Back To The Day (poeTry)

by: a.paige

I can toss up some metaphors over sushi for dinner. Still, my heart’s no match for thee, for your candied words are always free. The sky’s too proud, but I've learned to teach. So why do you preach as you sip your tea? Just grow a peach. But I’d rather crawl and take a trip. To the moon and back, since the stars are out of reach. Back to the day when my freedom reigned. You didn’t know me then, and you still don’t know me well.

what is Love?

***I wrote this last month but don't think it's too late to post.

I know of it. I have seen it, and tasted bits and pieces, chewed and swallowed what might be considered love.

Love is enclosed in a love letter, or consumed in a box of chocolates or a valentine poem. It has the scent of a spring bouquet and morning coffee, shared. It is imbibed with wine, or champagne, at special events. Or taken with veggie, or what have you, over company at a summer barbecue. It tastes salty at times, in tears and sweat, and sweet in joy.

Love is the family by the hospital bed; the dad in awe of his newborn. The womb that cradles her baby, the butterfly kisses and raspberries... From dawn to dusk to the late night hours spent over milk and cookies, and stories.

Love is a story. Of humanity. The good and broken parts.

Love is a seed held by tiny hands... Immense it grows when planted, and the elders sit by its tree. Seasons come and seasons go. Love grows.

Love is wisdom, both silent and loud. She walks her child and guides her through the night.

Love is a mystery. It evades systems and ignores time. It holds and warms; it quenches our thirst for life. Like water, like air—it feeds life—it is life. For without love, life is but mere shadow.

Love is a color—all the colors of the rainbow, and the grays in between... It is the silver in the lining... Our hopes and dreams and well wishes for one another. The rain showers. It is the dews that glisten and the leaves that autumn christens. The wonder bestowed by a winter snowflake.

Love is a doctor that takes away the poison... The apple everyday. The tight embrace and soft whispers. Your silent words and knowing smile. The time we held each other and the stars illuminated the sky. The moonlight when the sun is at rest... Love is a stronghold in a storm. Love is the light in the dark. Love is hope. They were right—I agree this time: hope springs eternal isn't just a cliche. Because hope is love. They are one and the same, and in its absence is despair.

Love is a circle; it returns where it starts, back to its giver. If not, it is the risk taken, unrequited. Love is an arc, from one to another. Love is a shared umbrella.

Love is magic at work all the while. It injects the mind with reason and bleeds the heart...

Love is you ripped apart when someone you love leaves... It is a piece of you taken by the person. Love is your broken heart. But love frees you from your prison.

Love is the crimson running through your veins... The tears shed over the death of someone loved; love moistens the barren ground, and the same tears shed waters a new beginning. Love is where you start again...

Love moves. Love continues. It always watches, if in silence sometimes, but laughs loudly and unrestrained at happy times. Forgetting is irrelevant, for love forgives and lets go. Love lets you spread yours wings, and if not, love will walk with you, crawl with you... Carry you. Love is with you, if you let it.

Love is seen in action. It is lived, though love takes a lifetime to learn. Love is your mission, regardless of your passion. Love is your breath, each of which counts. 

If there was god, then Love is God. If for nothing else, then I choose to worship Love.

For you and me. From me to you. Because if there was a hole in your sock, I would mend it for you, if you ask me to. But don't ask me to, I might not have the time. I might even laugh at you and/or buy you red socks. Because love is real like that. But I'd try to help mend your broken heart. If you ask me to. Because love is not imposed but offered. Yet it is always present. Only it will take a lifetime to metabolize it. Can you do it—Love?

Button.

He had it the whole time and not even know it. ~ a.P.

One day my black winter coat had lost a button. It devastated me enough to throw my whole life away. Actually, no. But it did feel like a part of me was missing whenever I put it on. Yup, I still wore the jacket despite the strange sensation of something being gone..., or the nagging awareness of its absence... Yes, even for a small detail, a minutiae. That minutiae is the fourth front button of my otherwise nicely tailored, long, wool winter coat, which sports clean lines and a timeless, classic look untouched by trends and labeled Coffee Shop. Speaking of which, I love cafes and worked in one in college, and hope to run my own in the future, granted I am ready for the entrepreneurial responsibilities and spot the perfect place. Anyway, I have had that coat for years. So I was sitting in his car, at the ready in the driver's seat, in case the meter police had nothing better to do than to harass vehicles and/or the people waiting in them, when I spotted my jacket's long lost, good, ol' big, black button staring right at me, lost among the toll coins that fill up one of the dirty pits disguised as small compartments in his jeep. He had my button all along but did not even bother to 'spot' it. He should have. He should have really bothered spotting the things he dumps in his jeep by now, even once in a blue moon at least. And why not? Why not 'see' the mess? I have only reminded him many times before in the hopes that he would begin the process of cleaning up his mess and have just had about enough and a button missing until now. If he even noticed, I can only guess.

