Sketchpad sans the sketches.
Instead, let the breeze ****** you.
Faded yellow, dusty lime, seventies orange flowers zooming in and out at you.  

Naked, bland eyes,
grainy, grease-skin,
too tight of pants and cold feet.
Shudder on the precipice.  

Who were the main characters in my life?

With the right light,
natural ponds of blue,
young-maiden skin,
loose skirt and **** feet
jumping off the precipice.

Fine arts is my major in school...I have enjoyed art, photography and of course writing ever since I was young; and I still do... I know this may sound odd but no matter the form of art; even if its just scribbled notes I keep all my rough drafts... My mom she calls me the "paparazzi" of the family...I am always snapping picture... Can you believe I have over 900  and counting; notebooks, sketchpads, and loose-leaf binders full of all my ideas, sketches and odd thoughts that may pop in my head?.. I've been collecting since I was 6 years old.... ART; any type was and still is my passion today...  I try to carry a notebook, sketchpad and my camera everywhere I go to jot down or capture the little things that come to my mind.... Sometimes my notes don't even make a bit of since but it is the creativity I put into them that makes it fun.... When ever I feel I've hit a writers or artist BLOCK I go through my notebooks.  I'm always seeing something inspiring that may take me to another world of imagination. I think I could probably write a book or two with all the thoughts I've collected..
Yep That's Me ... LadyBird

“There is a bitter sting to reality, an unfairness to it all.” These words echo in the young boys ears. Holding what is left of his sanity, he traces the damage; rubbing the now forming bump on his forehead. Fingers circle the discolored flesh then press hard against it till he winces in a jagged remembrance.

He still feels the full force of her bible belt beating down upon him. Open hands smacking him with the made up words of her own book of revelations.

“And the dead shall rise. To feast upon the unclean. “She ranted.

Now, the yellow superhero tee comes off slowly enough. She has stretched the neck of his favorite shirt. Of course he is partly to blame. He never should have had a favorite shirt. He tries to swallow, but his nerves force him to take two swallows for one. The first one descends halfway down his throat.  Catching his anxious breath the second swallow finally goes all the way, followed by a trickle of blood.

“It is what it is.” He thinks.

With soft poet hands he pulls a different shirt from the closet. His brown hair slides messily from the neck hole as the red wool rolls gently over is sore skin providing a small degree of comfort. Then he put his long goofy looking brown and darker brown jacket on.

“I’m done” he mumbles to himself, as he stuffs his journal, sketchpad, the book he is currently reading, and an extra set of cloths in his black back pack.

The white window pane vibrates with October winds. He slides it open, shimmying over and out into the frigid autumn night. A shiver crosses his skin. Then he closes the window as quietly as possible to avoid any more drama. His sad eyes scan the night trying to decide which direction is the right way for him to run away in. With no indication of which way will work best for him he turns left and starts walking.

A mile down the road he stumbles upon the remains of a partly chewed up possum. Empty eyes point deeply into the pine forest. The moist matted fur almost matches the road’s color perfectly.  Dark dry stains mark the grey road. Chunks of slimy viscera lay displayed from the flayed features of the decomposing creature.

In the distance he hears the howls of teenage boys.
“A bunch of screaming fools ******* around,’ he thinks. “I don’t need this ****.”

So, he turns off the road and heads into the trees. Brown pine needles break under his feet. The soft forest bed gives slightly beneath his treads leaving little footprints. As he scans the ground he notices that the earth is swimming with strange footprints.

With a little daylight left he finds the perfect spot to stop. A tree plays backboard to his tense and tired frame as he sits down to rest.

His mind turns to dreams of love. A female figure fills his thoughts. She is dark and lights. Pale skin, leather jacket, with raven black hair that shimmers in the night sparkling with the energy of infinity. She moves with all the destructive grace of Kali. She is a frozen skin scythe less death; Hopes and wonders mixed in with nightmare prophecies. Doom pervades his soul. He feels perfectly alone with no hope.

