Give him a skinhead, insignia, boots

Less scruples, a swagger-stick, crowds, money.

No black shirts visible. Just business suits,

and pride is restored: tragic but funny.

Proud like a skyscraper, godless as sin

Babylonian promises, towering lies

Reality shows when plutocrats win,

Their rhetoric raining from empty skies.

She-wolves, elected by uninformed sheep

behave predictably, eyeing the flock

Their wool (and the lamb-chops) are hers to keep

Grazing voter—this should come as no shock.

It’s a bitter pill (more like pilloried)

So shall we now be ******* or Hillary-ed?

We come to a complete stop.
At a red light.
We wear our arms like seat-belts-
crossed for protecting our pilot lights.˚
I can't help but wonder how many airbags might deploy
if a meteor crashed headfirst and heavyset into the planet
and pancaked us eternally into this moment-
and how our fossils would look confused;
funeral flowers on a wedding cake.

None of this matters, we're both thinking it,
God is a foster child playing with his erector set.

You grin with as much conviction as a dented automobile,
breaking the months of silence to say,
"I miss you."

We can never fold these road maps back the way they came.

Somewhere existentially above this moment, there is an asterisk
that confirms
you- are here.

There was a younger version of me that you never got to meet,
he was here once,
stupid as a slinky.
Shaken like an Etch-A-Sketch.
Crooked as the question mark that punctuated his voice.
I looked good in hydroplane,
my eyes- bigger than my belly,
so I drank my weight in promises- I knew would be hard to keep within arms reach.
I also knew an encyclopedia's worth of how it felt to lie to myself.
I did it for twenty-three years
until I finally let go of stupid and held on to reason.

At some age I wrote letters to my favorite musicians,
using the sloppiest side of my penmanship, I'd ask for answers
and my mother, like a paperclip, used to tell me - she'd say,
"Kiddo, just because they don't respond
doesn't mean they didn't get the message."

She kept her chest of hope upstairs, away from the living room.
She only opened it on the hallow end of October;
that's where she kept the blankets.

Shy, I kept my hope chest covered in a T-shirt-
at the very least.
I never opened up.
I emptied my toy box of all its fiction, filled it with voices.
Deployed an army of rubber wrestlers, martial arts amphibians
and those inanimate toy soldiers with plastic parachutes attached
in search of the confidence I knew was supposed to belly-flop inside of me.

It hid, unfound for decades.
Until you entered.

Hawaiian domino effect, circus of chain reactions, avalanche of affirmation, chest-plate yielding gravity mouth speaking brightest anything forever night light, all apex and eyelash and cheekbone.
You -from big island- broke me.
I opened like the dry side of an umbrella, kept my back turned for shielding you.
I showed up for love on time, like a subway train in echelon city
wanting these arms to feel less like turnstiles.

All my sign languages were in waves.
All my ceilings turned to skies.
All my jitters packed into my hunger stomach.
Typing hyper with caffeinated hands
a swarm of nervous words bee-hiving in my butterfly chest.
Something like a hummingbird
when I finally drop your name like an alarm clock whisper
my lungs empty like cathedrals on the day after Christmas.

I brought the sermon to your Sundays,
you brought the choir to my masses.
We built a church around these esophagus bell towers.
Held ourselves up to the stained glass and showed off our light;

I swear I don't believe in a lot of things, God knows,
but there's always a but,
so much as I believe in the eternal depth of everything,
so much as I believe that we'd have plenty of water if it weren't for salt,
so much as I believe in eight marbles rolling around a gas lamp,
I believed we'd find a way.

'Cause in all the ways my sky could never hold you- and I mean this-
I believed in you- same way some people believe in Jesus.

Because you never judged my albatross mouth when I said things like,
"Self deprecation is the new love."
You kissed me-
less like doorstop,
more like lighthouse illuminating windmill.

You were a merry-go-round pivot decorated in Kona coffee beans, Christmas lights, cough syrup, paper mache pineapples, plastic dinosaur bones, a collection of worn-out Asics, board shorts and a dubstep remix broadcast through the static of a blown-out rotary phone.

You were everything I could get my hands on-

A full-tilt action-packed kaleidoscope jungle
with blender tongue and volcano heart.
I looked good in your sad panda coat tails,
teaspoon swallowing my doubts
while you Tarzaned my ability to breathe,
gave me ocean view and weak knees.
Is that sea breeze in your aftermath or are there already tears in my happiness?

You came camouflage out of my blind spot dressed in magnet armor,
diving board and drum set.
We passionbent cymbals into cannonballs.

I found comfort between your breastplate and your shoulder blades,
where you held me like a promise
when all my wishing was for want
and all your wanting was for wishes

Granted,

I know that there were days when you couldn't help but wake up like gorilla speaking Pidgin
and I couldn't help but waking up like an abandoned highway with a chip on my shoulder-
some maps don't show this much detail, Google Earth-

Which is why I always came through for you like a well-lit citrus truck stop
pressed against the dusk in your moonlight life crisis.
We only saw stars.
From our moon base.
In bewilderment, in our hunger, we learned
that if you hold me to my vending machines you'll get what you pay for.

So here it is, the truth, as I have always known it,
delivered to you on the outskirts of an echo,
my voice, supporting my existence like a monolith.

I'm standing in the middle of a you-shaped hole.
It's as wide as a promise crater-
we built it together.
It's not my favorite place to stand
but the exit strategies are made in the shape of a me that I haven't constructed yet.
I had a lot of things planned.
I referred to things as "ours",
when I really meant "please".

Bury me in your time lapse.
When your emotional excavators discover me in your sediment
they'll find me all pterodactyl-
wings spread wide as potential, sky-diving toward forgiveness,
forever.

Truth is, I'm wingless.

We met at a stop sign.
Our paths crossed.

There's a lot of accidents at some intersections.
Maybe it's because that's not where those two roads were supposed to meet.

We can't time machine argue with the way things landed.

We weren't an avoidable accident.
We were just two cars that really wanted to dance.

I don't know what I'm trying to say but I know when I mean it.

There's a tyrannosaurus rex cradled head-to-tail just behind my curator heart-
all fossil spine, monster teeth, jaw head and piano hands.
His presence says a lot about the past.
There's an asterisk on the surface,
above this moment,
that confirms with absolute certainty,

˚something wicked awesome happened here.

