I start to think about dinner
When I’m still eating lunch
I start to plan for tomorrow
When I’ve still got today
I start to worry
Farther and farther
Into the future
About what may never come
I start and never finish
Because I’m always worried
About the next thing
And the next
Nevermind now, I say
Look at what’ll happen then!
I keep returning to the idea of focus. In order to be successful you must focus.
With art, the artist must focus in order to establish a consistent theme. This is not only for the audience, but also for this artist, because without this consistency it’s not possible to gain the deep observations from focusing in one area.
With a career it is the same. You cannot do many jobs and be successful. You must choose one job and focus. It is only with this focus in your career that you can achieve the knowledge and experience to be successful professionally. If you try to do Many jobs you’ll be mediocre at all of them. If you focus on one job you have a greater chance of success.
It is the same with your identity. If you try to live many lives, you will be mediocre at all of them. In order to be successful you must choose one life to live. It is only by focusing on one identity that you can achieve the deep insights of that one life.
If you try to live many lives at once it would be like walking into a movie and walking out after the first 10 minutes never getting to see the middle or the end or how the characters develop. It will be like only reading the introduction of the book or only listening to the preamble of a symphony. Or when meeting someone it would be like only talking to them for one minute and then never seeing them again.
A falling leaf
Looks like a butterfly
Flapping its wings
Moved about
More by
The whims of the wind
Than its own will
A spider web string
Sparkles in the sun
Like a thin diamond necklace
Turning over and twirling
Seeming to float
Above the branches
Where it can’t possibly be attached
Just floating
Like a kite string
For a kite somewhere unseen
And not so menacing
Bare
And without a bug trapped
Kite catchers
They call these trees
In the park
With more kites
Than leaves
A kite caught up
On the tallest branch
Of the tree
Beyond hope of rescue
Blowing in the wind
Like one of the leaves
Except for the neon
Sticking out like a sore thumb
Among the green
Doomed to flap there
Until a fierce gust of wind
Blows it down
Or the tree falls
Now I remember why I have forgotten why it is that I do what I do. Upon realizing recently, that I do not know why it is that I do what I do, I remembered this. Because I went about trying to figure out again, why I do what I do. Which is a funny thing, because I have been doing things all this time, but I cannot remember exactly why.
If I think of any particular thing I’ve done I can usually come up with a reason. For example, I ate breakfast this morning because I was hungry. But for all my decisions strung together, I can’t put my finger on a common theme, just disjointed ad hoc reasons.
So I started to think about it. I thought for a long time and took down notes and read some passages out of books. That is when I remembered why I have forgotten. I am not saying I know all. I do not.
But it seems there are some grim answers if you look hard enough, about why we are and what we should do. Upon thinking this thought, I was very depressed. And felt that I had experienced that depression before. I had, I knew it.
And that is why I have forgotten why I do what I do. Because at the point of my last depressions having stumbled upon these grim thoughts, I blindfolded myself and spun myself around and whispered a Truth in my own ear and pointed in a direction and said to myself, “Run.”
And so I ran. It took me a couple years to realize I couldn’t remember why I was running. So I’ll spin myself around again and whisper another Truth in my ear and set myself off running again.
I wake up
With a dry mouth
From sleeping
With the window open
I get out of bed
And walk to the kitchen
To fill a glass
With water
And take a drink
Then put down
The empty glass
On the counter
And get back in bed
And fall asleep
My heart sings off-key
For the half notes
That never got to whole
My hands beat a doldrum
Into the desk
Checking my watch
Every five minutes
Waiting for this day
To finally finish
So I can escape
To something else
Anything else
I can only whistle one tune
For so long
Until I forget the sound
Of all other tunes
And the hope of music
Becomes just
The senseless noise
Of that one tune
One song
Without sound
And a painting
Without color
Dares you to look deep
Into the void
And press your ear
To the glass ceiling
Where you might hear
A white noise
Which seems at first
To be nothing
Listen long enough
And see
How nothing
Becomes something
Getting drunk
And listening to music
I start to write poetry again
And think to myself
It’s no wonder
I haven’t been able to write
As of late
Because I’ve been too sober
And without music
Beer bubbles
At the bottom of the glass
Make me sad
Because this was the last one
In the fridge
And I’ll have to switch
Over to white wine
After these last sips
Of good beer
The music is loud now
No exclamation points in poetry
Is a rule I once read
But I’m going to break it
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Because wow this moment
The music is loud
Did I already mention that?
