What is Life?

Life is getting out of bed tired this morning, snailing to the bathroom, and finding out that my sister has left the top of the toothpaste ***** again. Life is drinking orange juice with that toothpaste taste still in my mouth.
Life is driving to school and missing the right ramp to get off of the highway.
It is cussing loudly in an empty car.

Life is coasting down the highway in between two huge, Moses-parting-the-red-sea, concrete walls.

It is reminiscing about magnificent popsicles from the ice cream man.
Life is realizing how ***** the ice cream man’s van really was.
Life is being that one kid whose dad bought him a pink bike at a garage sale.
Life is losing the reader before the poem even began.

Life is “Santa clause is real but not in the way you thought he was.”
Life is always being too obvious or being inscrutable.
Life is having a correct answer on a test then changing it.

I look out the window and see the night sky —millions of blinking glass shards on black pavement.
Life is craving to drive on that endless milky road instead of the road you are driving on to get to your school at three o’clock in the morning.
Life is driving an extra ten minutes because you missed that exit on the highway.
Life is the High School Cafeteria.
Life is your best friend who stabs you in the back.
No it’s not, life is like not having any best friend in the first place but telling your parents you do.
Life is arriving at school and entering through a pre-opened window in the dark then climbing through the vents in order to break into the math office to steal the semester exam answers.
Life is stopping - and turning back at the last minute and driving home to probably fail the test and class the next day.
Life is the divorce rate in America.
Life is the same boring start of a line over and over again.
Life is people politely nodding and saying “Yah” even if they couldn’t understand what you said.
Life is teens throwing handfuls of coins at each other’s (parents’) cars for fun at the stop light before getting on to the highway.
Life is the beggar watching them from the side of the street in the cold.

Life is not noticing that there are a lot of cars on the highway at this time of night.
Life is driving home at four o’clock in the morning.
Life is imagining your warm bed while you drive.
Life is breathing more slowly.
Life is the mellow rhythm of the highway humming underneath your wheels.
The music rocks on “Life is life, na na na na na.”
Life is soul-stirring music making you tired.
Life is a small brook bubbling silently through some far away woods.
Life is closing your eyes while driving for only three seconds.

I **** my eyes open just as sheets of heat from the air conditioning cover my body.

Life is the confidence that you can stay awake with your eyes shut for longer this time.
It is closing your eyes for 6 seconds. Then another 6 seconds.
Life is the reader knowing that you will close your eyes for 6 seconds a third time. It is them reading on excitedly.
Life is splattered all over the side of the highway.
Then life is the traffic flying past the spotless side of the highway the next day.

“What is life?”

Life is the disappointing last line of a poem.

Have you ever held your hand still
Just above a river’s passing water
Liquid rushing by reaching for your skin
Jumping up; eager to commune with you
Beckoning you to dip a finger in

My senses reel with every beautiful memory of shining summer days when I see her face.
There is nothing magic about the sunrise in perspective. Hours like stones tied to my back, and I trudge up this hill of regret, trying to fulfill some penance. The venom lies spill into my ear. One more hour, one more stone, and I am breaking slowly. What balm can soothe this, for I would go beyond the sea to find such. I would lay it upon crushed velvet at your feet and cry pardon. But I have nothing, just one more hour,  one more stone. I will look to the east and dream of days gone by, of your laughter sweet and the dawn, and hope that once more the star will rise.

There wasn't much in there, the ancient lawn mower a few other forgotten things. In came a few rotted chairs pock marked with holes, and the transformation to a palace was complete. We held court in green cloth robes all around like fairy wisps. We emblazoned our names upon the rusty sheet metal ," this will be here forever." I said. Forever is a cruel joke, 20 years or 2000, it makes no difference. and now in the palace where my fathers tools lay rusted and ramshackle, do I reminisce of days gone by, scrawl my name upon the wall anew. Oh my kingdom, my kingdom for that shed.

Guttural screams and the ****** beating churns all the more.
Walking west into the dying light, shadows linger about waiting to seize the Earth in their pseudo claws.
Twenty three miles to the next roadside solace, oasis of vending machine illumination,
the sickly sweet scent of ***** and pine trees, tall in the valley.
A symphony of dusk plays all around, echoes drive the wanderer ever forward, beyond the thin fabric of the known,
just outside the small town, big city, back yard chaos.
Letting the cards fall, jack of spades pops out his proud visage, lays in waiting to slay the king of diamonds and run with his rusted red crown. These are the dreams that stalk his mind, the arrowhead of onyx stone, seeking out the stag's flesh...
Awakes beneath a jagged tin roof on a bed of dead brown needles, damp from the night's war...
shadows are losing their grip as new life rises, standing with creaking joints, sore eyes.
Healing blisters in his worn down dime store boots that cling once more to the asphalt ,cool with the morn's wet kiss.
Nicotine courses through the veins alongside interstate twenty, as the faint remains of ash float over the lips to open air.
Once more the chatter falls silent, the invisible waves of a billion words gone as the road stretches out, mountains rise in the distance and there God sits, waiting...

If you wake tomorrow with
bruises blooming purple-yellow
across your knees
lungs stinging fuchsia  
muscles coiled tight and red
only to find you’ve run out of tiger balm
and friendly shadows have grown long
in the distance of years and the unknown

read a poem

Sift through the smoking ashes
of countries lost, rooms emptied, songs forgotten
breathing verdant sparks into the rotten chambers
of your heart. Poetry is soul kissing,
holy sinners meeting palm to palm
under the wild banners of longing
waving, aching and strong.

I work poetry into my pains
through my fingers, onto the page.