I ran like a head on collision. A car crash which you don’t look away, like a bicycle crash flung over the handles. Pondering then, in that moment, why I didn’t wear a helmet. I guess I didn’t have a thought to think about that before crushing my skull on the pavement. I wonder in these instantaneous moments, why you pull away first, before knocking the teeth out. Gumless and bleeding with remorse. Things that have foresight, but maybe no hindsight: an example would be falling on airbags like a grenade. I read once, somewhere, that 290 people were killed in 28 years by airbags. I wonder then, before flying into the sediment, if they had the same feeling of regret (or maybe confusion) when something supposed to save them, killed them.

Flaccid airbags, then. 1 to 2% of frontal deaths are caused by un-deployed airbags. Try to imagine the surprise before hurling through your windshield: “but? my airbag?” We can never really rely on anything, I guess, except for at 12 to 18 miles the airbag might, should expand. Marshmallow cushion, cotton ball fuzz clings. A white christmas dressed in harlot red; a sin of plain bad luck for those people. For me, it’s ignorance
I should have worn my ******* helmet

Thirty years of monthly
payments for a roof,
garage, and backyard,

The house burns down
the day you pay
it off,

A brand new model,
heated seats, leather
wrapped steering wheel,
more speakers than
you can hear,
pride and joy,
taken from you
by some careless *******,
focused on "Me"
not focused on red
lights or stop
signs.

The frame is bent,
airbags deployed,
the insurance
writes you a check
and sends a form
apology with next
month's bill.

The newest clothes
aren't so new,
once they're washed
twice,

but we base our wealth
on fleeting things,
wood, status symbols
and cotton,

We pay ourselves
by saving money
already spent,
and paying old bills
so we can have new ones,

Wealth isn't tied to these
temporary things, easily
replaced by more
work and money

No

Wealth is created,
easily sustained,
by good night kisses,
road trips just because,
and matching shirts
for family pictures,
things that make us
remember how to be
happy,

because we are all temporary,
but our love is
not so easily
replaced.
So even if
you rent, or
you take
the bus
or you have clothes
in your closet for years

The time spent
with people you love
wil always cover
you until the
next paycheck
you've already spent
anyway.

My father is an old truck
Sunbleached red

Breathes broken bottles
A faulty catalytic converter throat
All the smoke trapped inside

But the nicotine helps his brain function

Cinderblock sturdy
But skinny
A single pillar holding the roof up

A man built in a time when you had to tell things it was time to die
Leave them in a field somewhere and forget about

How do you write a love poem to a car of a man
Built in a time without airbags?
A car of a man who crashed with you inside so many times
You learned about rebuilding from experience
From trial and error

And how do you forgive a man who can no longer tell you he’s sorry?

Trucks
Don’t feel
Don’t give up
Don’t hurt you on purpose

Sometimes something inside just breaks
And no one catches it
And maybe you crash
Break a nose
Black an eye

As far as I know
I am not a broken man
But I’ve learned where all the parts go

And if I am my father’s son
A mechanic more often than a car maybe
Then I will be fine

The truck is dying
And beyond repair

You forgive it for that
It is old and past its time

And maybe it can’t say that it’s sorry

But there is a field somewhere that you plan on leaving it
To collect weeds
And rust
And be forgotten

So you forgive it

Hope is, by definition, a feeling of expectation and desire for something to happen, a feeling of trust**
Hope carries anchors on it's shoulders, afraid it will only meet the standard of almost
We all hope, but we do not all receive
Hope is the product of human weakness
We long that's why we aspire
Imagine how weak man is, we are not like birds that can fly when we want to go to places or we want to see people
We are frail and easily inflicted with illnesses
We are fragile bottles that easily break physically and emotionally, hence the development of the helmet and airbags
The study of human emotion called psychology and psychiatry
And worse, we die, that is why men searched for the fountain of youth to no avail
Hope helps us to move on and continue
Hope is a wish, hope is a motivator
Hope gives a reason to keep going
Hope is the whisper telling us that it will get better in time
But I ask, why do the hands of my clock have arthritis
Hope is not a liar
Hope is encouraging but hope is also deceiving
Hope is joker, a trickster
Like an amateur magician, everyone could see the trap door but me
Hope will disappoint you
Hope is not perfect, hope does not always work out like you think hope should
But hope is valuable, hope keeps balance
Hope carries the unable, the dreamers, the optimists
Hope is the guide
Without hope, we're lost
Without hope, we're nothing

I like making
plans I know I won't make,
I just like they're there.  
It's sort of like how we prepare
in our cars with airbags.  
Sometimes we thank God
they're there.

I like waiting at
bottoms of skyscrapers to catch
cripples' stares on stairs.
It's living up to a dare
trying to walk with one leg, one
crutch going up, look at their
Stares on stairs.

It wasn't a hippy
in tie dye that gave me
that squabbled piece of peace.
It was a horrid beast
who claimed I was the first
to not shoot, he gave me his last
Piece of peace.

I didn't like the tone
of his voice when he said
you can't bare the bear
Even outside the lair
you'll shave his fur and run your
hands in your hair, you
can't bare the bear.

I have years of your
wind pattern because my
vane detects vain in your veins.

Well it's hard to tell what's left of this mess.
Glass shatters and crashes, the air leaves my chest.
In a moment or two life will seem like a privilege.
And I've never been this close to the edge.
Headlights bend, and silence falls like the heavens.
Knuckles turn white as we're nearing the end.
Well when the glass breaks, will you cry out for help?
Or grab onto something to save yourself?

Brace yourself for what comes next,
Twisted wreckage and broken necks.
Would I trade their lives in order to say,
That we'll live to see another day?

Step out into streetlights, reflections of what could have been.
Counting to make sure I've got all my limbs.
Words come out as whispers, I stutter to speak.
Remember the rain as the breaks start to screech.
The concussion of air sends my head to the stars.
Smoke fills the cab, and we're looking at cars.
Well they could have buried us here in this steel casket.
Terror on the roads, with no way to mask it.

I'd sure as hell
Bury myself
to keep you unharmed.
I can't believe
Here in the streets
I thought I was unarmed.
When I posed such a threat
now full of regret
But at least our bodies are warm.

Well glass shatters.
And I clear the fog around my head.
Nothing matters,
As much as the fact that we're not dead.
We come to a stop as rain falls out of the sky.
Pieces lie, in a pile along the street.
Save our souls from the devil, denied his chance to meet.

