Imagine Everything
I’d forgotten what having friends feels like. Bonding, and all that, making it through life together.
How important
friends in
the
Flesh.
Friends around
throughout life.
Moments to share… realizing Rocky is dancing by the museum,
posing, and imagining victory
Envisioning
success.
A gap forward, from unfortunate to Fortunate.
A mindset for success and giving it All.
Have I found Reason or are these merely the musings of a mad man?
These holes in the ground remind me of when you used to tell me that if I dug a tunnel in the side yard, that I could make it to China.
Funny, old man, you really got me that time.
That thought is interspersed with not wanting to live through the tragedy of losing my mother.
I saw and felt your pain, old man. I really did, and I fear my turn.
Under Columbus´s boat, where the sea crashes against sharp volcanic rocks with thunderous roars, I look at the people below, and behind me the dark waves seem movie-like.
Gray, tumultuous clouds linger overhead, and the wind is cool, and comfortable.
Another short moment in my life soon to be gone forever; to be replaced by other short moments, until another young man stands in my place with his own pen and notebook, and replaces me by writing his own version, his own accounts.
And I will no longer be.
Until then, I am…
If all we are, are words in old journal entries, photographs in old dusty photo albums…
If all we are, are memories that reside in our friends’ and family’s minds…
If all we are, are people who try to make it, but nothing seems to go our way now or in the past or in the future…
If all we are… If all wea are…
is Dust Caught in Time’s unrelenting March Towards the End…
What can we do, but preserve the memory of us and those who came before us until the End?
It’s too late, death has its teeth sunk deep into me. I did not choose madness, but in true cliché fashion, it chose me — some unknown mountain dweller from a long-ago abandoned place no one cares about.
Such is Nature, such is the way, the circumstances of certain individuals. Afflicted by unseen ailments. I, like many, have exhausted all of my strength. There’s nothing left at my relatively young age. Funny, though, I feel old and these poems, if one can call them so, are filled with nostalgia.
And so, I pray like the 13 before me:
Lo, there do I see my Father.
Lo, there do I see my mother,
and my sisters, and my brothers.
Lo there do I see the line of my people, back to the beginning!
Lo, they do call to me. They bid me take my place among them. In the halls of Valhalla! Where the brave may live forever!
Have we lived multiple lives now? Is each stage in Life simply the Death of another one?
It seems so, when I was a child, I lived a life widely different than now. My thoughts, my motivations were different. There were other people in that chapter.
Chapter?
It was a whole story, all of its own. But that story ended, so did the child.
And so did the adolescent, the teenager, and the young adult. Stories finished, characters dead.
I keep seeing death, and a lot of change. I slowly watch myself die, all my former selves are gone, but not entirely. I sometimes feel them inside me, they sometimes come out.
Surreal…
It is happy sometimes, sometimes sad. The visits remind me that those times and those stories were real. That they weren’t made up and that this whole thing isn’t a dream.
Or is it?
Alas, the times, those times are gone and those those characters are still dead and gone.
Dead and Gone or far out of reach. Will they welcome me when the Final Death comes for me? Or will I find them first, tuned into their frequency?
I don’t know… things click one moment, and they fall apart the next.
This old black guitar stares at me and takes me back to a place, to people that are no more.
I look away, I don’t want to look at it anymore.
It reminds me… and it reminds me of the passage of time.
I was driving down the Misty Mountains as the sun was coming down. I got a glimpse of an unusually beautiful sunset. A dark cloud filled sky with red hues. My head felt altered, like I was impaired about to be sucked through another dimension. Truly, things looked different.
I was on my way to grab a drink, just one, down by the supermarket. When I got there, there was no parking spot, so I quickly parked behind a car and went in. I grabbed my usual, a pink lemonade Smirnoff — sweet alcohol is the best.
When I got to stand in line, I noticed a beautiful little girl. She was blonde with blue eyes, wore a white shirt with flowers and blue shorts. She looked so happy and had a radiant smile with expressive eyes.
As I looked to my left, I saw a little boy with curly golden locks and dark skin. I couldn’t help but smile.
I thought about being a father for a moment, and how my lady could give me a daughter like the lovely little, happy girl from the supermarket. But I have come to doubt it.
We are the Childless generation…
$3.91 for the Smirnoff — damn edibles are cheaper and the effects last longer, I thought. I didn’t drink it immediately. I went down by my old school and looked at it in the dark. Pizza shop was closed.
