the day

An empty house.
An empty bed.
Begin to seem as though the life to
be
lived. Watching alone; listening
the same. Forgotten is how
things look and seem when
shared.
There is a difference – yes?
Or was it a mirage?
Mirrors report what moves is
he. They also
report he moves alone. But
they report in silence,
of course, because they do not
speak, but only reflect
what is to be reflected:
a life, at odd times, in which:
Melancholy lists into despair,
or thereabouts, then rights itself,
lights itself, from black
to
a sodden gray. The morning
may bring sunshine, or not, but:
The stillness stays.
Solitary remains.
Alone is always there.

the clown

The “Balloon Clown” sits on the couch near the register at the iHop, curling balloons into curious shapes for $1, each, scaring most kids – and maybe a few adults. Most of his creations look pretty much the same except for the markings he adds with a marking pen, which sort of seems like cheating, doesn’t it? He has a smile painted on his face, for, after all, he is a clown. It is apparent, too, that most folks give him no more than a perfunctory glance and that his only real connections with human beings are the smiles he coaxes from the children, which is either laudatory or creepy, depending on how you consider a single, 42-year-old adult who plies a trade to four-year-olds while wearing oversized shoes. During the week, the clown is a janitor at the bus stop, downtown, sans smile, mostly. Weekends he gets to be creative. He once dreamed of being a Broadway actor. He still does, sometimes.

i can't get no ...

How do you write a song?
Does it sing itself to you?
Does it whisper itself into existence?
And, really, what does come first:
Music? Or words?
Or do they come together,
like morning’s first light with
the freshness of the new day?
And why can she write
a
song?
And him not?
Has a god somehow consecrated one and not
the other?
It is said that Keith Richards birthed the hook
to “Satisfaction” while on a flight
from somewhere to somewhere else.
God’s messenger.
Interesting choice.

the combat zone

She waits for him to
come back to bed,
but she knows it
won’t be
soon, because he knows what she wants
and she knows he knows and
it’s, well, become that way, all
the
time, now. Sex, for them, always has
been a matter of control, survival of
the
quickest to sense the
other’s
vulnerability and refuse to
salve it. He will wait as long as
he can, hold out
as long as he must,
to make certain that he has
the upper hand, if only for
this night. It is that and that only, for them, now: a contest, a battle of
wits, a struggle of wills. And
they
are
not
alone. Not even close.

ay-dee-dee

Every time a body is
pulled, breathing, from the
rubble, hopes soar and
people, entranced by their own
lives and struggles and challenges, stop
and pray and, if nothing more,
keep a thought of hope alive. But they’ve
finished pulling live bodies
from
the
wreckage, which means that soon many,
if not most, will turn their heads back to their
own lives, not to be disturbed,
again,
until the next catastrophe breaks into
this season’s American Idol. 9/11: now,
mostly forgotten. Katrina: left to those who
are working
there
with their hands. Afghanistan: Huh? Iraq: What?
This shooting.
That one.
The human heart is a fickle thing, now,
if not having always been. Our
attention span is from
wreckage to wreckage, a nation
of
ADDers. Think about
that for, well, at least a minute,
during the commercial
breaks.

just because

She smiles bravely and
reads the old letters, the
old
notes. They make her feel
wanted, loved,
needed, even though he
may not need her, anymore. She
doesn’t dwell too long on that,
because,
well,
just because. She thinks instead
about the first
times she read
what he wrote and
she warms herself with
that idea, of him writing, which is so soft
and
gentle
that she can feel the words almost
as he
writes them. They do come alive
for moments, seconds,
times too fleeting
to
settle her soul, to comfort her heart. But
she is willing to suffer them
in that way, like that, because,
well,
just
because.

tuff times

She is confused by
this
idea of
happiness. What if she
ever
isn’t? Has she
failed? Did she? Is she unworthy? Or
has she somehow made a choice
she doesn’t
know
she’d ever made, because she would
never choose
to be
unhappy. Would she? She wonders
about that,
too: maybe she
would, might
could. And why? She doesn’t
think about this
a
lot. Maybe
just once
a
day. Some people say
that happiness
is
a
choice, but she thinks
that’s just
one of those
correct things to say, like
“when the going gets tough,
the
tough
get going.” She knew plenty
of tough people who never went when things
started getting
difficult. Sometimes,
they were
just
too
tired.