Well we're alive.

My head tilted back like I was
Tasting raindrops
But what fell to my mouth was you
Cradling my jaw in your hands
Steady
As if I were a porcelain doll you might drop
It felt like goodbye
Because it was
And now I am afraid to turn corners
Locked in a haunted house
What will drop from the ceiling
Grab my leg
What will scare me back into submission
Besides you mounting someone outside
Which is perhaps
The most disturbing of all
How you wanted me until suddenly
You didn't
And how I didn't believe you
And how you fed me excuses like pacifiers
Quieting. Comforting. Soothing.
But I spit those out
Realizing their purpose was to
Quiet me into letting you go without a fight
But I took out my fists and fought like hell
You held them and pleaded with me to put my guns away
Surrender my weapons
And let you go in peace
This was all for you.
It was easier
For you
And only you
But what about me.
Grabbing at every part of myself
Pulling hair from my head and scratching flesh from my bones
Slowly and painfully pulling myself apart
Abandoning parts of me in gutters and streams
out windows and in ditches
I can't be myself anymore
Every inch of my flesh has your name written on it
Scratched in a pen using your own blood as ink
You sacrificed for me
And I for you
And we sat on a rock and smelled ocean and let the water spray our faces until we were sticky and wet and still we sung.
We had songs
Some silent, but I could hear the music when there was none.
I still do.
I can't look up down left or right without some yellow light telling me to
Slow down to a stop and take caution,
for a reminder is coming hard and fast your way.
Airbags go
*****-slapping me in the face for being stupid
For having been smart and throwing my morals to the wind
I'd like to regret you
But I don't
I'd like to hate you
But I can't
This makes me weak yes I know this
But
I gave you all the parts of me that were strong
And mere visions of you take the wind from my lungs and you use them to set your sails
You're a deep sea diver.  Swimming. Living. Lying.
And I drown here.
You told me once that when I jump from a plane
The moment my parachute refuses to open
You'd be there carrying me to the ground
I won't let you fall, you said.

I am standing in front of another creative writing class, and from my mouth, the mouth of all English teachers, comes, “Write what you know,” and the carefully tied fly whips itself out onto the surface of the classroom and lies there, waiting for a nibble or a strike. My students, fresh from fields and country roads and long hours alone on the prairies, stare back like ancient trout, converged at this bend in the river. No one moves a pencil; no one rises to even tap the bait. Silence is broken by the sound of the motorized General Electric clock over my head as it marks the flow of time and water and life.

Whoever put a 15 inch clock on the wall above and behind the teacher, knew something about multi-dimensional sadism. Students mark their breathing in second hand sweeps, while I wait for that first hand to rise like a fish, foolishly deciding to catch one last fly for the evening…my fly, tied carefully to “invisible, mono-thread nylon leader” guaranteed to withstand the assault of five pound monster brown trout. Patiently, I stand by the edge of the stream, my feet just barely touching the water line.

“Mr. Simms? What if I don’t have anything to write about?” a querulous voice trembles. Shimmers of water-light ripple through the pond-room. I see the other trout-children moving ever so slightly, turning in the water thick air toward the question-tap.

“Patience,” I think…and clear my throat. “Good question,” I say. “What do you know that you would want to write about? What stories do you have to tell that others would like to hear?” I let the current move the fly a little deeper over the waiting trout.

And there I miss the first strike of the day.

“Nothing. I got nothing,” grumbles Charlie. “I don’t go nowhere. I don’t do nuthin’ but work and stay at home.”

“Yah. Pretty much says it all right there,” chimes in his best friend Tad. The other fish start to turn away from the prompt/bait. I can see they are thinking of going into deeper water.

Quickly, I change tactics. I turn and grab a broken piece of chalk…not much, but enough. I scratch out two words: ‘episodic memory.’ Turning to the class, I say quickly, “What do you remember about 9/11? Take a minute and think about 9/11. Where were you? What were you doing? Who was with you? What time of day was it? What did you feel?”

The class is interested in the bait change up. I can see their trout bodies, speckled with brown dots, turning toward my new presentation. Gills are fanning in and out a little quicker than before.

A hand shoots up. Mary says, “I was on my way to school, and the bus driver yelled at us all to be quiet because something was going on with World Trade Center.”
A couple of her friends nod their heads, eyes looking up and back, into the past. Images were coming into focus.

Jose blurts out, “My mom was on the way to New York that morning. She was waiting at the airport. We were all worried about her.”

Now we’re getting somewhere, I tell myself. “So, Jose, can you remember exactly what you were doing when you first found out about the planes hitting the building? Where were you? What were you doing?”

“I had just eaten…Cheerios…yeah, it was Cheerios!” he says. “I was making sure my books were in my backpack, and the news came on over the Good Morning Show. I remember I stopped and just stood there like I was frozen. It was a couple of hours before we knew she was okay, but her plane was grounded so she couldn’t go to New York.”

The rest of the class murmurs. The beautiful fish begin to move as one toward the bait.

I nudge. “What did you see? What did you hear? What did you feel? What did you smell? Who were you with? Take a minute and write that down.”

Pencils scratch on cheap paper. The sound of the clock hum recedes. Time slows as currents of thought push the humming motor down. The stream slows and the water surface becomes glassy.

Two minutes pass. No one says anything.

I break the silence. “This is episodic memory. When huge events take place in our lives…events that mean something very important to us, or that are swift and exciting, sometimes too wonderful or too terrible to understand or to survive…at that instant…those events are stored in our minds almost like living, high definition videos. We can remember these episodes with all five senses. We remember what we were doing, what we were eating, who was with us, where we were, sights, sounds, smells, feelings…they’re all there in our episodic memories.”

I have their attention. The hook is set. Some pencils even scratch “episodic memory” on paper. I push on.

“We all have collective episodic memory. 9/11 is a good example. You all have some collective memory of that day when terrorists flew two airplanes into the twin towers in New York City.”

I take a breath. “Now comes the reason for my teaching you about episodic memory. We all have personal events stored in episodic memory as well. Each of us has his or her personal memories, forever burned into the hard drives of our minds. When we pull up these memories, they are there in true color, full sound, and clear vision. We can see, taste, touch, hear and smell those memories clearly. That’s what I mean when I say, ‘write what you know.’

