It's a soft mistake and
And a mismanaged moment
To say

You Were the last
Of my degree.

I took a soft
sapphire
And made it mine and
There was
Your nose
Who I needed to kiss
To keep
Divine

I have fun,
I make-believe,
I think,

Before I see.

I turned over a stone
And found inevitable wet dirt.
There were the mark of worms
And their bodies,
Presenting themselves to
Eyes, as of late,
Having a hard time to see.

I turned to face the river
And the river snaked down
The trail toward the houses
Filled with people, families,
Hopefully love. My finger
Rose on its own. I did not
Deny it's autonomy. The tip
Traced the path of the river
As if my finger were creating it
Out of thin air.

I turned ahead
And saw the path
I had walked
Many times. It reminded me
Of yesterday and the many days
Before: the constants; the abnormalities;
The changes in my life; the lack of
Change in nature.

I dropped my hand
Or my hand dropped me
Or neither.

I turned my body
And began back up the hill.
The sun had dried the dirt.
The birds sang to one another.
I felt lucky
To overhear their joy,
Their sorrow, their hope
In the present and tomorrow.

At the road, the hard surface of the asphalt
Told me I was back in my world.
I was back home, yet, it did not
Feel right.

I was far from welcome
And I didn't know
How to return
Or if

I even wanted to.

Some days
Time stands still
And you with it.

No task, no accomplishment, no satisfaction
Can propel you forward,
Though forward,
Is where you will go unless,

Well, you know.

Fulfillment, oh' another word for a shot of dopamine,
Another quarter conquered, another dollar earned, saved,
And spent.

Satisfaction is a dead-end dead man's game.

Revelry is in discovery.

That is where the spring is.
That is where the sun

Is always rising,

Only ever setting

When you do.

Words passed
That I and We
Baked
Make-believe
That never said enough.

I have a dollar.
Do you want it?
Ok.

The ocean doesn't.
The wind neither.
The ocean;

There's no convincing her.

That's it.

That is all.

Let's go about our sad inevitable business.

I make-believe (usage in action)
To imagine
Myself more than I
Presently am.

Who does this,
But you, I, and we?

I watched the ducks when I was young.
My stout Abuela,
Shaped like a Hershey's kiss
On the precipice of melting
In the noonday sun.
(Often we would skip classes
To exist, in my eyes
In a time outside of academia's restrictions)
They moved
Without trepidation or question.

Never once,
Did they have to imagine
Themselves greater
To perform
The act of seeing the bread,
Seeking the bread,
And eating it.

To make-believe is to
Project
The act on a vehicle
Toward greatness; something greater
Than oneself.

The catch, at least
In debates of happiness,
One hopes, when one reaches said destination,
Fulfillment resides.

Does it?

Or is happiness in the act
Of progress?

I am no sculptor
But untouched marble possesses an aura of hope
Versus the finished product;
An object of tourism and eventually
Falsely defined goals.

As Rimbaud spoke of arrow strings
Pulled back deep in the pools of mysticism,
I make-believe
I know
What the hell that gun runner meant,
Or what,
That hellion was feeling.

To inspire
Is to spur
Evolution.

In that sense
Is not all art
A variation of God, no,

Mother Nature?

I like to think so.

I hope so.

I believe until

Tomorrow.

A stone
Was turned
And
Is turned

To find food,

To create space to build,

Or used to ****.

Progress only leads
To more of the above.

Forget humanitarianism.

I started reading the
Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies and realized

We're just going to keep on doing this.

We are cursed
Variations
Of Cain's.

How long will we fight to prove
Our sacrifice
Is greater
Then all the others?

Funny how humankind
Muddies reasons for survival
For their true reason
For being

And

Unbeing.

I expect nothing
From myself
But happiness in the face of

The floodgates
Of our genealogy
That has no lock
Or key
Or God behind the peephole.

To be alone
Truly alone

And at peace

Is one's own masterpiece.

They used to reveal nothing to us.

