Thursday, August 16, 2018

Sleep

Sleep
Let eyelids form few drop memories of dreams unfulfilled 
Let skin turn blue like skies watching shapes form in the clouds of where your ambitions used to live
Play music
Let melody mix with sentiment and imagine forfeited futures
Hear wedding bells
Hear the laughter of your children’s never haves filled with the promises of the futures you couldn’t keep
Play hide and seek
Pretend mr almighty has his flashlight shining bright into the darkest places you’ve ever known 
Searching for the remnants of the skeleton you became while hiding in your closet
Freeze
Like green lights turned red with backyard games filling silences in the shallows of your breath 
Smile
Smile like the weight lifted from your shoulders to your jawlines to the top of your forehead until it pulls your lips skyward while floating like an anvil balloon
Take a shower
Feel recycled and refreshing water run from your temple to your toes as if the feelings you harbor could lift anchor to sail away with the dirt under your fingernails
Sing
Sing cause the shower is a sound booth and mixing music with mania has become your profession 
Hide
Don’t let people see you sleep
It’ll only worry the ones around you
They’ll mistake sheep jumps for countdowns and whistles for flatlines
Pick your bed well
Find a firm place to lay your head
But sink shallow enough so the mattress frame doesn’t visibly bother others
Stop checking your phone
Turn off the tv and laptop
You weren’t meant to remind yourself of the reasons you sleep instead of thrive
Don’t need to see acquaintances accomplish your life goals while you lay in shallow bed frames snoring until the ground quakes with your contribution 
You’ve been here before
Slept in these shoes
Smiled with plastic carved caricatures in mask plasters stuck to expressionless afterthoughts
So just sleep
Sleep where the ground is comfy
And the grass excuses dew drop memories leaking with sky blue lips through pale white clouds of never haves and could be’s
Your home in your private hostel 
No ceiling
Just 4 walls and a floor plan shallower than sea level
When they ask you why you haven’t woken up in awhile
Let them realize you’re home is where your heart is
Your heart is most comfortable when you’re at peace with the environment you belong in
You sleep in basements so you can feel as low as your life does 
It’s okay
You’re done waking up
Dreams may come to an end
But not if you’re willing to invest in them
Buy yourself a burial plot so beautiful you can dream of cloud filled skies as blue as the lips you sport and the mental illness you thought you could bury
Not realizing
It was already burying you

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Solar Fling

Have you ever seen a solar eclipse?
The answer should be no
It’s dangerous to make that mistake
Staring directly at cosmic cataclysm occurrence
The sun burns so bright, even the moon couldn’t hope to hide it’s entire expression
The light is said to be so strong it burns through your eyes like window panes to the corneas behind
Until eventually you’re blind to other light around you, as the world seems darker
I pause as i sit in my therapist's office
The hard plastic coated recliner is cracked like the minds of its inhabitants
The instability almost seeping into the interior upholstery
I shift uncomfortably as the chair squeaks like the gears in my mind
I finally admit “I stared at a Solar Eclipse”
I dated one
Spent my free time with a being so bright it’s impossible to look directly at her without some sort of barrier
It was usually substances
Finding herself most settled in bad tasting booze
Smoke screens thrown up with each bowl pack
She had many obstacles between her light and your eyes
Par for the course with cosmic beings
I made the mistake of meeting her at the bottom of each bottle
And rolling with each of her overpacked punches
Until I was so close to her, I forgot to wear my blinders
Stared directly into the sun of her soul and saw the darker core
The scars that hide in plasma faced sunspots and flare ups
As a child, she was courted by apollo
Picked up each morning and carried through the days horizon lines by his will
It took a little while for her to realize toxic relationships look a lot like her mirrored reflection
So she flirted with an overly brave boy who flew close to her light,
He was so blinded he didn’t see his ground fall from beneath him
Her icarus fell to earth, and she learned to hide behind storm clouds
Let depression thunder as flashes of lightning anxiety froze her
She muted herself
Tried to fade out
But stars are meant to supernova
I traded the edges of my iris for the golden ring of her profile so she could see her halo in my eyes
Put her on such a pedestal she was afraid of the drop
Began building ladders to escape routes, i hadn’t been able to see for a long time
She left me with a blindness to the light around me
And a picture perfect permanent imprint of her image burning bright through the darkness I’d begun to see, like an ironic reminder of why you can’t love a solar eclipse

