This Changing Night

Strength comes from distant places, promises kept and fortified from distant darkness.
When the will expresses the finally realized connection,
The closeness squeezes tight enough to rip though layers of
lies and hurt and fears and regrets and misdirection and ignorance
To embrace and clench and hug tight and understand
The chosen one.

The Reverse

Psalms 114 clinched hope in the day and showed me the experimental writing of the Bible. Look at it, I challenge you. I could have put it here for you to peruse, but I'd rather you dust off the Bible and see for yourself how this writer, listed as anonymous, pushed the boundaries of fiction, spiritual writing, and even praise. I'm deeply impressed. It took reading one-hundred and fourteen Psalms for me to be truly moved. I edit for a living, easy enough. For the Bible to surprise me in a writing style is a hard task since it is historical and my learning foundation was built upon it and other period-specific styles and works. I had a very pleasant commute home knowing that life still has unknown corners to peek around and discover hidden blessings.

Exert:
"What’s wrong, Red Sea, that made you hurry out of their way?
What happened, Jordan River, that you turned away?
6 Why, mountains, did you skip like rams?
Why, hills, like lambs?"

Intensive

He couldn't be persuaded from it. The only way to correct the problem was on his terms. It was delicate, the interplay of weening his beast. It started like old deals. On Marta: "I'll be there in two dimes." On a hiking trip: "Trees, plenty of green to be had." Around the table: "You don't matter after the bills have dropped." It was trying times, and he came around...like the dopeman circling the block.

7/18/07

Gray falls in slices
Nipped with precision
At almost 20 hard-earned bills
I hope she knows "cool".

Haircut on my birthday
35 and maintaining
Realizing time moves
Onward, uncaring

6am, cigarette reflection
Hum of bugs amid chirping
Wondered why in the hell
I woke up so early

It was my birthday.

Walking Home Alone

Anger
Misdirection
Plodding in footfalls that only resound splashes of lost wanderings

A lightning bug splashes green in front of me
I smile
Edge of sunset light smiles goodbye

Space
Time
Soft summer raindrops keep my hope alive tonight

After Night

Can't shake her from my walking, working, bus-card-slapping dreams...no, it won't disappear as long as I reach from the hunger in my heart to hold her.

Now it is time to lay my head down in a dark room with swirling ghosts circulated from a droning fan. I will awake 4 times before the alarm and every time I stretch outward, I find an empty bed.

The morning is transit card beeps, bouncing nodding half sleep in hard bus seats, the Bible reading, the routine elevators, my cube, and the omnipresent hate 15 floors above the beggars and beaten forms languishing below.

Lunch is the hopeful funny, the interesting tale, the strange dish. Lunch is short lately.

The afternoon stretch tempts my limits of smoking and not getting into trouble with my employer for smoking too much. After 4 I find that time changes into some kind of downward slope that I slide on until I rest on a transit train headed for home. Sometimes the Bible reading resurfaces.

I walk a good clip, maybe a mile?, and it is just considered exercise to me. It is part of getting back to my not-home where I reside, to go into my disconnected shed for slap-it-together art and old music and too many cigarettes amid forgotten warming beers.

And then I pause on the front porch to smoke out the night with finality cigs and the dregs of beers and clouding crickets and these very thoughts I pour out now are mere reflections of what spins around in my lonely thoughts night after night after night after night after night.

Respect

She was confused, not used to the train's surging starts or stops. It began with sudden motion, she reached for the suitcase, motion confounded her...pitching toward the floor his long arms stopped her. He leaned back when she regained balance. No words were spoken.

I observed this from my corner.

The next stop the folks departed...a confused woman suddenly realized her need to exit. She ran to the side of the train that had doors closed, while the open doors began to close. She screamed, he reached his long arm out into the closing door and caused it to retract and sound an alarm of inoperation. He scurried her through the doors and they promptly closed, ending the alarm. I waited until everyone settled back into the ride.

I spotted an empty seat and went to take it. I passed the long-arm man. I said, "Good moves, dude!". He looked surprised, and calmly replied, "It was my good deed for the day."

I gave him the dap hand motion, touching closed fist knuckles with one another, and said, "No, two good deeds." He was astonished at his actions, now noted in the public eye, and said, "Yeah, two...".

He got off at the next stop, nodding a departing recogniton at me.

He deserved his props, for no one is supposed to care or notice others on Marta. The rule is to ignore, withdraw, disconnect from the collective crowd.

He felt outwardly instead of obeying unwritten rules.

Forgotten Comfort

Found the jeans that fit so well, so close to my curves, worn to comfort. Found them staring at me in my dark closet...what I was in there looking for I can't remember...but they laid out themselves for my eyes. I tried them on, remembering all the closeness of their comfort, all the adventures they joined me on. This fits me, this relaxes me, this completes my picture of who I am.

Scratch Pad

Being undecided or determined,it failed to occur, remaining unformed, theoretical; drafting a letter, a fading pen, leaving doodled derisions.