Heirlooms

Jun 2017

One day, parkouring through my uncles two story apartment,

I was drawn naturally to his desktop computer

upon which I found his OkCupid Dating profile.

I don't remember his username, Or anything about the site really,

But I remember the head-shot of a beautiful woman

framed above the desk

the sterile grey Rubbermaid totes behind me like caskets, 

How they made even the hardwood floors

look like they were holding in the dead.

For my Grandmothers birthday

my family gathered at Captain Newicks

her favorite seafood restaurant.

My uncle flirted with the waitress.

I don't think I've ever gone to a restaurant with my uncle where he

didn't flirt with the waitress.

Captain Newicks went out of business shortly after that dinner

followed shortly by my grandmothers life.

the relationship between my uncle and that waitress expired well

before both my Grandmother or Captain Newicks.

I remember asking my grandmother about my Uncle.

Tarots Fool would have predicted

my grandmothers eyelids

a silent prayer before her words.

He had two children by his first wife,

keeps a portrait of her above his desk.

She was a blessing on the family

Selfless amd loved by every one.

She took her own life

Spread her wings to break free from the cage He kept her locked in.

He buried his heart in her casket,

motorcycles, empty bottles

had a third child by a second wife

who buried her heart in drugs and strangers.

Amanda was 6 years old when her mother died.

my uncles wife. Her brother josh was 3

when she died my uncle wanted to put them both up for adoption

he didn't.

Their mother died on the 20th of September

a week after her 25th birthday.

their mother once bought a bunch of carnations

with a dead rose in the middle

and said "it looks like I'm dead".

she took a bottle of pills before going to a chinese restaurant

went out as a family

and collapsed at the table.

she was rushed to the hospital

she didn't make it.

their mother wasn't happy

her and my uncle were getting divorced at the time

lived in the same house that I grew up in.

when my uncle told the kids mommy wasn't coming home

my mother was 17 

and there to see all of it.

When my mother was 17 

she had to watch her baby cousins be told their mother had died.

When my grandmother passed.

grief bounced off of my uncles callouses

ricocheted to my cousins, robbed 

twice now of a selfless mother.

The tragedies in my family

have always enthralled me.

like shakespeare sonnets

I breath them into my faithless nights

tap an extra dream-catcher on my bedpost

in space of a prayer.

When The hearth-fire of our family dimmed 

a tealight in my grandmothers eyes.

grayed, Glossed.

she could no longer crochet 

one big dysfunctional quilt, 

together from our families yarn.

without her needle, 

I was determined to watch how our life spun forward.

The next time I saw my uncle,

He offered me a job.

Thick mosquito blinded us as we carried our sweat 

with Rubbermaid totes into a blue two story home 

deep in the evergreen thickets of Maine.

a tall white fan rotated slowly back and fourth 

Cooling the wet patches on our T-shirts while my Uncle 

flirted with the landlord

I still remember when my uncle tossed me the truck keys

the look of terror I gave him

How easy it was for him to trust

I guess when your heart is buried in a casket 

you stop worrying who has your keys.

It makes me remember

when my daughter asked for my keys 

I would sit her in the drivers seat

watch her pretend to drive.

I loved imagining her free

living how she wanted.

I still wouldn't give her my keys.

she would turn my car into a casket.

It makes me remember

when that little girls mother asked me to drive

My words spun portcullises

prison bars forged in anxiety

scaffolding out of latex secrets

Glued with siren smiles, pacifier kisses

denying cigarette smoke on her breath

fueling infernos in my head.

when my uncle handed me his keys without hesitation.

my religion was insulted by his tough skin.

I felt his simple kindness 

like a splash of holy water. 

saw in me, the devil 

caging a woman like property

holding her hostage 

out of fear.

And yes 

when She could drive she left me

And yes 

when she left me she took her daughter.

every morning 

cereal bowl of pills, I **** myself

keep a poster of my mothers face 

covered in bruises 

behind the tiny orange bottles 

to remind me why I do it.

wake up twice, 

first as Phoenix, dying

second as a watcher, writer and admirer.

callouses are not to protect us from the outside at all.

Callouses harden our bodies into caskets.

Hold in all our dead.

This is the kind of note I hope you all have an addition to..

I think I've come to a realization. Just watched "waking Life" for the first time the other day and I've ALWAYS been super curious about dreams. The many discussions with my roommate Jenay Breden the many talks on deja vu with Ben Masters, and many others, I am open with dreams and like i said very curious and good at asking questions (To me it is kind of wrong because I feel dreams tell A LOT about people so I am getting all this information from someone and they think they are jsut telling me a silly dream that means nothing.) A dream is an opening into your soul and psyche. Its very personal yet can be profoundly universal.. Anyway, I had a strange dream last night: (haha though all dreams are strange)
but the premis of it was a personal moral I feel I had to overcome at this moment in time..

not all dreams are the same, it might not be a moral, but the conquering of a long journey. For example I've had many a re-occuring dream where I would be on a quest and every time I have not completed it but the next time I dremt it I got further. Till one night I will complete it, then not have the dream again..