Must be on account
Of my having had two beers
And already being buzzed
Because it’s been a while
Since I’ve gotten drunk
And danced around the room like this
The music is loud
And the windows are open
And it’s all alright
I see a point
In the tree
Where two branches
Cross over
And I wonder
If either branch
Longed for the other
Before they crossed
And if they now
Miss each other
Growing
In their own directions
I made a bowl of granola this morning. When I tilted the milk jug, to pour some into the bowl, but too much came out. And I thought of how to get some back in the jug. Then I realized the meaning of the expression, “There’s no sense in crying over spilled milk.”
How can you be so sure
A wrong turn won’t be right
How come you grip
The steering wheel so tight
Watching lines on maps
And planning where to go
It helps to know
That the road will have its way
A detour
Might save a crash
And a pit stop
Might change your life
So step on the gas surely
For going is the only way
But don’t worry so much
About where to
A bird chirps
Through the window crack
In the morning
Car wheels
Roll to a stop
At the light outside
Baby breathes
A deep waking sigh
With one eye open
I stretch and roll over
Before the alarm
I know is coming
Bright light
Breaks through
The mouth of the tunnel
Like the face
Of the mountain
Is missing a tooth
Oh here he goes
With heft again
Heaving as he may
Huffing and puffing
That big chest for something
But still he holds no sway
For strength aside
His muscles try
To make up for his mind
That door would budge
For just a nudge
If the knob were so inclined
I walked to the park after work today. I walked down California Street until I reached the avenues in the Richmond and then I turned north on Sixth Avenue until I got to the park.
It was sunny, but not too sunny. It seemed like the sun was farther away, sending its heat from a distance, so it wasn’t too hot. I almost wished it was hotter. When I walked through a part of shade under a tree or on the side of a building and a breeze would blow at the same time, I was almost cold.
The sky was blue. It was the same blue across the whole sky, except near the sun where it was white. I got to the park and walked out to a clearing in between the trees. There were other people around. Some dogs and some small children.
I watched one little girl squat down and cry. She seemed to be about a year old. Her mother (or at least I presume it was her mother) stood there and waited patiently for her to finish crying.
There were dogs on leashes with their owners. There were people seated on the grass having a picnic or just talking. I sat down on the grass and talked to my dad on the phone. We talked about making decisions and how that’s part of life. He told me his perspective and I thanked him.
It is ironic that I realize as I get older the value of wisdom from those who are even older than me. Perhaps it is because I am getting older and will want people to ask me for my wisdom someday. Perhaps it is because I am getting wiser as I am getting older, and it is part of being wiser to realize that it is wise to seek wisdom from others who are older.
After my call with my dad I walked deeper into the trees. I found an area of level ground and did push-ups. I started with twenty normal push-ups. Then I stood up and took a short break and walked in circles. Then I did twenty push-ups with my hands in the shape of a diamond. And I stood up and walked in circles again. I did other variations of push-ups until I was tired.
I was relaxing and thinking of whether I should walk deeper in the park. Then I realized I was late for dinner. My girlfriend said she was going to put the salmon in the oven. That was probably over an hour ago, I thought. So I went back.
I was late. My salmon was cold and dry. But the broccoli was still warm. I ate and then took a shower. Now I’m sitting on the side of the tub in my towel writing this.
