Shaking Hands

Coming across the hundreds of blank stares as I run downtown in the damp air 

of yet another busy December evening,

The warm breath, like a stream, leaves in a hurry out of their nostrils and mouths

as if trying to be free of the terrible conditions that everyone’s mood grants them.

 

I pretend to listen to my white buds, curling past my black coat,

walking and looking, wondering if anyone actually thinks what I do.

Won’t it be wonderful if what you’re thinking at the moment show up

on your forehead for all others to see? 

Oh how many interesting novels would be written that way. 

 

I pretend I can talk to strangers, and start up a conversation with the man 

strolling in his London Fog jacket. His Hugo Boss shoes stick out from beneath 

grey khaki work pants. 

“How do you do sir? I can only imagine what you are thinking right now.

But if I knew, and if it would not have been weird in today’s society,

to suddenly start up a conversation that does not begin with ‘How is the weather today’.

Besides, what can a man and a teenage boy talk about that is short-lasting,

will never be confronted by the NYPD, and interest both unknowingly. Aside

from love, sex, and drugs, practically nothing. I wonder if any two random

people on the street will have the same conversation as us two, sir. I do not care

what your name is because you will never see me again, but it would be nice

if we shake hands, just to be nice.”

 

I continue walking with my ear buds bouncing in my ears, as the strings on the violins in 

my instrumental version of Poker Face continue to flare.

 

 

Strings

Tuning the strings on a fine-playing instrument is not easy,

leaving them rusty, the screws slowly cringing in their sockets over times of neglect.

Replacing the strings hurts your heart; the old ones served you long and well,

the emotions running through the veins of your body will never stop

moving while those vibrating strings work their magic along those polished soft hands.

 

Listening to the rhythmic life of a fine-tuned violin of a heart beating against

the shoulder of a loved one, is the most nostalgic calming feeling you can have.

One’s it is not tuned, full of neglect, you can feel the goosebumps before

the chest begins to touch the clothes that separates you.

To fix a heart that is out of tune, all you need is to change the screws,

tighten up what makes a life worth it.

But losing a heart, like fixing a string, the memories will be gone.

 

My heart today goes out to those children whose heartbeat will never again

be heard, and felt by those they may have loved in their lifetime.

 

What Carried Me Home

Beyond all the feelings, initial emotions, anger, spite, fear.

Beyond all the erratic words, spilled tears, incredulous faces.

Beyond the mud that remains in your path, 

Beyond the pain it will be to look back at the broken up pieces that could have led

somewhere historic. 

Will be more horses to ride, more paths to follow, more dreams to catch.

Will be more tears of joy than sorrow, more surprises to hatch.

Will be more positive energy, more show, more everything.

I love you all

who did not get that first path on their road to success.

But every highway has future exits, this one is just not yours.

 

 

What’s Great About Life

Take a chisel, a pick, a block of modeling clay, and build a single moment for yourself

that you will do anything and go to any bounds to experience.

Piece by piece, scrape by scrape, the modeling object finally resembles a self

in its special moment of brilliance. 

 

Capturing a moment in history in physical terms is easy; painting a picture,

writing a play.

Capturing a historic moment is like living the moment twice, 

on a roller coaster that does a  loop more than once.

 

To know a moment is historic, you need to know its precedent, and how it became.

To picture a historic moment you need to know what came right after, so that

there is some place to call it “history”.

 

A clay statue is a moment in history when you have done something historic,

so to know if it is truly historic is to live the moment of the statue, and then find 

out if it is truly important to you or not.

 

What’s great about life is that, once it happens, you can reflect on which points

were historic.

Unfortunately, it is too late to realize they are historic when you live them, because

to you then, it is just a moment in history you have constructed a clay statue of. 

 

Who knows, maybe tomorrow is my moment in history,

but whether it will be a historic moment is to be found out much much later.

 

 

Focus

Rain isn’t pleasant, especially as it crawls its way up 

the dark lanes of a summer hidden underneath my pinstriped blazer.

The misty microscopic droplets shimmer their way past the glow of the lamppost 

in mid December.

Soft footsteps trot down the block behind me, as if trying to stay in pace with 

my mind that is crossing all oceans and seas to chase down a single dream that

has been on my horizon. 

Zoning in on what I really want, the lamppost shade knocks me out cold as I flinch to steady 

my balance;

what for(as if there’s nothing else to think) can an clear mind be in use?

Calmly walking down a dark softly lit street after all your hardships have been proved

worthy

is the only moment focus comes to my mind, not my eyes.

 

Nothing is actually just a shrouded mist,

everything is what can be discerned after it all. 

An ode to the most unique poet ever; one of his greatest works in my eyes

no man, if men are gods, but if gods must

be men,the sometimes only man is this

(most common,for each anguish is his grief;

and,for his joy is more than joy,most rare)

 

a fiend,if fiends speak truth;if angels burn

 

by their own generous completely light,

an angel;or(as various worlds he’ll spurn

rather than fail immeasurable fate)

coward,clown,traitor,idiot,dreamer,beast–

such was a poet and shall be and is

 

–who’ll solve the depths of horror to defend

a sunbeam’s architecture with his life:

and carve immortal jungles of despair

to hold a mountain’s heartbeat in his hand

III. Unveiled

nose raised, morning; first thing the sun pierces the heavy shade

of rolling clouds.

canopy obscures the prickly one’s view, though his eyes shut tight

to protect against ongoing blows.

Lethargic paw movements push its small shriveled body forward,

trudging through the frostbitten ground its paws make a fixed path.

 

Hilled up its body goes, there lies a gooseberry frozen in time,

moments go by, the berry is picked up and slowly savored, 

whiskers crackling, whiffs of the past harvests catch the prickly one

by surprise.

Shivering earlobes bring his munch to a halt; a hawk flies above, 

casting an eerie silence to its below, forest: still blank and empty.

 

 

 

II. Creation

shells, peeling seeds up-creeping ovals

of soft tender future. Protruding spokes, clinging to

life, over bend timidly in buss of soft gusts that

picks up their sisters into the cold air, crisp-locked

and strews them in the pockets of the earth- hard blanket.

 

dormant lies heavy wooden branches, frizzled within the icy

breath of the goose clouds dragging across the heavens.

quickly, before the wind picks them up once again, the seeds 

seep dig tred deeper and deeper into the frozen stream of gravel

and rocks; begging the cracks to shift to allow a sliver of green

to penetrate and breathe living into the world waiting

for it to rise.