Which means it is the perfect time to write a poem. One line flits past then the next till almost the whole page is filled. Then he rewrites copying and improving. Till two pages later he is finally fixing the finished draft.

With the last bits of daylight he completes the poem’s final lines. Shivering and exhausted he decides it is time to find a place to sleep. He packs his backpack with all the finesse of a ninety year ******* boy and heads out into the night.

Suddenly he senses something moving behind him. A shadow crosses his path. Panic seizes him. Shady black tendrils run across the ground followed by the sounds of strangers moaning. He runs. The moonlight flickers fast behind the fading pines as he quickens his pace.
He stumbles into a clearing where the ground is punctuated by broken stones and white marble dust. Small monuments stand marking the past. Somewhere slightly off to the side a Sepulcher sits as a testament to a hundred years of death.

“How perfectly macabre, I’m in a cemetery at night in the bitter cold.” He thinks

The earth shifts and swirls beneath his feet like quicksand. Losing his footing he falls backwards. The contents of his backpack scatter haphazardly across the disturbed dirt.

A thin hand pierces the brown ground. Then an arm makes its way writhing from the soil searching for something. Boney fingers feel around until they fall upon a pen and paper. The pen scratches furiously on the pad.

The young man stutters trying to make out the horrible handwriting.

“g-g-get of-f-f m-m-y head.”

The earth tremors beneath his feet, causing him to jump back in fear. Then a skull ascends. Empty sockets stare menacingly at him. More of its body rises, until the full corpse form is free. The wind whistles through the rotten frame. The monstrosity turns his head and heads away. Shambling off into the night to frighten someone else.

A sigh of relief escapes the young man’s lips. His heart slows to a normal rhythm. The blank October sky fills his eyes. He laughs in gratitude, deciding to find a better spot to settle for the night.

Then a jaw chomps down on his skull. Rotten teeth shatter but the bony mouth still pierces his noggin. Red droplets drip soaking the journal pages. The poet screams. His voice fades slowly away, as he struggles. Dying in agony he becomes a feast for the undead horde. The red splattered page reads---




The Graveyard Poet
He walks without sleep
Restless and awake burning inside
With all of the secrets he keeps
His pen and his paper
Lay softly on broken ground
The dead are his keepers
Their stones stand scattered all around
So he put his pen to paper
Ink is turned to flesh
The words bleed into
Each other and start to mesh
Thus the graveyard poet is born
He writes with passion
His mind becomes a storm
His body begins to feel numb
But his heart is so warm
On and on from dusk till dawn
Words erupt from the poets pen
Still the cold bites bitterly
He stops only to turn the page and write again
Hours come and go in a blur
Until he can’t move his arm
Even he is unsure
Of what is wrong
His eyelids grow heavy
And soon he is asleep
Rest peacefully young poet
Now your secrets are mine to keep

day 1: today i found out about the machines. sometimes i can feel your hand in mine. you used to grab it and pull, like you couldn't go as fast as you wanted to without taking me with you. war is never pretty, but you sure are. were. you were pretty. i still remember the last time i saw you.

day 2: do you remember when our names were joined together? people used to spit them out in one go, 'cause there wasn't a day either of us went somewhere without the other. they don't do that anymore. wish you were here.

day 3: i had a dream about you last night. i still can't feel my left arm. i miss you.

day 4: they're working on building machines that look and act like people. maybe i was a test drive. i still miss you.

day 5: i remembered something today (this is rare for me. if you were here i'd tell you why). you used to curve around your sketchpad, like it was a part of you. one night (june. i don't remember the year) i traced your spine and you shivered. i think about that a lot. i'm not sure why.

day 6: i miss you.

day 7: i love you.

day 8: remember our old bean plant we had growing in the windowsill? you used to fuss over it so much. (i used to fuss over you so much, too, but to be fair you're slightly more important than a bean plant. slightly.) you wasted a summer's worth of water on that **** thing, and never regretted it once.

day 9: we used to fold into each other during brooklyn winters, when the heat cut out and we had nothing but each other. now i just have nothing.

day 10: i can't get drunk now, either.

