The Island

Where I'm from is hard wood floors and the color burnt sienna

and people that can tell the difference between burnt sienna and brown.

Where I'm from is loud for good reasons

and full of sunshine. always the sunshine.

Where I'm from has long bike rides and kickball

and the certainty, the unyielding potent knowledge that the future was bright

Where I'm from is an impossible ideal so built up in my head that my life will never hope to compare. Where did my parents find all those friends? Where did they find money for vacations, bikes, my short but intense obsession with the spanish-american war? My prose fails me; fear rules.

Where I'm from is concrete.

Where I'm going is sand.

For Nothing

Here is this puzzle piece.

See? I placed it correctly here.

A path that leads to an abyss is not a path at all

Stairs that fall away to nothing are not stairs.

Here is this ladder.

See? I've placed my foot upon the first rung.

I can't tell you where I'm going.

I can only show you where I've been.

The Greatest Love of All

I believe the children are the future
Is the motto of cowards
Too afraid to acknowledge that the future
requires a possessive pronoun

We effortlessly own our present
Even in dire circumstances
We oblivious masses feel free to make world shattering decisions
Using whatever whimsy we choose to employ

But when faced with future decisions we lose confidence
The infinite aspects of the future
Create a gaping maw, let’s let that be someone else’s problem
Maybe our children will own their future.

to take hold of suddenly or forcibly; to grasp

In middle school I did not have control of my life
I let others dictate my actions; thoughts
Puppet

He showed us dead poets society
That guy from Mork and Mindy
Putting words to my most secret yearnings

Now I control my universe
I own my failures
To make my successes more real.
I seized my life.

So why am I disappointed?
Because seizing the day is fucking impossible
The harder I grasp the quicker it slips away
Mork lied.

If I find a bag of gold coins
That turn out to be chocolate
Can I really be disappointed?

A Thought, In Passing

if while sick, sad, angry, frustrated, she still enchants me,

what else remains?

Opposite

What is the opposite of the tip of the tongue?
Buried beneath teeth, hidden harmlessly in the esophagus
Known but unwilling
Able but unaware

What is the opposite of being stuck in the back of the throat?
Hurled forward like javelins wobbling
Burdened objects midflight
Inaction meets unopposable force

The opposite of the nick of time is
Every other moment ever.
The opposite of beating a dead horse
Is a lot more complicated than bringing it back to life.

The Cheque Comes

As we creep closer to cliché:
I feel I must set straight some items on our tab.

Like the way I catch you looking at me
As we sit silently on the subway.
Or when we walk.
Or as I am absorbed in my plate of food.
And out of the corner of my eye I feel you
With a half-smile and photographic eyes.
Staring through my stupid serenity.
I must protest; my guard is not up around you.
You see my soul.

Like the laugh that tumbles
from your lips so frequently in my presence.
A noise so satisfying
That the ability to generate it
Is stupefying.

You ask me, sometimes:
(and I return the favor on occasion)
Doesn’t this or that scare me?
I tell you honestly:
When we are together nothing scares me
Except subway rats
And the perpetual danger of killer statues.

When we separate small doubts creep;
That scares me.
What spell have we cast that insulates my brain from fear?
The answer to that question lies in cliché:
And as I’ve said, there is a tab to be paid first.