30 in 30 2016: #11 Riding Bikes and #12 Casual Time Travel

Riding Bikes

I’ve never had a bike

made for what I needed

the bike for in the first place.

As a kid I had a bike that was too tall for me

that I road in flip flops to get scraped up toes

In college I had a mountain bike

for my paved sidewalks and drunken rides home

and spilling onto brown brick

when the ground came at me too fast or too wavy.

When I got my new bike

the moments my wheels

spin the earth beneath me

I could feel myself fighting

the impulse to fly.

Sensing the pull to lift off

and forget about the pavement.

I’ve nearly crashed around impatient drivers

that believe their split second of hesitation

to let me past will ruin their day’s finely tuned schedule.

Drivers enveloped in solipsistic view of the world

they never notice or don’t care or have misunderstood

spiteful bellies of feelings about people on bikes.

It’s not easy biking in the city streets.

The commute has taught me

the need to be more aware

of my surroundings than they are of me.

I have learned that the furthest

I thought I could push myself

is miles from my edges

and that I make no progress

without exertion.



#12 Casual Time Travel

When you think of time travel

you think of blue police boxes

and out of date sports cars

going infinite infinity miles per hour

to get through the walls on the now bubble.

Playing the hero in their own story

they break through all boundaries.

If they see a boundary, they eat a boundary.

And wash it down with a cup of hot steaming rules.

Each trip runs the risk of even the smallest event

potentially altering the future in catastrophic ways

that the travel could never imagine.

Displaying more style than thought,

There is never any room for error,

but somehow manage to wiggle

around their mistakes.

I’ve never been interested in correcting my past

and leaping decades backwards in time

to save my future from facing consequences.

I dream of slowing time to a crawl.

Embracing relativity for the entire universe.

I dream not of altering the past or future events,

but making now last forever.

Pace out the seconds to be days apart

to share the moments

I’d rather not have to let go of.

Leap over days when I’m not quite sure how to fill them

while I wait for one I can see in the distance.

Stopping time and again to commit the moment

to long term memory, promising each detail

I’ll never forget how it fit into this moment.

I could dream of epic adventures

and saving the future, but my life

could be more easily saved

by skipping the dullness, s

lowly down excitement to a steady pace,

and freeze framing the joy for as long as it take to never forget it.