John Williams is the Man

Wow. I mean, wow.
For real, though . . . John Williams is the MAN.

Small

I am too small. Sometimes I just want to look at the world, but I am so small. I am too small to take it all in, too small to comprehend the beauty right in front of me. Too small to open my eyes wide enough and see. I don’t want to care. God, I don’t want to care so badly, but I do, and I’m too small to understand the beauty that’s so entangled in my caring. I don’t feel real. I don’t feel substantial. Everything floats around endlessly in my mind; in between my fingers and through my toes like mud or maybe water, or maybe something just beyond my comprehension because I am so small, and the world is so beautiful, and I can’t understand it. I am standing here, and my mind and heart, and body are all so full of this moment, of the beauty of now, that I think I could die. And beauty and life seem so short, but they're both timeless, and will never end with me. Will never start with me. Will never be more a part of me than they are now, and I will never be more beautiful than I am now, and this world will never be as endlessly inexplicable as it is right now. And I feel so grateful, and happy to be a part of it, and yet so unexplainably empty, because no one will ever see this moment through my eyes, and no one else will ever know how unreasonably heartbreaking this is, and I want to share it with someone. I want to give this moment to them, so maybe they, too, will understand how small I am. How blinding the world is. How irrationally amazing it is to be a part of something like this. Like now. Like forever. And forever will go on with out us; this beauty will last longer than we can even think about, because we are just too small.

Pistachio Icecream

I think I’ve hit an all-time low. My chest hurts, like I’m aching for something. Love? . . . How strange. A word I’ve never fully learned how to pronounce, but still keep wondering about. My thoughts seem to race around behind my eyes, so far away that catching anything with my net woven of children’s dreams seems impossible. I’m trying to write. Trying to breathe. Trying to forget that my emotions – at the moment – are the shittiest rollercoaster I’ve ever been on. I’m terrified of rollercoasters. The way they creak and stop and pull and drop you into a never ending tunnel that's softened only by the terrified screams of the people around you, the cries that remind you that you’re not alone. The back of my legs ache, too. It’s like I’m going into withdrawal. But how can you abandon something when you were never even fully submerged? I don’t think I’ll ever be. My fear of rejection keeps me from even trying. Maybe it’s psychological. Maybe I’m just too different. Too strange. It seems like I’m looking at the world through tented glass. Colors don’t seem as right as they used to. Maybe that’s because I’ve taken to wearing black. I need a man: one with silky black hair, skin as soft as a Saturday morning and the color of how I fix my coffee. Too much cream. Too much sugar. My parents drink it black. I guess it’s my secret rebellion. But people aren’t a crutch, and it’s wrong of me to even think about them in that light. I’m so isolated, it seems. I can read you, inside and out, but you’ve never even glanced at my title. My ice-cream has nearly all melted. All that’s left are the little pistachio pieces, floating like little life boats. I find myself eating the disgusting, creamy liquid. Like heaven is at the bottom of the bowl, and I just need to find it. No. Just that stupid, happy slogan.
“Yum-yum time is . . . Over!”
Son of a bitch. I have the sudden urge to smash the bowl, and make a mosaic out of the pieces; to do something, anything that will keep me from insanity. From self-hatred. From feeling so disgusting and useless and alone that it all seems like too much. But it’s not too much, is it? It never is. There is plenty of straw, but I’ve never felt too much like a camel. No. This all-time low seems allot like the others. I guess it isn’t really “all-time,” is it?

The Dance of Paper Napkins

The Dance of Paper Napkins

I sit here, looking out my window. The coffee shop that I drink chi and eat avocados in every Sunday. This is my religion. I sit at the same table, in the same black stool, near the same window every time I come here. So yes; I can call this ‘my window’. The leaves lie freely on the pavement, flashing their brilliant red and oranges as if to brag of the freedom of which trees, rooted to the ground, can only dream. These flattened vessels of hope become intertwined with the wind and create a small tornado on the cold and distant grey pavement. The wind, the one that I call brother, is picking up paper napkins, and is using them; creating a bittersweet waltz with the discarded implements of everyday use, as if comforting them on their way to a plastic-lined fortress, guarded by metal, he sighs, pleased. Then, my brother, arm out stretched, looses his howling vigor, and starts flinging the pieces back down, to lie with the other discarded paper napkins, or fliers that read ‘Tonight only.’ These things will too, in time, find their way to their rightful place.

I watch this every Sunday, in the fall. In this time when vessels of hope are flung into the sky, waltzes are danced with a pleasing sigh, and brothers can be caring. In the harsh majesty of winter, I watch gentle snowflakes drift down and softly caress the people below. Landing in eyelashes and hair, the individually carved flakes rejoice in the scarce warmth, only to melt and become the tears of spring. Then the fog of early summer, warded off by hand-held fans and lemonade, or the smog of late August, from which people are protected by over-sized AC tanks and bunkers of chlorine. I sit here, elapsing into a sweet and timeless meditation, and watch this. It’s on days like these, in late October, that I relax and find my serenity. My long forgotten, but much needed sanctuary of street performer’s music and warm chai. It’s on cold days like these that I actually enjoy touching the warmth of the coffee mug in my hands. Days like these, when the avocados seem the best, and remind me of the gentle touch of the sun and the distinct smell of sunscreen that can only be found in summer.

But you should know, like every other poet, in summer I’ll be complaining about the heat, and write how the red corduroy of my pants reminds me of fall; or, to be more specific, late October. I like it here, in the soft curves of the mountains, which can be harsh to any climber, yet still, in the exposed rock and barren beauty, can always be seen as the very definition of the peace found in a mothers caring soul. And, like the glow I see in my own mother, everything is soft. Nothing is sharp except the brilliant colors of the leaves, caught by the guiding fist of a loving brother, silently teaching dancing to misguided dreams. And I close my eyes. Because here, among the waltzing of paper napkins, one can find peace.