A Unique Day

There will never be another.
There will never be another sky like the one I saw today as the sun died,
or  another moon like the one I saw last Wednesday night as mother and I sat in the car outside the house and listened to the crickets chirp.
There will never be another day like the one I had today when I met a little boy in the hospital and his father, the FedEx man who delivers my packages everyday.
There will also never be another cookie like the one I ate next to the boy in the hospital as we played Connect Four and laughed at the nurses Pebble's style bun.
There will never be another mug of root beer as biting as the one I drank next to my brother as we watched the football game on the ice cream parlors 52 inch screen,
or another leather seat like the one in my brother's little Ford, stained with Mountain Dew and grease from the bowling ball lanes.
There will never be another person like me, on a day like today.

His Captain

Stucco walls the color of blood mixed with dirt grow darker and darker. When the window above his head shut, only thin slivers of light broke through the defenses. The checkerboard floor lay beneath him with dirt, dust, and human hair wadded into balls around his entire body. The wooden door met with the pane and the knob turned, releasing the latch from it's spring-hold to rest inside the necessary hole. A patient hand pulled a warm quilt of black and brown cotton over his back, which he pulled even tighter over his head. Outside, the noise of angry, hurt voices drowned all other sounds. "What are we going to do?" they kept asking, but no one replied a sufficient answer. It didn't matter. No one could lead them now. The Captain's red scarf was a burning reminder, tied around the boy's hand. A reminder that glory days were all over.

Gems and Plastic

Tanzanite, chocolate diamonds, pearls.
Stones sitting grandly inside little felt boxes.
Underneath the glass counter, dark colors contrast
with the blinding white of display shelves in showroom lights.
Metal, as fake as silver, lines the boxes.
What a Taj Mahal!
Men and women dressed in suits behind hte counter
exhibit wares on fingers, toes, neck, and hair
like a fish in rainbow scales. Price tags
are never shown, but always discussed
when it comes down to the card. Platinum, gold, obsidian, sapphire.
Gems and plastic never sound so good together
as when one can buy the other along with all of the other things in life,
useless, needed, desired or otherwise.

A Graveyard

Flowers scattered around grey.
The momentos of ordinary days where people walked.
Some are real, with water in their petals
as they fall to the ground in the cold.
Some are fake, course cotton and glue
holding them together, feigning to cheat death.
Only a few last without getting dirty,
but none of them last eternally.
Standing in metal vases next to stones
marked with epitaphs, nothing grows.
Loving mother, honest man, precious son or daughter.
Irreplaceable woman, enchanting man.
So many roles. Now all that commemorates
them are pale flowers and stone.

Beach Music

At night the moon raced past the windowsill

of the second floor bedroom in Beach Music, our house by the sea.

So unremitting and vain.

The lane trod down the shore, but only followed me.

You went another direction, a direction the stars follow,

always farther into themselves, but not you,

never into you.

Yet when we peered out the shattered pane filled with corpses of insects

who should have lived long and free, we didn’t see the end of the ocean,

like many do, where blue melts into green.

We saw only midnight and the shimmer of stars

on the body of the waves. We didn’t noticed the gulls lazily drifting

over our head, or the sandpipers scouring on the ground,

only the tiny world of the window as we peered out of our cage.

We understand so little, the world doesn’t have a chance to tell

our wandering minds how we should really see the clouds and the sun,

how the waves really roll, and what the water should feel

like as the waves beat us sore.

Where did we find such distance?

How do we lose happiness on the trip home?

What is happiness to the honey bee

with the taint of morning glories

still glued to his fur?

That night, the moon raced the world to see if it could make it home

before we did. Before we found a way to cancel it out again.

The world of windowsill bodies stands in Beach Music

on the second floor in the salmon room where together

we understood the world of mosquitoes that drink to nature’s health,

ladybugs who remain two sided and dream,

and spiders weaving stars into their seams.

Knowing

She sits in a chair, wires welded to bone.

Does she know?

Sirens ring in her ears.

Do they know?

Movies shout from the living room.

Why do they care?

What do they know

of her metal limbs, warning sounds outside the door?

What do they know beyond a mirror?

The chair is cold, like mountain air.

Does she know mountain air?

Sirens blare, and no one comes.

Do they know she is there?

A handsome actor shakes his head and smirks.

He knows, doesn’t he?

He knows they can’t find her.

He knows she belongs in a frigid chair.

The chair is a cage that chains her veins.

Does blood still flow?

The red sirens beat circles in her muscles.

How can sirens be strong?

A screen maiden cries that love is to the end,

but how does she know?

How does she know if it goes that far,

or if it is a car short on gas

rolling down a sailing barge?

For a girl in a chair, with steel encased toes,

does strength mean standing alone?

The alarm of death, like the banshee’s wailing call.

Can she hear the spirit once more?

Glass moves on, retelling history,

but never summarizes it all.

Can it summarize her all?

Encase or capture a desperate artery,

then keep it for later falls.

Does she know that iced chair or the last breath of mountain air?

Does anyone mourn, or walk away?

Does the chair sit empty, or gone?

Mama's Peppers

I witnessed brown in a root

that stood in my mother’s garden

burn the water to mud

then dust,

and pollute the flow of veins required for breath,

for living in a world of heat

and cold alike.

Fruit plunged into pits,

into worms and beetles,

too consumed with puddles to bite the sting of sweet,

to savor the green,

the sun-made root sprung in red and yellow,

filled with more seeds than a watermelon.

Wilted, abandoned not by midnight rock,

but by stiff hands too frail to pin them

on fading arms again.

Umbilical cords once cut

can never be resewn.

Babies sleep in dirt,

with no mother,

no mouth for crying.

Only a rough earth shell,

shriveled like cranberries

I am addicted to.

Green and red and yellow stripped

to their hue.