Old School Expectations-Unfinished

At birth, i was the only boy
Not in the whole world obviously, but you could have fooled my family
In a generation of daughters, I was the Sun that my uncles and grandparents hope for
A ray of bright light that was quickly overrun with oddly similar materials
I got given 4 firetrucks on my first birthday
Something about gender norms rang like sirens in each relative’s mind as they brought forth cars
I remember the first time I lost the image of the sun that shone through daughter mired darkness
It was a wednesday afternoon as my father came home to my sister 3 years senior spreading a necklace around my head
No comments made or arguments formed
But next christmas my aunt asked why I had played “pretty pretty princess” with a sister
Didn’t i know at the age of 4 that I was supposed to subscribe to binaries?
I liked the way the plastic earrings pinched my lobes and the time my sister spent involved in my life, regardless of outfit or accessories
But the moment my family reminded me that I wasn’t supposed to enjoy the “femininity” of this action
I should be ashamed
Shame was born and bred in me as each year i saw them passed.
I progressed through personality until who i was was clearly visible under layers of removed rubbel faced rumors
But I never forgot my uncles words as he explained “You’re the only hope for the mckeown name”
By 10, I had friendships stronger than skyscrapers
Each waking moment was dedicated to forging new bike paths in our already mapped out town as we pretended 2 wheels could translate to maturity
Mistaking freedom for adulthood
“I can’t wait to get an apartment with todd!” I explained at my 11th christmas, as my family processed silently the information they were being inundated with.
“But wouldn’t you rather live with a girl? What about caitlin? Isnt that the neighbor you see everyday?”
He wasn’t wrong.
Caitlin became my concrete foundation to fall back to each time my family wasnt able to cushion my descent
But months before the holidays she had chosen independence over being associated with a younger friend
The question stuck like daggers to my subconscious
I was more allowed to be miserable with my female friend than experience elation with the acceptance in male eyes
“But what if i wanna be with a friend?” I asked back as quickly as my defenses rose
My uncles face contorted into mirrored reflections of each ideal imposed on his childhood,
For a brother 4 siblings, 3 of which were also male, and one of whom was gay, he seemed more shocked than slighted at the comment

Peace Corps Perimeters

My sister lives next door to me
My whole life she’s been one house away
One phone call
One plea for help or cup of sugar
One barrier
One blockade from this duplex mentality
When we were young, my sister and I fought about landscaping.
Even the smallest things could lend themself to disagreement
Snow fort wars fought on upside down chutes and ladders
as staircases became runways for toboggan fueled aerial attacks
Harnessing frozen water like mortars as packed powder explodes to dust on impact
Hurling rocket propelled ice chunks hidden in innocent snowflake shell
We would build hills higher than arms reach to defend against sibling onslaught
Draw borders down the decks and patios as we competed for size in kingdom
Pretended we were all over the world at once, and in control of it all
Even in adolescent backyard memories, my sister and I have competed.
The competition kept evolving with our ages
Bickering about cardboard disposal and carseat priority
Competing to be right, better, first, fastest, bestest, and brightest.
I built climbing walls to the toeholds she left behind as she progressed through academics with ease
I began living in the dust of her heels and the shadow of her distancing silhouette
Felt myself slipping lower on the rungs of this hamster wheel climbing wall Resenting the heels in my vision each time I looked up to the stars
I never saw her hand stretched out to grab me
Only the one pulling herself above me
I remember the first time I told my neighbor I hated her
The most vile awful mean terrible no good very bad insult I knew existed at the time
She stared unblinking at the anger filled adolescent in front of her
Smiled
paused
And screamed holy hell as she ripped me 8 new ones
It was the first time I saw a crack in the wall we had built
She cared what I thought of her
Tears streamed down her face like lost snow packed memories of winter backyards
When I saw her white flag fly, my neighbor and I made amends with the competition we had finally finished
And the same tears stained her face as she sent me off to college this year
Knowing this winter would be our first with no christmas
No new years
No 21st birthday wishes or snow fort showdowns
No neighbor home
So I shook my head like a snowglobe trying to cloud the image
Video chatted and facebook messaged every other day
My neighbor lives on the other side of the world
And still manages to come home for backyard snow fights
She is all places in the world and controls them
My sister lives next door to me
On the other side of the world