Our shower drain
Has been clogged
For as long
As we’ve lived here
So the shower
Makes three noises
First is the water
On the floor
Of the tub
Second is the water
On the surface
Of the pool
In the tub
Like rain
On a lake
Third is the drain
Drinking the pool
Slowly
Making gurgle noises
White tiles
Take time to turn
Into something
Noticeable
On the shower walls
My fingers rake
My wet hair
Not even washing
No shampoo
My mind
Is someplace else
In fact, many
Other places
At once
Until I open my eyes
And see white
Tile walls
And return
Realizing
I’ve been rinsing
My hair
For some time now
I don’t know
How long
I see kids careful
Now that grown ups
Are watching
About what they say
In a circle
Of parked bikes
On a side street
In suburban San Francisco
Covering their mouths
Telling their friends secrets
About what they watched
On television
When their parents
Weren’t home
I wait for a morning
Where I can see
What’s already done
And what needs doing
So I can settle
On what to do
With my day
Hiding below the horizon
Like a shy child
Who forgets every night
That he is the sun god
And must muster again
The courage needed
To shine all day
For the world to see
The city alarm is set
By the bus route
And the bakery man
Driving his truck of bread
And the other cars
Their wheels and engines
And occasional radios
And the street light
That never stops
Or maybe it’s the store light
Or traffic light
That always finds a way
Into your apartment
Despite your best efforts
To drape the windows dark
—The light and noise
Even here in San Francisco
Makes you believe what they say
About New York never sleeping
The sun comes up
Through the shade
So early
In the summer
That I wonder
If I even
Got to sleep
In meditation there is a principle, that you can focus on your breath forever and never stop learning new things.
In philosophy there is a principle, that you can never know all that there is to know about a fruit fly.
For poetry, I believe that you could sit in the same room and never run out of poems to write.
I breathe easy
In the night
On my back
Four fingers
Rest on my belly
Feeling it rise
And fall
A wrist
Props my head
Looking up
At the ceiling
A slightly
Different shade
Than the day
In the dark
And I just breathe
It takes a turn
Tight as can be
Up on two wheels
Leaning to the side
When you thought for sure
You were going one direction
And even started to think
You might only ever
Keep going in just
That one direction
And then it turns
And everything you thought you knew
Turns to memory
While what you can see
Is replaced
With this new way
That you’re suddenly going
Prose:
The metal rod that held up our blinds over the kitchen window broke yesterday. So I took a hammer and some nails and stood on one of the dining room chairs to nail a bed sheet to the top of the window frame to serve as a blind for the time being.
I went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water. I opened the fridge and poured myself a cup of cold water from the pitcher. I was on my way back to the bedroom half-asleep when the bed sheet hanging over the kitchen window caught my eye.
I stood there, naked and drinking my water, and watched the headlights from traffic on the street outside passing through the grey bed sheet. They seemed like ghosts from an unfamiliar world. The lights were distorted beyond being able to discern that they were car headlights. It was like an abstract movie.
I started to make up stories about why certain ghost lights would come to stop and then go again. The fast lights were in a hurry to get somewhere. Some lights stopped next to each other and made love before moving on.
I stood there in the dark by myself and made up stories about the light movie on the bed sheet until I was almost fully awake. Then I went back to bed.
Poetry:
The metal rod
That held up our blinds
Over the window
In the kitchen
Broke yesterday
So I nailed up
A grey bedsheet
To cover the window
For the time being
I went to bed
And woke up to get some water
Then stood and watched
Naked and drinking water
The headlights from traffic
Passing through the grey bedsheet
Like ghosts
In an unfamiliar world
A bird chirping
In the middle of the night
Singing her heart out
Must be drunk
Coming home
From the bird bath bar
Not to see
It’s pitch black out
And time to sleep
And save the chirping
For the morning
Don’t look forward
Look right here
There is nothing for you
Beyond this moment
Nothing more
This is it
The source of your troubles
And longing
And lamenting
Is all in the future
Causing you to think
There is more then
That is not now
The future
Makes you feel
Like you’re missing something
You must be
If there is more to come
Then you were missing it before
You must have been
But don’t be worried
Don’t let the future trick you
Focus here and now
Start with the senses
What do you see
What do you hear
What do you feel
Focus all of your attention
On the senses
What picture of the present
Are they painting for you
What song of the present
Are they singing
Your senses of the present
Are gold
Compared to copper imagination
Of any future
Not yet come to pass
For the body
But only for the mind
As some figment
Focus here
Breathe it in
Do not worry
Let go of the need to plan
To prepare
The future is now
It is part of the nature of now
To become the future
So if you want to prepare
Focus here
I woke up early today to find my muse. It is almost summer so the light was up before me, peeking in between the drapes. I got out of bed and rolled the rug away to make space for my mat. I did my stretches and put on the clothes and pack that I had set out the night before. I opened the door and locked it behind me and stepped onto the sidewalk outside to find the peace and quiet of the morning.
