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Rocking Chairs - Goodbye

Tell me about the time
That you snuck into the party
For the girls and they all loved you
Tell me about the time you wowed the crowds as a waiter
When you rubbed salt on your wounds
The time you discovered Madonna
Tell me anything I ask
But you respond
By asking for a poem
A certain way
A certain idea
Jumping off point
You don’t just appreciate
As I’d hoped and for which
I was thankful
But you asked for more
You give me a list
As we sit in rocking chairs
On my front porch
And practice for our old age together
When I can ask you to tell me
About times you did things
That only act as reminders
Because I was there, too
And you can still be feeding me ideas
For poems
And I’ll eat them.

Of You

I ask so many things
Of you
That I hardly have time to listen
And I find myself
After some time
Asking only as a test
To hear again 'yes'
Of you
While you blame it on your age
And blame it on your race
And blame it on your masculinity
Each of these true
But we both know the truth
That I am much better
At rubbing my eyes and blinking as a child
Tired
And wide-eyed
Is this true?
I wonder
Christmas
Fails
Beside this
While you are much better at listening
And saying yes
Because you are the only person I have met
Fully free to love
As stated in the rules
That say
Only love when you love yourself
Everyone else I know
Myself, god knows
Finds the path to self love
Inside of someone else
You've loved yourself so long
You've moved on to me
And I sit
Ever thankful
And you listen
While I am convinced
Which is more than I could ever ask
Of you

Him

It was a man
Some man
A specific sort of prick
Who started the idea
Of power
Over women
Not with them

That idea caught on
As something scary
Entirely scary
To everyone
Not just women

It was a man
That pushed his way across the room
In front of your children
Into your face
And down your throat
It was a man
In particular

And it was every man
In between those two
That has suffered
From a fear
Of this scary idea
We must all dominate you
Provide for you
Perform at our best
And conceal all tender sighs

And it is this man
In particular
Myself specifically
Who respects that scary idea
Inside himself
With fear
And occasionally stops worrying about
What it does to you
Long enough to worry about
What it does
To himself

Long enough to hate
For a moment
The man down your throat
His lazy acceptance
Of this scary thing
Inside of him
Fed to him
That told him it was okay
That told him hitting you
Was appropriate

It is this man, still
This man I am
That struggles
With understanding
That man
Too
Because the same voice that told you to stay with him
Told him to make you leave
It is a big, scary thing
That voice

You are one woman
Though
In the know
And someone who took the chance
To see that voice
Objectively
One woman
Much later
Aware
Of what
Was there
Then
Now

We are not to be forgiven
For our sins against you
We are not to be lamented
For our side of the pain
We are expected to be brilliant
And that should still remain
We are required to be open
To the power we've been given

To use it for good
To give it away
And
To notice
Yours
Too.

We cannot undo the guns at our sides
We use them to pee
But we use them to plant
Just as easily
As we use them to kill

Now you are one woman
With room for one last man
A specific sort of man

And I am just one man
Who cannot change the world
At once
But can explain it
Over and over again

And I will show you what
Your one last man can do
From a lens reserved for my eyes only
And give you a glimpse
Of what real is
Really what is

I ask only that you keep
Covering your ears
To the scary voice screaming
When that one last man
Finally
Whispers softly
Into them.

,even

We saw the seed tonight
We looked into the moments
We loved each other the most
We saw the seed that lived behind
In isolation
Behind the thing itself
The moment
Whether it was my love for you
When I see you in the passenger’s seat
Dancing and singing while I drive
Or the moments I live for
When you are at your least desirable
Embarrassing and otherwise awkward
Or when anger is spit forth in passionate rage
The least desirable moments
The moments I love admitting aloud, even
That I am still happy to love you
Or the even the moments when I know you well enough
To know when you’re bullshitting at a party
All of the moments that I love you
All of the reasons
Your car seat butt warmers, even
All of the reasons
That I love you
Contain the seed we saw

And what we saw we’ll never forget
And we’ll look for it in everything we do

I saw your soul run from your core
With electric intensity out of you
Through your mouth
Into my kiss
And into the center of me
It was a two way street
And I felt a piece of me
Over in your seat
Like Hawaii
My far out island
But mine

And now I can see the personality I have
When I am with you
As is with everyone I know
In 2s
As a duo
This third personality
Not you
Not me
But me and you
And me in you
And you in me
Responsible for both personalities
And not in control of our own
But just as everyone I know
In 2s
Has this place we both live
They don’t have you
Like We do
And the love we have
Inside our third relationship
Leaves us talking at 2am
On the front porch each weekend
About how good this is
Like we were the only ones in the world
Who know how to be in love
Because if the whole world know this
There wouldn’t be the wars there are
Our love finds us posting whole albums of pictures
Of the two of us kissing
All over the internet
Proclaiming from the modern day rooftops
On a regular basis how in love we are
I get battle scars
From our love
I walk with hickees like it’s the 8th grade
And can’t help but live the way I want to live
And be proud of the sex that we’re having
Our love finds us
Constantly now
Pulsing like lightning through kisses
And pushing us to our feet
Inside every moment we get

Two Directors

Walter is an old man. Walter is a camera man.




