And if I saw you
Standing in the pouring rain in the dead of night,
Shakingly anxious for a midnight train,
That speeding, steel pill that will
Relieve you of all your pain,
Would you remember my name?
Or would you make like the rain,
And fall away again?

And when you reach your final destination,
When that platform creaks under
Your thirsty boots at that nameless station,
As the fog moves to embrace you and
You feel the great feeling, a mighty vibration
Of a heavy railroad monster
Abandoning you at some remote location,
Will my eyes creep into your imagination?
Or is the past on permanent vacation?

And when you’re finally alone,
Silently, painfully alone,
You will crack open that dusty luggage,
You will begin to aimlessly rummage,
But will you see my picture
Tacked inside your suitcase?
And furthermore,
Will you recognize me?
Will you recognize my face?
The color that my hair really was that day?
Or was that such a different place,
A completely different time and space,
That my smile, once occupying your heart,
Might as well have been born into some
Nonexistent place?
Will you ever remember those days?
Or are they gone without a trace?

Heavy-hearted,
Heavy-browed,
Self-conscious,
Snapping pictures,
Struggling to say ‘please’.
Too tall,
Not tall enough,
Thin enough,
Not thin at all.
Crooked smile,
Goofy grin now and then,
Born with a heart that
Skips a beat now and then,
Demure, quiet, shy to speak,
Short attention span,
Stories that could fill a book,
But the kind that one skims
For recipes, dusty, in a kitchen nook.
Never been a statue,
Never been a muse,
Comes with a deep stillness that
She has no clue how to use.
Lost,
Found,
True and tried,
Dark-eyed,
Weary-minded,
Trying to be kind,
Trying to find the time,
Having nothing but time,
Time after time.
Long feet, long toes,
Long fingers, long hair,
Long time coming,
Long time leaving.
Stumbling over the long feet,
Stumbling over a small vocabulary,
Wearing a peace sign at the neck
Like it’s mandatory.
Tattoos,
Taboos,
She’ll remember you,
But you’ve gotta impress her
For her to recall your name too.
No dark without some kind of light,
Barefoot in the dead of night,
Or dead of noon,
Barefoot anytime feels alright.
Lyrics and strings,
Colors and wishing she could sing,
Hoop earrings and other pretty things;
Ins and outs,
Screams and shouts,
Awake and dreaming,
Asleep and living,
Taking it one day at a time,
Learning how:
To be healthier,
To be more productive,
To be better,
To be honest,
To be herself,
To laugh,
To forget,
To live,
To raise those heavy brows,
To yearn,
To show concern,
To love,
To learn.

It’s like how you
Can’t see the fireflies at noon,
Or how you think an
Ocean is amazing, until
It takes a life.
Or how we can be so distant
To those we say we love,
Only to part from them and
Find we can’t recall how
It feels to hold them close.
It’s like how, when you look
Up on a cloudy day,
It hurts worse than the sunshine,
And like how my trust
Doesn’t compare to his riches
When it comes
To your piece of mind.
Like how, when your love has parted,
And you try so **** hard
To season the heart that
Won’t stop aching, leaving you thinking:
“I will watch tonight, perchance
T'will walk again.”
It’s like how nobody will ever know
Why learning how to walk again
Is so much harder than it was at infancy.
It’s like how,
Even though an infant has no
Experience of the outside world,
Somehow, infancy is so much
Easier than adulthood.
That’s exactly how it is.

The snowflakes fell
Like talcum, softly, from a rusted tube.
Pure and silently, the
Pine trees shrugged
Against the blanket they were forced to hug-
Evergreen arms
Cut the blue sky and
The white clouds became gray,
And they cried.

As a mirror thrown against
A brick wall in the dark,
The wind blew harshly,
Demeaning,
Unforgiving,
Like tiny knives, tiny shards
Of broken glass, fast and hard.