I walked on a street with shops. I walked in a forest. I walked across the bridge. After almost four hours of walking, I began to despair. My muse had been missing for some time. All this past week she has been missing, and I had only caught glimpses of her a few of the weeks before.
I stopped overlooking the ocean. I took a drink of water and ate one of the bars I had packed in my bag. I walked to the beach. It was still foggy and the beach was not too inviting. But I was tired and wanted to lie down. I did, and after finding a comfortable position in the sand, fell asleep.
When I woke, the sun was shining. The clouds had separated for the sun to shine through. It was then that I found my muse. I searched in my pack for my phone and began to write. I wrote some poems and then I wrote this.
My muse will have to go again soon. I have become used to this, her coming and going. But I am grateful to have found her. And will be grateful to search for her again.
In a moment, there is nothing you need. It is only over time, that needs arise. It is impossible to be hungry, for example, in a moment. It is impossible to be tired. It is only a period of time that makes it possible to become hungry or tired.
These needs keep you from peace. They fill your mind with motivation for action. They tell you it is time to go and have something to eat. It is time to lay down and have a nap.
To fend off each of these needs would be like pulling leaves from a large tree. To pull up the tree all at once by its trunk, you need only to forget the passage of time.
There is nothing to need if there is nothing to come. There is nothing to need if there is only now.
I go out
To get here
Not really knowing
Where I’m going
All the while
But now
Having arrived
Realize
This is surely
Where I was headed
All along
What moves me
Other than belly
And bladder
Tugging at my mind
Telling my body
It’s okay to stay
And lay out
On the beach
All day
After fog and cold
All morning
The sun breaks through
Cloud cherubs
That flee
Feigning fear
Of a sun god
Now known to be
Quite benign
It’s a blue day
Out by the water
As the clouds move away
And the line between
Ocean and sky
Melts into
The same blue
My sense of speed
Is less than perfect
I admit
But I would say
If I were a betting man
That those fast cars
Seem to be
Above the limit
Posted on the sign
Out on a walk
I have the urge
To return home
Even though
I haven’t gotten very far
I wonder why
Am I hungry?
No
I just ate a couple of dates
Am I tired?
No
I just woke up
Then why?
Laziness
Is all I can think of
Red Presidio roofs
Against the blue white
Ocean sky
And the red bridge
Green lawn and trees
The dreamer is a night owl
The worker is an early bird
The realist is a businessman on lunch break
Prose:
At night, I have a bunch of dreams and ideas for things that I want to work on. Most of them I forget soon after I’ve thought of them. Some I remember in the morning. I write down a list of the ideas that can be realistically achieved in a short amount of time. By the end of the day, I’ve completed less than half of the items on the list. Then the night comes, and I dream up a whole new list.
Poetry:
At night I have
A hundred dreams
Hoping for more
Than I could ever
Possibly achieve
In the morning I wake
With a heart full of hope
And a rested body
To go about
Making my dreams
Into reality
Around noontime
I have settled
On one, more realistic
Out of the hundred
Dreams to work on
I hear birds
And my heart lifts
Even though
They’re on the other side
Of a close door
And the clouds
Outside the window
Are dark today
My heart still lifts
Hearing the birds
After you have taken
It to mean
Something other
Than what I intended
It means
What you have taken
And nothing else
Some light seeps in
From the street lamp
Between the drapes
Some light
From the buttons
Of various devices
Strewn about the room
And just those two
Besides the shimmer
On the ceiling
From one or the other
Of the aforementioned
Is enough to make
The night bright
In our bedroom
When we would rather
It be dark
I myself, was a potter
And my brother, was a poet
So we went to see a man
About some flowers
On the outskirts of town
We had already been
To the one man with flowers
Most well-known in town
In the morning
And had gotten two flowers
One for me
And one for my brother
And they were fine
But not exactly
What we had in mind
So we asked our driver
On our way back
If there were another
Man with flowers
Somewhere in town
And he said, “Well …”
And then he paused
“There is one other”
And by the tone of his voice
Like any fairytale
We should have known
To turnaround and go home
And be happy with our two
That we had gotten that morning
My brother, the poet,
Had heard the tone
And wanted to turn around
I, the potter,
Urged that we go on
And my brother, being the younger
Was forced to follow
When we got there
There was a large henchman
Seated at a long wooden table
In a larger open room
With a high ceiling
And a clutter of objects all about
We asked him to see the man about some flowers, and he asked us some questions that I now cannot remember. And our answers must have sufficed, because he turned and took us up the stairs that led to a small room in the back of the place, also cluttered with objects.
