The Soulless

Where I am From (again)

I am from warm hugs

From sweet child O` mine lullabies and a star wars bedtime story

I am from rowdy boys crowded around a bridge ready to jump

I am from puppies in a bin baying and crowding around a mother basset

I am from apple pie dreams and hands older than me and stories spoken over

Laughter and the smell of food cooking in the oven

I am from the morning

Warm sunshine smiles and daisy chain afternoons

Brothers with too tall bodies and too small sensibilities

Confused and wonderful

I am from a garage

Alternative rock, the smell of grease and men and fixing the problem

Pieces clicking together like a puzzle

I am from a field

Scratches bug bites and high grass

Scrapes and bruises falling out of trees and into fun

I am from costuming

Bright sequin, improbable characters, and laudable performances

Lines not quite memorized but somehow funnier that way

I am from competition

Racing past a sibling or cousin to get through the kitchen first without being scolded by that one aunt

To

Racing through the air trying to get to a ball just beyond my fingertips so I can pound it into the ground before it’s blocked

I am from a kitchen

Smells that evoke nostalgia in every southern heart

All the sisters, cousins, aunts and grandmother gathered in the kitchen with bustling mouths laughing as they cook turkey, potatoes and cranberry jam and the menfolk watch football and the kids play a façade of the game of the day

I am from elegance

Being taught table manners, learning how to walk in 6"s and how to do my makeup from a favored aunt for the prom

Learning how to be a lady

I am from vibrancy

Spinning sepia-tinged memories filled with stars dreams and sadness

I am from a field lying between my parents learning Draco, the dippers, mars, and planets chasing the sisters and running from Orion’s bow

I am from the stars

A new adult wandering the earth

My head in the clouds with lofty ideas, hopes, and longing to be the cause of change

I am from a promise

A promise to learn

A promise to live

A promise to laugh

A promise to cry

A promise to succeed

A promise to fail

A promise to be me

I dreamt of a Man

I dreamt of a man, with long black hair, curling and twisting like laughter down his back 

I dreamt of a man with bright blue eyes, sparkling and winking and closing at my touch 

I dreamt of a man with long thin hands, strong, graceful and grasping against my skin 

I dreamt of a man taller than I, with head thrown back and face raised high 

I dreamt of a kiss, tender and sweet 

I dreamt of a million kisses all meant for me 

I dreamt of a Man who one day, could belong 

"I think I have cancer, no really I think I have cancer" she said as she shook his shoulders trying to get his attention

"babe last week you had the avian flu and the week before that you had ringworm and the week before that you thought you had meningitis"

"seriously though look I have a growth on my neck just below my ear" she pulled his hand around to feel what she was talking about, he felt the spot and yes there was something there

"okay, I'll call the doctor tomorrow and we will get it looked at" they went to bed peacefully and awoke with all the trappings of the next day forgetting about the previous nights conversation, she mentioned it a few more times and each time he promised he'd go with her to her doctors appointments, or remind her to call the doctor so they could go get it looked at

-but they never did, just like he didn't believe her when she was convinced her cough meant avian flu and her spot on her arm meant ringworm and her headache meant meningitis but this time... they should've

Golden Boy and the Black Sheep: Part 1 The Golden Boy

He’s an angel, always has been

The youngest son, the golden boy, the favored child

Shining and resplendent with bright hair long and fair cascading in curls, far more perfect than mine ever were, down his back across wide shoulders to a tapered waist to put models to shame

“Hes too pretty for his own good” “That boy has more charisma in his little finger than anyone else I have ever met” “see how tall and pretty that guy is?” Whispers follow him, praise even in the dark

In my dreams he has wings white and whole, huge things pristine and glistening except for the golden metallic liquid that the tips are dipped in. Blood thick I alone know that its the souls he's been given and the mark of all the hearts he’s unwittingly broken.

In reality he has long thin fingers, piano fingers that are perfect and kept soft and agile for music and grace, in my head those fingers are stained black from manipulating the ink black minds of poets and kings, inspiring them to beauty and malice and greed.