day 11: i saw my gravestone today. yours is right next to it, did you know that? they're both empty. they never found our bodies.

day 12: monochromia. that's what you had. i wonder if it went away after. you never saw colors and i saw too many.

day 13: i dreamt about you last night again. i've been remembering more. it's slow, but steady. fragments of memories every day. maybe one day i'll remember it all.

day 14: again. i think my subconscious is trying to punish me. i wish i could just forget again. maybe it would make everything easier.

day 15: again.

day 16: i haven't left my bed in twenty-one hours. this is the only way i can see you.

day 17: i wonder if you'd have married her if you hadn't died. a part of me (i'm sorry. all of me. every single ******* atom in my body) hopes you wouldn't have. it also knows that you would have. i miss you.

day 18: it's your birthday.

day 19: anachronism: a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned.

day 20: hello again. i missed you.

Draw a narrow road with a man standing in the distance,
The sun is setting and his shadow moves for an instance;
What is this symbolizing? What does this mean?
In the background, sea, salted waters, filled with chlorine.
Don't get too caught up in this life-like dream,
Almost real, but all too extreme.

Painted man walks up to you and speaks,
"I am None, I represent the Freaks."
Sun stops setting, just stands right there,
Gleaming rays, upon it a face appears.
Chlorine waters turn into rough seas,
Winter's come and the painted man freeze.
The winds so strong seem to play you a song;
Not such a nice tune, and ever so long.
The faced sun runs away from the cold,
Winter ruled all, all it controlled.

Pebbly beaches, umbrellas at shore,
Painted man alive and the sun rise once more.
The cold got heatstroke, the seas all calmed down,
The painted man, from the sun he turned brown.
Leaves falling down, that season has come,
Trees so bare, no more growing plumb.
Final season, makes you so sad;
Drawing leaves you from your sketchpad.

A sketchpad on your lap
then lines became alive
There are smudges on the edges
and coals on eraser.

It's very important
to keep eyes into the wild
to smell that juicy lemon
and to taste in everyone's mouth.

But the time came..

When it's hard to persist
that seeing everyone's mouth
asking what's beyond
You try to give colors
but nothing seems profound
You try to give emotions
but everyone looks numb.

You keep asking
if the contrast are right
or the colors are just dumb
are my feet left untracked?

If you suddenly bumped at him
along the way,
Please don't turn your back,
Don't look away.
For years of loving him,
I have only been
stealing glances,
staring
when he is busy laughing
with his friends
or when he is talking
with the girl he admires.
But to you who will love him,
stare all you want
like as if you'll never get tired.
I'm sure he'll love that.

He cracks jokes
when some funny words
can be used as puns.
Laugh for him
if the joke is funny
and laugh at him
if it's nothing but corny.
Love him still
even at his funniest
or corniest moment.
I'm sure he just wants to see
and make you laugh.

He loves to draw
and that
will make you
love him more.
Don't envy other girls
if you see their faces
painted on his canvass.
Your face has already been etched
on his sketchpad,
some has been laminated,
some in picture frames.
But I am sure,
more than those arts,
you have already been sketched,
painted and etched
in his heart.

He can be a poet.
It will give you warmth
when you read your love story
written in his poetry.
Write for him,
don't mind the rhymes,
just write
what your heart wants.
Make your I love yous
a poetry
and he will drown you
with his I love you, too.

To the woman of his future,
he gets tired sometimes
but don't give him up.
Rest with him
and be his home.

Love his every imperfection.
He is flawed but he doesn't mind.
So love him no matter what.

To the woman of his future,
let me be with him for a while.
Just in this present times,
even just in this short now.

The woman of his future,
I hope it's me
so for a lifetime,
I have him
to call mine.

© Tres

Nobody put any one of themselves first,
just the bottle.
My mother, genteel as she was,
wrote sketchpad poems on how alcohol must feel
shrouded in a chifforobe. If I were the author
each stanza would only say “warm”
because such is how I felt
folding myself among the goblets as a child.