When I turned around, old tia’s house was occupied by its new occupants — a big white pickup sat in the driveway. I came back to 111 and turned left on 603. I drove by a house where a bunch of children were outside singing. I waved at them, and they roared in a happy excitement at the acknowledgement. Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” played.
I laughed a happy laugh. It was nice to see kids out having fun instead of being glued to tiny mass surveillance devices crafted by technocrats.
I got home and before I got off mom’s SUV, Reel 2 Real’s “I Like to Move It” started playing on the radio. The radio can surprise you with some great beats. You never know what could come on. Anticipation and surprise are great things. I listened to it in its entirety and danced my little dance.
I got out and picked up Post Office, flipped to the page where the picture of my new friend who has been dead for over 30 years was, and “Cheers!” This round is for you, and I gulped the Smirnoff down in one shot.
Otra vez la vi, la chica de los dibujos en la iglesia. Puede que tenga unos 13 a 15 años, pero ¿quién sabe? La gente me dice que parezco que tengo menos edad.
Su familia estaba allí, abuelo, abuela y su mamá. Edades, generaciones distintas.
De momento cerraba la libreta y atendía lo que decía el diácono, pero evidentemente su mente andaba por otros lugares. Tiene pelo marrón oscuro y lleva anteojos.
Así era yo, la mente en las nubes y así sigo siendo. Al menos la chica nutre una destreza hermosa: el dibujo a mano, lápiz y libreta.
El diácono hubiese sido sacerdote, predica muy bien, con intelecto, como un hombre que ha leído y entendido mucho. Me recuerda a mi padrino de confirmación, nombrado como el Salvador.
El mensaje era uno de esperanza, de lo poco Dios lo multiplica; de Generosidad y de abrir el corazón.
La chica sonríe poco, inhibida, ¿tímida?
El señor que llevo viendo por años, al quien nunca le recuerdo el nombre, la saludó y le echó la bendición.
La repostería, unos dulces para la tía. La primera vez en la iglesia solo ella y yo. Un joven, cuyos padres perdieron su hogar, que llevaban construyendo desde jóvenes por un Siniestro, me cuenta acerca de la Tragedia.
Nos marchamos y me senté a leer.
Just for a little while, I want to spend some time with my sister and my nieces. To look and see them in a new place.
To live some new moments that will soon pass, washed away by time unforgiving. But we’re all just passing through on our way to somewhere or nowhere…
Here, just for a little while.
Unable to relive the old chapters of our stories, I seek to enjoy what unfolds in the present and look forward to a better future.
Even just for a little while…
Death stands by the corner of my bedroom door. I don’t know the place nor the hour, so let us live here
Just for a little while…
I’m immersed in what is supposed to be a happy moment. My aunty turning 78 tomorrow, but I’m celebrating it today because I work the next day.
Ephemeral, but I try to soak in the moment as something positive, but even as I sit next to her listening to the waitresses singing Happy Birthday to her, I feel extremely sad.
I fight against the Feelings.
It might be the last birthday I share with her. She eats her chicken sandwich, no mayo, no tomatoes.
I get our picture taken; I look like a whole cheese dog in my black T, but I want it printed to remember the day one day.
We’re driving out, a copy of Ham on Rye and Post Office sit in the back — I couldn’t help myself, so I bought both. I see the closed Sears my father loved to go to. There’s a Coca-Cola van parked in the front of it. Maybe the guy that repairs the vending machines. It looks classic-like in its white, creamy color.
I drive her to La Posa, it’s full of people. We walk up the volcanic, crater-like rock where the lighthouse is. I hold her to make sure she doesn’t trip or fall.
78
in better shape than most, don’t see or hear too good though. Sometimes she thinks we want to kick her out, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Hurts to see her praying to the Virgin for help; her mind has gotten the better of her.
We love her, everyone does.
The wind is blowing up here, I hold her, she’s about 4’10” and 90lbs.
The Wind even knocks me around. I stare at this big rock in the water as the waves try to bury it from all angles. The water is deep– if I fell in, I’d be torn to pieces against that very rock.
Time to pick up the photographer up and go for some ice-cream.
The creepy pink The Storyteller laughs intermittently as aunty enjoys her strawberry ice-cream.
Another beautiful, but Ephemeral moment gone. It is the natural course of things. I try not to be sad, like the lizard in the mountain wall, but I guess this is what Lou Duro calls The Sadness of Happy Times.
