i miss you most on mornings- a random thought straying some familiar, something recalls you from a place that no longer exists i blunder through memory some days- some mornings  before the blurring day begins i sit here, alone with you

I must go, for the fog is rising

These are my last words, at least, until there are more. -if there are more. all of my words are my last. apparently. after some thought.

I should be prepared. (get prepared) come up with something clever to say on my deathbed, a dying declaration. something profound would be best, but all of the good ones, have already been taken.

i've been avoiding what's left of my ability to care. thoughts like birds wildly flapping their way to the page, have been reduced to a slight fluttering sensation somewhere around my middle. lately, i feel i should apologize to anyone who stumbles across any of this morose shit. "write what you know" well, this is what i know currently. i've got a garage full of mismatched memorabilia and dusty odds and ends that i can't seem to cut loose of. if someone were to try and figure out who i was using only the contents of my garage, there's no telling what sort of inane profile they might come up with. i console myself with the knowledge that nobody ever really knows anyone else. so it's a push. i have every computer that i've ever owned going all the way back to an Apple Macintosh 128. if you don't know what that is, then you're neither a computer nerd, nor an old jackass like me. i've almost thrown the entire lot away a dozen times, but i could never bring myself to pull that particular trigger. i get attached to things. i'm an overly sentimental person. i hang on to items that most people would have never thought twice about keeping. sometimes at night i think about the fact that, when i'm gone, all of the things i have kept as a reminder of old friends, and lost loves, will transform back into nothing. just an old eccentric guys trash.

-he must have been a hoarder.

for granted

still waiting to grow up. it could happen any day now. or maybe it never will, would anyone notice?

i'm still a child at sixty two, ignoring all of the blaring signs of age. slowly becoming less able, with the unwelcome need, to catch my breath.

the world has gotten away from me, -all of this casual cruelty. i'm unwillingly placed and categorized, staring back at you, between the years.

forward

i notice too much. the way light hesitates in a doorway, how dusk lingers, just before letting go. a face flickering in the glass- not quite here, not quite lost.

a glance that wasn’t meant to mean anything becomes a thread pulled loose, woven into the kind of dream that slowly falls apart.

i’ve waited too long. long enough to lose the path behind me, long enough to know I can’t stay. i’ve told you the truth in ways that should have undone us, spoken so much that silence would have said more.

every fleeting moment, every faltering shift in the air, they all tell me the same thing. there is no turning back- only forward, where the way is uncertain, and my next step is the only one that matters.

Nothing grows by moonlight, but all is revealed.

I think I'll miss these little observations. The ones that feel like they're just for me. There's a finch that visits my bathroom window almost every day come winter. It's been going on for years. I suppose it could be the offspring of the original bird. How long do finches live? I could google it, but I'd rather not know the answer.

There are small breathing sounds coming from the bedroom. I wake each day at 5am, like some kind of magic trick, but my wife sleeps well into the morning. She covers her face with the blanket to ward off the light. Sleep, for her, is a last refuge from her daily struggles with life these days. I leave her be, and let her dream as long as possible, quietly pecking away at my thoughts in a vain attempt to make sense of things, or at least to console myself with the knowledge, that i've tried.

It's an odd feeling to finally grasp, that there are moments, that were only ever meant for me. Small, seemingly insignificant points in time, that collect, and linger. I've always felt a compulsive desire to share my love for these small observations, along with the precious insight that, these little interludes are the actual harvest, of a lifetime.

landscapes

crows as seen through a frozen window. foraging in blurred impressions movement. this view defies the cold, desire searching past frosted glass, reaching out to touch an ephemeral moment.

this brush pen, has worn thin of late. grasping at the root of it. held too tightly for composition, a canvas, pristine, and bare.

winter comes again -and again, to fields, that have all gone fallow. clear blue skies that cling, to my black and white landscapes.

A little late for Christmas, but I'll take it.

"Our paths", they said, "did cross askew" A time unkind, a fate untrue. The truth-a blade, a bitter sting- Did nest within my heart and cling.

I dreamed a now where you were near, A fleeting thought, both bright and clear. But life, with laws I can’t amend, Spoke softly- "some truths cannot bend."

For paths diverge, as rivers part, And steal away the tender heart. Unknowing tides do sweep, reclaim, What once was love, now but a name.

i'm not sure why some of these words keep reoccurring. -some of these thoughts. i feel i've been set on a repeat of sorts. a cyclical recitation, of a specific set of stanzas, made and remade, and unmade. -relentlessly played, over and again, a broken jukebox, with a torch, for a particular list of tunes. remorseful, redundant, exhausted.

i don't know how to tell myself, that the song is done. that i've stopped listening to me. -to my heart that beats its imaginary pulse, or my feet that fall in step to a dance without partner. words that carry on like weathered curtains, moving with each whisper, of this vacant house.

wasted on the young

time. i need more -or a renewed disregard for limits. or clocks, maybe, i need the insolence, that only the young can maintain.

it's terrible, these consequences. a lifetime looking for answers, peeking behind every discernible curtain, finding only the irreplicable nature -of madness.