It’s illegal to fly fish with multiple baits on one line in Montana, not that I am coordinated enough to keep 15 grey wolf flies separate and in the air on the end of 30 feet of fly line anyway. In my mind, I imagine those flies stinging the water and 15 fish leaping to snag them. The class is moving mentally toward episodic events.

The fly fisherman lives for that leaping catch, when the world explodes with the splashing surge of trout beauty and fierce battle. The teacher lives and breathes the exhalations of “AHA!” as students capture concepts and come to life.

Fifteen memories, brilliant as shattering crystal catching sunlight, explode in fifteen minds…and then the trouble comes. I have been here before, and move quickly to head off a possible flight to deep waters.

“Class! I need you to hold your thoughts for just a minute.”

“Some of us in this room just experienced memories of wonderful events: winning shots at ball games, good news of brothers or sisters coming home from war, first kisses … and some of us are experiencing terrible events, reliving them over right here in this room. I know that happens. It happens to me. The problem is…not all episodic memories should be shared with everyone.”

The class is silent. A couple of eyes are red and I can see where tears are beginning to form. Someone is recalling a fumbled tackle and the agony of sounding jeers. Another is re-living the scratchy beard and beer-sour breath of a father as he crosses all lines of decency and honor with a child. I can almost hear the sounds of skidding tires and feel exploding airbags as three minds simultaneously re-experience crashes…. The silent sounds of slaps and screams, of joyous and sarcastic laughter, of shouts of tearful farewells and exuberant reunions fill the air, bubbles releasing in the moving water of the classroom.

And then, the bell rings. “Take your ideas with you and write about what you know! I’ll see you Wednesday,” I yell.

Fifty minutes. The fishing is good. I reel in the fly, check the hook, and wait for the next fish to come upstream.

a month ago, i got in a car accident that totaled my car.
i was making a left turn at a stoplight
and the driver of an suv was paying no attention to her red light.
she barreled into the front end of my car at full speed before i even saw her coming,
and then everything was shattered glass and metal colliding and screeching tires
and suddenly my airbags were puffed out like sinister clouds and my engine sounded like a death rattle.
when i opened the door to get out, the hinges grated like a scream.

but i wasn’t hurt.
i cried for six hours that day but i went to school the next one.
everything was fine.

it's just that since then, everything in my life resembles a car crash.

i smelled burning for weeks.
i still blink and see spiderweb patterns of broken glass.
i cried for two hours when i realized i lost the cd i made
just so i could listen to my favorite songs in the car.
when i hear the song that was playing, i have to turn it off.

my father picked up the shrapnel still on the street a week later
and gave me my charred, crumpled, unreadable gravestone of a front license plate.
he straightened it out and put it on my new car when we got it.

i broke up with my boyfriend three weeks ago
and as i left i heard sirens from inside his house.
the day after that, i was talking to another boy
and his promises sounded like ambulances with no paramedics on board.

last week there was a fatal car accident half a mile from my house
and i couldn't breathe for the rest of the day after i heard.

i have to turn left at the stoplight where my own accident happened every day
and when i turn i clench my fists around the steering wheel
like it wants to tear itself out of my hands and maybe it does.

i still check left and right and left and right during turns
even when someone else is driving.

call all of this a reaction to trauma,
but honestly i don't know what's wrong with me.

all i know is i cried with frustration, immature, pathetic,
when my mother and my father couldn't find a new car.
all i know is i grieved for my ford focus
like it was my only friend in the world.
all i know is i keep talking about this accident
even though i’m even getting annoyed by myself
and my fingers on the keyboard sound just like the policeman's as he wrote up the report
as i perched on a plastic backseat, shaking, face covered with tear tracks,
waiting, alone, for my father to arrive so i didn't have to be an adult,
waiting, alone, for an explanation of why this happened to me.

all i know is everything in my life resembles a car crash,
and there are sirens in the distance,
and i'm still waiting for the smoke to clear.

I've been breathing in everything I hate
Such as the smoke from fire that bellows beneath my feet,
It burns and it scalds and yet,
I do not learn my lesson.
My lungs have become airbags- deflated, charred
It hurts me to breathe but yet,
I do not learn my lesson.

I have been shown the sweet smells from the valley,
The honeysuckle kisses against my dried lips
But nectar is far more vicious than tar.
For it sticks to you like a bad memory
It will coat you in a sweet sickness,
A birth from a joyous hospital room
Honeysuckle kisses upon dry lips,
While they pump you full of the tar.

So while my lungs cannot heave anymore,
And my organs coated with depression
The nectar does nothing but upset my stomach
It causes it to wretch like a screaming baby
Lack of honeysuckle kisses fuels the fire.
I will continue to burn and scald my feet-
But I will not succumb to the iridescence
That will one day leave you sick,
And sticky sweet.

I didn't get to say goodbye.
Again.

Not in the way I wanted to.

Not in the way that made clear as the glass
you shattered,
that this
was temporary.

Not in the way that I could promise you that every firing neuron in that beautiful brain
lights up your eyes
like shooting stars.
You think like the sky.

Not in the way that came anywhere near answering WHY?

Not in the way that stitched every I love you on the tip of my tongue together
into so big a blanket
I could swear,
you would never feel cold.

Not in the way that apologizes for maps making miles into inches
that should only equal minutes
But you realize once you're in it,
wading through the hearts that could never find their way,
objects on maps are further than they appear.
Much like the face that i see in the mirror.

I wish I was there.
I wish you were here.

I hope you don't hate me

But I'm grateful to the sea.

For catching you gently
before rocking you to sleep
in the arms of a stranger
who in saving you,
saved me.

Like I am grateful to light
and time
and airbags
and the dark side of miracles.  

I am not a religious person.

But if you dont believe in guardian angels,
then I have to believe in mine.

Because I,
sellfishly,
cannot lose you
one
more
time.

My heart knows my throat like the inside of it's cage
because that is where it found you,
where I find it when I sit
and I miss you,
warming the words I always said I'd say.

So until I do,

stay.

If it makes the space seem smaller,
I have written you so many unsent letters
that if I lay every word down end to end
I could build you a bridge
that wrapped three times around the moon
So we could at least pretend,
I'd see you soon.

A bridge,
strong enough to hold you
and the fifty tons of memories
that ware you like waves,
Crashing against your ribs
in a storm
Where no heart is safe.

