For the sake of discretion, when I retell this story, I am a fish, gill-hooked, near gutted, and thrown back. You are a goose with swan beauty, but not swan grace. There is a girl throwing bread onto the water above my head. Competing for the same crumbs, through what could be a mirror, our mouths met. You took the bread, but I kissed you.

Got audio published. Check December's entry's for my name.
http://dimestories.org/news/san-diegos-best-dimestories-updated/

Is what I am doing the plight of my existence?
She asked me

Sitting on her lap
I notice the beer on my breath
Heating my mouth like a furnace

In giving answers I always feel like
A hundred Schizophrenic Walt Whitmans
Scrawling math problems on walls
With bits of coal
And we keep saying to ourselves
“But I am a ******* poet”

And what I wanted to say was
Probably
Or what are you doing exactly
Or if you are truly honest with yourself you won’t be

Here is how to truly be honest
It will feel like words in the mouth of a toddler
Learning how to speak to its mother
And you just keep saying, “Yeah” and “Wow”

Only this time
What you’re hearing makes sense
And you turn white
And you want to puke

It is the secret things we say to ourselves
Like
After my mother almost successfully killed herself
Well enough to be gone forever
I now secretly bank on my dad dying soon
So my aunt can take my brother and sister
And I will no longer feel responsible for anyone

Walking away
And feeling good about it are two different things

There is plight in our existence
In the monotony
In the repetition of sorrow
But that feeling fades
the fear of being alone
And unloved
and lost
and whatever

Like being in a nightmare
They all go away
As soon as someone touches you

Now be honest about what makes you happy
Do that
Do it well
Make others happy with it

“And if it ends in flames
At least we’ll be warmed by the fire”
She said

And to be honest
I don’t remember what I really said

He had a clock in his stomach
Time is a hungry crocodile
After eating your hand
And learning he likes the taste

That is when the arthritis kicked in
Or the unexplainable pain
Caused by a broken wrist
Or maybe just aching joints in the cold

I think of all the times I wanted to sever my own shadow
Question my presence
Even in moments of light

Where do I stand
If I cast no shade?

There is a boy
Who one time for hours
Pointed at a can of pringles
In the hopes that he could make it move
With only his mind

The bike he learned to ride on
Had flat tires
He one time shaved down and spiked the back of his head
Then grew his bangs out and dreaded them

He had an albino rat named snowflake

Those were his angsty years

Then he found this crocodile
And it was so cool
And it ticked like a time bomb
It didn’t hurt him or anything
So he kept it
Until one night it tried to eat him in his sleep

So he ran
But maybe it thought he was its mother
Or love wasn’t enough
Or it was just mean

He wonders if his got hungry too early
Burning bridges at both ends
Forcing him to jump in the middle

He was a darling child
And he was lost for a while
Then he was found
By a crocodile
With a clock in its belly
And really
Who doesn’t want a pet crocodile?

I’ve got plenty of ghosts I promised her. I leave them wherever I go.

At the house on 711 Ellen St there is the ghost of a dog named Hessa and a dog named Mac. They don’t play together, but they pant heavy, waiting my return.

There is the ghost of a cat named Charles. He chases a raccoon out of a busted window that my mother fell through.

There is the ghost of my mother pacing the living room, contemplating suicide.

When ghosts die, they become useful fire, burning as long as necessary, and then blowing out forever.

There is the Ghost of Louie, helping me fix my car. There are the ghosts of our tall cans crushed to the curb. There is the ghost of their fullness. Little drops that are left sit in the rim of the mouth.

Every moment makes a ghost. Every time you move something from stillness, there is a ghost for it.

When I come to see you, I will leave behind the ghost of laughter, the ghost of my warmth growing colder. Miss it if you want to.

There is the ghost or your taste in my mouth. Certain foods bring it back to life. I let the Bud Light sit on my tongue. I almost tasted it. Something is missing.

There is the ghost of your smell. It tricks me into craning my neck, eyes searching for you. There is the ghost of your smile which haunts me when the ghost of your smell tricks me into thinking you’re there.

There is the ghost of my cool breath dying on your neck, then dying again. The fire it becomes extinguishes quickly.

Behind your couch there is the ghost of a cricket. He has stolen a harmonica and plays only the high notes. Tell his family that he misses them.

There are the ghosts of apples that I skinned when I learned to make pies in high-school. I have made many apple pie ghosts since then. I will bring one to you. It will be a slow ghost. The steam rising from the middle is its spirit returning home.

Home is your chest. Breathe the ghost of my pie, the ghost of my cologne, the ghost of my eyes wet with poetry I have just read.

There is the ghost of poetry as it mixes with my breath and exits my chest. Let it die and die again. Let it haunt your heart, your belly, the back of your neck like a gentle hand.

I make graveyards. I make ghosts. I leave them behind wherever I go. I miss some of them. There is the ghost of my irregular heartbeat, when I feel the ghosts that I miss pass by. I breath slowly trying to feel them, but too soon they are gone.