Christmas past. 1993. This stern looking fellow in the circa 1970's grandpa pants is me. This is the look you get from spending Christmas in a Federal penitentiary. It's a look you acquire after wasting more than a thousand days locked up with good behavior, and they reward you with the opportunity to take and send a photograph of yourself standing next to a Christmas tree, erected and decorated by your fellow inmates, and set in a scene that can only be described as - "The School Cafeteria look" The person taking the photograph was named Billy. Billy was sweet on me, and offered to take some glamour shots of me, if I would only allow him to direct me about how to pose. I politely declined as I did to all of Billy's suggestions concerning myself, and made my way back to my cell that I shared with three other misfits just like me. Christmas in jail is an experience that I would not recommend for anyone. For some of the inmates it didn't even register as a blip on their radar. For others it was a somber occasion in which they retreated into their own thoughts, and dealt with their own hidden depressions. For me it was so profoundly sad and lonely, that whenever I wasn't sleeping, I was out on the walking track running myself to exhaustion, and then to the weight pile to lift weights until my muscles burned with fatigue. At one point I was running at least ten miles a day, and walking another five to ten miles, as well as lifting weights. it's the only thing that helped. I made myself too tired to cry about my situation.

When I first went to prison it was in Texas. My wife would come to visit every Saturday at the prison, and sit with me for the hour allowed, telling me about her week, and sometimes bringing my two small daughters with her so that I could hug them and feel a little bit of sanity in my swirling mass of self pity. After about seven months of this, my father came to see me one Saturday morning, and we had a long heartfelt discussion about my wife and children. He told me about how difficult it was for her to spend every weekend coming to a prison, with children in tow, so that I could feel better. My shame at that moment was overwhelming. I immediately put in for a transfer to another facility. After a short time the prison system transferred me to another prison, in another state, and I learned to cope. I learned what true loneliness is. I learned what really matters.

My first Christmas home was the best holiday I have ever experienced. Not the commercialized version that's forced on us every year around this time, but the kind of holiday that stands out in memory like a beacon. I was able to finally grasp a true understanding of home and companionship, and I knew that the only light that can ever illuminate our paths through all of life's uncertainties, -is Love.

I ran across this photograph recently while searching for something else on the internet. It's a very odd sensation when a memory suddenly grabs you, and whisks you away to a place and a feeling that you hadn't realized still lived somewhere deep down inside.

In 1976 I was thirteen, and just coming to that age where a boy begins contemplating, and or obsessing over the female persuasion. At my mothers prompting, my stepfather took on the very uncomfortable (for both sides) conversation about the birds and the bees, what goes where and why, and what it means if another boy flirts with you. At this point you might be asking yourself "Thirteen ? How naive was this kid?" Well, you might not believe this but kids back in the 70's weren't exposed to a tenth as much as they are today. We had a chance to be innocent for a time -some of us. -Getting back to the photograph At around this time my parents acquired a new television for the living room. This might not sound like a big deal, but back in the day, a new TV was as monumental as buying a car, and nearly as big as a car. It was more like furniture. We went from a 23" screen, to a mind bending 25" screen. It was a whole new world people. What to do with the old outdated entertainment center became a real controversy. Everyone had their suggestion for its new location. My brother was gone by then, into the coastguard, so it was me and my sisters trying every angle we could find, to win the secondhand prize TV set, and place it, like a crown jewel in our respective bedrooms. Lucky for me my father was a sucker for logic, and my record collection was the tipping point, placing the highly coveted, ten foot long, combination Television/High-Fi stereo/Record player, along an entire wall of my bedroom. I was living in very tall cotton folks! -I swear I'm getting to the photograph. Becoming the proud new owner of an entertainment center, came with a few rules, obviously. My mother was obsessed with rules, and had a real passion for enforcing said rules with a vigor that bordered on maniacal. If there was an activity, she swatted it with a rule and made sure that it walked with a limp thereafter. The rules went as follows- No TV after 9pm, No drinks placed on top of the TV, If anything inappropriate comes on the TV screen, you are to immediately change the channel, or swiftly turn it off. (yeah right) I didn't care. I had a television in my own bedroom, and It was glorious!

It took me almost a week to break the first rule. I was a pretty good kid and did what was expected about 95% of the time. But being a kid, I felt I had to uphold the code of children everywhere, and rebel just a tad on occasion. I had big plans for a particular Thursday night. Thursday night 9pm was epic movie night, and I was geared up to break the rules and watch "The french connection" a movie that was filled with violence. My mother's hair would have fallen out, if she knew I was watching it. When the time came for the movie to start, in its place was some other movie I'd never heard of "The Summer of 42." Starring Jennifer O'neill. (Photo) I was deflated. I considered turning it off, but instead I just sat there disgruntled. After a little while, I started to get into the story, and after a while longer, I realized that this was a pretty good flick. It had a kid around my age, going through some of the same stuff I was going through, and I became fully vested in the main character  "Hermie." Hermie it seemed, had become infatuated with an older woman. A very beautiful woman. A woman that I was quietly falling in love with as well, in the darkness of my solitary bedroom. It was the first time I had ever felt this particular feeling. As the movie came to its inexorable end, Hermie, as an older man, narrated his memories over the last parting scene, and I realized that I had been weeping. Something had changed in me. I had found a deep well of longing that still resides in me today.