The Red Carpet
Central Park smells better in the fall. That doesn't say too much, but if you've ever had the displeasure of taking a walk through in the heat of summer, you'd know what I mean. It smells like dirt, rot, and earth. I feel uncomfortable watching her undress bit by bit. I have trouble not being unnerved by the leaves I step on as I trample her youth and virility bit by bit. Soon she'll die.
A glance around the park shows the birds, the people, the animals, and insects that enjoy what she offers. The shade, the fields, the flowers, the walkways, and the water-features. Sometimes I wonder if Shel Silverstein walked the same path I do. Did he try to pick around the yellow and orange leaves plastered to the asphalt?
Too often, I hear people speak about phases of life like the changing of the seasons. If this is it, I don't want it. She buds every spring like a little baby. She opens her eyes and learns and grows. She sprouts into a full woman. Fertile with life of every species, she offers everything to them. We don't even thank her.
We marvel at the colors in the fall. They are the last markers of her beauty. Some travel a hundred miles to catch the foliage. But she's dying. We all sigh and simply wait for the birth of a new year, a new season. Will next year bless us more? We don't even thank her. Have we ever thanked her? Rather, we toss silver cans in her bushes and cigarette butts on her trails.
When the leaves drop and turn brown, we wait and wait and wait for spring. What about the old crone that waits, gnarled and bare? Some admire her pretty white hair on the tree branches and bushes, but we simply wait for her to die, so we may enjoy her daughter's benefits.
She gives, and gives, and gives. We take, and take, and take. When there is nothing left, we sit back and wait until she's dead. Then, we may enjoy ourselves once more. For what is fall but the reminder that she's dying and with patience, we may help ourselves to her fruits.
Central Park is abuzz with activity. People take photos of the leaves. The birds perch in the branches. The path is covered and I have no choice but to walk the red carpet that fall has laid out.
Burn
You smell like sunshine. When your skin is saturated in it and every hug smells like childhood lake days and you thrill me like teenage amusement park rides. You’re warm beneath my fingertips and your lips stay cool, pressed to my heated skin and you burn me. You burn me until I am nothing but freckles and sun spots. My skin is taut, red and soft to the touch. Was the burn worth the warmth that covered me? Yes. I would happily burn my burns for you.
Squeaky Hinges
I want to laugh at her. I want to be able to say something condescending and horrible and shrug this all off. But in that moment, sitting there almost nervous and embarrassed, telling me I was the first person to ever share the night with her and have the privilege of sharing her morning too, I could feel my heart clenching so violently I could almost mistake it for love.
She tells me this over coffee- stale and tasting of the burnt bottom of the kettle and soake up by store bought shortbread I scrounged out from the back of the cupboard. I wince at the charred flavour from one morning that she had sleepily brewed it twice. She scowls as she listens to the cupboard squeak shut from when I never oiled the hinges.
Yes, I could almost mistake it for love.
But that would mean it had ever left. That it hadn't left an indent around my bones and organs. The velvet carress of petals where the many vices of thorns had left me scarred over the years. Where my words were washed and pressed and folded until they lifted.
God if I couldn't feel it thundering in my chest and pounding in my head like it wanted so desperately to be released from my throat and whispered in that bitch's ear.
But that's just the dose of her poison, isn't it? I am soothed by the blanket of A4 paper and the familiar clack of well worn but long neglected keys. Weren't things that were loved meant to change? To be supported? To squeak from time, like old bones?
The vulnerability that my bastard ex-wife had been trying so desperately to feign was displayed in cracked paint held in the body of metal on my desk, and the feeling of purging my words without judgement let me know I wasn't alone in whatever we were connected by.
My ex told me she didn't like my laugh- how it squeaked and how the box springs on my side were too loud. My typewriter never says such things, kissing my fingertips and begging for more and more and-
Well, my mother in law believes there's another woman.
We are inextricably interlinked; despite how resolute I've been told to act like we aren't.
Yet
I need you
like the world needs sunlight.
I need you to cover me
like a blanket in the cold, lonely night.
I need you to link minds,
connect with me,
recharge me and fill me
with passion and excitement
and energy and lust,
bring back meaning and purpose
to this broken eggshell life,
but I haven’t met you
yet.
I submit to you
all of my poems, songs, and stories,
my heartbreaks and victories,
loves and doubts,
verses like stars and rain,
infinite worlds of possibility,
times and places to fill stories,
poems and memoirs,
lyrics and music.
I need you to publish me and edit me,
give my stories out to the masses,
but I haven’t found you
yet.
I pray to you.
You are my god, my savior.
It is you who comes
when the weight is too much,
the chains are too many for me to break.
This world, this life has become gibberish
in the Tower of Babel,
but you can create a rock you are unable to lift
and then you can lift it.