Drops of dew looked up to the sky-
And now it is springtime;
Spring is the temple,
Love is a new day
To open your eyes and
Count the
Births,
And blooms,
And beginnings
And things.

The raindrops fell in a gentle mist,
Fat and slow,
Onto blades of dark green grass
And when they landed,
They kissed.

Light
Tangos on the tops of heads,
Perches in the hair like
Crown jewels,
Liquid like gold
Above faces of lovers-
Lovely, bright, and bold.
Births,
And blooms,
And beginnings,
And things.
And now it is springtime,
Stuck inside a blissful moment,
Snapping vintage photographs in
Hues of yellow and green,
Chartreuse, something in between-
Light falls down though eyelashes,
Dancing upon toes of shoes,
Hoping this moment doesn’t
End too soon.

"Are you alright?"
She asks,
That tell-tale look of
Worry, concern,
Maybe a little bit of love
Flooding her face-
Imagine:
A complexion gone tight,
A pulse skipping as quickly as
Young child in Brooklyn skipping
A rope in fright,
Waiting with anticipation for
The object above inching over
A skinny high-wire between
Two of those Brooklyn city towers,
Waiting to hear it, the thing, the
Invisible power!
Of-
Of a voice. And a smile.
And he smiles,
Drunk without a drop of the poison,
Wrapping an arm around her tired waist as
He gazes out at the city skyline,
Saying happily, "I'm fine."
Just like that he breaks the line,
Sets the hook-
And she falls from the high-wire
As if collapsing into a pile of leaves,
And she closes her eyes,
And she breathes.

I was thinkin’ about Colorado,
I was thinkin’ about Maine,
I was sitting in a Greyhound,
Trying to remember my name.

I must’ve been crazy
To do what I done-
It must’ve been a thrill,
It must’ve been fun.
To sit here in wonder,
To sit here in shame,
To try and forget you
Is like trying to forget my own name.

I was thinkin’ about Oklahoma,
I was thinkin’ about the law-
How one day you’re tall and
The next day you’re small and
How we never really knew each other,
After all.
I was thinkin’ about
Paint-by-number sunsets,
(Where Highway 9 meets 12th, looking west);
I was thinkin’ about saving people
And abandoning the rest,
About who I would choose,
And what I could afford to lose.

I was thinkin’ about sugar,
I was thinkin’ about spice,
I was considering how it ended:
Bitter… but nice.
I’d like to get to know this city,
Forget what I came to do,
And forget my name in a Greyhound
A time or two.
But a rose is a rose
By any other name,
So there’s no use pretending,
There’s no use shifting the blame.
I’m thinkin’ about a few more years
In Colorado or Maine-
Whether in crumbling mountains,
Or in dry, dusty plains…
Add on a few nameless nights
In some abandoned country bars,
Then it’s only six more steps
Straight upstairs to the stars.

O sad American night,
With her fingers stretching
O'er the fields, prairies, and streams-
O sad American night,
Falling on top of faces of
The poor, the helpless, and meek,
Hard-faced bretheren building
Houses and streets.
The lonely American night-
Quiet, wise, promising,
She allows her men, women, and children
The silent moment to think
Of future, getting out of this place;
When the sun rises, leaving this
Insufferable space.

Heavy American night,
Joining fellows around fires,
Whispering tales of hope,
The end of her people getting tired.
The night time,
Like hands covering eyes from behind,
Is clever,
And she disappears as a whisp of smoke.
So- lonely, angry, and forlorn are the realizers;
Blissful, unaware, joyful are the rest,
For those bretheren have not met
The underbelly of the beast,
And like a pool of tar is their current situation:
Sad, dark, and hopelessly infinite...
They shall forever have an ankle stuck in it.

---------------------------------------
7/21/2012

"... and as of yore, he too was telling his life story and never dreamed we were passing, at that exact moment in the highway headed for Mexico, telling our own stories. O sad American night!" -Jack Kerouac, On the Road.