I wondered sometimes if his habit of taking things for granted translates to people, because once he owns something, it would either get tossed in the basement to gather dust like his plaques or left laying around neglected. I often wondered too if he merely uses the objects around him without really knowing their functions and if he does the same to the people in his life. If so, then I had better hurry on and make a move to find my own space. Because I like to clean up my clutter so I can breathe.

The button currently sits inside my coat pocket, along with my keys, at the ready for the day I grab a needle and thread for mending.

Gravity, saints, and a funeral.

Okay, I went. For your family's sake. Could I have sat there longer? Maybe. Did I seek attention? I will let you know later after consulting with the mirror. Look, I just don't think that so-called service was for you really, though your family did dedicate it to your honor and memory. It was merely a show for the god(s) they worship—what, three of them too?—though I could be wrong. They talked too much... And sang. I wondered if the leader was just a frustrated artist... And the bowing down and kneeling and beseeching for forgiveness of sins from a deity or deities supposedly watching from a distance... On top of saints...names I have never encountered in some inexpressible, magical way and, thus, have no real connection with. No thanks, but I can connect better with others I have also never met: Lewis, Da Vinci, Dickinson, Van Gogh, Hepburn, Bukowski, Carlin, Rowling, and Poe, to name a few.

How were we supposed to remember you in all that din? But I do. Sorry, I had to get out of there and talk. Did you sit with me in the car at the same time you were probably visiting other places? Or were you communing with them and their god(s)? Did they even know you? I know you like talking to people, but did they ever really talk with you? Did they really see you? I saw you. We talked and laughed and drank coffee... It was real. I heard the sadness and fear in your words....the despair about your world... You were no saint, though you smiled... No one really is. (Not even Mother Theresa. She did what she could, her work. I read up on her, you must have too. Although I did hear you could apply for sainthood, especially now that the church has recently lowered its price. Maybe the stars could be saints, though we only know too well they already are deified by folks.) Besides, if you were so full of courage, you would not have hidden... And if not for yourself, you would have forgiven...for your children.

There is so much more to say, but anyway, if you weren't lying to me, you said you talked to the wind too, like I do. It goes where it chooses, doesn't it? But while it's nice to soar with it, sometimes we have to ignore its whims. Or blow the air ourselves to keep it moving when it is very still. There are responsibilities here on the ground, gravity bounds us, you know. But you could ride along with it all the time now, and go to places you have ever wanted to visit. We were going to take trips together, remember? Now you must be looking at all the grandeur the earth offers, all at once too. Do they pale in comparison to the cosmos? Oh well, maybe you can tell me all about it over coffee. Just try not to startle me when you stop by, or I might spill paint on me or something.

Look, I don't mean to suggest that I was the only one who knew you. I probably only know as much as you allowed me to perceive... Sure, family, friends, and relatives cared for you, some maybe even more deeply than others; we all just have funny ways of showing it. But you must now see us in all our nakedness from where you are? One day the rest of us will too. Though we can only wonder this time from down here things that haven't been revealed about us...about the world, from its microcosm to the macrocosmic...that is humanity. We'll talk again soon.

Coffee or tea for absurdities.

She received the card. I wanted to wish her a bright year and she got it. She let me know five days before my birthday, but I only got her voicemail. I called her two days later and we exchanged gratitudes: I, for her birthday greeting, and she, for my new year wishes. Three days later she died.

You see, it was not  supposed to be like that. It was not even supposed to end like that, not just yet at least. In fact, it was only supposed to be a new start. Those are the kind of thoughts one holds when the New Year rings at least. And if your heart still bleeds...

The New Year felt light, 2014 felt right when it rang. But nobody knew what was coming. Nobody knew the pain she was feeling. How could we have known? We were all caught up with trying to live that we failed to pause to see who was dying, who had been dying... Though everyone knew all along: she was the elephant in the room. Yet no one could stop her insides from bleeding... How do you stop a slow death wish that had been at work for a while?

I told her to let me know as soon as she was ready to go... We could have coffee outside for a change. (Or tea. But how she loved her coffee; it was what she often offered me.) Then we could torture the guys with a few rounds of scrabble since it bored them to death. It was a nice little plan for when it got a warmer because it was still frigid here, and she did not like to be out in the cold like that. It was a simple invitation, not an imposition, so she would not feel the pressure of being put on the spot, that if she declined again like the hundred times before, she would not be eaten up by the dreadful twins...