Ghosts don’t stay long. I can stay long. Make ghosts in the meantime.

When I come to see you, I will leave you with ghosts.

I’m not sure there are words for this
It is like suddenly finding out your heart is hard and hollow
Like a shell
And the heaviness in your chest goes without explanation

It is like these arms are revolving doors
For bodies that will not stay

It is like phantom limbing lips that aren’t yours
And maybe you kiss your own shoulder to remember the feeling

It is telling a chat-room ******* you love her
And almost meaning it
But you could never tell anyone else about the relationship
She says she loves you back
To everybody

There is the silence
In the spaces between sleep
When your thoughts take you places that are not calm

There is the mirror at the gym that you sometimes look into for too long

There is you without the words to be honest so you come on too strong

On the non-tattooed side of my chest
Are childhood surveys
Check if you like me
Check if you don’t
Please leave a 500 character minimum explaining
Your reaction to your most recent encounter
Thank you and remember
I only aim to please

There is this fancy worded poetry
With bits of her body tucked in between lines
So that when I speak them I might get to taste her

It is the broken record of your confidence
And no one has moved the needle

Sometimes you separate yourself from it
But you can’t even name it
It isn’t lonely
It is speechless
It just sits and feels
So you try to feed it
But it doesn’t eat

Sometimes you come close
But the words sit awkward in your mouth
Fall out like blocks

But they have no weight
So they don’t hit hard enough

All I know is that when I look at her
I feel the exact opposite

But there are no words for that either

This is the year of the search party
The year we stop looking for the answers
The year our inner commotion
Winds down to a clockwork steady

The year where everything is okay
Because it is
Because you are not your lame job
And you are not your last semester
And you are not your bills piling up

You are the moment your lungs erupt
A steady stream of your own breath
Taste it like biting cold
Or cigarettes
Feel it like a mudslide on your own skin

Let it go

Let it go like the millions of choices you can make today
Let every choice you have ever made fall away
So that you may take a moment to be satisfied right now

Assume you had no other options
And because you had no other options
Where you are is where you were meant to be

This is the year made easy
The year the search party found the answers
And hand delivered you note

The year you are a nuclear reactor
Every time you stand still
Feel the hum of your breath
As it fills up your chest
And you get so hot
The snow bending your branches melts away

The year you do not still yourself because of your anchors
You still yourself to watch them fall away

This is the year you make peace with the past

Be in the moment
Make this the year of forgiveness
And the year of less stress
The year you shake hands with your vices
The year of really good ***

The year the search party stopped
And you walked away
Dropped all your gear
Because what you found was a mirror
And it felt like you saw yourself for the first time
Because you did

Because there are no answers
Because every choice you have ever made brought you here
And right here is where you were meant to be

Underneath the burning building in my gut
So much is preserved safely
In the memory where you are smiling
I find peace
I want to be lonely in private
But there is no space for that

Under the rubble
Compound fracture of bitter jawline
That same smile a photo
Warping in fire

I want to preserve you
Like a wasp in amber

But we are not as slow as that
Not as gentle

The theory is
Two objects fall at the same speed
Regardless of mass
Except for people
We do not fall for each other at the same pace

I felt like the man with the rescue dog
That heard your heartbeat
After the cement settled
And the wood grew cold
White ash
Black cinderblock paperweights
Your body preserved under
Layers of broken building
But you felt safe
Because you set the fire

And I was the man that found you
Some secrets can’t stay buried

We were cave people
Found and revived

I’m not new to this
Just rusty
Just dusty
There are burn marks on our bodies
And I have almost forgotten how mine got there

There were things you thought you should go back for
Things you wanted to leave behind
But in the saving you took what you could carry
There was baggage in your desperation
To save what you thought was important

When you burnt yourself to the ground
You forgot that fire is a funny thing
It lives too
And you can’t control it

There were some houses
Left standing
Whole acres unlit for no reason

Not everything gets burned

And there is a photo of you
Cigarette hole dimples
A smile that brings me peace

And you brought with you
Bits of burning ribcage
And smoke filled lung
To hide your heart minimally

I brought nothing
Mine is slightly weather calloused now
But it works just fine
It’s just rusty
Just dusty

So take this
What is left of my burning breast plate
Carved message on the inside
like an oversized locket
Underneath the black and white negative of your film strip

“Thank you for trying”

Who am I?
Not name
Not address
Not occupation
Not body
Not thought
In an instant I can open my eyes
And take you in
And know what is in front of me
And that you are beautiful
And it would take days
For the voice in my head to describe what is in front of me
I am not that voice
I am that instant
I am a series of instants
I am constantly changing indescribable awareness
That feels
I feel **** sometimes
I write poetry
I am poetry
Read this again once I am dead
Feel me?
Feel me
I dare you