I'm sorry you wake in sandy sheets
That no matter how high you climb
there's a beach at your feet.

But not a single broken piece of you
will ever be sand
no part of your spirit
was made from this land.

You are one hundred percent sky
spread between two precious hands

And I'm just a star,
who followed a bridge to the moon.
I'll see you soon.
I'll see you soon.

He didn't see the patch of ice;
She had closed her eyes for just a bit.
When she looked,
Guardrails tearing...
No time to shout,
Windows blowing out,
Merciful airbags slamming oblivion
Through muffled thudding
sliding,
rolling,
plummeting
plummeting
down.

Silence....

"Some day, if we die at the same time,"
His mother had said,
"We want to be together in the grave."

An ominous request, that,
And one to be perused, ignored,
Revisited now
As her life hovered
"Ten percent," the doctors said.
Shattered body, all alone
.../.../....../..................
Alone.......

They were together again.


"Do you remember what they asked?"

"I do."

"And do you think...?"

The mortuary
Obliging,
Compassionate,
Arranged them
Arms encircling,
Her head upon his chest...
Embraced in life,
Embraced in death.

Lowered gently down,
A warming day,
In spite of snow,
A circling of friends around,
A mercy to have lived and died
Through every harm
Encircled in each others' arms.

I was lying on a highway,
Next to crashed cars,
With blood trickling down my face.
I was with my best friend;
She was so adamant on buying that dress.
That blue dress we had seen a week ago,
Through the window of a closed store.
Now, she was in the car
With airbags against her body
She was alive, thankfully;
But with a broken arm.
As now the situation was contained
With no unusual movement around us,
We walked to the hospital nearby
And were given first aid.
Unclear about what had happened
Until the news channel spoke about the meteor.
The car crash was at the edge of the crater.
After dropping her to her place,
I got back home after 2 hours.
It was 5pm and exactly then,
The country was under attack;
It was a war.
The enemies were attacking from all sides,
And Oh God! From us they were not far!
As we hurried to leave the place,
From the window, I saw a man loading a grenade.
I was white as I shouted for my Mom,
In reply I heard, "It's nothing".
"But Mom, you have not seen what's happening here, we have to run!"
"Yes dear, we have to hurry, after all it is 5.30".
Now the man was aiming the grenade at us.
"5.30?! Mom we have to run, we all are going to die!"
"Not we, but only you!"
I was surprised,
"It's 5.30, for God's sake, wake up!
Or you'll again miss the first hour of the day!"
*And all this while,
I thought I was surviving an apocalypse.

As I light this third one,
your face came up to my mind.

I suddenly wished that your love is like smoking.
When I desired to let in the smoke,
the addictive nicotine of your love
inside my pitiful tired airbags,
I could easily tell myself
to exhale the white
lung filtered ghost
out of my system,
out of my life.

But your love doesn't work that way.
Love is inking your name on my skin
deep through my bones (if it can).
Living in me, thousands of needle bites
In each second piercing through who i am
for the rest of my breathing years.
And through the pain, your name is complete.
Yet when you leave,

your name, your love,
will remain
in blank ink
on my young
cigarette-fumed
skin.

one month:

we went mini-golfing
and then to the movies.

you were so nervous.
it was adorable.

you texted me
halfway through the movie

“can I hold your hand?”

I said yes.



two months:

I had an emergency removal
of my wisdom teeth.

you came and took care of me.
I was embarrassed, but
you didn’t care.

with swollen jaws and
slurred speech and a
mouthful of ****** gauze,

you still looked at me
like I was the most
beautiful woman
you had ever met.



three months:

you weren’t paying attention
and you crashed your car.

the car was totaled.
the airbags went off,
the windshield cracked.

I wasn’t hurt at all.
you hurt your neck.

the first thing you did
was get me out of the car
and onto the side of the road

even though you were
the one who was hurting.



four months:

I spent nights at your place.
we made it official.

I let you touch me.
I wanted you to touch me.
I hadn’t felt that way
in a very long time.

we drank.
we kissed.
we had ***.

the next morning,
you weren’t gone like
I thought you would be.

you had your arm
wrapped around me.

you’re a heavy sleeper.
I smiled and went
right back to sleep.



five months:

it was my birthday.
I told you that I never really
celebrated my birthday.

I was still in school,
but I didn’t go that day.
I spent the day
with you instead.

before you,
I never felt so loved.

I spent Christmas
with your family.
I had never
celebrated Christmas.



six months:

I took my shirt off
in front of you.

I hadn’t done that yet.
for half a year,
I slept with my shirt on.
we had *** with my shirt on.
you didn’t push me to.

you saw my scars.
I thought for sure
you would leave.

you didn’t even blink.
you hugged me and
you kissed me and
you didn’t see me
any differently.



seven months:

not much happened
that month.

I got close with
your family.

you’re not American.
you had lived here before
but you had moved back
only seven months earlier.
you weren’t planning
on staying, so you were
living in your parents’ house.

it was awkward
because they were
so nice to me.
I kept waiting for
something bad to happen.
nothing did.

I started leaving
my toothbrush
in your bathroom.



eight months:

you wanted to meet
my family.

family has always been
important to you.

we drove out to Ohio
to meet my uncle
and my little cousins.

they’re the least eccentric
members of my family,
but they’re still dysfunctional.
I didn’t know how
to warn you. so I didn’t.

you met my cousin.
you realized he was nonverbal.
you sat with him and you
talked to him like he was
any other twelve-year-old.

you both played video games.
more like you played, and
he watched. but I had
never seen him so happy.
he didn’t have to talk.
his smile showed me everything.

my youngest cousin
loved you too.
you played with her dolls
and you gave them
funny voices when you did.
she laughed every time.



nine months:

we got into an argument.
it was nothing serious,
but we hadn’t argued before.

you didn’t hit me.
you got up and walked away.
somehow that scared
me even more.

I waited for you to
come back with something
worse than a punch.

you came back
with a hug and an
“I love you.”



ten months:

we went to a
fertility clinic.

obviously we didn’t
want children yet,
but my friend told me
that early treatment might
be the key to helping me.

I didn’t want you
to come with me,
but you insisted.

it was bad news.
I cried. you wiped my tears
and told me that
if we ever had a baby,
it doesn’t matter how.

what would matter
is how we raise that child,
blood or not. I told you again
how much I love you.



eleven months:

I relapsed with
my self-harm addiction.

eighteen new scars
and over sixty stitches later,
I came home.

you took care of me.
you never should’ve had
to do that, but you did.