Oh, what funny business guilt and shame operate. They probably kill more people at a faster rate since they like to hang about always hungry. But who knows, the folks that have passed on are probably the ones alive, whereas we, still stuck here on earth, might be the ones who are virtually dead. Or manipulated at least. Like marionettes or guinea pigs. We are born only to die in the end. Sounds familiar? But we are forced-fed first... And forced to sleep at night when we should really be awake. I never understood it. And if we overeat or oversleep we could die even sooner. Whose the grand master of this great, big plan? We can only guess. Yet it is called life, so there is always a flipside. For now, I would have to believe I am alive just to live and maybe extend my stay, then die at a later time. I also have to convince myself that there is an after-life. Another flip. If I don't, why buy into the idea that there might be a chance to ever meet again the people who are gone. Like grandpa... Like her.

The month of her death has proved significant; I will take it as a sign. Or a nudge. In the direction of life I choose to follow. Because it is all I have until I get to the other side, and possibly meet them...and/or the grand designer, if there is a puppeteer... If not, oh well, I would have to flip things again.

I saved her voicemail, by the way. So I can always hear her. The time she was here... The time we had tea. We did have tea, you know, though we both loved our coffee as we exchanged stories...

Still, fuckin people are dropping like flies, and when the punchline ends and the whole thing blows over, it might just be a damnable joke from a sick, bored king... If not, then it is a funny thing, this life. Of course, you still have to keep breathing until your time is up. What tiresome absurdity.

Fish.

A man walks to the middle of a stream. Like an offensive lineman, he strategically places himself. But not to hike a football or whatever is in his hands: his hands are empty; and there is no invisible quarterback hunched behind him, no other player hanging around him. He is the only one standing at the ready for this game. He lowers his hands in the water and remains very still. He waits, then waits some more. He is in perfect position when the time comes, and it comes just as expected. He closes his hands on the fish and does not let go. His grip tightens as he steps out of the water. The camera pans to the creature tossed on the ground. Its eyes bulge out; its mouth, wide open. Its movement starts to slow down, yet it is still flapping, gasping for air...fighting for the only life it has ever known until the man skewers it.

I saw the scene in a movie once. Today, I was reminded of it. She was on the bed with her head flailing and tubes planted in her mouth, hard at work, to keep her breathing. But unlike the fish, she gave up the fight a long time ago. Not in the emergency room, but in her own skin... She had often told of stories of kings and queens and the rise and fall of cities. How she loved stories and history. Yet, her eyes betrayed her as she sipped her tea. She did not want to be here, she did not have to say it; I read it as I sat across her, sipping my coffee. She had waved the white flag and wanted to leave; she had longed for it. She could not live here any more, and so she left. She had been gone, even as she continued to nurse her plants; she loved the feel of dirt, but not this earth. One day, I, too, shall pass. Though perhaps somewhere beyond this place and time, we would meet again. Maybe in the pages of history and over a cup of tea. Times would be perfect then, just the way she dreamed it. For now, I raise my cup and say goodbye to the woman I once met and exchanged stories with; I hope I did justice to her as she remains in the garden of my memory. And for now, I continue my journey.

A little bit of sunshine {poeTry}

by: a.paige

a little bit of sunshine–

is it all we need

to coax a flower down a muddy field?

does it make a difference

that a gem is hidden in a rotting heap,

or that a bowl of rice appear

in tiny hands that multiply, then drop, like flies–

has our world really become a better place for it? 

still, we try...

the kind words tossed 'tween me and you

like icing, are they enticing?–

that we'd treat each other nice this way around...

the genuine smiles and joys devoid of sound,

do they really resound

much louder than all the rounds

of applause and rubbing faces, or kissing asses?

or are we just beguiled and disoriented, as we switch our ups and downs...

but we rebound...

when we're soaked in piss, knee-deep in shit

does a bit of sunshine really lift

all the gook off our slimy pits?

a warm hello, a hug goodbye...

do these make up for what makes us cry?

a gentle kiss for all our griefs

to lighten up our load–

does it convince our leaden souls again to bleed,

despite our sins? and, yet, we breathe...

Forgive they say, at least, to dispel despair

i raise a toast, instead, and say, "inhale

the air and swish a wand... invisible...

magic is invincible... a quip, a cup

of wits... words intrigue, you know.

amuse a funny bone, create a song

cajole the mind, bewitch with poems

to right the wrongs... to tame the beast, 

this terrible and beautiful thing we live...

so what if a rose has thorns?

or if sticks and stones

should break our bones,

as we stagger without the swagger, all broken and bewildered–

must the spirit succumb?

lest it lingers and ingest the seas and drown...

but to span the time and survive its scorn! –no need to be reborn...

the tides, the full moon brings–

might wash ashore the filth, the lies, we'll see...

should we shine a bit of light then

to disarm our fears?

we can only try, we can only try

to convince our souls...

alight.