Part 1
My third car broke down
All that metal
It will outlive me

I’ve been jogging to work
Taking the back ways of a neighborhood
I barely know

Yesterday morning
I took pictures
A modern day romantic

A pack of camels followed by
A pack of Marlboro silvers
The cellophane glittered with dew
It will outlive me

A sunset behind a church
Sunsets will outlive me

A shopping cart next to the church sign
The grocery store is very far from here
I imagine it belonged to a homeless man
He found this spot and was saved
The art of being saved will outlive me

Broken glass
I want to touch it
Leave my blood upon it
I want to glue each piece
To form a ball
And hang it from a nearby tree
So that it may own the morning sunlight
Reflect it like small miracles
Some parts red
That glass will outlive me

A dead rabbit
Mostly bone now
That rabbit did not outlive me
I feel good about that

There was also a woman walking her dog
We passed by a tree at the same time
She and the dog were old
She would not let me take her picture
So I took one of the tree
She and the dog will not outlive me
I don’t feel good about that
Part2
This facebook status will outlive me
And I feel like a caveman
Scrawling poetry on cave walls
In an attempt to be remembered forever

I want to place my hand upon your belly
And bite my lips
So I can spit blood
Like a human can of spraypaint
The outline
So you cannot forget what my own touch looked like

You
May not outlive me
And I may not outlive you
All we have is now

All we have is now

“You look like my son,” he says.
But he does not look at my face
He looks over my head and out the window

It is the look of a man that while drunk
He has kicked his dog in the ribs
Because he can

But now he is sober
And can’t really look at it anymore

I understand that look
And run my own fingers along my side

I wonder
If he still has the rain in is breath
And as if to answer my question
His chin quivers
He fixes his glasses

“How old is your son now?” I ask

“We’re both old men now, ” he says

I give him his change
52 cents
And two plastic bags

“Happy Birth-
“Merry Christmas I mean.”
Merry Christmas I say

I am there
Wishing that if I pressed my fingers to your lips
I could understand the broken Braille of your breath
When your throat locks in the noise

Gentle butterfly gut
Fanning flames over burning cinderblocks in your belly
I am there

When you wished the moon in a rearview mirror
Heading west
Wondering if you really could go far enough to see its dark side
When you wanted to turn back
I was there

When she drank razorblades
And Tylenol ink
Into a botched suicide note
I was there

This is the journey

When he wondered when he could hold somebody again
Like a waterbed full of blood
Without the motion sickness
I was there

Every moment y’all
Of your ***** sacred
I want to be there
So when you see that this place is so big
And you are so small
And our souls might be stardust and minerals
Burning blue so far away
At least you’re not alone

Your body is built for love
She said
Beer breathed and true
I smiled
I was there

Kiss me with your car parts
DUI this knee buckle
I want to be tried and arrested
Spit out and spanked
And I will still kneel before you
And praise all that is good in you
Because you are holy

Every moment of you is holy

I was there
Begging to be baptized by your presence
Because in a place so big
I don’t want to feel so alone anymore

I want to kiss you
I want to kiss you
Like you are better
Than everything you’ve ever done
You are

I was there
When the world inside your breastplate
Spun natural disaster
And sunshine
Anvil remorse
And sweet laughter
When I held you
Any of you
And our worlds
Vibrated a conversation only our souls could understand

I was there
And all we could speak was “LOVE”
All we could speak was “Us”

Supposedly beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Which is super gay
So when I say you are beautiful
This is what I mean

You are beautiful in the same way
That the word, “believe” in sign language
Can translate to being married to your own thoughts

When a person sees something beautiful
Their pupils can increase up to 45 percent in size
I’m not high today I swear
Just that
You surprise me every time

Your left lung is smaller than your right
So it can make room for your heart
That’s just biology

And when they say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach
When people blush
Their stomach lining turns red too

Laughing lowers stress
A 7 year old can laugh almost six hundred times in one day
An adult
13 to 100
I want to make you laugh like we are 7 again

I was 7 once
I’ve had seventeen years practice since then

When you put a shell to your ear
What you are really hearing is the sound of your own blood
Rushing through your ears
There is a ******* ocean inside of you
That swells like lungs
And rushes a steady current of mostly
Unattractive creatures
You are like the bottom of the sea
All single celled and fight for life
In darkness

And maybe that doesn’t seem too beautiful
But you don’t really know what’s down there
Do you?