I healed with you
by my side.



one year:

we moved in together.
you met my brothers.

you weren’t intimidated
by my brother. he tried.

he was so rude to you
and eventually you
snapped and told him
to shut the **** up.
he smiled and so did I.
he said that
you were a keeper.

you weren’t afraid to
stand up to him, even
though he was my brother.
no one had done that before.

your love for me
outweighed your
fear of my family.

my brother loved you
after that.



years:

I graduated school
and you went back
to get another degree.

we hit hard times
and we had great times
and through it all,
we were happy.

it wasn’t easy to stay.
sometimes I felt like
running so that you
couldn’t leave me first.
I stayed. so did you.

you wrote me a letter
and you asked,

“will you marry me?”

I said yes.

I met this girl who means a lot to me.
This is dedicated to her.
Love.

Please forgive me for letting you get too close
Although I did warn you
There is no outlet down this road
and there are no life vests on this boat
and there are no airbags in the car
and there is no harness or safety net for when I am falling back into my own body...
Have you ever tried to breathe underwater knowing you've run out of oxygen and the light is so far away yet you keep swimming towards it but it seems like the more you swim the further you get from it and just as you're fingertips graze surface the ocean claims your name so the voice of your lost soul forever screams in the shells that are a home to a series of hermit *****
Have you ever sunk into your own bed by what feels like the force of a thousand boulders, unable to move, unable to speak, and just when you think it's all over, the demons that haunt you come out and now you're unable to breathe, there you go hovering over your body and not being able to do a thing
Every night I pray to God that I never see you in my dreams
because for your entire life, everyday that you wake up from your dream you lose a little bit more of yourself to those demons that haunt you
Every time you close your eyelids you see the monster that's trying to be Neptune and drown you in his seas
But baby I gave you the moon as the light to see the path that leaves behind all of those hermit shells
Now your the voice of your lost soul is no longer trapped in the home of a monster
It has found its way to me
Finally you can get some decent sleep
and wake up to me
from this day forward I can't say that you're the woman of my dreams because I'll be ****** if my demons trap you too
When someone asks you how we came to be, you tell them that we met on the moon every night
To calm the ocean tide and make it out alive
and if you are to drown in your dreams again, I'll still be here on the moon for when you find my light again
Waiting to build you a new home away from all of our demons...

Write What You Know

I am standing in front of another creative writing class, and from my mouth, the mouth of all English teachers, comes, “Write what you know,” and the carefully tied fly whips itself out onto the surface of the classroom and lies there, waiting for a nibble or a strike. My students, fresh from fields and country roads and long hours alone on the prairies, stare back like ancient trout, converged at this bend in the river. No one moves a pencil; no one rises to even tap the bait. Silence is broken by the sound of the motorized General Electric clock over my head as it marks the flow of time and water and life.

Whoever put a 15 inch clock on the wall above and behind the teacher, knew something about sadism. Students mark their breathing in second hand sweeps, while I wait for that first hand to rise like a fish, foolishly deciding to catch one last fly for the evening…my fly, tied carefully to “invisible, mono-thread nylon leader” guaranteed to withstand the assault of five pound monster brown trout. Patiently, I stand by the edge of the stream, my feet just barely touching the water line.

“Mr. Bouchard? What if I don’t have anything to write about?” a querulous voice trembles. Shimmers of water-light ripple through the pond-room. I see the other trout-children moving ever so slightly, turning in the water thick air toward the question-tap.

“Patience,” I think…and clear my throat. “Good question,” I say. “What do you know that you would want to write about? What stories do you have to tell that others would like to hear?” I let the current move the fly a little deeper over the waiting trout.

And there I miss the first strike of the day.

“Nothing. I got nothing,” grumbles Charlie. “I don’t go nowhere. I don’t do nuthin’ but work and stay at home.”

“Yah. Pretty much says it all right there,” chimes in his best friend Tad. The other fish start to turn away from the prompt/bait. I can see they are thinking of going into deeper water.

Quickly, I change tactics. I turn and grab a broken piece of chalk…not much, but enough. I scratch out two words: ‘episodic memory.’ Turning to the class, I say quickly, “What do you remember about 9/11? Take a minute and think about 9/11. Where were you? What were you doing? Who was with you? What time of day was it? What did you feel?”

The class is interested in the bait change up. I can see their trout bodies, speckled with brown dots, turning toward my new presentation. Gills are fanning in and out a little quicker than before.

A hand shoots up. Mary says, “I was on my way to school, and the bus driver yelled at us all to be quiet because something was going on with World Trade Center.”
A couple of her friends nod their heads, eyes looking up and back, into the past. Images were coming into focus.

Jose blurts out, “My mom was on the way to New York that morning. She was waiting at the airport. We were all worried about her.”

Now we’re getting somewhere, I tell myself. “So, Jose, can you remember exactly what you were doing when you first found out about the planes hitting the building? Where were you? What were you doing?”

“I had just eaten…Cheerios…yeah, it was Cheerios!” he says. “I was making sure my books were in my backpack, and the news came on over the Good Morning Show. I remember I stopped and just stood there like I was frozen. It was a couple of hours before we knew she was okay, but her plane was grounded so she couldn’t go to New York.”

The rest of the class murmurs. The beautiful fish begin to move as one toward the bait.

I nudge. “What did you see? What did you hear? What did you feel? What did you smell? Who were you with? Take a minute and write that down.”

Pencils scratch on cheap paper. The sound of the clock hum recedes. Time slows as currents of thought push the humming motor down. The stream slows and the water surface becomes glassy.

Two minutes pass. No one says anything.

I break the silence. “This is episodic memory. When huge events take place in our lives…events that mean something very important to us, or that are swift and exciting, sometimes too wonderful or too terrible to understand or to survive…at that instant…those events are stored in our minds almost like living, high definition videos. We can remember these episodes with all five senses. We remember what we were doing, what we were eating, who was with us, where we were, sights, sounds, smells, feelings…they’re all there in our episodic memories.”

I have their attention. The hook is set. Some pencils even scratch “episodic memory” on paper. I push on.

“We all have collective episodic memory. 9/11 is a good example. You all have some collective memory of that day when terrorists flew two airplanes into the twin towers in New York City.”

