with my two hours last night

we are deep as the ocean
like raindrops in a dish
in tides of motion
riding a wish

your white sun dress
flows like rain
dancing slow
around your space

dreaming in sunlight
dancing on hue
from red to violet
and back to you

dreaming as you disappear
in a sad movie ending
knowing i’ll never be there
in pictures of you

 

 

ghost

of an end

a friend of mine and i were discussing her dread of her little ones growing up last night. while i don't share her dread, i do sense that i will miss my wee ones being so small once they've grown up a bit.  Pixie started school today.  Tiny Tank is returning for his second year. Dimples is in third grade. i dropped them off this morning, skipping my first period class to have the opportunity to send them off on their grand adventure. 

on the way to school afterwards, i had this small pang of longing that they would stay small. not forever, but for a while longer anyway. and that pang has been haunting me since.  it's not a mortal wound, but it is an irritation that keeps hitting me in quiet moments today. just like so many other small pains we suffer in our day to day. 

and i think maybe that's what eventually kills us all. death is not a single event, but a culmination of all the small pains and wounds we endure.

  

ghost

beet red

so the other day i sold three paintings to a very good friend of mine,
which, had it been anyone else, would have been a rather innocuous
occurance. this friend is matherly,though, and i believe shakespeare
must have had a friend like him, someone who inspired the character
puck. mischevious just doesn't quite cover it.

now, before we go on, i will take time to remind you all of the
incident at the bank wherein my three year old son commented on the
size of a taxidermied polar bear's "peeper" and compared it to mine
within earshot of pretty much everyone in the bank.

this is the bank into which i went to cash the check for the
paintings. as the teller is going about her work, i am waiting, not
even considering that embarrassing event i mentioned earlier, when she
stops and pulls her glasses from her face, looks at me, back to the
check, and then to me again.

"does this say what i think it says?"

i look. and on the description line at the bottom of the check,
matherly, my friend, has written, for beer and hookers. i feel my face
redden slightly, and the teller and i have a laugh. then she leans
over and shows the description to her neighbor teller, who also laughs
and then looks at me.

"wait," she says. "i know you. didn't your son make a rather
intriguing observation about you and that polar bear not too long
ago?"

that is the second time in as many years i have left that bank the
color of an apple. between my son and my friend, i don't think i can
frequent the lobby of that establishment anymore. my face has turned
red just recalling it.

ghost

lightscape

where i've wandered, the sun bleeds through every crevice.
my shadows have been swallowed by the dawn, i cannot forget them.
i am a stranger here, and in this place no one has a name.

ghost

breathe

don't let me keep you. i know you have a dozen places to be all at once. you move from page to page, quicker than a hummingbird. besides, there is nothing for you here, nothing you haven't already seen. just words.

what's that? tell you a story?  darlin', i don't even know where to start. well, of course at the beginning, but that's not the whole story. 

sometimes we forget ourselves. either by intent, or a slip of the mind. sometimes we are hectic and in need of a landing place. somewhere we can stop doing every thing but the one necessary.

breathe.

 

 

ghost

subconscious intellectual

i am so much smarter in my dreams than i seem to be in reality. it makes me believe that it is possible that the human mind is capable of much more than we've seen so far. i don't know if i'd go so far as telepathy, but then again, why not? we're just complicated electrical wiring anyway, aren't we?

 

ghost

look, just beyond your peripheral vison...

...madness is there.

sometimes it feels close enough to touch it. like when i follow an idea too far down it's winding path. i see it in brief glimpses, always just beyond my field of vision. i might reach for it too if i weren't worried about what sort of stain it might leave on my finger tips.

i'm constantly dodging and sparing with reality. i suspect i'll never get used to it all. maybe none of us do. maybe we lie to ourselves. we all have these imperfect pictures of what the world really is in our heads, and yet we manage. more or less. when you think you have the absolute market on what things are, you're pretty close to madness. when you don't believe in anything, when you think nothing is true, that's pretty close to madness too.

i supose that would mean that sanity is when you realize that everyone's model of what is out there is built on assumptions, and everyone has colored their picture of the world with the tints of their soul. sometimes you're right. sometimes you're wrong. we all get by on the little bit of truth that has weathered the days, and a little bit of faith that things are as they seem.

 

ghost

spark

i took the kids to the splash pad today for a last hurrah of the summer. i report back to school on monday and tank and pixie will both be starting the following week. We splashed and frolicked and stayed cool on yet another texas summer day. it was a perfect way to spend the last day.

i met a woman.

i noticed her immediately. what's more, i noticed her noticing me. the kids and i played for a bit and my eyes kept being drawn back to this woman. i caught her watching me several times. like high school kids at a dance, we circled and traded shy smiles for a while, but eventually the play paths of her children and mine brought us together. and we talked for quite a while, lamenting the end of summer and the number of unattended children making it difficult for our kids to enjoy the water without being shoved or run into by flailing arms.

fast forward a few hours and it's time to go. we're all sunburned and hungry and beyond tired. and i didn't get her number or her last name. i don't know why. i thought about asking her out, of asking for her number in the off chance she wasn't attached, but i ended up not doing either. i guess i'm not quite ready for that just yet. but i'll tell you. the rush was something i was afraid was gone forever. it felt good to be desired, if only for a little while. that's been something missing from my life for entirely too long.

 

ghost

this has been rattling around in my head for weeks

Suicide wrote a note of his own on a leftover napkin stained with horseradish from an arby's run, in big black block letters that bled through.

i can't understand why anyone would choose me. i do not deserve it.

maybe, just maybe, loneliness is lonely too. 

 

 

ghost

id e a s

ideas sometimes weigh too heavily
and drop through the floor of my mind
or they drift too lightly and flutter off.
sometimes they float right there, at eye level.
sometimes i catch a glimpse of some that
have fallen to the side or flown away
and i wonder why, once dreamed,
my heart lost sight of them.
sometimes they hover just above
the ground of my imagination
so they might take root and
carry me away if they should
ever take flight.

ghost

un der tow

un wanted
 un solicited

you

   step into
and out of my
life.

as regular as
     clockwork,
 a cliche,
or a stereo
             type,

more
   uncomfortable
     than a pair
              of
    n e   w
         shoes.

ghost