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Aphorisms rarely confer the comfort they intend
                                    BUT
   “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure

An antique wooden trunk sits languidly beside the road (Alabama State Highway 98 Scenic Route, Main St. Daphne, for those that need to know) atop a concrete culvert cover amidst a color-guard composed of an unused ironing board, and a mildewed duffel-bag (but the nicer kind- made of synthetic blend, with the wheels that don’t really roll, and an extendable handle that’s stuck “in”; not the heavy olive-drab canvas of the pop-culture cliche, found slung across the shoulder of the love-lorn/shell-shocked/long-lost soldier returning home unannounced in a lifetime movie melodrama) discarded haphazardly, and awaiting their diesel-powered trash-truck ferry to the afterlife of moribund things; but serendipitously and surreptitiously it is to be rescued from oblivion by the unexpected happenstance of a passerby passing by distractedly (gone out of his way though he really has no where to go, just somewhere to be, eventually) meandering through town, down alternate roads making his way to a rendezvous with a friend to give them a hand, for a minute, with some chores they’d like to get through before they leave for Atlanta, because he hasn’t seen them recently, and he had nothing better to do.

How many others have passed by the unmapped X, but never saw it for they were so myopic in their missions and goals: rushed and unconscious, on autopilot, en route, to work, or to lunch, to mid-day meetings with clients for paper and gold; How many missed the possibility of adventure passing by, the childish excitement that could unfold, if they had just looked up from their phones and coffees and looked around for signs, untold? How many noticed the slight shimmer of fantasy left sitting by the road, but couldn’t stop because they were in a carpool, they weren’t driving, or just so unimaginative that to believe, for a bit, that a treasure exists outside the storied pages of fairy tales was too much to do, or too much to bear, with a rundown, old soul. Did a child see, with impressionable eyes, the chest of treasure left by a fool, unattended, out in the open (not buried, not even a bit, barely even hidden from view) and instantly wonder, too, just what might be inside? Could it be shimmering, shining jewels, loose and encrusting golden crowns, and goblets, scepters and silver candlesticks, precious oriental silks, or bullion and pirate *****; possibly a magic lamp, or maybe some enchanted tools?! A flying carpet!? Perhaps A Ghost of some grim ghoul. Did they beg a guardian to stop the carriage, but were denied and told, “we have to keep going little one, there’s much to get to that you don’t know. You have to go to school.”
Well, the glimmer caught the eye of one beholder and made them think immediately, “That looks like treasure!”

Indeed!
It did look like treasure: a literal chest, built of heartwood with a carved arch-top, weathered paint, rusted hinges, metal bindings and filigree.

(It was obviously empty of value, scuttled, broken, and relinquished to the refuse heap; However, To one with a limp, and a bad eye, and a deaf ear, brandishing a homeward bound insignia upon his chest and an island luck charm in black ink on his leg, whom you’d easily confuse for a pirate misplaced, you can see how it might seem to warrant an inspection.)

Plus: It’s uncommon to find a treasure chest
in the trash, in this century. Perhaps hope got the best of me; but also I knew its fate was not to be buried under heaps of plastic and rot.

I’ve a friend whose proclivity one could describe as a collector of things, useful and abandoned... but not a “hoarder” like on the television - Unless you count Ariel as such- with all her jetsam, Knick-knacks, thing-a-ma-bobbers, and dreams.

We are “of a kind,” prone to picking up after others, collecting aesthetic driftwood- anthropomorphized or just architecturally interesting, finding faces in fallen leaves, pointing to leaves that look like bugs, picking up bugs dried up like leaves and or sticks and stones and broken bones of small creatures long left rotting, beautifully decaying detritus of modernity - deemed useless; but still WE believe a greater purpose lies within, undefined by its usefulness, to be determined by it’s form Rather than function, appropriated and repaired  or dismantled and “re-crafted” into art, by simplification. Driven by a simple inspiration; To make beautiful decoration.

I pull aside, let traffic pass, circle back, reorient and reclaim this bounty of the proverbial “spring-clean.” Its condition is one of slight disrepair: needs hinges re-attached; but otherwise in fine shape. I collect this treasured trash and return to my path, on course to its new home with my friend to whom I was already bound; But now I come bearing gifts.

His smile was worth the drive and the dumpster-diving and the the whole day.

A gift given is a love lived-in, and a smile
shared with a friend Is love and life for me.
Journal entry
11:50pm 3•6•24
Rough draft

This is terrible, pretentious, drivel. But it’s a post-pastoral (a “post-oral” as it were), and it’s honest…
He opens the grave,
Not to see the light.
What not can he save.
So simmered despite.
Simmering high flames,
The beast not in chains.
It’s the contempt, court,
Replaced tennis, brains.
Blasted are the aims!
Come time hacked discord…
For who fall the Duke,
From toilets to ****.
At what belief shook,
Did he die for it?
Jordan Gee May 2022
God made me into a marionette
He pulled me from the dust
He scooped me out of coals.
He breathed life into my belly
and now they call me animated earth.
He carved my bones from alabaster stones
long buried under piles of pine needles and leaves
He sang songs of Light and Life
and put them in my ears
and taught me all the words
and cut me silver keys.
now i stand up tall
like the Lighthouse of Alexandria
or the Colossus of Rhodes
i take showers under jungle waterfalls
full of orchid petals
and with angel fish climbing up the rock walls.
my head and all my limbs are hanging by
golden silken strings and threads
and where I walk the moss and lichens grow.
He fashioned my eyes from glass
blown over the hot geysers
and sulfur springs
of thermopylae
and the salt basin dunes.
He plucked my pupils from the pregnant blackness
of the Void.
He struck them over steel and flint
and the sparks made it bright enough to see.
my heart is a time-piece
keeping minutes with its beats
like a great shadow cast behind a sphere.
the elements once kept me apart from me my identity,
I was a hungry ghost
walking around town like a hypodermic voodoo doll.
everytime I turned around
I tripped over another basket full of rattlesnakes
hissing from both ends.
I gave up and crossed my heart
and gave it over to the chemical egregore
hoping I would die while somehow staying alive
and learning how to fly away home-
so i could leave all the piles of ashes and teeth alone
and maybe plant a rose garden.

but God made of me a marionette
strung me up from strings of silken gold.
He breathes for me,
and dances me to the music of the spheres
and now the whole planet is a
Hanging Garden of the Fallen Babylon
and now I keep snakes
as exotic pets
and as company
when i’m lonely
and for afternoon tea.
I am suspended
It’s like the only time I can see outside of this hole
Is when I’m trying to make sure others don’t see
That I’m digging it deeper
And
Deeper
And
Deeper
And falling
Further
And
Further
And
Further
Until I can’t get out
EmVidar Feb 2022
How do I pull myself out
when I am buried
6ft under

-em vidar
leave me in the garden to die.
i will not let you save me-
leave me alone with the dead leaves of autumn,
with the coldness of winter settling in my bones.
i don't want to be saved-
leave me along the dead and decayed
and come back to bury me in the spring.
i have left to find death,
to pick it's flowers and to finally rest.
21 avril 2021
17:50 pm
One day I will meet my end.
Will your face fade from my eyes?
I lay buried with you in my heart.
The circling sun and moon come together in a line.
Abstinence and honesty lose their grip.
I die bit by bit seeing the quiver of your lip.
O beloved, I implore you to give me your heart.
Standing on the other shore, longing to reach you.
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