// Jack and my sleepless nights//

I watched the sun fall off from the horizon

Jack and I were sitting on top of world smoking

We told stories, spit our confused views of the world off the cliff’s edge

Before we played a game of basketball which made us tired and rheumy

It took me all the muscle I had to reach the summit but hell, a man’s gotta do, what a man’s gotta do

Jack will grow up well, better than I have. I saw it in his eyes and what a terrific sight that was…

And now I’m in a dark room filled with silence and serenity, laying half-asleep

My ears won’t stop screaming though they do not bleed down my face

I’m kept up by the footsteps from the floor above and my thoughts buzzing from within

Just like every night.. but my eyes are too heavy to focus upon a book so I’m trapped

Though this is a sleepless shell, I’m bound to persevere until the next night

But that’s a different story

// Watch out, now!//

It’s tough to say however there isn’t a soul for me

In looks and dejection, I’ve noticed my stomach pales and shrivels

Out on the street, cigarette butts are littered along with faded dividers and once treadded tire marks

I stare out and forget the faces and minds that I yearn and pine for looking at the road below, fumbling over my right foot

And this eases my thoughts as I count the rocks and pebbles and debris from around my view

The hangings of the stop lights sway against a gentle breeze, the rain has just stopped hailing

The unkempt roadways and alleys have always rewarded me with time and the journey ahead

Though the city blocks are facing the same and will never move, I’ve found guidance walking slowly, with mud on my shoes in the rain

It feels like the whole earth is rippling and shaking from the center with every drop of rain

I’m wet after my trek through thought and observation but I see now that the rain speaks of more sense than any Internet blogger spitting his spit in front of a desk

I bet he feels more vulnerable than I soaked from brow to toe

I am cleansed and undaunted but he still has grease stains on his worn shirt, and he is trapped and always will be

I’d rather be stuck in the rain

Stuck like glue, me and you

But that’s probably just me

Because I never used to talk in rhyme until I sort of one day became a mime

But that’s not really the case, I’m actually more worse off than a man without a face

Or a fish stuck in a foot race

And I really don’t like when I make a new friend

And we have to talk instead maybe playing with chalk

I’d much rather walk under a ladder

Than face you

Or your weak-ass crew

Or being stuck together like glue

// Tea cup//

The young are so old and the dead remind me of a withering sun
So weak and trembling like a sea gull stuck in oil
But while death is a lonesome end, the living act more lifeless than a bear hibernating
And I am that old man holding on
Who doesn’t have a soul to speak with
The soul is voiceless without a body
But the body is speechless
A fire absent of warmth
And the land without light is a man without eyes
My tea is out of reach but its shadow is inviting
The water is warm and refreshing but what do I care?
My body is a urn of ash
Today I get a little older while my soul writes out my youth
It is ash like water and steam transcending matter
I shall remember you Earl Gray

Another sleepless mindlessly absent day as I stroll and lay down and yawn around my potential being
That soul trapped inside like mouse in its trap, but I say “not now, not now! Stay away”
Let the rain turn to ice and watch my feet slip and give and I’m sore laying on my ass
Having your head in the clouds doesn’t help you on ice
I’ll manage to get by, to hang in until Spring to see the ground thawing, the trees sprouting, mouths moving
But I still can’t move, my feet are still stuck in ice
I’m weak; vulnerable
Like the first pedal to a flower