You are beautiful like old people
Who think you are sweet
Because you’ve had enough patience
To match their pace
“I don’t know when I got old” she said
“But I wasn’t ready. It took me ten years to figure this place out.
“I’m 94. I don’t have another ten.”
And she kissed me

Beautiful like poetry
When poetry hurts the most
When it gives you goose-bumps

And I bet if I stuck my arm inside a music box
To let my chilled skin pluck the metal keys inside
There wouldn’t be music
I am too soft
And it would hurt
But it looks like if I were hard enough
There might be
It would sound like chaos
The keys are beautiful
But the sound inconsistent

Beautiful
Like the collaboration of molecules
That understood pointillism enough to make me
But still experimental
So they gave me cancer
And I’m shorter than I want to be
And I am pretty sure they are laughing
About what they did to my brain
But my lungs are perfectly uneven
So my heart can pump oceans
So I can move and be stupid
And do things like tell you

You are ******* beautiful

I don’t come home some nights
And my brother tells me when I don’t
As if I didn’t know that I did that
He asks me why

I always answer
Just stayed with a friend

But he knows what drinking all night looks like
I remind him of his mother

Weekend mornings
When he’s still home
I walk in smelling like suicide

He talks for hours
Nonstop
His hands hold things I can’t see
“This is how I am going to squeeze the toothpaste from now on
Are you mad at me from doing it wrong?
Hey I wish I was strong like you
It’s hard to help dad when you’re not here
I need you to buy name stickers for the Christmas presents
This is your shirt but dad doesn’t have enough money for laundry
I made too many sandwiches today
I ate them all
My best friend Louise farts a lot
It’s funny when he farts
Do you have to work today?
I know how it feels
Work is so ******* hard”

Sometimes I feel so unprepared
Feels like a ricochet for wrists
Axes chopping bricks
But yesterday
I fist fought a mountain
Some of us get practice

I tell him to relax
To bug his sister

“I love you,” he says
“When you become a writer can I draw pictures for your books?
I wake up some nights and hear you type
Mom used to stay up all night too
I don’t ever want her to come home
Are you going to move out soon?
Before or after Christmas?
Before or after my birthday?
Will you still get me presents?”

He is a one man search party
And has found most of the answers

In the end
The answer is always
Yes
The answer is always
I love you too

You look like a fire escape in a dress
Flower patterned
Sunday's best
I don't have to fall so hard anymore

The first night I held you
I dug your neck into a trench
This body was not at war with itself

Your shoulders are battlements
Your chest a drawbridge
I am waiting
Horseless
For you to let me in

I know you are so much softer than that

Lay across me again gorgeous
Let me sleep under your strength

I felt like a giant
Holding fireworks in his fists
Fuses burning between my knuckles
I could silence the bang if I wanted to

Inside your chest are bibles
Full of psalms about hunger
And love
And letting go
Psalms about selfless
I want to kiss you like a prayer

******* like a prayer

I am small
And I feel the ground breathe beneath my feet
It is dark

I am a marble with a green cat eye center
Still hot and smooth
The glass blower that made me had asthma
I don’t roll like the rest of them
This dent in my chest
But you decide it is a good place to rest your head

You feel like the ocean
When I am sleeping on a raft
I made from fallen trees and rope
A steady rock just past the wave break
So calm I’m sure I could sail safely
As far as I wanted

I feel like I don’t exist
Like I am unicorn horn glitter
After the slaying
The men who have ground me down
Use me to sell toys to kids
Because glitter makes everything magic

I am magic
Clumsy magic
Like a giant learning sleight of hand
Fireworks in his fists
I could stop the bang if I wanted to

I don’t want to
I am hot glowing color
Falling from the palms of a giant
Whose hands are clouds

Someone has just prevented a car accident
Saved someone’s life
There are fireworks
A celebration

I am rubber kneecaps
For people who collapse
I bounce them back
People who don’t pray anymore
They just keep walking

I feel like a slave song
The simple message
When you sing these words
I can do anything

I feel like a giant

And I want to kiss you like a prayer
That stops someone from dying

Not a poem. Just shameless self promotion of a short story.

http://normanshine.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/this-little-patch-of-earth/

Part1
This body is full of worms
Glowing
And moving forever
If I could match their movement
I might know what it means to be still

This body is afraid of rusting
I shave ***** red banjo strings
From the creak in these joints
This body moves like a song
String snap at a high note

I want you to kiss me with your brake lights
Fast enough to snap a knee cap
Reset my gait

This body is falling apart
Like an old Volkswagen in your dad’s front yard
All rust and ***** engine rumble
Even at red lights
We idle like earthquakes

Feels like a bike rider taking up his own lane
In front of you
Makes you nervous
It takes patience
Not to speed up
It takes patience to stay

Part2
She smiles like I am a child
Asking silly questions

Think softly she says

Your body is dust
Swirling in daylight
There is your rust in the soft glow
It is free
And you are alive

You are still like water
A steady current
Your body is fish and worms now
They move and eat
They are free
And they are alive

Your body is a furnace for glass blowers
The men inside make marbles
They are blue
And gold
And green
And warm

Let her hold you awkward now

You are free
And you are alive

She is dressed like an unmarked bottle of tequila
Smuggled and homemade

There's some dirt on your cheek
Leave it there
Out here looks good on you

There is the crunch and scrape
of dirt in the threading
little pebbles against my teeth

I spit them out onto a smooth portion of cement
Pray that in the blurr
I can read divinity
in the way the dirt falls

