Box

I watched the movers fill a truck with my neighbor's belongings today

Everything fit neatly into a nice dimensional box

Little boxes placed into a bigger yet little box that could be driven away

Driven to another place where it all could be unloaded and arranged into another dimensional box

This time maybe a bigger box than where it used to reside...or at least one with a better view

Maybe this new box is within walking distance to a boxy school, boxy hospital and boxy stores

Maybe it will be nearby a boxy job

Wherever the stuff ends up it will arrive upon paved roads traveled by many

All linear roads and sidewalks lead to boxy things

And so we live our lives with boxy underwear, boxy minds and boxy hearts

Imagine if there was a wilderness...a place where oceans, forests and sky all came together

To wander aimlessly and join the stars billions of miles away and into blackness that's infinity

Where a box is nothing and light is free to travel everywhere

Dad, Wine and Baba O'Riley

My dad liked wine

He liked to taste wine, he liked to drink wine and I'm sure he liked how wine made him feel

I do

He also liked classical music

I do

I appreciate wine and my Father's sensibilities...now

But he never appreciated mine

I liked beer, tequila, a line of cocaine and Rock 'n Roll

I wanted to smash my violin across my mom's face

After I played The Who's "Baba O'riley"

Is that art?

But of course I wouldn't

...smash my violin

I loved my violin

I would play the solo violin part of "Baba O'Riley" with headphones on and a head full of THC

My Dad would drink wine and listen to my mom ask if that was music I was supposed to be practicing

And all I could hear was,

"It's only teenage wasteland, it's only teenage wasteland...They're all wasted!"

Today I hear the song and all I can hear is,

"I don't need to be forgiven, I don't need to fight to prove I'm right!"

...and I no longer want to smash my mom's face

And I'm not my Dad!

Ship of a Fool

A wrecked vessel upon a reef of childhood memories lay waste to a voyage beyond

I am the captain with no ship and a faint sadness threatens to crumble my snottiness into tears

Fortunately I can stand

It's shallow... and if it were not, I can swim

But scared of open water

The abysmal depth of dark, brackish and cold waters I have felt have been satisfying

I seem to enjoy those non metaphorical bodies of liquid although I'm scared while crossing

Now I stand grounded upon an uncharted, bony reef

Stuck!

It's time to swim

And I realize I was captain to no crew

I never needed a fucking ship

I was always told I needed one

What a fool I've been

Light Wind Tashiba

The Splinter

The splinter beneath my skin makes me feel bad today

A rash has broken through my facade as I try to heal from my old ways

All my appetites are back and it itches like crazy

I'll try not to be lazy

Maybe the ceiling will collapse on me and fall through the floor into dirt

The dark hurt

The dusty place of the heart when revealed breathes easy

Freeze me

Until a time in which I can be cured

Reassured...

They tell me it's just a spilnter

The only problem is that they've never had one

Not like this

I've forgotten how to kiss

And all they can say is...

Fill in the blank

Because we have all heard the stupid fucking words

...and the splinter continues to fester

Good Morning Man

The Good Morning Man rests his head upon the pillow and burns the timbers of his mind

As sunrise lights a color of fire on his cheek chafed with time

The Good Morning Man moves his fingers stiffly upon his joints and cracks the limbs in two

As morning air fills his nose...an aroma of new

'More to work with today than yesterday' as the Good Morning Man likes to say

He's awakened the dawn of responsibility

Expanding dreams a possibility

And beyond the daydreams?

Darkness and sleepy scenes of burning forests of imagination

Fresh will be the soil of a brand new world

Good night Good Morning Man, good night 

Live and Die On Your Birthday

I welcome the newcomers with some advice

Don't live your life according to a plan, but plan on having friends and family

Wander about aimlessly for awhile and make some mistakes

I did

If you, newby, asked me how to live

I would tell you how to die

For the answer to life lay in the heart of the brave who understand that you live and die on your birthday

Leave the world headfirst...as you entered

Never be dragged by your feet and refuse to crawl

And always, always share your heart

Leave it behind for others so that you may travel light

And I always believed that some good last words would be "Happy Birthday! "