Walter: Whats total crap about the story of the two directors everybody keeps talking about is that I was there. Yeah, I saw that shit back in my day. I worked for a temp agency that sent me to Walgen Icons and I kept a job there hired on as a permanent for about three years then I too also worked for a the other guys, Dignett Pictures, too. The beginning parts are true, I have no issues there. They met in school back in their days together at the start. Thats when they were more friends than anything those days. And Mr. Alden, the guy who ended up getting billions working for Walgen making crap movies, he was one of the stars. And Mr. Diret, the hippie indie director guy, he was the other. They totally went their separate ways after school. Alden played his money, he bought his own studio, he found where the money was, he pimped it. Diret, on the other hand, stayed a director worked years to find his audience, kept things artsy you know? Well they had a rivalry of course because thats what comes with power, is this 50% of it is defense of it ordeal. Power sucks, I know, I watched it. And in that rivalry the two men wanted to show off to the other that they could make more happen in all the places, not just their own. So Alden opens a little side-studio for indie films and Diret gets picked up by a different mega-studio to make summer blockbusters for a while. Yeah, they both did good, sure, okay. A little ‘Parent-Trap’ switch theme, very inspiring. They rekindle their friendship. But this is where I have a problem.
They didn’t just rekindle their friendship. I mean to say it wasn’t just them. See the women they were with when they met for dinner the first time after all of this, actually, they were the ones who did the fixing. See Alden was married to his wife who had Bi Polar disorder. And Diret had a teenage daughter who had Borderline Personality Disorder, which is very similar I hear. Anyway, the two women were able to help one another. They connected in a way. And they both helped each other realize, is the thing, that their disorders had come from the lifestyles of their men, and the styles of the movies they made.
Mr. Alden’s wife was overwhelmed by the pressure she felt from all that stifled sort of life she was leading always looking good for the cameras and all of that rich bullshit. And the Diret girl was always worried so much with living her centered energies and dramatic truths and all that other bullshit that she was never allowed to just relax and say fuck it, you know?
Anyway it was a beautiful story to watch. They started meeting on the sets until eventually it was a known thing. They were friends in this weird Thelma and Louise Romeo and Juliet kind of motif. Anyway thats what kills me. Its not really public talk, I know they’d do some disrespectful lesbian cougar homophobic thing on it or something. But we watched it. We knew. We saw. It was those two that really made the story for me. Its just crap sometimes that this story seems so stupid and easy to people who have no idea. No idea.

June

This night air
Has a breaking light
Through the clouds
Purple like in comic books
Across the light blue sky
Starless from the city
But lit up just the same
By a full
Yellow moon
This warm night air
Has a firework
In a suburb
On a summer’s night
No where near the 4th of July
Just one
Just one little defiance, no biggy
But accidentally perfect in its straight shot
Straight up
And perfectly round
Like a disco ball
In a gay club
Somewhere else
On this warm night


I spoke to her about the things we’ve missed
Since she moved to Arizona
I cut my hand in Turks & Cacos
I went into the water anyway with a plastic glove and some band aids
I should’ve gotten stitches
But I’m an addict
To the water
I spoke to her and remembered what I told myself I’d do when I first met her
I would be on her level
I would make the changes
I would come back from countries
Like the Congo
Or Laos
Or other places Missouri people never speak of
And have stories like this
Of bravery
And life
My friends are moving out of the country
So thats why I spent this weekend with them
Her friends are from everywhere
And because she is here
I am everywhere
But I’d better get started being there on my own
I know
Because this one flies on the breeze
And chases the moon
Around the sky

And where will it be that you go
This next time you leave my side in our bed
Called to your work in the countries I cannot fathom going to
Where will it take you
How long will you be gone
When will you leave
What kind of day will it be
It hurts only all the more because you’ve got no choice
And what you do helps the world
And you will miss me I know
It only hurts more that you will also count days
In the back of my mind it lives
This looming cloud in time
Working its way towards me
As I listen to stories from friends
Of trips around the world
And I smile
It is there in the pit of my stomach
This knowing I will soon long for you
But I feel the breezes
Alive on the night
While I whisper reassurances
I feel your touch in the night

But I watch her smile while she’s laughing
And I think that she is a lot like me, too
I notice her forgetful moments
As she tells me a story
Within a story
With such enthusiam
That I share
And I know that my path hasn’t strayed
Ever
So far that I cannot get back to what it is
That isn’t yet
But still very much is an is

In the boggy humidity of the night
There is a certain sense of water
Like being under the ocean
Suspended half way down
Watching jellyfish light up
In a chorus all around you
But the jellyfish are lightning bugs
And the ocean is inside you
And while you may feel heavy
The water starts to slosh
And you just ride the waves.