Another swig and I am heart heavy
Like scrap metal
and old houses
like fat sacks of glowing mercy

She smiles like a pipedream
of twisted shining copper

She speaks in head spin
This is what it feels like when god talks to you
without killing you

She says
You are not in the business of
feeling sorry for yourself

Name the year

This is the year of the shedding of weight
The year of the cutting in half
The year of shaking the dust
From the fragile places
Wiping the dirt from the threading
even if you have to use your own mouth
so you can finally seal yourself
without worrying if it will hurt this time

The year of hotmess
And young love
The year of leaving
This is the year
Not where everything is lost
But a new lightness is gained
In the way you can walk away

So pull your heart out from the rubble
of the past

This is the year of being charming
The year of fist fights and no regrets
The year where you finally understand
what it means to be honest

This is the year of shaking the dust

This body is a memory
Like a phantom ache
For fingertips
For lips
For fists

There was the rug-burn

I sleep most comfortably on my belly
Shirtless
No blanket

From when he brought the belt loop
Buckle pinching neck
The carpet not as soft
As curls of fabric
Felt like razorblades and fire
Skin so red and raw
Window open it cooled me like a slow breath
On tomato soup
There were days my body looked like tomato soup

This body is a memory
For the soft against my chest
Puzzle piece breath
In the ways I want to fit

I want to taste your mouth like a cannibal
Lips so full of blood I want to bite them

Some days I want you to single cell me
For simply the fight and the ****

This body is a memory
A gentle tickle
Some things I’d rather forget
Phone book bruises
Elbow torque and knuckle gut

Some things I strive to remember
Beer breath kisses
Head on chest
Hold you like an embarrassed birthmark
Because I don’t want my arm to fall asleep
But I don’t want to move you either

If you arrive here
You will show up laughing
like a sigh
Headshake and shiver

It tastes bitter on your tongue
The last poem you will ever speak
When catching your breath is like praying backwards
Pulling heaven back inside of yourself
A struggle for composure before you lose it all

There is a man or woman
That looks like you
With a chest like a tree trunk
So heavy
And a stomach that rumbles
A body so empty

It asks of you everything
So you place before it
All that you have
Which it devours
Bits of all you’ve ever had
Confetti burst from the corners of its mouth
And then it asks for more
Until there is only you and it

With nothing left
You place its fingers into its mouth
It eats its own arm
Then the other arm
Then both legs

You watch it eat
Sounding so satisfied
It hums and drools
And bleeds to death

You catch your breath
You are alone in this place
So you laugh
And the sound of it startles you
An echo inappropriate
When you find this funeral funny

You pick it up
And sling it over your shoulder
Limp like a flower sack
Like a bag of potatoes

You tell yourself you are just going to bury it
And at the same time wonder
Why you didn’t walk away

The dust settles on your bare back while you sleep. Sometimes tries to bond back to the skin, but in the morning you shake it again as you rise. It shimmers in the sunlight like smoke. Though patternless, it does not look lost.

It sits nearly weightless in your palm
Hold it like a bible
with the page already marked in your head that you want to share
Like that page contains the only truth that you know

The closest to a magic wand you will ever get to
The only spell your voice
Speak honest
While words are still meant for this
Your mouth a shotgun for my tracks

Now dance

Follow my lead
Pick up your phone
And call someone

Pick one

1
While you were still earth
And I was still earth
And the thought of us
Sounded like a 4 year old learning to whistle
We had no stake
Just a note in the background of breath and baby teeth
You make me so happy
Your parents ****** on the day they did
2
If you were to die in any way
I want you to know
I have already planned your eulogy
It is simple
My name is Jonathen Hal Tobias
And this empty case of skin and bone
Formerly housed
The best friend I have ever had in my life
3
Your belly is a blackened furnace
Full of soot and sawdust
It is love the way it keeps me warm
And I will leave my hands near it
The distance of a magic spell for fire
My skin
Until there is no more sawdust
Until there is no more love
Until I have to warm my hands with breath
And press them against your cold black
Do you feel that?

4
Whatever you say
Through satellite
Over airwaves

Know your voice passes through stars
And metal
And microchips
And speaker

There is tongue
And breath and lips
Your heart when you’re honest

When words were meant for this
And your mouth a shotgun for my tracks

On the end table by the bed
A tiny Styrofoam cup
Full of unwrapped candy

In child’s writing
All caps and struggle

HAPPY HALLOWEEN
I AM SORRY
MOM

It is hard to stay angry
When you have an imagination

I picture her at a round table
******* a hospital bracelet

There are other people with her
Some have construction paper
Some have glue
There is glitter
And painted fingertips

I still get homesick
For places I have never been to
Sometimes miss people
I never even knew

There is a city inside my chest
It bustles
Pre pollution
But ***** is still legal

I have made homes there
You have a home here
In a city with
No hospitals
No graveyards
Just a cul-de-sac that starts at my throat
And double loops along my lungs
So many streets
My chest x-rays look like upside-down trees without the leaves

