I'd like to be able to write again, but the universe is turning too slow in the wrong direction.
My heart drips instead of duh-dums
And my breath slips.

Rhyming sticks to the top of my mouth catching grains of rhythm as I regurgitate yesterday's thoughts.

I haven't been able to write lately, not because I am a bumbling busy body, but because time is frozen, I'm cemented and dissolving into the tasteless air.
Everything is too colourful lately, too... anything for me to understand.

Maybe I should start reading again, go back to painting stale blue skeleton hands with not enough paint.

Maybe that's my problem... There's not enough paint in my life.

For my Pop Pop
I want to see you.
Even in your frailty
As your bones shake in the gentle wind like chimes
I want to be close to you.
Your flesh is nearly transparent
The veins in your face and the thinning of your silver hair
Make you look much older than the 71 years
That have left rings on your skin.
Some say you were a poor father
And an even poorer husband.
You never got along with my aunt
Your daughter
Your beam of light shining through the sidewalk cracks
And she began to shine for other people
But her brightness reflected off of ice
And I know her coldness is not merely human nature.
Pop Pop, why were you always so kind
To my sister and me?
It's like we thawed your hardened spirit
So we could see the softness lying underneath.
Funny how it's just natural
For a three year-old and a newborn to make a grown man crumble.
I don't want to think about the fact that you may never walk again
Because your disease can never steal where we've been
Although, perhaps mundane
Steak-and-Shake, our rented condo,
And plenty of barbecue spare rib joints later
All meant the world to me.
I wish I could say something other than
The last time I saw you was on my sixteenth birthday.
It's been over a year since you stayed in the Sunshine State
And I traveled home to my garden
Pop Pop, it was hard as the years went by
The only way we got to know you was through $20 gift certificates
And the static on the other end of the telephone
On birthdays and holidays.
I wish I had called you more
Because now it's hard for you to speak.
Daddy said you had a shotgun subtlety when you spoke
"How bout them Phillies?"
"Oh....the cancer spread."
"Have you been to a game in a while?"
Pop pop, now I'm the one who's shotgun subtle
"How's the hospital food?"
I'm scared I won't get to see you
"How are you feeling?"
I'm scared you won't get better
I love you, Pop.
*I'm scared.

Whose gun is at your head?
Tomorrow I graduate,
And feast on my heart; they're giving it back.
Only small parts though...
Freedom is not exactly free.

As I tick through a day that doesn't feel
     R. E. A. L.
I'll remember a time when eating clocks
Was a delight
And night never came
Because time never sung.

But what will tomorrow bring?
The final burst of detrimental metaphors and acidic teachers egos,
Who depend on a pay package
"Not enough" for their knowledge.
They should've stayed human.

I wince as the cogs twist
And an ever continuing robotic system
Chomps down on thousands of more souls.

And I beg for new a freedom.

Whose gun is at your head?

I have more than just flames,
Flickering on the tips of my fingers;
Underneath and above the edge of the world
I will dance, similar to the way wind creates wars between the leaves.
A melancholy dawn to new days; and the fear of uncertainty
Rumbles through you, shattering all your teeth.
I will pour you another cup of tea,
From my psychedelic purple cat face teapot containing a stopped clock,
We will sit silently on the brink of disaster
As we always have... and something beneath us will laugh.

Limp, lifeless and longingly dry.
Like the packet of crumpets I lost to mould last week
The rot finds it place under my tongue.
I toy with ideas that maybe anger
Is the reason waves erode sandbanks
And the turbulent wind is why walls like us crumble...

T   U   R   B   U   L   A   N   C   E

The ambiguity of what happens now rings loud and clear
As another fear added to a never ending list.
Professionals would have a field day and a whole new genre within me.
But that's conformity.

The cavern with which my mind resides is dark
Chaotic and violent to say the least.
Self preservation is a fantasised option only present in the books
Surfing the stale wind inside my mind.

If you wanted normality it's taken you two years to undiscover it.

I'll beg each and every second for you to never leave the park bench
That sits across from me staring at everything behind.
I'd give all my soul, dreams and whatever hopes I think I have
To know that you're going to stay in my mind with me forever.

I'd give my heart just to know that you'll stay mine forever.

I had never thought about little things until now, until I had become displaced and detached. Little things like the scratch of grass against bare feet and the little crunch noise that undoubtedly breaks the blades of grass... But natures green carpet always bounces back immediately. Perhaps the noise of tree branches, being tangled, tortured and embraced by strong southerly winds in the middle of a steaming hot summer, should have held more importance to me back home. The art of appreciation and great-fullness  is so easily lost amongst the concepts of time, greed and the incomprehensible human need to succeed.