Well -
Here we are.
It's been a while, right?
I've been writing. So, I thought -
I'd like to include my old friends....
I'm going to try to post on this once a week.
I just, I want to write,
and keep writing. I've been writing, re-writing, and editing my novel.
If I were sculpting it, the thing would have shape to it, and from a far, far
distance, would look like a beautiful thing. But up close, however, especially if you were equipped with bifocals, a flashlight, and a scratch to the head, this sculpture
would clearly need things like arms and legs and a birthmark in the shape of Idaho
on his left big toe.
I've been chipping away at it, nonetheless.
And when that novel is out, and free, and ready to be read by other readers, who are not you,
(but most especially you)
you can say you knew of that book before it even had arms or legs or a left big toe.
And that is my gift to you, because you are my reader...and because it's been so long, hasn't it?
I've also been typing out poems, with a Ticonderoga pencil in my teeth, or my hair, or next to my foot.
They are the best type of pencil, you know.
And I've just been thinking about this one thing, in the back of my mind, all the while:
I am a writer, and so, I've been writing on my own for a while, and, well, hows abouts I share
a little bit with you again? My friends. My readers. My audience.
My friends.
If we were in Alice in Wonderland, you would be Alice and I would be a tiny strip of candy, with the words "Read Me" in large typeface, all over the packaging.
And then you would read me, and so you'd grow to be 100 feet tall, and, everybody would be all like, "I always knew that guy [girl] would grow up to be something."
That's how it would happen, I just know it.
I do hope you forgive my leave of absence. I do hope you are still reading this very sentence.
I have a feeling that you are.
So.
I'll start off with a poem I wrote, about a month ago.
I was going to start off with a little anecdote of how I dreamt of a dinosaur-zombie apocalypse two nights ago, but, I'll keep that one in my pocket.
That one's for keeps.
I hope you like this, oh readers {my readers}.
And away...we...go.
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The family’s shoes are in the kitchen, stacked luminously,
These soles, they stretch and grasp at the moonlight,
but the light, it hides, thin and wan behind the clouds.
Tepidly they sit, and wait, through the long sigh of the starless night;
Each soul is beaten and tattered,
Too many pathways,
Too much scuff.
Boots and sneakers alike, sandals and peep-toe lady shoes, they are all
the same, and
stink
of days past:
this smell does not smell like the glamorous wiff of daffodils or
Tulips.
You see, they do not stink of beauty,
but of restless nights and days walking in circles.
These penny loafers hold the stench of keeping up, two by two they
step up
into cars and out
onto the ruthless, empty gaze
of parking lots
in the heat of a staring sunlight,
or the office kitchen, where coffee spills and falls like
acid rain.
Two by two they stop short beneath a desk, or a table,
beneath a sigh or long lost gaze,
or suddenly these closed-toe pumps must face
the unforgiving stare
of what lurks beneath the couch
for hours as the family stops
to take a moment
to take it all in.
No, these shoes do not smell of roses, but,
instead, their leather is worn, like a grandmother’s soft hands,
a grandmother who kneaded a life out of nothing but
prayers whispered to a starless sky
just like tonight
just like many nights
but these soles, these souls, they wander and wait
Waiting, wading, through another day.
I can almost hear the footsteps, I can almost taste the pavement –
Too much pavement, too much of the same, too much of the unexpected -
Perhaps, Perhaps.
These soles, sitting in the dark, seem wary of another day;
but still they wait, still they wait
still they are ready,
so come what may.
September 10, 2013