And when you leave
There is a house
Inside the city inside my chest
That stays empty forever

So much left behind
There is no room for anger to stay long

It exits like forgiveness
When you’ve given up all hope
When you can only reimagine so much

Some of these homes are condemned

Though it is hard to stay angry

Every day as the sun rose
the sand sparkled like broken glass and salt

The ocean saw how the sand sparkled
and collapsed on top of it
A steady hush and hiss with every attempt
No one ever wondered why the ocean sounded like that
Like a fatigued Darth Vader

The ocean was sick
The ocean felt lonely
It is hard to have a body that big
to ever feel full

One day people came to swim
They did not swim like the animals did
The animals swam naturally
No one ever notices the way their own blood
pumps inside their veins
so much that they are happy being alive

The people splashed awkward
Stood sometimes letting their toes
graze the sea floor
This made the sea happy
But the people who were not of the sea
grew tired
and started for the sand

The sea became upset that they were leaving
and created a wave so big
it pulled the people back inside of it
A crash that sounded like lung cancer
A heave skipping the heart a beat
One that begs for any kind of breath

The ocean felt the people splashing hard
Fighting for land
It felt good

Eventually
They slowed
Gave up
And drowned

The ocean was lonely again

It calmly wheezed
at the shiny sand

Even in complete darkness
there is no chance

Beer and benedyrl
like a pink and white bumble bee sting
only adds to the heaviness

So I do what used to help
Think about what my arms are missing

back of neck
a stomach
and my fingertips in slow circles

The weight against me

Right now I feel that heavy

In times like this
the only way to fall asleep
is to give up entirely that you are going to sleep

Then morning comes
and so does rest

In the darkness of the living room
the street light breaks through the blinds

He sleeps on the couch
A flannel blanket so small
every night is a decision
Shoulders?
Or feet?

I give him a fresh diaper
and light him a smoke

Tonight
before bed
he tells me a story
the only one I have ever heard from him
about the war

His best friend was named Mike
Mike got sick
Fever and blood in every cough

"I kept telling him everything was going to be okay"
He said
"but he kept asking me to leave him
Said to just send his wife a letter.
I never found any letter.
I wrote one later as if were him"

"I found him one morning
Cut his own throat"

My father's gone through five cigarettes by now

He lays down
covers his feet tonight

"When you're a burden to the people you love
it is okay to give up
That is what I am trying to tell you boy"

Just like that
he gave up

I am not saying my father was a good man
But in the end
I forgive him
for everything

Part 1
"How about some long beautiful hair" the Santa says
The little girl rubs her head bald and veiny
She looks like a baseball

"No. It doesn't get in my eyes anymore when I play basketball" she says

The bunch of us
Sunken eyed and balding
In wheelchairs and on crutches
Some of us holding our I.V. stands for support

I can only imagine how the Santa feels
The tiniest zombies
All waiting for a turn

Me
I have silver caps on my top front teeth
And dentures
Look like an old Cadillac
Insides all rust and rumble

We all want to know if we were good this year

Part 2
Cut to the bunch of us
Watching the Blue Angels air show

All getting pictures with a man dressed as Shamu
He is supposed to write something on the backs of all the pictures

I try to imagine
What you could possibly write
To a group of kids that looked like us

Each photo
In shaky black ink
Because whales aren’t prehensile

He writes
I love you

Part3
When the circus came to the hospital
We all gathered on a balcony
The news was there

Clowns painted our faces

I asked if they had room for me
Told them I could be like that guy
From the 007 movies
With the silver teeth that could bite really big stuff

They said I might miss my folks
I told them I wouldn’t
Then took off my gown
To show them my scars

They weren’t impressed

Ever since I’ve wanted to join the circus

Part 4
Despite our qualifications
We could not join the circus

But that is okay
All we wanted really
Was to know if we were good
And that somebody loved us

We were
And somebody did

It feels like the right kind of leaving
Like the end of a movie
Late at night
And secretly
I wish we didn’t have a destination

With her in the front seat
Him and his boyfriend in the back
They sleep
To the elevator music of my generation

White noise wind
Adds static
Like cards in the spokes of a bike
All spades and hearts
In the blur they dig sometimes

How this feels right now
Is like riding a bicycle
And a man in a car slaps your ***
As the car drives by

It is how life pats you one the back
Good job
But keep going
This **** hurts sometimes

It is a 25 mile an hour slap to the ***

After everything
And all the places I could be right now

It is why I got us lost I think
In the need for no destination

But right here

The apartment still smells new
It’s all new
Save for my dad’s recliner
That no one sits in
Not even my dad
But in that corner
It smells like our old place

It feels *****
When I sit in it

At the dinner table
It is in the second thing I open
In a birthday card
A note from my sister