Life Manual

3
2
1
Ready
Set
Go
Hurry up and learn to talk so you can understand the world around you
It’s easier to listen if you know how to speak, so never stop learning how to talk
Constantly evolve with generational phrases and uncovered subject matter
Begin this perpetual learning now, because it only gets harder
Don’t forget
Life is not for living, it’s for achieving
Set milestones!
Learn to crawl
Walk
Run
Sprint
Spend your days practicing writing and reading
Here’s where that talking and listening skill comes up already
Learn to interact with strangers
Social skills will never not be important
Dedicate the majority of your conscious to society and the anxiety of fitting into images
Treat this dedication like religion
Pray to the god of change at the dinner table, bathroom scale, classroom corner, state fair port-a-potty, and overcrowded concert line.
Change your look
Change your hair to get comments
Change your outfits to be seen or unseen
Change your attitude so you can upgrade friend groups
Social lives are just practice for future networking
As you’ve been learning to exist, did you forget to constantly challenge, change, add to, and alter your knowledge?
If so, the public school system is a wonderful reminder of the mediocre shape they need you to be
Read letters
Now read letters this way
Now connect the letters so it says the same thing but in fancier font
You’ll never need this skill except at the cash register
Now write papers
Write papers like this for me
Write them like this for a different authority
Learn how to write the same paper a dozen ways, and remember none of the are the right way
Keep your nose to the page like record scratching vinyl
Pass classes
Graduate and keep working
Go to college and convince yourself you are already what you never wanted to be
Change your hair again
Change your clothes again
Change your attitude….again
Change everything until the reflection in the mirror needs to be introduced to its beholder
Fail exams and papers
Skip classes and lectures
Scramble and study to pass and persevere at the last moment
Reach the golden finish line of higher education with a diploma in hand and direction in life
Start walking that path
Keep your head to your shoes and count the 68 steps it takes to get from your front door to the bus station
The 4 full stops before your own
glance the hundreds of cracks in the sidewalk on your way to work
Repeat until you need to reset or the game ends
Repeat until you need to reset or the game ends
Repeat until you need to reset or the game ends
Remember the game ends
The game you forgot to enjoy
The game you didn't realize you were playing rather than surviving
Think back to the school days and realize none stick out
Think back to formation of behavior and question who told you how to be
Think back to the walk from home to work you took for years
Question whether there were even roses to smell
Try to remember the mosaics of the sidewalk fractures meeting along fault lines
Realize all the missed shows you never saw
Lament the lost travel chances and forgone escapes
Question the last time your smile sat squarely on your jaw with no extra adhesive
Change your hair because you want to
Change your attitude as life challenges it
Smile more
Start each day with optimism and cut out unhealthy behaviors
Take the same walk but slow your pace and look up at the world around you
Devote your time to what you love more than what you think you should
Sit on park benches rather than bus seats
See the difference between life and living
preach it to the next generation that steps off school buses onto mosaic cracked sidewalks with their eyes glued down
Teach people to learn from your mistakes
Walk back to the revolving door of life and finally stop moving as you sit on the outside waiting for your turn to spin
Take a deep breath and count
3
2
1
Ready
Set
Go
Hurry up and learn to talk
...and maybe a little quicker this time

Snapshots of regrets-OLD

Stop
Pause
Freeze
If I could control time with speech
I would have searched for the command that let me stand in a moment
Our moment
A time capsule image with the rest of the world moving around it
We could live in a snowglobe
Exist in our perfect seconds over and over like a record stuck on the best part
The only music i ever needed was your laugh
Like a melody beckoning me to join
We spent afternoons giggling like school children
And lived life in photographic hallucinations of shared foreign futures
We went Skipping from continent to country
Treating borders like velvet ropes, and facing fears like the reaper was in our back pocket
But time is not mine to manipulate
So we moved on
We cliff jumped from caverns of consciousness
Tripping between reality and fantasy
Over time the borders in the back of my mind began breaking down
I would travel from satisfied to desolate
Like I had been granted dual citizenship
Long distance relationships can’t work
Not when one has such a long distance to go
A 19 year trek across life’s peaks and valleys
19 years of traversing life lessons well enough to know, that I’m still learning
But when school gets out and my Trek is done
I hope you’re still there
And we can walk out together