the car wash plays music over two tiny, square speakers, one mounted to either side of the vending machines.
It usually plays modern pop music hits and misses,
But today it's playing Elvis.
Today it's playing Suspicious Minds.
Today the sun is shining and the sky is blue.
All the washing stalls are occupied.
Silver, blue, and two black cars are getting clean today.
And I sit across the lot, waiting to work the rest of my shift,
Watching the day turn,
As House of The Rising Sun begins it's turn on the car wash loudspeakers.

I called the shots until I realized
I was shooting all my friends.

My canvas is the same as yours
Just white, solid surface
Made to fill with shapes and patterns
Of varying sizes.

The only difference is that
You use more colors
To paint your truth
And I use more words
To paint mine.

Some of us got lucky
And found what makes us
Work
Some of us still wonder

But life is art
And we paint it with our tongues
And with our eyes and hands.

Don't argue with me anymore
About whose paintings
Are
Better.

I'm sitting on the carpet of my rented room
Swatting neurotically at gnats and fleas that may
Or may not
Actually be there,
On my arms and on my face.
The only proof are the little red bites,
Up my left arm and across the bottom of my chin, where they stop.
As if my blood boils while I sleep, leaving little red marks to show that I need to
Chill out
Calm down
De-stress
But I'm
in distress,
Destroyed.
I need a higher up.
I need a voice that speaks with more experience,
With firm understanding,
With the knowledge of everything.
And I can't seem to find it in Bibles, Torahs, Quarans, or other holy scriptures.
I only hear it whisper from old history textbooks,
I hear it only
Chiming softly like drowned out cymbals from the radio talk
I only see it peripherally in my rear view mirror,
Can only taste it as an after taste of many drinks.
It is ribonucleic acid,
It is thymine, guanine, adenine, and cytosine.
It is the carpet of my rented room.

I will escape my body one day
And death will take what's left
But until then
Let's sing each other's praises
Until we're out of breath
And dance in sunlight, and moon light too
Let's drink to more drinks
And write it all down in a book
When all the rubber is worn from the soles of our shoes
our hearts keep beating with syllables and pentameter unspiralling
Even when the blood in our veins stops flowing
Let our souls flow out via the poetry
Kept stuffed in half-filled spiral notebooks perspiring, just
Waiting for you,
And for the you after you,
To live again
In the language of an old life
Speaking dead alive stories
For others to keep inside their own
beating hearts.

Instead of worrying, I listen
Turn off the endlessly pouring spout of inner monologue flooding my senses
and listen

There is music in silence, a kind of symphony made by the absence of what could be there and yet
What is not

late afternoon sunlight descends through the waving Palm and Oak branches
highlights the rips in the knees of my jeans, made not bought
and I feel like I'm seven years old again
waiting for everything
too young to know what's waiting for me on the other side of time
but then my next door neighbor comes outside and says
"Hello"
and it's welcome back to now,
to right now,
when I'm twenty four and sitting outside writing this poem,
hoping that you're proud of me,
hoping that I can still learn to love properly,
hoping that I always get rips in the knees of my jeans.