Impression

Where there was fear
There is now freedom
Breath flows freely
No more presence of risk
No more seeking insight

The RV smelt so strongly we imagined
Body parts rotting inside
We imagined the dark depths of a gambling
Addicted life
Outside the hooters game slots.
Standing by the ventilators
Second guessing strife.

You were with me then
Before I knew you
Holding my hair back and whispering in my ear
Spreading limbs in an endless tub
I thought about you then.
Back before I was with him.
You were with me as we shopped the
plastic filled aisles

If I were less of a challenge he would have married me by now.

One day
I might impress you.
With the darkest skill of taking on more than one should

She holds her breath now.
Thinking of all the truth and beauty that day had a passed on by
Thinking of the desperate decline
Of attention
Of curiosity
Of genuine repressed anger
Of insatiable feelings

My scalp warms
As if the summer were burning bright above me.
My feet melt to the asphalt
and I’ve become part of the earth.
What if I never move from here.
What if I can’t figure a way out

Will there be more for me to find of myself
across state lines
Beyond counties that bring food
wine and reason for life

Quarter Life

Marmalade skies, you, and a backdrop of cornrow mazes.
This delta river might as well swell to overtake us.
Pills, drills and thrills is the life you built for us.
Repetition, long winded and sure throated.
My insides feel bloated.

When we were so much younger we sought out pumpkin patches and clung to traditions
 too scared to let adulthood take us.
Scared to see what depth a hollow holiday might carry for us.
We spent the rest of our college years
Struggling to find meaning
Then once meaning was evaded we walked into life with only an inclining of feeling jaded.

Filming bars at early morning twilight.
Talking to bartenders
Making friends with one eyed patrons.

There’s a shift between naive reality and reality itself.
Like when we realized the truck drivers would end their day like anyone else,
with a glass of whiskey and a smoke.
Except their day ended at 4 in the morning
After driving all night
And we all wondered why they are so susceptible to stroke.

It’s a lonely road some would say.
Others would tell stories of how they’d pass the time
One finger flicking ash away.
We stood on the corner then, nothing but flat land around us.
We stomped in the sewer drain and the flooding nearly drown us.

Parked cars and piled leaves.
Do you remember when he grabbed for me?
As if this weight didn’t carry bad memory.
We came here to expand our reality.

Dog Shit

She wants passion.

But I seek clarity.

For I have found happiness where she has forgotten it.

She tells me that I am calm through times of stress

I tell her I just chose to scream inside instead.

And through our discussion, we walk past piles of dog shit.

Humorously high, leaning, towers of broiling sidewalk, steaming dog shit.

Like tiny sundials on the asphalt, dog shit. 

and we stop and marvel and say "Wow! What incredible piles of shit!" 

And then we laugh.

And as time passes, and the shadows move, I notice the pile of shit has begun to fade.

Turning a dustier, more tired brown as it bakes in the sun

So I warn the pedestrians not to step in it because

who would want to wreck such a perfectly good pile of shit 

on a day like today.

Because this day became a day 

Where even dog shit was admired and morphed like clay.

Funny Man

He sent me a taco. 

So I sent him an eggplant. 

We held hands and decided that this was romance. 

He took me to an apple bees where he watched the TV. 

We sat in a booth playing partners for what felt like an eternity. 

Was I nervous? No. Was he? 

I could tell when he chuckled distinctively. 

He told me my ring was in the fryer. 

Then asked me if I’d ever sang with a choir. 

When he kissed me it was like we’d made love already.

I imagined it would be wild like the Serengeti.  

He brought me back to his home

When I realized we weren’t alone. 

The lights outside were dimming against the waning sky.

Which was when I decided I really liked this guy.

But despite his charm and wit, I found out I should’ve quit. 

Shortly after we ordered the pie. 

For the person inside was a big surprise. 

Because it turns out it was his mother. 

That wasn’t the worst of it.

Because that is what sets me apart.

My standards are low for some super special bro. 

So I hoisted this aside, looked her right in the eye. 

Then proceeded to go and get nailed. 

The road to his house was treacherous. 

He had set me up for what now felt like an obvious mess. 

A few days later he got upset when I started to cry

because I realized that he was just another lame guy. 

The magic had disappeared after I had 

filled myself with fear that I would be alone for yes, another year. 

'Softly Warning'

Silently sailing towards our own jurisdictions.

Pathways often crumble when gone unattended.

Did the earth give way to your foot's soft impression?

Or did you step blindly into the atmosphere and expect no collision?

Were you given the chance to resurrect your desires?

Or was it shoved into your arms in an attempt to inspire?

