All Is Continuity

All the Voices Speaking

They begin at sundown.
In growing shadows.
Shadows cast by
you and me.

They begin at sundown.
And continue while
shadows grow and
converge into one
black mass. Continuing
till midnight.

Continuing till midnight
when you and me sleep.
We watch our dreams.
We direct. We act. We
re-shoot scenes we
want perfect. And
then we wake.

When shadows recede.

And you and me
question our waking
thoughts. Were we
dreaming? All the voices
speaking, were we only
dreaming?

Small Town

Small town
hidden from
the centuries.
A town just
over the hills
to the south.
A place where
old men die
in peace.
In the summer,
small creeks
and little
brooks
streaming
down from an
icy mountain
top run dry.
A town with
mills and steel
factories built
in decades past,
now adorned
with shattered
windows and
faded paint
and rusting
smoke stacks.
Quaint, tiny
homes on
tiny lots
with stone
driveways.
This town.
Where neighbors
know each other
by name and by
nickname alike.
A town whose old
men yet to die
sit on wooden
chairs in the
front lawn,
waiting for
cars to drive
down main
street. The mayor,
who lounges
over a banana split
at the corner ice
cream parlor
every Saturday
evening, shoots
the breeze with
the men, young
and old. And next
door the women gossip
by the front gate
of the old Baptist
church built in
1857. This
town that
Washington
doesn’t know
and doesn’t care
to know. America
is this town.
Washington doesn’t
know us.

It appears as if my brother just might be going to France to visit our cousin for Thanksgiving later this year.

Excuse the four-year-old in me, but that’s just not fair. Proper protocol for siblings, especially brothers less than two years older than their younger counterparts, involves asking said younger counterparts if they would like to go along on such trips. Or any trip.

Unless that trip means going to Blockbuster to rent a movie wherein your older brother spends fifteen minutes and decides he really doesn’t want to rent a movie.

It’s like he’s going off to kindergarten and I’m stuck at home.

In any case, my roommates and me decided to get rid of our phone/internet/dishTV package. So new writing may be slower in coming, though there are some works in progress. I spent half an hour or so the other day hunting down a wireless signal on the campus where I work that doesn’t have a filter on it.

You can assume I found one.

Boys Will Be Boys

The lamp broke.
Yesteryear.

Father found it.
Shattered.
He’s usually
very good at
fixing things.

A blind man
would be glad
to see it, he’d
say, with a half
smile after
fanangling
something back
together.

But the lamp
is quite shattered.
Irreparable.

The boys stand.
Eyes wide.
Boys will be boys.
They lie.
Father knows.

Horseplay. Outside!
He’ll say, sternly.
Face reddened.

Boys at play.
Outside.
Yesteryear.
Mother comes
home. Walks
into the house.
Finds father
sweeping up the
shattered lamp.

What happened?!
she’ll say.
Eyebrows raised,
scrunched together.
Forehead in wrinkles.

The cat knocked it over
father will say.

We All Wait Attentively

Write.

Write your thoughts,
young man. To say
what you wish you
could. What someone
you know well needs
to hear. Something
you wish to say.
A philosophy to
change the world.
That the poor might
be made rich and the
rich might be made
content.

Take your pen,
young man, and
write until the ink
runs dry. You need
to speak as your
voice lends itself
to silence a fair amount
too much. Let people
hate you, let folk
love you. The great
thinkers, the lofty
debaters, the crooked
politicians, let them hear
your voice.

Speak.

Stories made up in
an instant. Something
new. Something exciting.
Something dramatic.
Where lovers love anew.
Of lands near and far.
Where paupers live
paupers’ lives and princes
only wish. And kings,
like Charlemagne,
worry not of who
might succeed. Give us
stories with blue skies
and open fields, cities
of buildings made by
the gods of the Earth,
buildings impervious
to destruction.

Tell.

Of times before the twins
fell. When they stood tall.
When cities were safe. And
folk knew their neighbors
and the corner store charged
but a nickel for a stick of gum.

Do you have anything
to say of worth? Then tell
a world yearning to hear.
Tell a world full of misery
something, anything. Really,
you must have something
to say.

We all wait, attentively.

Most people go out on a typical Friday night.

I, on the other hand, would much rather stay shut up in my room. Especially seeing as how I spilled pop over the right section of my laptop keyboard. Well, spilled is a bit too gentle a verb. No, I threw the pop. Ice, too. Lucky me.

It even got my tax rebate checks wet. Doubly lucky me.

So guess how I spent my Friday night.

A free ice cream on me to the person who can guess the song/band referenced somewhere in this post.

[And obviously, if I'm typing this post, then safely assume I got everything cleaned up.]

Stories

The stories told.
The children sleepy,
some fastly sleeping.

The stories told
in a room warmed
by a roaring fireplace.
A room almost
overfilled, a room
that heaved, billowed
and rolled along with
the stories.

The children sleep.
The adults sit.
All reminisce.
They all have stories,
it’s the glue that holds
them together.

The children sleep.
When they wake
they will have grown,
they will find the adults
with gray hair telling
stories like they’d
happened only yesterday.
The antagonists - him and
her and Jon and Billy and
Joey, just as if it’d
happened yesterday.

When the children
wake they will have
to tuck their parents
in for the night.
Their parents will sleep.
And the children sit.
All will reminisce
of stories yesterday.
It’s the glue that
holds them together,
for a time, that is, until
gray hairs turn white.