There was a man seated there, the man of the flowers. The second man of the flowers in town, or maybe the first—this we hoped to find out.
I told him sir, “We would like to buy two flowers.”
And he said, “Four.”
I said, “Beg your pardon.”
He repeated,” Four … that’s the minimum.”
“But the other man of flowers in town …”
“I’m not the other. I’m the only,” he interrupted me, without looking up from whatever he was tinkering with on his workbench.
I started to argue, but the henchman who had remained standing in the doorway stepped in and grabbed me gruffly, asking, “Do you know who you’re talking to?”
And what happened next will be hard to explain, but the long and short of it is, my brother the poet was turned into a pot to teach me a lesson about being greedy.
I was let outside and wept in the grass for the loss of my brother and learned my lessons once and for all about sacrificing the potter for the poet.
1. Reading
2. Meditation
3. Dreams
4. Nature
5. Travel
6. Sex
7. Drugs
Now it can be said Of thoughts Passed through my head Blunders They would be In reality Expect For this one That I have done
In the morning
I found
A tree branch
Had grabbed hold
Of the open
Window’s frame
As if to make its way
Inside
And out of the wind
In search
Of different
Travelling
And changing scenery
Smoking
And drinking
To move his body
Or at least his mind
A writer
Must always be
On the move
Lest he find
New ways
Of writing the same
A diversity of experience
Deemed to be
Different enough
From a normal day
To keep boredom at bay
Back at the beach
Left behind
And sailed away
Sought after stories
Of one’s own
To match the sailor’s
In the barroom
Boisterous
And spilling his beer
Is as close
To drowning
As he’s ever been
Having sex
While listening
To Sanskrit chant
Channeling
Into physical bodies
What would otherwise
Be only audible
For ears to hear
Senses mingle
In the heights
Of ecstasy
And ears
Start to hear
What skin is feeling
Like buried treasure
We found them
At a fourth the cost
Of the grocery store
In one big box
Lined with a plastic sack
Piled to the top
We carried home
A heaping quart
And gorged ourselves
On fresh blueberries
From the farmers’ market
I had a dream last night
That I stained a shirt
With what I stained it
I can’t remember
But the shirt was ruined
And I was worried
About people looking at me
And the stained shirt
I was wearing
Prose:
A closet seems to be so private, if we are to measure it by the same standards as other private things. A bedroom, for example, is a very private place. Usually it is behind two doors—the front door and the bedroom door.
If a stranger were to come to your home and knock on the door, it would not be unusual for you to first look through the peep hole, and then open the door just a crack in order to ask what they want. If they give you a sufficient answer, maybe you would consider letting them into your front room. They have, at this point, passed through the front door.
But for someone to pass through your bedroom door, it is usually a great deal more intimate. For a person to pass your bedroom door, they must usually be a lover, a family member, or a close friend.
What then shall we say of the closet, this third door? To pass through this third door must be to enter into the depths of intimacy within the confines of a home, even if there are only old coats and forgotten boxes in there.
Poetry:
A closet of stuff
Alone
And closed away
Behind
A closet door
A bedroom door
And a front door
I run the flats
And huff and puff
I run the hills
And huff and puff
I run the flats
And need
Huff and puff
No more
I asked her to recite some poetry for me, and she did, easily and brilliantly. She created poems completely on her own and right there on the spot as if she were saving them in her head and waiting for me to ask.
I was a bit taken aback, to be honest. Not by her poems being brilliant—if course they were brilliant. But more so by the ease she displayed when creating them instantaneously, without even appearing to be trying.
This confirmed for me my belief that she holds all the poetry. I dance around her all day and try to make her smile, which is all just another way of kneeling in front of her with my face turned down and my cupped hands held up and open, begging for her poetry.
She does not care to write it because that is not how she lives her life. She is the poetry. This is why she as able to recite a few poems so easily when I asked. It is already within her, and always will be. So why would she go through the trouble of writing it down and giving it away? That is no the way she interacts with the world. She goes about living, and that is her poetry.