It used to be
Leaves from trees to the public ground
Whose internal lines
Showed what they ate when
They weren't hungry.

And
When they saw that movie and;
It's ok,
Nevermind,
Let's guess about it.

No one ever said,
Let's not.

Maybe one
Opened up their love lives:

I was with him
I was with her
We were together
Through this night and
We made it
Until we no longer could.

Then,
Fabrications of myths moved on top of each other
Like late-night projections
Pushing pushing pushing
toward Nothing the world
THE WORLD

couldn't bring on its own.

I feel bad for movie stars.
I feel bad for pop stars.
I feel bad for fame because the ego
And myth has
Nothing to do with empathy.

To provide
Is never to feel
Fully.

To provide and step away
Is to say,

I am here
Currently,

But my grass
Grows
And dies

On another side.

We got there in the early afternoon
By a car low on gas and a bad back right wheel.
It was Thanksgiving, and I wrote.
My name down on the back of a Whole Foods receipt
Because I was having trouble remembering the
Double-clap and the lazy double L.

I have been trying to read more poetry.
And yet
My stanzas
Still come out like that.

The royal, we appreciate the energy.

There was my grandma's newly painted house.
There was my father, and I's grifted palm tree.
There were my uncle's five cars.
All parked on the ****-filled crack and mild sidewalk.
There was the sound of the neighborhood dogs.
All fighting for the honor of their owners
Who only really loved one-fourth of them.

I started to cry after I put the car in park.
I was terrified. This shocked her because I was one.
To only cry when I was really drunk.

"Are you really drunk?" she asked me, patting me on my back as if I was choking.

"I feel I'm saying hello and goodbye at the same time," I said.

Then I opened the door and said, of course not, not yet.

The gate was creaky, and the young black dog.
Was excited
Like they always were.
The one white one, the one my uncle got took from my neighbor,
Just stared at me with the absence of something.
That knew they wanted to love
But didn't know how to ask or even receive it.

My grandma wrapped up because of the wind.
She was all smiles as she talked about being ready to die.

Being forced to be outside in nature
Is not always pleasant, especially when the alternative
Is killing from an accidental posture.

I had two beers for the price of one.
And listened to bird sounds on Youtube.
That my uncle explained brought tropical birds:

"The really fancy ones," he explained.

Then he pointed to a dead pigeon a hawk
Had left the day before
And stripped me of my Esquire magazine perspective.
Of fancy
And recalled where the hell I came from.

For some reason,
I brought up Veterans Day.
A ripple of guilt
Snaked over the glass patio table,
Over the leek and chive stuffing,
The Pilsner beer,
The homemade cranberry sauce,
The too-thick gravy and the burnt turkey, only to land
On my uncle's ears, who said:

"Dad always told me, When I'm dead boy
You go and **** on my grave! Man like me
Needs a shower whatever way he can get!"

I nodded as she winced, and grandma said nothing.
My dad was inside cooking as usual.
One of the dogs, the young small black one
Excitedly mounted the brain dead white one
And ****** and ****** until the black one realized
He wasn't ready for physical love.

An anecdote spilled out of my mouth
About how I traveled to Normandy and saw
Art of the boats and the men and he, my grandpa,
That drove on D-Day.

My tale fell on deaf ears.

"Yeah, I went to Dad's grave," my uncle said. "And I beheaded him and skinned him as he asked. The man had a lot of requests."

"No, he didn't," Grandma insisted. "He no do that."

"I put a new skin on him," my uncle assured her. "Ain't going to leave my man skinless."

We had bad pie and left ten minutes after.
We didn't hug, so don't ask.
As we waved goodbye, I noticed a smudge of food.
On my dad's bulbous gut.
He had been very excited about his new couch.

"It takes up the whole living room! You and your sister can sleep in every corner of the thing and not touch feet!"

I did not cry as I pulled into the street but
I wept at home
In the shower
Scrubbing away the off-chance or the possibility or the
What-if-I-did-this of that

Family-packed afternoon.