Surely, they said, surely you cannot decipher;

Love from spring,

Pain from frost,

Tears from rain,

Amidst every other attempt to sustain.

This battle, unwitting, should come with a price.

All I can do is ask for your honest piece of advice.

Should I move with the earth when you finally came around?

Or should I run uphill in search of the higher ground?

Should I give into longing?

Can this saga of never-ending wanting

be a story that drags on forever?

Or will it strike us both down to our knees

and make us whisper

“I loved you without warning.”

Loving a stranger

For the past 6 months I’ve been in a pretty steady FWB (Friends with benefits) scenario with a man I talk to almost daily. 

Well, actually “talk” is a stretch.

We text.

If I’m being honest, we’ve talked on the phone 3 times, or maybe it was only twice? 

I can’t really recall. 

The second time we ever spoke on the phone he was changing in the locker room at work. I could hear his fellow officers chatting in the background. 

He is LAPD.

He was explaining to me how he’d taken down a violent sex offender the night before, helicopter spotlight and all.

“We just ran the plate of a shitty looking car and the screen blasted red, so we had to call in backup.”

I could tell he was still high from the rush, his normally calm demeanor was exploding, he was vocal and excited. 

If he were a chicken, his feathers would have been fluffed and his legs kicking wildly, reeling from the excitement of the day. 

He was still on a kick.

Normally, he was a rather subdued man, so it was exciting to hear him be so expressive.

He’d only shared this level of excitement when we discussed topics like, goat fucking, or region specific Columbian dance (Bambuco).  

His sense of humor was the darkest and truest match to my own that I’ve experienced yet. 

His attention to detail was unfathomable, perhaps his line of work lent well to that.

He took up Krav Maga once only to be disappointed in the amount of hipsters in his class. 

He thought he was a bad ass when the girls in his Muay Thai class told him he was a strong striker- so he took up boxing only to find out he was weak for a man. 

One night, following coitus, I lay in his arms, his hand rubbing my back, he told me a story about how he was forced to bury 6 dead puppies in the backyard of his LA home. 

A neighborhood dog had crawled into his backyard and given birth under his childhood porch and in a twist of fate, that only nature could provide, she killed them all. 

He was the only man in the house and because of that, was elected to clean up the mess.

He was 8.

I hugged him tighter. 

He understood pain. 

I understood none of it.

We were from vastly different worlds.

He was a marine, I was a mariner (my high school mascot). 

He had never celebrated Thanksgiving, I learned this, as I was in a comatose state, rubbing my belly, enjoying the vast fruits of my families communal meal prep labor and that reality of his shot through my stomach like the beanbag gun he’d fired at his most recent perp. 

“You’ve never celebrated Thanksgiving?”  I asked, feeling even worse about my gluttonous rampage which left nothing in it’s trail except a mutilated plate of Turkey grease and bread crumbs. 

My mouth was the Spanish inquisition and my plate the villages of South America. 

Of course, I wasn’t ignorant, I knew that not every person could afford a lavish Thanksgiving, but even still, a pack of sliced turkey meat and a can of cranberries cooked on a stovetop could equal a makeshift Thanksgiving Dinner.

 I also wondered where all those frozen turkey’s I’d donated every year were going -if not to families like his. 

I questioned his mother. He said that she just didn’t think it was important and that she decided to work on Thanksgiving instead. 

I also found out she didn’t believe in Halloween, which I thought was ridiculous, since it’s a holiday built on charity.

If any holiday should be celebrated, the ones that give out free food should be at the top of the list. If our disbelief in holidays is a financial motivated move, of course. 

After I hung up the phone, I was overwhelmed that someone could be living such a dramatically fulfilling lifestyle, chasing bad guys through south central, with police backup and still somehow  be watching my cat while I was out of town.

How to survive a breakup:

Cry it out

Smoke pot or drink 1 glass of wine (only 1) 

Watch X Files

Create music while you cry it out

 Delete their number

 Say all the horrible things you want to say, either to yourself or to other people that they don’t know and your ex will never meet.

 Read 20 articles on how to cope with a breakup

 Believe in whatever future you want ahead

 Breathe in hope and out frustration

 Accept

 Repeat until time has passed. 

Do NOT:

Make contact 

Cry on the phone as you text them crying emojis

Beg them to take you back

Think about the good times

Continue dreaming about your future together

Invite them to a party that is a couple months away

Call their mom and complain

Look at their pictures

Stalk their new partner

Make excuses for them

Pretend like you’re okay with it

Let them come over just one last time

Allow them to make you feel anything

Ask them for help with something you don't actually need help with