Contractions

Sandwiched between heart and soul
lies memory and spite.
Remembering the pain of our pasts
does nothing to heal the nasty stitches.
You are beautiful but unwise; vague and tired.
Your exhaustion exhausts me,
your lack of interest discourages me,
and I begin to wonder what all my fussing was for.

Sounds and Furies

Pterodactyl sounds
wake me up,
always much earlier than I’d like.

Mighty Roars come
out of a small mouth
overcome with excitement for the day.

This Pterodactyl is gentle,
though easily excited and
agitated to play morning games.

My own grogginess passively
fights these
yelps, groans, cries and cheers.

The Pterodactyl ignores
my ignorance and shouts louder
to be heard and dealt with.

Other sounds begin to
emerge if one does not pay
attention to the Pterodactyl.

It leaves suddenly, tracing joy
as the less jubilant cry of
Eternal sadness sets in.

This sound is much
more desperate, sounding alarms
remarking hunger, boredom, temperature change.

I ask for the Pterodactyl
to return, finally appeasing the
Eternally Sad sounds.

I start to hear nothing at all;
Both the Sadness and the
Pterodactyl have had their fill.

Then, there is silence.
No sadness, no Pterodactyl,
only the shrill still silence of repose.

This sound, this silent void,
always comes once my own rest and angers
are void and empty.

I watch the silence take shape
and remain ever present,
waiting for the Pterodactyl again.

Jespah "the Shark" Lara

Has bees in his head and snakes on his face.
He listens to Sweden and uses sticks to complain.
Jespah makes words that sound like Communism.
He holds secrets to childhood and infantile glee.
He judges not, slicing into life with honest intentions.
Jespah changes his cigarettes without pattern.
Once he tried to mow the whole Cul-de-Sac.
He has been a brother for twenty five years.

Mad Men

On whiskey drinks and cigarette afternoons,
men with ties eye women with pencil skirts.
The red-lipped stay silent
as the straight-lipped edge away.
Literary capacity maintains decorum
and technology remains on edge.
Tailored language and status quo
keep people in place, liberated or beaten down.
Keeping up with the Joneses
means learning what Suburbia requires.
Fine dining and late nights are saved
for distant, betrayed, younger loves.
The youth are distanced and placated
and the aged look on with horror and elitist cocktails.
These fine men sober and apologize
to these fine women who whine and wine and dine.
The fine china is still kept dusted
and the comic-strip Sundays remain sacred.

Ice Cream Vendor

One year ago today,
I was probably sitting at a desk and writing some ditty
much like this one.

Heart broken, sun beating down,
my wife in the next room
recording linguistic sounds for thesis research.

Walking to and from the
Soriana and waiting for Friday to eat
eggs made of European cocoa.

Happiness is always
measured in the context and rhythm
of your current brain wave and blood pressure tempo.

The definition wavers and changes
depending on that which is available
and that which stimulates the five senses.

Fast forward to now and
the scenery has changed to the level of
nausea and throw-up.

If there were no such thing as memory
or sequence, there would be no way of
situating the changes or feelings of one moment to the next.

Today my heart is not broken,
the sun is not as yellow
and my wife is still in her room somewhere, though not next to mine.

I was happy then,
I am happy now.
Though the winds change and time passes.

Age

Suspended in time,
our bodies are gently moving toward silence, free and clear and bouyant.

At the start,
we are shiny, bright, elastic, new, without fear or traces of doubt.

We bend and cry
and grow, exponentially learning, betting, astonishing ourselves.

We wear suits
made of bright, shiny cloths which bathe us in song.

The air we breathe
is new, and the sounds, sights, tastes, shape us into information-holders.

We start to use shoes
and form calluses, marking the unending passage of time.

Every day is an adventure;
the knowledge we gather begins to add weight to our skin.

That which we detest,
we remember to avoid: homework, chores, taxes, arguments.

That which we enjoy,
we allow to penetrate us more and more often: water balloons, candy, first dates.

We comb our hair
and begin to understand vanity, love, betrayal.

We ambulate,
sometimes with our own limbs and sometimes with rare machines.

We begin to understand one another,
and even try to create new one anothers in order to understand more.

These processes
change us from elastic new stars to older, tarnished trees.

We begin to spend more time
looking down at the ground instead of at the sky.

Those younger than us (there are more and more),
do not know that youth is fast and age is not particular.

True love gives way
to real love and real life and real exhaustions.

Everything
starts to take longer to complete, manage, remember.

Our memories become
grander and greater and far harder to manage.

Nostalgia tastes finer
than novelty, and we finally understand Christmas, family, true love.

The shoes we once wore
are exchanged for those without laces and firmer grips.

We use blankets again,
just as we did in the days of our young elastic star youth.

The circle is perpetual,
definite, and indefinite.

We sit in each other’s laps,
comforted by the passing of time and the honesty of memory.

Age creates a balance
and mistakes time for movement, leaving us silent and free once more.