“I know your a grown up and your still here. I just don’t want you to hold back on your dreams because of us. I want you to write books and people read them. I want one day for you to walk down the street and for someone to stop you and say hey you wrote my favorite book. I don’t want you to think you are leaving us behind because you are not. I don’t want you to stay because you think you are gunna miss is us growing up like when I go to prom or if you need to beat up a boy who hurt me cause you can do that from a distance while living out your dreams. I want you to travel the world and for your hand to break from signing books. So live your life with no regrets.
Happy Birthday Jon
Emily”

It doesn’t matter now
That mom is gone
Or if dad dies soon

I can leave

No regrets

Forever from now, after we are dead and gone, scientists will x-ray our bodies. They will see the way our backbones sit behind our breastplates. Our chests will resemble busted church gates. Any soul big enough to do that to a body is ******* beautiful.

The ticket stall is empty
Sunlight bounces off the pavement
And reflects off the double doors

There are no posters in the frames

In my town
Most places are too cold for pretend

Against the white
In thick black letters
The headlining show
“Theater Closed Broiler Broken”

Bored at work
I take a razor to a white eraser

I slice an x down the marble white
So sharp the lines are invisible
Until I bend it

It will take much friction to hide what I did
But if I am too rough
It will break

The backyard is the smallest dead wheat field
Raccoons visit without fear

I come to leave food for my cats
Who I could not take with me
They already act like they don’t know me

I punch a hole in a wall
To make this place look more deserted

The giant broken window
The toilets filled with **** and bleach
Because the water stopped
The cigarettes in the driveway

I’ve never abandoned anything before

It feels like a place where bad memories come to pray
Like weeds finding life in deserted places

You make lists
Giving yourself reasons to come back
The bedroom fan
The screws for the bed frame
The beer in the fridge
To leave the cats food and fresh water

To pray in a church
By punching holes in walls till I uncover an answer

Outside
Raccoons are waiting
For the food to be left alone

Willie has an awkward gait
Looks like a man
Who can keep steady under the table
Wipes sweat off his face
With a spare shirt hanging from his back pocket
He walks heavy on one side because of calcium deposits in his knee
He’s a veteran he says

Still has his New York accent
He’s a man who looks like he’s seen some ****

You think you were living in a slum
Only two people stayed at the place I lived at
In New York
People prove they resilience

I help him lift a dresser

Gimme a sec man
Not that I don’t have strength
I’m jus getting old

We take our time
Paced steps
I give him a beer

I thank him for his help

When I heard the story and saw your brother and dad
My heart broke
Then I saw you
And it gave me hope

I am just glad things got a bit better
I say

He shows me his hands
He holds them like he is miming half opening a book
It is “Boat” in sign language

You’re always in good hands

I laugh

He wants me to believe him

It’s time to move the couch
I say

There must have been at least a couple hundred pounds of it
All trash
All things to let go

I find pens
A glittery black heart shaped paddle from Halloween
Old poetry
Stories
Photos
A set of drums

This how you body-bag your excess
Give your heart fat a proper burial

It is shedding weight

Take what you need
Take what you need
Enough so not sticking around is easy

I have a runaway pipe-dream
That in the telling
I have whiskey lung
And a voice like carnival gravel
Like semi-ground teeth in a bag you hold on your tongue

A comic strip hobo
With a stick and a red rag

Fresh starts imply shaking dead weight
That includes people

So much **** gone
**** I never needed
And was never going to use
But I was living with it

Norm sits in his honda. He has whisky breath so ***** he feels it change the color of his teeth as he breathes. His voice has become all gravel from a circus pipe-dream about how he'll leave here one day. He feels it like rusty train tracks tracing his bones. It itches his joints, the rusting. He starts the ignition and heads home.

Jonathen
Jonathen wake up

She stands in my doorway
Green knitted scarf
***** pink pajamas
Eyes and skin jaundiced yellow
A ***** Babushka if I were Russian

If this were a movie I'd be cursed by now

There is a man with a shopping cart in the driveway
I think he's trying to break in*

With my baseball bat
I step outside full of all the anger I had reserved for the day

The street is empty and cold

It's the fear
We make it up
We always do

As we walk to my best friend's house
My brother and I cross a bridge

He suddenly walks slowly
Like a penguin with a hunchabck
Closes his eyes a little
Steps towards the street

Tells me he is afraid of heights

I hold his 711 bag
And press my hand to his boney spine

We cross

When I can read
I am going to move to New York
Live in an apartment til I can buy a house

Toffer lived in New York
You should ask him about it

It snows there

I don't ask him about how he'll pay for it
All he need is to know how to read
Everything else falls into place after that

I believed in the easter bunny
And Santa
And god

There was chocolate in  church grass
A gift under a tree
And I pray when I am helpless

And one day you find out the truth
Realize parents are good at keeping secrets from you

