Reminiscence

And again we are silent.

Everything we have built crumbling beneath our feet

The rubble upon which we try to stand,

Unable to support the weight of so many years,

When we thought we were free.

When we thought we had found everything we had once aspired for.

You have collapsed within this, ready to rebuild,

Somewhere distant. Away from these nightmares.

And I have fallen beyond hope.

Milestone!

Now if only you could see it.

Two and Twenty Misfortunes

The human race,

The deterioration of the spirit of man,

Man, undermining himself,

Causing self willed, self imposed, self evident...

Self destruction.

The Crickets Have Arthritis

It doesn't matter why I was there, where the air is sterile and the sheets sting. It doesn't matter that I was hooked up to this thing that buzzed and beeped every time my heart beat like a man whose faith tells him gods hands are big enough to catch an airplane, or a world.

Doesn't matter that I was curled up like a fist protesting death, or that every breath was either hard labour or hard time, or that I'm either always too hot or too cold. 

Doesn't matter because my hospital roommate wears Star Wars pajamas, and he's nine years old. His name is Louis, and I don't have to ask what he's got. The bald head with the skin and bones frame speaks volumes. The Gameboy and the feather pillow boom like they are trying to make him feel at home 'cause he's going to be here a while. A man who just smiled the first time I see him and it feels like the biggest lie I've ever told. 

So I hold my breath because I'm thinking 'any minute now, he's going to call me on it'.

I hold my breath because I'm scared of a 57 pound boy whose hooked up to a machine because he's been watching me and maybe I have him pegged all wrong like maybe hes bionic or some shit. So I look away, like I just made eye contact with a gang member whose got a rap sheet the length of a lecture on dumb mistakes politicians have made. I look away like he's going to give me my life back the moment I've got something to trade, I damn near pull out my pack and say 'cigarette?'. 

My fear subsides the moment I realize, Louis, is all show and tell. 

He's got everything from a shotgun shell to a crows foot and he can put the all in context, like 'see, this is from a shooting range', and 'see this is from a weird girl'.

I watch his hands curl around a cuff link and a tie tack and I realize that every knickknack is a treasure and every treasure's got a story, and every time I think I can't handle more he hits me with another story, he says ' see this is from my father', 'see this is from my brother' ' see this is from that weird girl', 'see this is from my mother'.

Took me about two days to figure out that weird girl, is his sister. 

Took him about two hours the day after she left to figure out he missed her. They visit everyday and stay well past visiting hours, because for them, that term doesn't apply. But when they do leave, Louis and I are left alone and he says 'The worst part about being sick, is you get all the free ice cream you ask for. The worst part about that is realizing there is nothing more they can do for you". He says 'ice cream can't make everything okay".

And there is no easy way of asking, and I know what he's going to say but maybe he just needs to say it, so I ask him anyway, 'are you scared?". Louis doesn't even lower his voice when he says 'Fuck yeah". 

I listen to a nine year old boy say the word fuck like it was a thirty year old man with a nosebleed being lowered into a shark tank, hes got a right to it. And if it takes this kid a curse word to help him get through it, then I want to teach him to swear like the devil sittin' there takin' notes with a pen and a pad, but before I can forget that Louis is nine years old he says 'please don't tell my dad". 

He asks me if I believe in angels. And before I realize I don't have the heart to tell him I tell him ' not lately'. And I just lie there waiting for him to hate me but he doesn't know how to so he never does. Louis loves like a man who lived in a time before god gave religion to man and left it to them to figure out what hate was. 

He never greets me with silence, only smiles and a patience I've never seen in someone who knows their dying. And I'm trying so hard not to remind him that I'll be out of here in a couple days smoking cigarettes and taking my life for granted. 

And he'll still be planted in this bed like a flower that refuses to grow, I've been with him five days and all I really know is, Louis loves to pull feathers out of his pillow and watch them float to the ground. Almost as if he's the philosopher inside the scientist ready to say 'its gravity that's been getting us down'. 

But the truth is, there's not enough miracles to go around kid. And there's too many people petitioning god for the winning lotto ticket, and for every answered prayer there's a cricket with arthritis, and the only reason we can't find answers is the search party didn't invite us.

And Louis, right now, the crickets have arthritis. 

So there's no fiddles, no music, no symphony of nature swelling to crescendos, as if we could bend halos into melodies that could keep rhythm with the way our hearts beat. 

So we must meet silence with the same level of noise that the parents of dying nine year old boys make when they take liberties in talking with heaven. 

We must shout until we shatter in our own vibrations, then let our lives echo, and grow echo, and grow echo, and grow distant. Grow distant enough to know, as far as our efforts go, we don't always get a reply. 

But I swear to whatever god I find in the time I have left, I'm going to remember you, kid. 

I'm going to tell your story as often as every story you told me, and every time I tell it I'll say 'see, there's bravery in this world". 

The 6.5 billion people in the world curled up like fists protesting death. But every breath we breathe has to be given back, a nine year old boy taught me that. So hold your breath. 