I take a breath. “Now comes the reason for my teaching you about episodic memory. We all have personal events stored in episodic memory as well. Each of us has his or her personal memories, forever burned into the hard drives of our minds. When we pull up these memories, they are there in true color, full sound, and clear vision. We can see, taste, touch, hear and smell those memories clearly. That’s what I mean when I say, ‘write what you know.’

It’s illegal to fly fish with multiple baits on one line in Montana, not that I am coordinated enough to keep 15 grey wolf flies separate and in the air on the end of 30 feet of fly line anyway. In my mind, I imagine those flies stinging the water and 15 fish leaping to snag them. The class is moving mentally toward episodic events.

The fly fisherman lives for that leaping catch, when the world explodes with the splashing surge of trout beauty and fierce battle. The teacher lives and breathes the exhalations of “AHA!” as students capture concepts and come to life.

Fifteen memories, brilliant as shattering crystal catching sunlight, explode in fifteen minds…and then the trouble comes. I have been here before, and move quickly to head off a possible flight to deep waters.

“Class! I need you to hold your thoughts for just a minute.”

“Some of us in this room just experienced memories of wonderful events: winning shots at ball games, good news of brothers or sisters coming home from war, first kisses … and some of us are experiencing terrible events, reliving them over right here in this room. I know that happens. It happens to me. The problem is…not all episodic memories should be shared with everyone.”

The class is silent. A couple of eyes are red and I can see where tears are beginning to form. Someone is recalling a fumbled tackle and the agony of sounding jeers. Another is re-living the scratchy beard and beer-sour breath of a father as he crosses all lines of decency and honor with a child. I can almost hear the sounds of skidding tires and feel exploding airbags as three minds simultaneously re-experience crashes…. The silent sounds of slaps and screams, of joyous and sarcastic laughter, of shouts of tearful farewells and exuberant reunions fill the air, bubbles releasing in the moving water of the classroom.

And then, the bell rings. “Take your ideas with you and write about what you know! I’ll see you Wednesday,” I yell.

Fifty minutes. The fishing is good. I reel in the fly, check the hook, and wait for next fish to come downstream.

I can feel it wearing on my skin, a deterioration of my bones, sandpaper on my heart, carving holes and smoothness in paces were they don't belong, polishing me into something it isn't. Inside my head I'm screaming but its hard when everyone knows better, everyone is telling me what to do, no one is willing to let me just do things my way, those ways are wrong, always wrong, and I need to stop them or else. Or else what? I'm not even sure I just know its bad and bad is bad and that's something I'm not supposed to be doing.

My body is caving in on itself, but I don't have the time for it, I'm late, so very late, for all the important dates and I can't let the axes fall and the queens to get angry for I can't waste any time with my head chopped off. I have to keep it together. I must keep it together. I have no choice but to keep it together.

I can't lose anything. I've built my mountain of progress and though my heart is being sandpapered into a mess and a circle of conformity and pain, I can't stop I can't breathe if I breathe a breath of my own air they reject it and my new lungs they gave me reject all air that is original. I can't breathe. I can't keep things together. Everything is a broken cacophony of madness and I cannot silence them and they fill my lungs and bleed me of oxygen until my body is panicking and I'm not breathing.

I want to feel better. I want the monsters gone and the fear and the shattered fragments to find their place somewhere safer than the tips of my fingers and the center of my heart. I'm so scared. I'm so tired.

I'm tired of trying and failing and having no time to breathe and when I try to give myself time to breathe I'm not better and things hurt more and everything spiraling down, down, down, and I can't stop it its like my brakes are broken and I'm careening into traffic and I'm trying to save myself but my airbags are broken and my windshield is shattered and my bones are brittle and my seat-belt is choking me and I know that if I don't get the brakes to stop soon I'll be dead but I know if I stop driving I'll hate myself more so I pray to unnamed gods and figments of my imagination to let me live past one more intersection so that I don't have to stop never stop and just keep on going forward.

I don't know if I'll make it, but I can't stand the idea of braking now. I could lose everything I've ever dreamed of, and I can't stand the thought of that.

I'm so tired and everything hurts, but I can't brake now, I can't sleep now. It might **** me but losing everything would **** me too. Stuck between a whirlpool and a seven headed *****, guess I'm picking the ***** and hoping I have enough marbles by the end to make it through.

Please stop being tired.

my life is a wreck
a paralyzing car wreck

you are the tree
that came from nowhere
causing me to swerve
into this depression

though the crash was quick,
the recovery will not be
and I will never be able
to walk freely
again

the cuts that line my body from the crash
stem from the shattered glass
made of shattered dreams
and malevolent words
that i'll never forget

my airbags come in a small pill bottle
and though they do not cushion my head,
they cushion the blow
of the destruction

my seat belt is his arms
gripped tighter than a buckle
and stronger than any nylon
that would be designed to save my life

I become lightheaded easily
from exposure to the smoke inhalation
more commonly known as
anxiety

**my life is
an absolute wreck

I need to go back in time
when family was family
communities where tight knit
and church lasted all day Sunday

You know... back in the day
when disputes were decided
with fists and not guns
and meals shared at the table

Once in a while
on any given weekend
we'd pile in the sedan
for a classic SUNDAY DRIVE

No GPS or directions to guide us
just following the open road
no seat belts or airbags
free spirits in every essence

I miss the road games
I miss the family time
I miss those good old days
I miss that SUNDAY DRIVE.

we sat in the car in front of the fabric store
talking about the pink elephant that had found
a permanent residence inside of our home:
my future.
i wish that eyes came with personal windshield wipers
because you cried over the fact that i didn't believe in god
that i didn't want to go to a christian college
that i didn't want to worship
and i wish my kneecaps came with airbags,
so i would find it easier to pray,
but i'm sorry mom, that is not who i am.
your baby girl has been cutting the strings from
being sewed in for so long, and using them to patch
up your own heart because it hurts me to know that you know
i am not saturday morning church pews,
i am not someone who judges the length of someone's
skirt because deep inside i really wish i had the legs
to pull it off. i am not empty hallelujah's, amen's, preach it,
i am not a believer in depending on god to choose where the dice fall,
because i refuse to believe that life is rigged,
i'll take the punches as they come and put on my boxing gloves,
i don't care if i fall out of the ring, because i know now i'm strong enough to get back in,
and for me that hasn't been something realized through bowing my head
it's been something realized through holding my head high
and trying my best to do right,
and it's sad that you don't believe there can't be good without god.

what hurt the most
wasn't that you refuse to pay for another college
wasn't that you have so much faith invested in the guy upstairs
that you forgot to put some towards your daughter
who's only looking for pride from her mother,
it was when you said,
"next thing i know, you're gonna be bringing a girl home."

this closet, is getting smaller everyday,
and being trapped in here with all of these skeletons
is starting to hurt.
boys are cool,
but *****
are ******* awesome.
and if i ever do fall in love with a girl,
i'll write our names into all the bibles i can find.
because there's a verse in there somewhere
that says that our bodies are a temple,
so with her i'll have no problem with going to church everyday.
if i had a genie, i would never stop rubbing my lamp,
wishing that i would be able
to care for things without the expense
of losing the ones that care for me.