Then they do things
Like drink themselves to near-death
Fall apart

And you see they are not superheroes
Thery're human

Makes me understand what it is to be a man

Vera once told me Mickey Mouse used to be a bisexual
That she can’t have kids
That I should never get old
But if I do
Don’t get diabetes because
Sugar free chocolate doesn’t taste nice

Her hair has that blue hue
Almost purple
It brings out her eyes

Her voice
When it is not overpowered by her walker
Is smooth and sure
Like sandpaper on velvet
She talks like she is already a ghost

I had a dog when I was younger
And he got sick one day
Really he got old
Something about his liver
And he started to bleed out from the inside
I asked the vet if he was in pain
He said no
Basically he got really tired
So he thought it was time to take a nap
And he went to his place
And never woke up
That’s a nice way to die

She smiles at me
I give her change
For the diapers
And the sugar free chocolate
And the 16 ounce bottle of orange juice

I touch her hand
It feels like that one time
Paper tried to be human
And begged you to play along

I played along

I don’t want her to die
But she’s 93
She’s cool with that

She tells good stories
And I know I won’t see her one day
I’m cool with that

I get so lost some days
I feel like I am rubbernecking lightning
Just waiting for the flash

And life is a Nissan brake-checking your awe

People say you can tell how close the storm is
By counting seconds between lightning and thunder
If you can see it
It is always close enough

I don't mean to romanticize everything
But it's what I do

The clouds look like scabs
In front of some bolts
Before they mesh back into the smooth blackness

I wish I healed that fast

I want to know if a venti
Will hold a tall can for my jog home

As I type the word “how” into my phone
Recent searches pop up
Only one starting with the word how

“How do I know if I am having a heart attack”

I skip the beer and run
Until my heart beats so much warm blood into my face
I feel the pump in my lips

If only someone had kissed me just then

Too much change
Is bad for your heart
Weighs heavy in your thin places
Like locking your throat
While the bags under your eyes
Pull their draw strings shut to keep all that trash in

No one wants to know what your ***** laundry smells like
Not even you

And so much this feels like stepping into yesterday
Wearing brand new shoes
Where no matter what
The only thing I could have done differently is walk away

You give yourself lists
Of I can leave after
I fix the car
And throw away all our old stuff
After mom comes home sober but still broken
There will always be something or someone
You forgot to fix

But you will walk away from this
It will feel like heaven
Leaving all the dirt behind

Only heaven is more or less a line of people
Wondering if they turned their stoves off or not

A long time ago
Unicorns roamed the earth

They were ugly
And dumb
And did not know fear
Did not feel the need to use their horns for anything

They were fat
They smelled bad
Like an open wounded staph infection

They did not even taste good
To other animals or humans

But there was this boy who loved to watch them graze with his pet turtle Rusty
He watched and listened

The Unicorns did not neigh so much as they screamed high pitch and breathy
Into each other’s mouths
They made no sense
It was beautiful to him that things that made no sense
Could exist without reason
And there be nothing wrong with that

Rusty would walk around them
A turtle’s pace
And graze
Occasionally bite at an ankle
It made him feel strong
To cause such a big animal pain
And slink away unscathed
No one will ever see the way such a proud turtle walks
As the way Sparky did
Head so high
His neck did not look like ******* skin

The boy also watched them die
Watched as the men in his tribe led them to a nearby valley
Where they would smash the unicorn’s head in with rocks
The animals just stood there
Not understanding what was being done to them

The boy felt like a unicorn then
When his father hit him
He felt dumb
Dumb in the heart
Dumb in the brain
Dumb in the body
For continuing to stay

The boy cried as the last unicorn died
His father said that soon everyone would forget that something so ugly lived
The boy understood
So he went to nearby caves
Where all the gay tribe boys go
Because in hunter gatherer societies
Boys who did not work were gay
They did what makes them happy
That is why it is called gay

In the caves he would draw the unicorns
He made them beautiful
And intelligent
With blood that healed wounds
And horns that if stabbed you
Would cause the most beautiful death

When all this ugly is gone
People will tell stories about us

Some things don't hit you


                                                       til you tell somone else.              
                                                      
                                                              "She's
                                                                      never
                                                                                  coming
                                                                                                 back."

First draft of a short story. Check it. Lame title. Having no internet ***** until you use your new found time to do stuff like write. Who'd of thunk? Should have time to perouse soon. ;-{)

http://normanshine.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/new-heaven/

With love they still wilt

                          
                                                                It's okay to let them go



                            
                                                                                                                                Plants don't have feelings

On most days I feel like a cave on the outskirts of a small town in Iowa. A lonely hermit lives there. The cave is a body of tunnels. Some have lanterns waiting to be lit. The hermit lives somewhere in the center. Sometimes the children who have made up stories about the hermit visit the mouth. Full of fear, they yell into it. Yell, "Hello! Are you there?". After a moment of silence their own echos bounce back and startle them. Realizing he is not real, the children laugh. Their laughter fills the small tunnels, and the sound makes the hermit happy. On most days my body is heavy with that sound.