You can make nonsense sensible
and make the sensible nonsense,
but you haven’t intervened
yet.
I wait for you,
any of you and all of you,
but the sands of this hourglass have fallen.
You might be my woman,
my once in a lifetime love,
my hero or my savior,
but you need to show up now
because I’m a skeleton,
bare bones shouldering the load alone,
hanging from the cliff side
by a pinkie,
but I haven’t fallen
yet.
Greetings fellow earthling
Thank you for gracing me with your amazing presence or merely chancing reading message sent into cyberspace, whose aura, charisma, enigma, gramma...persona, et cetera delivers measure for measure a figurative dollop of blessed delight.
Impossible mission to jump/kickstart a lifelong friendship/relationship, especially since an immediate impression cast simply gleaning notions about me, an articulate bipedal hominid, introspective jesting married, mindful, nonconformist opportunistic, poetic, quirky rational thinker, unpretentious, vocal wordsmith.
Inordinate amount of leisure time might help explain how fruit full this harmless poetic brute, (a June MCMLXXVII Methacton School of hard knocks grad), who sports astute demeanor with ample brew netted locks, vaguely androgynously cute, his trademark signature hirsute unstyled wavy hair tell tale characteristic, not that I care if anyone gives rats ass and/or hoot bummer attire acceptable since long unemployed and recipient with meager loot receiving social security disability to boot, nonetheless can while away unlimited numbers of wee hours into morning yea ideally best time to sleep, but also most optimal, while the missus thrashes in bed thankfully mute unless ya don't count flatulence she doth toot disrupting and derailing train of thought courtesy trumpeting glute.
An unexpected whistling unlike Christopher Robin hi ho... hi ho the derry-o the Norwegian bachelor farmer in the dell exiting their wooded den (think Snow White and her seven dwarf men) off to work they go to earn cents (unbeknownst conversion into) yen boot just enough to undergo gastric bypass surgery to shrink abdomen, plus grueling boot camp regimen guaranteeing bullseye hit courtesy artillerymen nsync with honing sharp eyed acumen joining (rather leading) civilians carrying out coup d’etat putsch ching aside feeble, inept and lame president to step up and augment penultimate last ditch effort to halt climate change to stave turning planet Earth into self destructive oven.
This hunger artist cannot read volumes of printed material fast enough to satiate an immense appetite and unquenchable thirst to acquire learning from the millenniums gushing fount of cumulative chance revelations, (or deliberate intent to validate a premise vis a vis via private investigative research), thus unwittingly setting alight an intense inquisitiveness sans this curious George primate experiencing the equivalent of mental non fallacious figurative enthusiasm analogous to: patriotism, phototropism, priapism...), whose every waking hour, (when not tending toward the basic needs for survival as a seeming foreigner - journey ying in this helter skelter, madcap, slaphappy, whirled wide web) expended to enrich the yawping immeasurable volume mine fist size housed cerebellum buzzfeeds shrouded within skull and cross lovely bones, a vast scope of innumerable chunks of fascinating, fortifying, and fulfilling various subject matters, that when pursued to an approximate logical conclusion yields abundant esoteric information.
All joking aside horrific, née apocalyptic crisis doth loom perhaps even unleashing mushroom, clouds (horse - thrown in for good measure) encompassing entire planet assuredly spelling doom, where liquidation and fire sale at all brick and mortar stores will bloom, (just ash at the front desk) charcoal burnt offering skeleton crew pointing blackened decker index finger pointedly warning kaboom about to be heard exploding lemon meringue pie literally across every black curtained window intimating solemnity within house of the rising sun worshipping Friday, Saturday, Sunday... until every tomb morrow until end of time.
While sitting on me keister (ass, backside, behind, bottom, bum, buns, butt, buttocks, can, derriere, fanny, fundament, hind end, hindquarters, nates, posterior, prat, rear, rear end, rump, seat, stern, tail, tail end, tooshie, tush, et cetera) on a cold and rainy twenty third of March 2024, I figuratively drop plumb line then courtesy grunt labor lyft unexpected find hoisted deep jamming lookout, noggin perched, roiling thinking uber wayfaring zealot, drills legendary phalanx.
Writer's block afflicts Das scribe, who whiz now stricken supine adept dull livery sub par excellence his gold standard worse, thus another day to slog thru arduous process crafting admirable verse wrestling behemoth loosed sniper dodging enfilade broadcast sos terse.