I've been listening to sermons since i was a day old,
and what I've learned is that God is love,
so if there is someone looking out for me up there,
he should know better than anyone else
that loving someone with the same
secret body parts as mine
is anything but bad, is anything but a sin,
is anything but wrong,
it is me holding a girl's hand
it is me being just as human as anyone else.

Jon you love to teach with your mouth.  Please start teaching with your ears.

I am only one person.

Jon I know you care too much. Please don't ever stop.

I don't want to burn out.

Before you go to bed you think too much. Make those your most important. For they will be the ones you remember forgetting.

I never write down the things I wish to.

Jon breathing comes simple. Your mothers lungs were not as fortunate. Don't abuse the airbags in your chest.

I can't do this

Without your fingertips you wouldn't know what amazing feels like. So touch the lives surrounding you.

I have too many calluses.

You were given a heart in one piece. Stop convincing yourself it's broken.

I found hope.

Jon your dad left you for a reason. You are a man because of it. Now chest up like you mean it.

I miss him.

Jon she is here. In the snowflakes on your tongue. Sunshine in your steps. And in the muscle that helps you swallow the loneliness of her absence.

I dream of a life with her in it.

Jon you have one back. Please stand up for something worth your time here. Do it with pride doused in confidence.

I don't know my purpose.

Jon you are purpose.

I'm fine and then I'm a basket case
I am driving down a secluded road and then I am in the middle of a city, there are too many noises and people, I need to get out
I am crashing. I am toppling over a cliff going
Down
Down
Down
Down
Crash.
Windows broken, airbags deployed, engine on fire.
I am the wreckage.
Don't slow down the world to look at me because I don't want to be seen. I am too busy feeling the pain, feeling loss, feeling broken. My gears don't work right. You can't put me in drive anymore, my radio won't play sweet feel good top 40 songs.
Even my gas pedals won't budge, I am stuck and I am feeling everything
All at once.

I can only recollect the moments....before, during, and after,

before.....
we were laughing so hard I felt like I couldn't breathe,
and my stomach, it hurt so bad the pain was almost unbearable,
I was crying too, we were both crying,
to the point where she begged me to stop because it was hard for her to see....
and moments before,
we saw the lights of a cop car, and
at first I was going to say go straight to avoid it, but
I didn't, so we turned left and were
hoping that we would not catch their attention,
but we did....
because in that moment,
we both saw two lights,
ones that were red and blue,
and the others attached to the front of a street sweeper,
and I remember screaming stop, because
these things only happen in movies and on t.v. shows, and
I don't know why but seconds before we would collide,
I actually believed that we could avoid it,
but our fate had already been determined...

during...
I don't remember screaming,
I remember the sound, the adrenaline, and the feeling of us colliding,
the second I knew we were going to hit it, I closed my eyes,
and when I opened them again I was in a dream, my
chest felt heavy and all I could see was the shattered window shield,
the airbags, and
I could feel a heavy pain on my chest,
she turned and said "oh my god I'm so sorry",
all I could manage to get out was that I needed to get out, we
were on the curb,
and had encountered what we were trying to avoid because,
we definitely caught the cops attention, and

after....
for some reason in my mind I felt as though I had to act like nothing was wrong, I
suppose I was in shock, but
I remember saying I was okay, but questioning whether I really was or not, the paramedics
checked my vitals and said I was good, but
it did not feel that way, and
I could not bring myself to look at her because she was displaying all of the emotions that I couldn't, all of the emotions that
made it real, and I tried
to say I love you and it was okay, but
I could barely make out the words, my dad took me
to the emergency room and, everything felt even less real, we
arrived and I remember listening closely to their conversation, "my
daughter has just been in a car accident", I
gave her my social security number and she got the rest of the information from my father, and
I remember listening closely, making sure he got it all correct, he
got my date of birth off, by a day,
she put my wristband on and a file in a slot, we sat down and waited, only for a second because in a second, a man
in all blue,
picked up the file and welcomed us in, I
remember getting my weight taken, should I
put my phone down will that affect it? I didn't,
I held it and then followed him into the next room, I
laid down on the bed and he, took my vitals again, I
remembered I took a picture of the ones they took in the ambulance, and they said I should show it to them, but I
couldn't talk unless I had to, I
couldn't move unless I had to, I remember
hearing laughter in the next room and thinking of how this, this
can not all be real, there's people
happy and smiling yet I can't get to where they are, I
can't even begin to think of how they got to a place where everything is okay, at least in that moment, but
the doctor came and then someone to take an X-ray, one
by one they came in and out, each telling
me something new, I
remember looking at the clock and noticing how fast the hand moved, they
asked what time it happened, but
I remember Emily texted me when we got off the highway, 10:25,
it takes about ten minutes to get to my house,
how bad was it, I
showed him the picture, "you're lucky
you were wearing your seatbelt, tell
your friends to wear theirs," as
if I am now a walking advertisement, and
they scanned my wristband, as if
I am like a box of cereal, like
the ones I ring up at my job, I
did not feel human, and
we left, I went home and wanted to sleep but,
everything kept replaying in my head, everything
keeps replaying in my head, the before
the way we were laughing, the thought of almost dying nowhere on our minds, the during,
my scream of warning, the cop coming over, the paramedics, the headlights...
the headlights, I swear I can still see them coming towards me in the dark, and after,
the hospital, the smell, my
nurse smelled like someone I once adored, how strange,
and I keep replaying everything in my head, I
can't believe that neither of us is dead.