You are amongst those who stayed far more thine.
Far more attractive is the intelligent kind
Not just the mind yet steely eyes

Gray poems
started January 24th, 2021

There are poems
that are easy to share
that want to be seen-read-heard

then there are other days
when gray skies
reflect my gray disposition

silent be silent
say the critical voices
don't scar the world
with this

and so my mark on this world
has often been
one of absence

but to deny these gray poems
is to deny myself
is to deny the crocus
blooming through the snow

for if I don't give expression
to all of it including the gray
then the beauty in me
also stays hidden
unexpressed-unrealized-unknown.

Scratch off the surface
of anyone's mind
and you might be surprised
at the picture you find
the one that's behind the smile that you see every day
we all paint our faces but leave little traces
in shades of Dorian Gray

Movement and shout has been given to the world.
Who wants to spend time in stillness and silence?
Me who listens to the reverberation of these frequencies, and observes their form and colors.
Silence listens most to the unheard.
In it my consciousness forms a likeness of myself.
Mine is like that white guy with a buzz cut, who sees truth for himself, and has a wider than thin musculature (medium).
How similar are "we" really to put every white guy with a buzz cut with a medium build who rejects the conformal truth prevalent in this country and time?
Why should they be the sidhas that my mind shows me?
What is their power?
Their eyes show the imperfection of a tattoo.
That inkish black stare.
Those creases on the forehead.
That perplexed point on the brow.
That hair so short as to wonder its color, introducimg itself in the eye brows, the white skull cap, and even the short spotty beard.
The shadows between lights portrays more gray than black and white.
The gray of prison bars, the gray of streets, the gray of rain clouds.
With all the fancy of a toilet bowl.
With all the luxury of a walk.
More a "Beastie Boy" than an "Eminem".
More a Jew than a Christian.
More a Baha'i than a Muslim.
More a Buddhist than a Hindu.
When will shade and utility become beauty?

And just like that,
the sun sets on the last golden, cresting wave of summer.
Standing on your porch and clinging to you,
not wanting to let go of these memories.
Tapioca and folklore,
drive-ins and sing-alongs,
green dresses and sail boats on a lake.
The heavy gates slowly shutting,
and now, we move onward.
Towards applications and last years while
clinging to our gray film childhoods,
and your pleas to "stay here".
May our love be passed on.

The evergreen tree grows
The winds come and go
Raging fire turns to glow
Yet I still miss you so

Gray, the only color in sight
A burnt out star, no longer bright
An old batch of snow, once so white
The mysterious vanishing of the light

A tainted sliver of perfection
The uncertainty of my reflection
Numbing thoughts of your affection
New shades of gray in my collection

I pick me,
I choose me,
I love me.