises will lift my mental acuity twenty-one points, condensing it to a strict diet of half a dozen and then quadrupling each one should have the same effect.

Now, if you’ve read the article, you’re probably wondering which exercises I’ve chosen for my program, so I won’t keep you guessing any longer.

1. I’ll eat more dark chocolate and drink more red wine: These are a good source of flavonoids that help improve memory. Don’t worry if you see me stumbling around with wine and a slurry of chocolate dripping down my chin; I’m getting smarter.
2. I’ll wipe that stupid smile off my face and frown more: Ever notice how frowners are usually more skeptical and analytic? It’s true.
3. I’ll drink at least two gallons of water per day: They say that drinking more water makes the brain work harder, probably trying to find the closest urinal.
4. I’ll drink at least four cups of coffee each day: Caffeine is a crystalline compound that is a stimulant of the central nervous system and bolsters short term memory, which I’ll need to remember where that last urinal was.
5. I’ll join a knitting circle: Refining motor skills bolsters cognitive skills; although I might drop a stitch or two due to my caffeine shake.
6. I’ll try to nap during the day and get to bed early in the evening: The brain continues to process memories even after going to sleep, and I’m sure I’ll be exhausted from running back and forth to the bathroom.

If you know me, you’re probably shaking your head and have a frown on your face after reading this. You’re considering the titanic task I’ve taken on and you’re thinking that there’s no way I’ll accomplish this incredibly difficult feat. But I assure you, by this time next month, you’ll marvel at my mental dexterity. My old stupid self will be a mere memory in your minds. You’ll be amazed by the astounding metamorphosis.

And, if I haven’t grown exponentially smarter, at least I didn’t tax my brain trying.

The List to Watch

My finger scrolls down the list
of folks to watch in the coming year,
the ones who are up and comers,
the ones who matter,
the ones who make a difference,
but sadly, my name is absent.

Instead, I find it scribbled
on the list
of those to watch out for.

"Cogito, ergo sum"

The full story is that Descartes,
when confronted with the question
of existence, answered,
"I think, therefore I am."
and followed up with,
"Are you?"
which garnered vacuous stares,
forcing him to suggest that they
"Think about it."

Pears

Pears

Forgive me
for eating all four pears,
but after the first,
I couldn't help myself.

The sweetness of their juice
reminded me
of your kisses,
and I craved more.

And for the image
lounging in my brain
as I licked the last bead
of nectar into my mouth,
forgive me.

Just a White Boy

She glides into the cafe,
her coffee colored skin
simmering in the fire
of a hot summer night.

Dignifying the room
with African elegance,
she silently gazes around,
her wise brown eyes soft
above smooth brown cheeks.

She sits at the counter,
a royal queen on her throne,
and orders hot milk
in a delicious mocha voice.

Glancing over, she graces me
with a slow shy smile that declares
she is unaware of her beauty.

And at that moment, I am stunned
and yearn to reach across the space
to touch this goddess.

But I don't
because
I'm just a white boy.