He doesnt have a halo but he might as well, all the compliments heaped upon his lofty brow make him hold his head even higher from the ground

some days I feel like I should hate him, my perfect, favored, oh so loved bouncing baby brother

but how could I hate he who I helped raise? he who I helped create and grow? he whos potential I saw first and gave him love and space and the words so that he could grow

people tell me I should hate him because everyone else loves him so much

but I can’t because he was the first person I loved too

More Beginnings

Humanity is a Poison 

Sunlight is all I know

I was born in the sun, I AM the sun, its radiant rays heralded in my birth and that memory will be with me until the death for I was born in the heat and light of the sun to be hope and peace and to combat the cold dark miseries of the world 

People don’t realize that the earth, our terra firma, is alive. Totally and completely, it breathes and cries and sings and lies. The trees are inexplicably conscious and carry dreams and messages from times long forgotten. The River is even older, it whispers to me and sends me dreams of warm afternoons gone by and of stormy seas that are yet to come. The river is the embodiment of time, it is beautiful always changing always flowing and never ever stopping, perhaps sliwed but never still 

The Red Backpack

Time slipped away

        We knew, had known, will know

She had years, then months then days, then none.

She went first

Skipped into death like she had been waiting for it all her life and I suppose in some ways she had,

I couldn’t handle it

I sold the business, the house, the car, I lived out of my backpack                       She loved books so I hitchhiked from library to library always picking up ones we loved. Then we’d sit down at one of the tables, two old coots living out of a beat-up red backpack and read and talk about everything

We got some odd glances often funny stares. I didn’t care I had my beloved back then I’d come back to myself and realize that I was once again just a lonely old man talking to an empty chair

Then I’d pick up that old red backpack once more and search for her in the next dusty corner of the next dusty library in the next dusty town

It's hot but it's not too hot it's hot in that summer, carnal, sweet sweat and hard work smelling strong of sawdust and body odor way

And you only get it from working in the sun, sweat doesnt smell the same if it's a hike or just sitting outside or a workout indoors in the winter

There's some . . . Visceral about hard work sweat in the summer

It's original sin

A wet hot American summer

Adam eating "the apple" under a blazing sun feeling the sweat bead under his curls at the back of his neck at the same moment that sticky savory juice graced his lips changing forever how he saw the world

It's what the pope fears more than anything

Raw

Humanity

Unfiltered

Un fettered

Animals running flat out across a grassland under golden rays

Laying in the shade of trees older than their speech

All their warts and beauty on display for anyone to see

Drops of it, stories encased in wet salt hit the ground and color it dark in a silent plea for rain

The Not Yet Now

The future past flashes forward in my head, I see blue eyes and long shaggy hair in my periphery with a warm hand on my waist the strength of the hand matching the strength of the musk on the hoodie that protects my wet swimsuit skin from the evening chill. 

We’ve spent all day together and a warm feeling enters my heart and my vision blurs as I come back to reality after seeing one of my fondest memories before it happens. The trees in the rove I lay in whisper “Lover you’ve returned to us” the river refers to me as daughter, the waterfall beckons “Child, come kiss your grandfather” while the wild mountain bid me fall into its warm motherly embrace. 

I am the child of the wilds raised as a meek human and thought to be of angelic broods

Sometimes

Sometimes I get desperate, 

Sometimes the world screams too loudly and not loudly enough, too loudly for the music to drown out, but not loudly enough to drown out the chaos in my head. 

Sometimes it feels like the black cauldron is swirling in my brain, in that interminible space between the right and left ears there exists a tempest, a whirlwind that only I can hear and I have no miranda to request that her father stops his dreadful awefilled arts. 

Sometimes I play music on my phone, no headphones, the volume turned all the way up and I just lay in the dark waiting for the music to seep into my brain listening to the souls of those who feel like I do the pain of the world. 

Sometimes I hold my phone speaker up to my neck like a knife, not to harm but in a effort to heal, in the way that a surgeons scalpel opens to heal or a syringe enters to heal I try to force the vibrations of the music into my blood. 

Sometimes It’s not enough 

But sometimes ... It is

Nightmares Part 3

The door opens to a small grey room with only a table beside a bed to furnish it, a girl sits at the table writing ferociously in a journal the only thing visible about her is that she is exotic and has been beaten and tortured other than that she could have been any girl in any room and any journal because you could not see her face for the tears and the hair spilling over her head and into her eyes. As she writes a woman comes in and asks her a question, without hesitation she replies savagely. The woman seems unimpressed and strikes her then walks out leaving the girl laying on the floor with blood-mingled tears running down her face. When she looks up all of the walls have transformed into glass and on the other side there are men, taking notes, she looks down and seems to notice that the floor has suddenly become water. She begins to swim, the climate continues to change and the men continue to take notes and the girl continues to cry, and wail, and try, and survive.