It's so old, and the beauty of a hundred years of happy memories and lives lived to the fullest is seeped into the dark and creaking wood beams of this home. In the fireplace crackles a soft warmth that keeps the bitter cold at bay from this room. Sometimes, it still tickles your nose and playfully pinches your ears, painting pink across your cheeks. But this is the only gentle reminder that outside the frosted window, snowflakes fall in soft piles against your doorstep, dancing and singing in their own special winter way. Inside is only merriment, where the wine is poured and the stuffed mushrooms are devoured slowly and languidly, each bite tasting of a melody. Around you on the walls, painted flowers and snapshot memories smile down on you as your friends laugh and sing and dance and break out the fiddle for a folk tune. After the wine comes the coffee where your hand gently holds a saucer and the cup almost never leaves your mouth. Everywhere you look, there is a joyous friendly face with a contentment of time about them, not anxious of a thing. Furry friends circle the floor in search of scraps, which they were given in a moment of weakness. And as you feel the warmth begin in your toes in your socks on the creaking wooden floor, as it travels up your spine and into your head and fingers, you know this is where you are meant to be. Here, surrounded by friends, with love draping his arm peacefully about your waist and laughing along with the rest, only every once in a while glancing over with a look that you know is meant to assure you, "Someday, this will be all we get, and it will be enough."

My father’s cousin
Died just days
after planting tulips
Purple red yellow and orange
Scattering the yard with bulbs
To burst through the earth
Come next spring
When he knew he would not be here to see them
Fore he knew of his coming death
They have told him frank
The cancer its terminal
They had told him to do enjoy
And Every day he must have seen his body
In the mirror
Growing gaunt
And weak
with his wife not at home
He planted 200 flowers
A going away present
And that same day
His body gave
Tremors and shakes
A seizure turned to coma
Which turned to the closing of his eyes
And the silent tears of his wife

Two years later
I saw her at a reunion
She spoke fondly of the tulips
How beautiful they are
How they remind her of him
And his love for her
She is with someone new now
She explains
A pilot
Who treats her well
She tells me he is a great man
But with tears in her eyes
She says
he isn’t Shawn

We are standing in a church cafeteria
Surrounded by people
But I feel it is just us
As she cries
I hug her
And she cries on my shoulder
He was my best friend
It is so hard
I miss him everyday
She released me
And apologized for the tears
I told her
I understood
And I missed him too

Later that night and for years later
I have thought of them
The tulips and the tears
In that cafeteria
I have since been afraid to fall so much in love
That I wouldn’t be okay if they had to leave first
But later on
While lying in embrace
I realized that vulnerability
Is what makes love worth it

Im sitting in the car
Trying to think out another bar
Have I come to the end
What's become thus far
...Writers block
Still no juice pumpin
No ideas jumping
No thinkers dancing
Just standing & glancing
Just searching & searching
Lurking & yearning the higher thinkin
I get to rolling
Get this shit  going
I'm blowing
This shit
Oh shit
Help me ..
I can't breathe;
Gardner I hear you too
Because I can't fucking breathe
21 but lungs 50
These bills got a choke hold on me
So I let go with some weed
Here's some sugar for this tea
sally Mae is to greedy
Like college is to family
Like Family beating down on me
For this degree
Spent two years for a degree
In a logic I learned to disagree
I had to finally be in the tea
To see the bitterness in me
So here's to the sugar in my tea
Mary is to me
Like Mary is not to family
All because of a little weed
I admit it's what I fein & need
I feel the need  
To not need what I feel
Then it hits me
it's too real
Life hates me
She's out to kill
My minds hazy
can't stand still
My soul is taken
Taken to hell
Cs when I get to thinking
I cant prevail
Words left unspoken
& so many more to tell
Dwelling in a heart that's been broken
but none of that matters when I'm smoking
So here's an ode to Mary
for lifting me off my feet
& emptying a heart so heavy
For all the happy highs  given at my saddened lows
With a cheery smile & eyes a glow
I truly owe.. this ode to Mary
                                             -G

Auntie Janet asked me to say hi and that she doesn't blame you.
Grandad sends his regards and says he needs a little more time before he can see you.

Pete says hello and he'd like the long skewers returned if you get them back.
Mary sends her apologies and says you can keep the hachette.

Mum says you're invited to Uncle Bert's funeral if you're up to it. She'll deal with Uncle Arthur. 
Sarah says to thank you. She and the baby are doing much better.

Jim said he'll see you when he gets out. He owes you a major one.
Dad says you were right and not to beat yourself up. What’s done is done.

The nurse says you need to rest. It’ll take as long as it takes.
- Do you want those grapes? Don’t want them to go to waste.

They're super annoying,
But you love them still.
No matter how much you hate them,
You'll always do anything for them.

THEY YELL! At the top of their lungs.
You can never have parties with them around.
Never hang out with your friends alone.
But still if you look at those days you'll realize
how much more fun everything was
when they were around.

Sometimes I feel better with them around
even when I am mad at them.
And I would hate it if
I never had enough loudness to fill the quiet house.

Their called sisters.
When I feel down they always lift me up.
So I am thankful for my sisters.
Even thought I don' show it.

My fears feel quaint and strange these days
I remember a time when my head was filled with dreams
Yet my creativity has gone done the gutter
Losing it like a rush of blood to the head

And yet I’m far away from the one I love
A distinct summer that is warm and humid
Yet in reality is cold and bitter
Again, a rush of blood to the head

I’m not sure if I have my eyes on the prize anymore
I wanted to make it so big
Those dreams have faded away into the dust only at 21
I find myself craving different tastes

I want to find myself in comfort, want to get by
Have a kid or two or three
Make some money
Teach in the long hallways
Simply live a life with my wife

Yet I remember the years of high school
Thinking I could be better than everyone else
Maybe not be another family in the suburbs
Yet all the sudden I want that
The thing I supposedly wasn’t crazy about

Is this a bad thing?
Or simply replacing another thing with another thing?

Or did my old dreams ever want a chance of seeing the light of day?
Maybe they did not

All I’m asking for is one more light
My questions may be answered then

For now I tend to a garden
where I cater to my simple hopes I hold onto in this day and age

Everything else faded away years ago.

My ancestors
dropped
the pencils
in my hands
I am drawing
them now,
the lines
in my face
I sketch
them out
clearer
every day.

©