about half my dreams are scary on all sides of spectrum, from having family in danger, to other dark things.. to monsters, to death, running from someone/thing, to real-life-stuff to not-so-real-stuff, to parkouring in a mansion while my friends and I throw random objects at each other (i know.. what? haha).
Random dreams about things I desire, or fullfilment of life goals (one time I wrote a song on the piano in my dream) or the dream I had about swinging on the vines in the jungle before my bday.
Such as adventure dreams: flying is a huge thing i do in my dreams that I savor each moment of. A very-young-me dream was I was a sto-away on a pirate ship, but it was fun to travel through the maze of hidden spots..
Or maybe other dreams that aren't so much scary, but things I fear happening. Like a boyfriend cheating, or losing money. I mean, we all have these dreams.
My girl Ashleigh was telling me how her and her boy, had a similar dream the same night.
I see random people I know, and people I don't know.. yet
Such as deja vu. Ever since I had the theory a couple years about deja vu being a dream you once had, I have only encountered moments that attest to this.
Almost every deja vu Ive had I remember it being from a dream.. How can your mind know what is going to happen in the future?
We all might have heard that our mind and the universe are one. In many ways you know. examples: positive and negative affirmations, how the way we think spans subconsciously to others (when you're thinking of someone and they all of a sudden call or text you), we are all connected, etc
SO, if the universe IS our mind (and our souls are connected to this unvierse, to each other) and the universe has no time, because how can you put a tangible definition to something intangible, (i also got that from reading "universe in a nutshell" by Sir Steven Hawking).. then the universe/your mind, already knows the many paths your physical self can take in future, past, and present.
But WHY then (always my question:WHY), why then would it want to show you this glimpse into 'the future'...?
I will leave with a lucid dream I had one night:
a re-occuring place in my dreams I've noticed is a housing complex that is many stories tall where many people of many different ages and ethnicities live.
In this particular dream we are being chased not by zombies or aliens but a mix of the two, they look like the creatures from 'I Am Legend'.
I first noticed I was 'just in a dream' when one of them was chasing me up a flight of stairs and i fell, on my **** hands and legs scrambling up I saw it come for me and kept telling myself to 'wake up wake up!' and i might have for a second or two but then right back to sleep. When i realized there was no way out of this and that it was: 'MY dream, i could do what i wanted with what I had' (sound familiar to one's waking life? hmmm) before this whole moment I had run out of amo and had no gun so was at a lose to be easy prey. I was in the basement with everyone else of the house or others who had run in for shelter, and the beings were on their way downstairs. All of a sudden I thought 'there is a gun on the person in front of you and it is loaded' i grab the gun and with excitement but uncertainty I shot at the beings, and sure enough, they one by one fell down. WE were all, now, safe. Then it cut to a scene that we were all at a bar dancing and celebrating. haha
I am excited that i have lucid dreamed before but its not like once you do it from then on you are capable of it, it is very rare for me to lucidly dream, but still very exciting.

Please Please coment and tell me ANYTHING relatable to this. your dream, your thoughts, your theories, your deja vu, your disagreements.. I am very intrigued. I would create a blog somewhere but have no idea where to start, so i started here..
I tagged people I know and love and people i've noticed who have also taken interest on any subject I've mentioned.
Sorry for anyone I missed but please feel free to comment anyways if you see this and are not tagged

I'm clutching at straws
I'm hanging off ledges,
Parkouring my way down.

They were lying about the spirals.
I'm free-falling
In directions I didn't know existed.

There's my limb
And there goes my mind.

But my eyes are shut.
My faith is blind.

And I'm losing touch with home base.
Auto pilot, I run no vehicle.
Just crash and burn.

After you all left, your party that is,
I ended up parkouring a bit,
through a beautiful display of bamboo,
and wooden structures,
and found myself amongst friends,

Thai ladies who recognized me,
from the last time i had been here,
and we picked up conversation,
exactly where we had left off.

The one on my left was from Chiang-Rai,
she was beautiful, and spoke english well,
while the one to my right,
who also spoke well, was much more foreign,
and much less cute.

After finalizing the feelings,
it was off to the festival of life,
and the veggie food cart, once again,
was happy to see my face.

I told them as i had last time,
“Come to get a massage,
we can exchange for bomb food,
and all will work out well.”

Somehow these fields of love,
brought me back to prison walls,
and a game of basketball,
amongst angsty inmates,

and the soup that was bought for me,
for i could not pay, and we lost the game,
but all was not lost,
as i was given the keys to the jailhouse band,

and almost instantly i was back in that bar,
with my dad getting me drunk,
and buying tons of groceries,
to feed all the new friends.

It seems i had been given a deal:
they wanted 4oz on the front,
and i would be in the band,
and my dad could manage it all,

but just as easily i was sitting on a couch,
taking such a fat rip of bho,
that without missing a beat,
i remembered its exactly what i shouldn’t have done.