That Friend You Hate

Louis CK talks of a friend we all have
The friend we secretly hate

C'mon we all have one
Says Louis CK

Mine has called me "Spoiled Brat"
Nearly all of my life

Just as my father's pet name
For me was "Dumb Kid"

Louis' says his is the type person
Who asks, if you could time travel

Where would you go, what would you do?
Secretly, Louis feels, you only asked

To tell your own answer, besides
Who do you think you are?

Like you could really kill Hitler
Although I've never met him

I realize I am Louis CK's most hated friend
Or I would be, but he's got me all wrong

It really is about the game, the discussion
Not my hopes of spiking my point down your throat

Maybe if I could go back in time, I should
Go back in time and unmeet you

Waiting

Morning.  I am sitting in my front doorway with Peabody, hugging his small furry body tight to my face.  I can hear a chainsaw in the distance, a small dog is barking, cars hum down the neighborhood’s streets, people talk to each other.  I can’t make out exactly what they say.  I have had so many moments like this it seems like when I look back over my life, I have always been alone.

In my mind, in an instant, I am sitting just near the fence line on my parents’ property, I can hear the wind, the cars on the highway.  The ground, hard yet slippery, with loose topsoil underneath me.  I can feel the tension of waiting for my mother to call.  I can feel the precariousness of having no solid rights to support me.

Then I am at UC Davis, sitting outside Sproul Hall, the cement hard and cold beneath me.  Bicycles tick tick ticking by me, the hum of fans nearby, the murmuring of students talking.  I take a sip from a small carton of chocolate milk, wonder why it tastes so different from chocolate milk you mix yourself.  I am eating lunch outside my next class, which is still 40 minutes away.

Next I am sitting on the floor near the bathroom at the hospital.  I am so tired the air feels thick like maple syrup around me.  My palms, braced against the carpeted floor, are damp with sweat.  The back of my head, my shoulder blades and my butt cheeks brace against the wall.  When I blink, my eyelids choose to stay shut longer than normal 50 percent of the time.  A nurse passes me, taking a second to enquire if I am all right before she moves on.  I answer yes, but in reality, I feel as if I am caught in the travel portion of a very long vacation at which I never arrive.  One floor above me, my father, who has recently had a stroke and who I have come to visit, sleeps.

Snap, I am in my living room, Daryl is half a world away, taking a plate full of food to his daughter while I sit and wait.  Skype makes the computer speakers whirl like something with a cyclical motion has been set off speed.  Impact seems imminently ahead.

Waiting.  My life is composed of waiting, moments waiting, hours waiting.  

The things I wrote to you and about you

Aren't mine anymore

They relocated to a neighborhood

Where all the things we wish were true
Walk the streets with all the things we're glad are not

Ghosts

thoughts you can't quite remember, stuck
almost on the tip of your tongue

You know them

demanding attention

look at me look at me look at me 

I will not be ignored

the cries of those who do not reflect

but only absorb

take

and 

take

you know them, they’ve sucked your breath from your mouth while the world burned around you, they push you down like you’re their handrail

brace me

support me

help me 

and you try

you are the very best handrail money can buy

stainless steel

rigid with purpose and intention

Rhythm

All is rhythm

And reflection

Get it wrong

The next layer fails to happen

Life 
A Rube Goldberg experiment

Left on auto play

The larger universe
Encapsulating our universe

A dead and deserted world
Of automatons
Unthinkingly
Nudging
Loss ball bearings
That 
Bump into
Our intentions

Nothing personal

Sometimes life flows 
So perfectly
It is as if you have
God's hand up your ass

Blasphemy


At our best it is us 
who powers the universe
pistons pump 
drive the little ball bearing 
to the next domino drop

synchronicity
beauty 
simplicity

why things never happen
when put into place

things must fall

an airborne moment of trust
flight 
the second between 
the known 
and the known

freedom

not forced 
or begged
not fought for 
or won

nothing that can be taken from us 
by anyone 
but 

honestly . . .

does the last domino to fall

question the hand that started the motion?
or does it simply skid and slide as momentum carries it

across the table