As for me, I am a taker. Whether that is because I am a man or I am me or because I live in America, I do not know. But at least I have realized the relationship for what it is. My baby is my poetry, all of it. I am a taker, and I am lucky for what I can get.
We rolled the rug
Away
More toward
The window
To have space
To play
On the hard
Wood floor
Today I feel good
Yesterday was bad
I don’t know
What I’ll feel like
Tomorrow
I have to learn
A hundred times
The hard way
Before I get it
Good and down
I’ve seen more
Hopscotch
Chalked
On the sidewalk
As of late
Friends come and go. You intersect on your paths. If you are to remain yourself, you cannot stay together forever. Doing so would cause you to become more alike, meeting on the middle path, somewhere between the two paths you would each otherwise walk on your own. There is a rare friendship where you can walk side-by-side. Some paths run parallel just by chance. Some will deviate from each other and then cross again at some point in the future. Some will deviate and never cross again.
I write in the shower
With my eyes closed
I write at work
When my mind wanders
I write during conversation
When my friend writes for me
I write at the park
Laying in the sun
I write in the middle of a run
When it gets hard to breathe
I write after a dream
That I can barely remember
I write when I read
Stealing words for myself
I write at night
When I can’t go back to sleep
I run to the park
To pick a poem
Like a leaf
From a low-hanging
Tree branch
Or a lyric
From a bird’s song
And then run home
To write it down
Or maybe, it is like a side show I once saw at the circus. “The Fish Man,” they called him. I watched the man in the human-sized fish tank. He even swam like a fish. The tank was small, but he managed all sorts of aquatic maneuvers. Bending his back and kicking the water with flipper-like feet, he could swim circles round and round in the tank. It even seemed that he had webbing between his fingers and his toes (but that could have been makeup and prosthetics).
I read the plaque nailed to the top of a stake that was driven into the wet ground in front of the tank. The plaque read thus:
“Behold the Fish Man. He was not born this way. He chose to become like a fish. Some rumors say that he once told his mother while taking a bath that he preferred it underwater. He began learning to hold his breath. At first, like any person, he could only hold his breath for sixty seconds. Over the years, spending all his time underwater, the Fish Man learned, by various unknown methods, to hold his breath for longer and longer. Today, the Fish Man only comes out of water once in the morning and once in the evening. He sleeps at the bottom of the same tank that you see him in now.”
At the time, I didn’t for a second believe it. I figured there must be some invisible breathing tube worked into the tank, and by some sleight of hand, or sleight of swim, the Fish Man was able to take a breath from the tube as he completed one of his back-bending flip maneuvers. I watched him for a while but couldn’t catch a moment where the Fish Man seemed to do anything like breathing through an invisible tube.
I couldn’t help but wonder to myself what it had been like for the Fish Man to learn to hold his breath. Even if it was a sham, he probably had some talents for holding his breath underwater.
The day teaches us to live. The night teaches us to die.
I wonder if the nights start to seem longer as you get older. As of now, I can’t tell a difference. The days seems to be about as long as the nights.
Some nights are longer, when I can’t sleep. Or when I sleep deeply and achieve a dream that seems to last a lifetime.
For those farther beyond their youth, I wonder if the nights grow longer. For fear that death grows near. That a night of nothing—no sound and all dark—is not all too different from death itself.
Backstage wasn’t usually this quiet. Not completely silent, of course. You could still hear the opener thudding through the walls of the dressing room.
As soon as they had the bandmates pushed out and the door closed behind them, she had his shirt off. There was a ferocious banging on the door. They ignored it. Then it came even louder, threatening to knock the door out of its frame, and a voice screaming from the other side, “Jackie!”
He unclenched her grip from around the back of his neck, turned, and opened the door just a crack, through which the sound of the opener forced its way in, vocals wailing and bass thumping.
Travis, his drummer, was standing there with his forearm resting on the frame and his head against his rest, annoyed, like he’d been through this a hundred times.
“Can you at least hand me the bottle of booze off the table there, mate?”
“Anything else?” Jackie said, sarcastically, handing him the bottle.
“Oh yea, can I bum a cigarette?” Travis said with an open-mouthed grin that revealed a gap in his two front teeth.
