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and out of date sports cars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.

30 in 30 2016: #9 and #10

#9 Schrodinger’s Best Side

I never really listened for them,
but both the best and worst of myself
are somewhere inside me.
They take turns making my decisions,
but if I never take the time to actually listen
I can’t tell who steered me wrong.

There are times when I feel
like I’m brave enough, but
I usually find myself jumping
onto the nearest distraction
to keep me occupied long enough
to no longer be interested in whatever
I felt coming up from inside me.

This isn’t every day,
This is the odd moment remembered.
This is mispronouncing words in front of the whole 6th grade class
and not realizing it until years later, those polite assholes all just stared.
This is the a part of me that did all the right things and relaxed his way to glory.
This is the time I couldn’t remember what it was to be strong enough
to say no or all the times it was a misunderstanding of what brave was
that made me say yes.
They all live in the volume of my self-doubt

I listen to the better self inside my head
as often as I can hear it speaking.
In my moments of desperation,
it’s my better self I pray to:
Show me strength, better me,
Show me the way out of this, better me,
Show me how I’m supposed to deal with all of this, better me.

I’ve become  practiced at hearing the chorus of quiet
with the subtle ticks and hums
barely above silence that’s almost never there.
Those are small moments in a life
constantly moving by the sea.

#10 The tingle of her gaze

I had grown so tired of missing their brightness. 
The way the whites rarely peaked out around 
the bronze chocolate swirls in your eyes. 
They hid behind the creep of exhaustion 
and too much of traffic for any one soul. 

I could see the way you were just 
holding it all together by hiding 
the soft whites of your eyes.

You wanted to bounce 
open spilling their wholeness 
they held the moment our door closed,
but you’d forgotten how.

We have spent years trying 
to work distance and sleep 
and work and joy into 
a view of the horizon 
with an outline of our future.

I have seen the timid parts of your eyes 
peeking out from safe corners 
created by a tomorrow of maybe possibility.
Their luminosity begins to caress
the tension from my shoulders.

I look for those parts whenever I get home.
I can see your whole day and our whole night
in the shine in your eyes. 
I can feel myself getting lighter 
in the shine they bring to your face.

30 in 30 2016: #8 Learning from my own mistakes (where’s the lesson plan)

Learning from my own mistakes (where’s the lesson plan)

Little mistakes will add up, if ignored,

and make the carpet they’re swept under look lumpy.

The bigger ones never let you forget,

constant reminders of what you should have done.

What you thought this would be easy?

No one bothered telling you it’s harder than it looks

that you’re expected to figure it out as you go

and there is no lesson plan to avoid missteps.

Stay home on the weekends,

I make fewer mistakes as I grow older,

but I’m taking less chances to fail

and getting dwindling payouts on a win.

I have always been quick to make mistakes,

even when I see them coming,

trying to build confidence in my ability

to teach others what not to do.

Hindsight shows me all the moments

I should have changed the outcome,

but that’s really just a mind’s way of

criticizing foresight’s bad vision.

30 in 30 2016: #7 Old friends I never had

Old friends I never had

Old friends have shared history,

that I can’t ever seem to learn.

All the ones still around

are still tender with their newness.

I’ve always been awful with

dates and times of events.

Dreaming of being a better person

from the back seat of the car I didn’t fit.

The morning took me by surprise

and I worried about getting

away with it on a dead battery.

Life has not been a succinct series

of story-lines that wrap themselves up

before ever getting too complicated.

I’ve always tried to keep hidden

long enough to forget about them.

After a lifetime of bad calls

and “I obviously know best”s,

most nights I prefer sleep to adventure.

I’m getting good at pulling punches

with my better judgment,

throwing the fight,

getting chased to the dawn by

the mistakes I made,

laugh running from the rain

covering my exit and

keeping people from

noticing the trails of smoke

I leave in my wake.

30 in 30 2016: #6 Obscure Fears you didn’t know you had

Obscure Fears you didn’t know you had

Katsaridaphobia is the fear of

finding a roach in your silverware drawer.

You’ve got no idea how it got there,

or why all the traps you’ve put out

aren’t luring them in,

but now you wash everything

before you use it because you can’t

look at the drawer without seeing

that wriggling black spot scamper

across your eating utensils, take out menus, and unused chopsticks.

Peniaphobia is the fear of

an unexpected rent increase

at just the wrong time.

You’ve been getting between your paychecks

with just enough room to breath.

Then like a grain of sand

in the gears of a music box,

it decides to change the tune,

making it harder to hear the melody.

Now whenever you get mail from the rental office

your heart sticks in your neck while your stomach drops to your knees.

Atelophobia is the fear of

not saying the right thing

to the right people

to get where you hope to be.

You’ve got skill and ability

to follow your dreams,

but you’ve always been bad

at convincing others to gamble on a long shot.

Maybe keeping all your talents hidden

is just your way of keeping

the world from knowing

you don’t think you’re good enough.

Cherophobia is the fear of

the other shoe dropping,

seeing the easy streak ahead of you isn’t real.

Things can’t possibly be this nice,

if they are that means I’ve missed something.

I’m too relaxed and I let myself

forget something important

it’ll come back to shatter all this happiness.

Graphophobia is the fear of

words on paper.

Writing them down gives them meaning.

Admitting the faults you feel

is asking for someone to tell you they are true.

Reading them back you tell yourself

they are just words

they don’t actually hold power over you.

You tell yourself this,

but the hesitation is always there when you start.

Until you remember bravery isn’t

a complete lack of feeling afraid,

but instead it is knowing your fears

and standing up to the cascades

of doubt despite of your worst efforts.

30 in 30 2016: #5 The ocean puffs out its chest

The Ocean Puffs out its chest

The further inland you go

the easier it is to neglect to remember

that it is even there.

The ocean does not forget we are there,

It sits caressing our shores,

letting us live behind our breakwater ridges,

collecting what we’ve tried to hide

from the dry land.

It still takes pride in the way

it swirls between us.

It’s still holding all of the pieces of ourselves

that we hurled past the shorebreak.

Carrying fleets of messages sailing for the lonely.

Reaching out with sea-soaked notes

to swear to strangers that

there is someone else out there

standing on some other shore

chucking similar dreams into the waves.

The ocean is pushing back

against the people’s indifference.

The ocean is a sensitive soul.

It does not like to be forgotten.

It gets easily offended by

poorly thought through good intentions.

Now it’s foaming fists beating upon

the soft sand that secure us,

Smashing up against us,

because this is the only way to remind us

just how much there is out there.

A glass surface horizon that goes on forever

until the a curve you can’t see from where you’re standing,

pulls the waves down out of sight.

It’s all so impossibly large

there is no way to get your arms around it,

no matter how much you want to hold on

and reassure it that it will never be forgotten.

30 in 30 2016: #4 Sleep comes to the thoughtless

Sleep comes to the thoughtless

My most restful nights have all been

ones I can’t remember.

A still brain that couldn’t fight

the hypnagogic fizzle of exhaustion.

The texture of the ceiling above my pillow,

matches the back of my eyelids.

I have given up

on trying to get there.

I was never destined

to dream through

darkest parts of the night.

Sleep comes only to the thoughtless.

My brain loves an excuse to keep me

attentive to ideas that can wait for tomorrow.

All night my hypnopompic thoughts remind me

of what I’m not doing.

My brain will never get out of bed tomorrow

I’ll be fighting myself every stumble of the day.

I am assuring myself that

I might not be sleeping,

but at least I am getting some rest,

and that will be enough.

This is the familiar lie I tell myself

when I’m facing a whole tomorrow

of nothing I want to deal with.