The same way you would hold a pen when writing thank you letters on your skin to every tree that gave you that breath to hold. Then let it go, as if you understand something about getting old and having to give back. Let it go like a laugh attack in the middle of really good sex, the black eye will be worth it. 

Cause what is your night worth without a story to tell. And why wield a word like worth if you've got nothing to sell. 

People drop pennies down a wishing well as if the cost of desire is equal to that of a thought, but if you've got expectations, expect that others will have bought your exact same dream for the price of the hard work, hang in, hold on mentality, like ' I accept and challenge so challenge me".

Like I brought a knife to this gun fight, the other night I mugged a mountain, so bring that shit, I've had practice. Louis and I cracked this world wide open, found the prize inside, because we've never lied to ourselves. Never told ourselves it would be easy or undemanding. Never dreamt of anyone handing us anything so we sing in our own vibration, and dare angels to eavesdrop and stop mid flight, to pluck feathers from their wings, and write demands that gods hands take the time to catch you. 

So even if god doesn't, it wasn't because we didn't try. I don't often believe in Angels. 

But on the day i left Louis pulled a feather from his pillow and said, 'this is for you'. 

I half expected him to say, 'see, this is the first one I grew'.

Metal4lyfe

Discrimination

Justice isn't justice, it just is..

Your entire body shakes when you laugh, as if your sense of humour was built on a fault line,
And the coast of your heart falls into the ocean of yourself, and I am left looking for this Atlantis.
Left looking for this place that exists in stories told by old men who were there when mathematics assured them their willingness to believe was greater than their determination to dismiss.
I'm left looking for Atlantis. Regardless of the scientists that insist my efforts would be better spent unearthing clues to where the wild things went.
Try as it might, faith can't put a dent in fact. So we must settle for watching science reenact the world. As if the universe is curled around this globe, and if we consider the universe is never ending, then we are not even a microbe. We are like a death threat from a pacifist, we're nothing. But the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that "nothing is fo shizzle".
And the interesting thing about that is it ensures the principle itself can't even be a fact.
But we still act as if this time, we can see the forest through the trees.
Regardless of the soft wood lumber levees, we fall in line like reforested pine.
Its all straight rows where everything grows a little less wild and a little more hum drum ho hum, we come from the mentality that rarely sees the horror in symmetry, or the beauty in non-conformity.
We insist that for us, everything must be clear cut. But what about philosophy?
What about the tree that fell in the forest that no one was around to hear, its a little less clear, and a little more deep. Deep like, if Oprah Winfrey farts in a bathtub and no bubbles come to the surface, is there an alternate universe where the price of gas is cheap? Possible, but we can't prove it.. Anymore than we can prove that light can move fast enough to stop a monster hiding in a closet. We deposit our faith in fear, and clear our minds to the possibility that maybe we as adults secretly sometimes still get scared of the dark.
Things that go bump in the night.
And I can't prove that I've ever loved anyone, but despite the smoking and the overweight body I want to grow old with you.
Go through muscle and joint pains to the point where every time it rains we can feel it in our knees. Get arthritis so bad that every time we move we sound like two bowls of Rice Krispies.
We're all Snap, Crackle, and Pop.
But we still take the time to stop, and take the time. I'm looking for Atlantis.
Letting faith turn this fiction into fact, as if I've dragged this missing continent for decades and all I know so far is it's somewhere underwater.
I'm looking for clues in those blurry photo's of UFOs and thinking, if aliens are so smart, why don't they start making their spaceships look like airplanes?
That way we would just point to the sky and say "An Airplane, how commonplace. And not at all suspect."
We are all shipwrecked on this idea that everything has to be explained. But maybe we just need to believe that lemmings jump off of cliffs to prove that they love us. And sure, that sacrifice is as empty as the box of condoms politicians used when they thought they could fuck us.
But its nice to believe that somebody up there cares enough to plummet onto jagged, backbreaking rocks in an attempt to tell us, we're beautiful. Tell us that as far as life goes, our fingerprints are like snowflakes. We leave them on everything but they melt in the time it takes to touch someones tongue, but if we're lucky, maybe we're remembered along with the sunken cities of a lost continent.
This is to each child who is a monument to the ones who came before.
Maybe the best we can hope for is that those we leave behind will find comfort in knowing that we're born out of love, and not science. That biology explains the how, but love explains the why.
So in the event of our death we hereby bequeath all of these words to you.
And they are only meant to say uncertainty is something everyone goes through. And there is not much in the way of proof, but believe me, we loved you.
We held our breaths for your first step, your first word.
We laughed when it finally occurred to you, lemons are sour...
This is for every time love becomes the finest minute in the darkest hour.
This is for those scouring the streets wondering where the wild things went, for the believers who lent us their madness. This is for everyone we miss.
And this is for the children who are lost. Sadness is nothing more than the cost of being able to smile once in a while.
And grief is the trial we stand to offer evidence that your fingerprints were left on our hearts, and our skin. And in terms of proof, love can be demonstrated in giving.
Our lives consist of the efforts we give in swimming towards a lost continent, where you are rumoured to be living.