// Moon the day//

Bay the hill

Seize the bunker

Commandeer the sky

Wash the sun

Ray the way

Summit the green

Green the blue

White the wrong

Wrong the right

Dull the fun

Hue the trees

Tree the road

Bloom the city

City the forest

Drunk the high

High the drunk

Renew the old

Old the ancient

Praise the damned

Damn the saved

Edge the corner

Corner the line

Word the silence

Silence the noise

Protest the moon

Moon the day

// A short story in 499 words//

So here I am, sitting again, in my house with no one around drinking a cup of coffee, off I go writing letters on the computer screen. Where will I go? I take an elongated sigh, stretch my knuckles and now to destiny. This work of art, picture formulated and fermented in my mind driving up to the Rims for some marijuana smoked with two strange, energetic young high school boys; scared anxious about smoking. I tell them there’s no harm done and there we sit in a parked car overlooking the city that has kept us from our dreams, torn us down with conservative values. Yes, we rambled and digressed about our creations and our expectations of our golden earth now frozen by winter’s hunger, head lights whirling by shining right in our eye. Marijuana breathe hung pungent in the car. Ahh now the paranoia sets in, an insatiable apprehension of precaution, looking over my shoulder. I want to cut out, the air rigid up above the city, wind unrelenting, tortured old Soul the grounds of Montana. Looking up the celestial cuts and divots of the Devine Sky, no body know what goes on up there. They left to go get girls, speeding down the slope into the city while me and my buddy smoke tobacco in his trashed car. Drove down the slope still dazed and venerable, lights on the streets dim and weak like the nights lying by my lamp reading. We make an up-swing onto a street listening to music crashing, plummeting down like a tail spin; unmistakable voices echoing through the fuzzed, static speakers. BOOM! It’s like hearing a firecracker on the 4^thof July, loud and sparkling with the stars. I need to capture the moment before it’s too late, before the last tick tocks. Now we’re down in town aimlessly driving talking about music and the four cosmos. We start losing ground, nowhere to tread our souls to so we parked down by Hastings. I got out saying my last few goodbyes until the next. Drove home myself, in control of the situation knowing I could be halfway to Missoula right now but I stay the course to my house and get there. My brother was outside, just arrived home from a friend’s. We exchanged a few words, laughs. My dad was inside cooking chicken sizzling on the pan. We talked and wanted to hear a poem but I was too tired and paranoid, so I stumbled downstairs to my room and read a bit. I stayed up til 2, I couldn’t sleep, my mind was still churning, thinking to itself. Life in all its intricacies and immense voided potential now on my shoulders, to carry my family name far and go to school, learn what nobody has learned, think like nobody has thought before. This pressure feels like anvils two tons pressed against my back, slouching posture. I finally escaped myself enough to sleep. And now I’m here writing a story.

// Monday morning digression//

Human wit and the mind

The matter of religion and other various types of human worship are not farfetched.  Our minds adapt to the environment and any sort of ideology that makes sensible correlations between our perception of truth and beauty. Truth as in what our human instinct deems as real and beauty as in what our human psyche is appealed to. Thus, in my opinion, truth and beauty are subjective to one’s environment like how Muslim followers, in most cases, find female subordination truth, and Christian followers find man as the patriarchal arbiter of nature. There are no contenders; we are the top of the food chain without any foreboding to our extinction but from ourselves.

Life is not a game but rather a joke. There is no consensus of what is the meaning of life, so the so-called “punch line” is undetermined. However, through my limited time and contributions on this earth, I’ve found out that this “punch line” boils down to experiences and those who take no risk and live within their restrictive means do not get the joke. With that said, our insignificance, in comparison, with the rest of the cosmos means little to none. Stars will form and burn out without the slightest interference from our small, little world. This is unsettling with a plethora of human beings; however, this is truth, universal or not.

What you have and what you don’t is nothing; voided dust in nothingness, and it’s strange for me to comprehend our anatomical configuration of the brain for if one atom was to disrupt the development of our brain, then our perceptions of life and death and anything in-between could be non-existent. I find it no argument that because of our evolved intellect that we have the arrogance to say what right and wrong are; right and wrong are silent facts and truth nature has already created. There are no discoveries in that nature, rather rediscoveries of what’s in existence.

We are animals with higher thinking capacities, but let’s not try to float our own boat and say we are better. That is childish to me.

// False duality//

The yawning tired lousy air lifting my mind up with ONE string
A feeble corral of security
I wish to explain however the words don’t come out so well anymore
I’m too worried and stressed, words seem like aching exaggerations of emotion
A blister of events have wrapped my time into a hurricane
Storming and whirlwinding the shudders of my mind
My friends only seem like nostalgic cornerstones I wish I could have back
But the past has no eyes
Startling and breathtaking the moments with blind remembrance
My character has changed, but the past holds no sympathy for change
What needs to be understood? Lifestyles? Mannerisms?
For all what it’s worth, I am my own arbiter, a rediscovery of responsiblity; cycloning raging
Can I weather the storm? Last until the final cloud parts from the sun?
The answer is present hidden like a ghost
Future and past withhold more questions; devoided
A false duality like hell on earth

// Nerve-easing Companionship//

The trust given and the trust received

The strange looks, the perceptions

What’s unknown always is the terrible bother lying on your head, immovable and unseen

Who should I be? What clothes should I wear? What things should I say for a shot of acceptance?

It all seems trite and unworthy to call trust an unconditional bondage, a right, a debt to someone else feeling the same nerve and thinking the same ideas

Trust an unimaginable fortitude no one should toy with like the pawns on a chess board

If there are flaws in people, you can see it in their eyes, smell it on their breath when they say you should be like me! Be yourself! Don’t be a hipster! You look like a hipster!

But what do I conform to? And what does he wearing studded jackets and living like a punk? It’s unreal, a rag of doubt

What are true friends? What is that connection? I seem disconnected with what a friendship should be

I’m taking different turns and decisions while I strive to figure out what is holding me back like those last few words trapped on your tongue

I realize companionship has more to do with honesty and compromise than cheap words or innocent digressions, promises, let alone false trust

I’m starved for companionship, delicate soothed nerve-easing companionship

What have I to offer to this falsified world?

I’m honest but what good does that do? Truth is not easily digested

I’m stuck in a cloud; where is my lighthouse piercing through the thick ribbons of mist?

To hell with it! I’ve given up so much for so little

There is my story