the stars, the sea, and sleep.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Day 40: Stage Table Dinner

Parked in front of a memory
Words spoken through a light box
To the headlights in the review.
The door pushes through the cold
Clamoring to get in, as a chatter's letting out
Walk to the door in the same mossy steps
The same glass breath from standing too close to the door
He never knew there would be more
Who ever said there couldn't be more
Strangers taking place of the most welcomed past
That warm, but do not burn in the presence of fire.
And as God's will's desire, I preach
And to these teachers I teach what they taught
A homebaked good packaged and store bought
Inspiration for a generation I forgot let simmer in the kettle
Of the well-wishers, the poisoners, and the pots.

Day 39: Who Protects The Sleeping Whom

"7:30 wakeup call in sick again," sings the alarm bell
The heater rings, made home the most pleasant hell.
So I took my coffee green with kin bounded legally
And familial ghosts of my savior passed through the tinted glass.
It was a holy fever or my mind left scrambled in a busy parking lot,
For the time spent on the hood of a black car
While all the other ones passed.
I saw no pine, but there was a zephyr in the sky,
Mixed green cut down under blue, this is me and truth.
I found my kin had found some kids
Finding a childhood I once did,
Two guitars and a xylophone
That started with a "z"...
Them and me, yes this is we
Now this is you, now go to sleep
Truth had left, now it's just me.
Remember floral waiting seats
Remember radiology
I had left, but now it's me
Them and me, now this is we.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Day 38: Under the Knife

A day spent in bed, but never home
When a doorbell rings and the floorboards sing
Under the weight of a new man.
He reflects in the glass
Rearended on an onramp to get the port
Sitting in a bed all day,
Listening to nurses talk like a sewing circle
Slipped into the machine
All of the screens, metal gleaming
Talking normal and then sleeping
Wake up before they finished
Alive awake alert enthusiastic
Blondie in the holding room
Take me to discharge
The old wheeling out the young
Backwards, but I am done.
Not a new heart, but a way to it.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Day 31: T2, C1

Chemo and nothing.
So hungry.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Day 29: Family Adhesive

How long I've stared at empty sea and stars
I'm getting friends back through Skype
Reading of my risks a different heartbeat every tab
No food for today, the beginning of the fast
Calming the family, being soft-voiced reason
We're all working together
Three adults in the room. One child.
Tired eyes of a sleepless hypocrite.
Talking to the world about the future
Tapping keys until the sun is charmed out.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Day 28: Where Airplanes Go

I stepped into a cold car speaking yesterdays
That fogged the skyline through a dirty windshield.
With a suitcase in the back and a book bag in my lap
To keep me warm, future plans chattered out of steel bones:
Future dads that clamor out of sealed homes
With windowpanes that play dead
Until the lingering night fingers on to the west
Where I go now. Where they had gone.
What I had left, and how they moved on.
Where airplanes go and sink by the sea,
Why winds prevail without a sense of meaning.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Day 25: Talkative Bunch

The closest to normal I have felt in a very long time
I know there are more to come
But I am okay with this one
Let me return that email
Let me preserve those details
I've missed it for so long
You for the longest,
All to go so soon.
The winter, the cold lights, the crisp moon.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Day 24: Ebb and Flow

An ounce of liquor spilled on the black keys.
It soaked through sick veins
But you spent all day in bed,
And we watched our remaining life
Through a oneway mirror.
Will you remember me in oh one two?
Will you think that I was thinking of you?

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Day 23: Sad City Bouquet

To sleep through the morning
And wake up again.
Gray becomes a softer black
Maybe I loved this city all along,
So I gave my thanks in a porcelain bowl
For what I took and what was dead on arrival.
She left all the sweetness preserved in her
As I finished my breakfast at the counter
Like a well established diner,
A hole in the wall by a hole in the ground.