On dress hangers she had no use for
but to dream to abort me,
I hung and thought about how laconic my kin was
not asking what state I was in the past week.

(Mississippi,
I would announce. M-I-S-S   I-S-S   I-P-P-I
as many meters as letters in its name
and I burnt my calf on an old man’s motorcycle:
he kissed it better, a stranger did
though your bureau’s dirt chocked below my nails.
)

A false god set my parakeet free that trip
at least that is what mother held when I got back –
Oh, many days ago, azure feathers
spanned in a conduit
right by the lady’s home, you know the one
you tell me that her carpets look like bacon strips
(once eleven years ago I had,
as many years as in Mississippi’s name).

Had it been so many months
from the episode when I accidentally mumbled
“I hate you” and never regretted it as I should have?
Had it been so many hours since I wondered
why I could not hate her
but she could hate me, or say so “accidentally”?

Nobody put any one of themselves first,
just the bottle
even I was careful not to shatter when we shared a
ligneous hiding space, regal, misunderstood.

But on returning from Mississippi,
(M-I-S-S   I-S-S   I-P-P-I
One Mississippi Two Mississippi Three Mississippi Four)
I hoisted myself like a stiff jacket and
realized no one could see the difference between
red wine and a child's blood, in laced imperial stripes.

The Wordsmith
He looked exactly like the type. A boy who would grow up to be a man married to a woman who would raise his beautiful children, three or five of them, would soon find himself facing a mid-life crisis. Bored and lost, he goes out to find himself---in the arms of another much younger, more beautiful woman. Finally finding what he has always been missing, he divorces his wife, blinded by the intense emotion he feels for the younger one.

He forgets--- they all forget that the youth are restless.
And he would soon find himself alone.

Watch out for the wordsmith. He comes in a distinct form. Hair unwashed for a day or two, beard long and over-grown; normally hunched with a hand underneath his chin, eyes luxuriously grazing through the pages of his book. In his bag a journal or a sketchpad, or maybe even both may always be found.

He is loyal to none but one: loneliness.

Beware of the wordsmith, his words will echo through the bowels of your mind after he has been long gone.

2. The Good-doer
He is perfect; the sort of fella that makes up every parent’s wet-dream. He would have graduated high school with honors, went home before his curfew, received a college-scholarship, and attends religious activities zealously.
You would see him for the first time in a congregation or talk of some sort, engaged in a deep conversation with a friend or two.
They might’ve been arguing about probabilities and theories; existential questions and what-not. You’d give him a second glance… or a third. You’d notice the book he holds and chat animatedly about it.
He’ll be amused, or in awe.
You won’t be quite sure which.
He’s the type who has never met a pretty girl who can hold intelligent conversation about books.

Raised well, he treats women politely and correctly, through and through a gentleman. But he secretly demeans them.

Stay away from this sort.

He’s bound to marry a trophy: a lady of the same background, who knows nothing but to raise children.
Five years down the road, you would see his picture-perfect family. They all happily walk out the doors of the church.

3. The Player
No. He is not a Casanova, not a smooth talker, not the Romeo. He is the man who never grew up. He is the one who is plagued with the Peter-pan syndrome, in constant need of stories and games. He will claim to need you—believe him. He does. Every baby needs its care-taker.
You would want to be needed the way he needs you. You would want to worry and fuss after him but you will tire, the way all mothers do.
Soon, instead of being thankful, he will grow weary of you. He will isolate himself in the bedroom. Playing endlessly the games you have gifted him; emerging from his cave from time to time—only when he’s ***** or hungry—never when you need him.

Years would pass him by.

He’ll realize how sad and lonely he has become.
One day, they’ll find him cold dead on the bedroom floor.

4. The Seeker
He knows what he wants and makes sure he gets what he wants. A top-notch business man, a CEO of some company; grew up in a rich family. This man knows what he wants and makes sure he gets what he wants.

Be sure you can’t be bought.

Lock your heart, for there lies your treasure. Treasure this dragon will surely devour.

5. The Savior*
He has always been there since Day 1.

You had never noticed... till *it was too late.