Jackie slammed the door in his face.
“Okay, where were we?” Jackie said turning on his heel and waking over to the couch that was missing a cushion where she was lounging, like she felt right at home.
She was looking at him. He walked over and put both hands under her cheek bones. She pushed him away, and kept looking at him, at his torso.
“What? What’s wrong? Is it my tattoos? The devil on there doesn’t mean nothing. It’s just an old band I was with …”
“No, it’s not that,” she interrupted him.
“Oh,” he smiled. “It’s just because I’m so devilishly handsome?” He said this with the best London accent he could manage. His bandmates were actually born and raised in London but Jackie was just a tourist there when they all met. Most of their fans didn’t actually know that. He figured he could fool this one.
“No, it’s not that either.”
“What is it then?” He asked, now a little alarmed, hoping she wasn’t crazy. About to ask him if they would ever see each other again.
“You’re so … so skinny.”
He laughed. “What do you expect? I’m a rockstar. I eat more drugs than food.”
After they were finished. Jackie walked right out onto stage holding her hand. He didn’t think anything of it. He didn’t care. The magazines would write about it for weeks, “Who’s Jackie’s mystery girl?” And a feminine silhouette on the cover with a question mark in place of a face. The truth was, there were many faces that could have replaced that question mark.
He walked right out onto the front of the stage and held her hand as one of the security guards helped her down into the front row.
After the show, he looked for her. He really did. He tried to catch her face in the crowd all the way through their last song. He worried about it in the tour bus on the way to the hotel.
Then Travis handed him a bottle. A new bottle, full again. Jackie took a drink and forgot.
Edited: I wish the wind Wouldn’t worry For the leaves will surely Shake themselves Free From their branches Before the fall Is over Original:
I wish the wind
Wouldn’t worry
For the leaves
Will surely
Shake themselves
Free from branches
‘Fore the fall
Is over
Prose version:
I was on my way home from the park, still in the park actually, but on the borders of it, almost out, when I saw a white dog digging in the trash for scraps. It looked like someone had taken the trash bin and turned it upside down to empty all its contents on the ground. Or maybe the dog did it. But I doubted that because the trash bins in the park were usually kept inside of a metal container. Come to think of it, that container was usually locked. So maybe the maintenance man had made a mistake by forgetting to lock the container.
Anyway, so this white dog is digging in the trash strewn on the ground. And I already knew there was trouble coming, because it was a very pretty dog with a collar, which led me to believe that the dog had an owner. And that owner was likely close by. After all, we were in a park where people often come with their dogs. So I figured I must have caught this scene in the small amount of time between when a dog gets out of sight from its owner and before the owner realizes.
And sure enough, I heard a voice from the other side of the tall bushes shout, “Winter!” And see, this is where I had to laugh to myself. Because if it had been any other dog’s name, then I couldn’t have known for sure. If it was Milo, or Buddy, or some other generic dog name, then I couldn’t have known that this voice was coming for this dog’s owner. But there was no mistaking, putting two facts together—this dog was lost and it’s owner would probably be calling, and it’s fur coat was white as winter—that this owner shouting their dog’s name from the other side of the tall bushes was the owner of this white dog digging in the trash.
And that’s when I left. I realized I had been standing there just watching the dog dig in the trash. And I don’t like drama. So I didn’t want to be there when the owner found their dog. So I started walked away as fast as I could. And by the time I was out of sight but still just barely within earshot, I head the same owner’s voice shout, “Get out of there!”
Poetry version:
At the park
I walk past
A white dog
Digging in the trash
For scraps
And already know
There’s trouble coming
Before I hear
From a ways off
The dog’s owner,
I’m supposing,
Shout, “Winter!”
As the dog proceeds
To lick a paper plate
That once held pizza
I walk by
Leaving the scene behind
But not before hearing
The owner come closer
And exclaim,
“Get out of there!”
Looking out the window
At a man on the sidewalk
Who speaks
So much with his hands
I wonder
Being unable to hear
If he is using
Any words at all
A pitted date
Left out too long
Overnight
In a bowl
Tastes
Like a carpet rug
I can remember
From childhood
The horns honk
So loud
On the street outside
It seems
As if the walls
Of the apartment
Weren’t even there