Ne'er easy chore to fashion acceptable word worth poem to whit staring at flickering accursed cursor doth blank stare visit flash flooding warning saturated gray matter fist sized unit groundswell burgeoning leveed banks barging signals transmit urgent army corps of engineers to reroute via sluice, sans surfeit apprentice longshoreman doth double duty as grammarian sought to retrofit arduous struggle ensues, where drowning affects consummation strong temptation quit ditch ching progress made, thus far in hot pursuit mind comfortably numb stream of consciousness submerges concentration entrenched deep posit craftiness sentenced to punctuate disequilibrium doth outwit venerably beaded trademark Scottish matted flair abandoned unfinished prosaic piece left forever stranded orbit zero escape velocity zinging, unsprung, pinging mindscape nonprofit able endeavor reflecting zeitgeist bombarding Messerschmitt undermining, strafing, disabling cutting crew rescue outer limit faint feint blinking in the twilight zone.
Summer
Summers is the worst. Now, trust me on this, I'm no teacher's pet. I like school as much as the next kid, but I prefer the school months to the summer ones. I live way off the beaten path as ma calls it. My bus ride into school takes over an hour, though I've never timed the trip. I'm sure you can see where I'm leading. Nobody's parent wants to drag their kid an hour out of town down a dirt road that's made of more potholes than gravel. And neither ma, nor dad are going to drive us. It means me and my brothers are alone for two months.
Alone, however, doesn't just imply boredom. I'm sure my brothers and I could entertain ourselves alright. But dad has other ideas. It's the job of us kids to keep up after the chickens and drag the goat back to the homestead after he gets out for the third time this week. We've got weeding, watering, pruning, and harvesting to do. The tractor quit two years ago, so even in the spring, when we used to be free, we were up early and up late trying to plant all the produce.
Ma couldn't even help this year because of the new baby. She was off her feet for weeks. Dad was more upset than I thought it was alright for him to be. Ma's absence meant extra work for all of us. Dad even dragged Kit, who used to be the baby, out to the farm this year. He's only four or five, but Dad said his father forced him out in the fields when he was even younger. Dad is always telling us how lazy we are compared to him as a child. Grandma would be ashamed, or whatever family member he tries to condemn us with that day.
The verbal lashings are better than the real ones. They don't come often, but when the day has been real hot, and dad's got a cold brown bottle in his hand, one little slip up of the tongue or even a slip of the feet could land us in trouble with dad. There may not be many trees around, but he'll find a switch, that's for sure. It stings bad.
I wish I could say we get days off, but even Sundays, when we don't have to get up too early, are miserable. We all pack into the truck. Us kids are too many to fit in the cab now. Will and Mickey have to sit in the back of the truck on the way to church and pretend that the sun-drenched metal truck bed isn't burning their skin off when they sit.
We're always late to church. Dad chews everyone out when we get home. Sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest, I think. But dad drives us out to collect the eggs, milk the goat, pluck the pesky yellow worms off of the zucchini, and water the thirsty plants. The last day of school has me counting down to the end of August. When I heard they were drawing out the school year last year, I got excited. Dad was real mad, and even more upset that I was grinning while he shouted. He switched me real bad that day.
Today was Tuesday, I think. Missing church always messes with my memory. Ma and the baby have the flu so we're not allowed to bother her. It was all okay for dad, though. He woke us up with the sun and drove us to the yard without breakfast. Without ma, we can't feed ourselves more than bread with whatever jam is on the shelf. She won't let us touch the stove. The gas is broken so the flames shoot real high. She gets burned all the time and won't let us near it.
I knew the day was gonna be a bad one when dad flicked Kit hard for whining about breakfast. The sun was hotter than normal. My skin has already been burned to a crisp. Dad says the sunscreen will kill us faster than the sun, so he won't let us use it.
After a few hours in the sun even Mickey, who idolized dad and did whatever he asked with reverence, was begging for a break.
We chugged water and made a couple mayo sandwiches. Now, I don't like mayo sandwiches one bit, but after a morning of hard work in the hot sun with no water, I could've eaten ten of them. Kit barely had three bites of his sandwich when dad was ushering us back out into the field.
One of the ties on my braid snapped and dad wouldn't let me go in the house for another one. He said he had half a mind to cut off my pigtails and be done with it. So, I tied the ends of both together with the one I had left. If I have one thing I like about myself, it is my hair. It was as blonde as ma's and real long too. I wore all my brother's old hand-me-downs. Without my braids, I'd look just like a boy. Dad couldn't cut my hair. I knew he'd forget about it if I dropped the topic altogether.
Dinner was nothing but sandwiches too. We had one bowl of chili left, but dad said that was for ma. But at least this time we got to put some tuna on our sandwiches. I was downright starving.
Bedtime followed shortly after. Now, most kids hate bedtime. I don't hate the sleeping part. I hate sharing the bed with Kit. He still acts like he's not even potty trained much and wets the bed at least once a week. Now, I suppose I don't get too mad, except when waking up in the middle of night. Laundry is my job, so it gets me out of the sun a day or two a week. Anyways, I guess I just like going to bed because it makes me one day closer to the start of fall and the end of summer.