Gabby

I arrived to the party and looked around the at the faces in this basement

A sofa next to a keg and filled with some snoody beer

I have grown to like

Working around others who like micro-brews

I sat down and time after time someone would sit next to me and I would get to know them

Time after time

I was present in each conversation

Present amongst my inebriation from beer and other things

I looked into their eyes and saw the torrential horrors that devastated their youth

The abuses

The mistreatments

The heartache

The pain and their suffering

I could see it all as their heart pounding against the walls of their chest

The echo pierced my ears

As I could hear their hearts beating

Everyone’s heart beat

As we sat their making human noise and indulging in the human experience

I could hear everything they had to say

I could see everything they were and would be

The greatness in their hearts and the flaws that marked them

Each scar and scab

Told me of their wounds in life

I could feel their voices with mine and I was lost in time

I would come to

After they had gotten up and walked away

Another would approach and sit

Except this one was different

Her name was gabby and we talked and talked all night

When the morning came she was sleeping quietly on my chest

I

Had a smile on my face so wide

For the human noise we made all night and the human experience we shared

I could hear her heart beating

Even as the room went dark

I could hear her heart beating

For the people

The work of a poet must be done

No matter the ailments

No matter the injuries

No matter the death

The work of a poet must be done

The poet mustn’t shield his eyes from the critters in his closet

Or the peering golden eyes under the bed

He must look

The must be courageous

In order for him to survive his battles

Of love

Of life

Of man

Of this world

It must be done

So the people knows

What it means to be alive

The poet must do this work in the streets with the people

He must do it in the gutter

To see truth

He must struggle to know liberation

The poet’s work cannot be squandered

Take time with your voice

For it is for the people

Take time in your message

For it is for the people

Take time in the work of poets

For it is for the people

I am young they say

I am young and that is my crutch

I am young and so more time to do things

Will come

I am young and that is my burden

Overcome

Only by time

I am young so I can procrastinate for later

That amazing novel I will write

Put it down for tomorrow

That poem that leaves me breathless

Put it on the books for next week

The screenplay that will astound

I’ll get to it some day

I am young they say

This I know

If I am ever to be in love

She will be the most extraordinary girl of her gender and the most unique, that like me no twin exists

She will be beautiful in my eyes

Reflecting back into mine

She will be smarter than me

Of that I am sure

She will set me right and most of all she will make me better

She will be hilarious and I will cherish each laugh and giggle

She will be courageous

Telling me that she loved me on the first day we met and I said the same

She will be spontaneous

As we will travel at three ‘o’ three in the morning

From PDX to a spot on the globe

Picked by her blind finger

She will be all of these things and none of them

But she will be here

One day soon she will be here

This I know

Nobody knows anything

Nobody knows what is going to happen to any of us

Except the fore lorn rags of growing old

In the immensity of it

I Moan and groan for the things I must do in this weary world

Rolling my bones

Alone

Rounding around 7^th avenue

In these tragic hands I do see a tired old man in the calluses on my palms and the wrinkles in my skin

In America

Born alone and stupid

There must be an alternative to the American dream of capitalism and money grubbing

That consumes the west

The east

The north

The south and anything in between

Across golden folds of America

 I need a supplication in this dream

In all the road going

In the madness of my mind

I seek the end of my travels

To rest these tired feet

From all the searching

To end at the doorstop

Of the woman I love

Visiting prison

Every day before class I sit outside

On concrete in this building that could be

Mistaken for a prison

Only it has doors and windows

And they let us leave

But they still tell us

What is right and what is stupid

What is good and what is not

Every day before class I do this and stare outside the doors and see big rolling green hills and tall tress

I want to live in the deepness of the forest

Listen to the silence of crickets churping

Birds singing and other critter making their sounds

I would sleep in the trees and eat berries from branches

Hunt for my food with the respect

That this green earth gave to me

Using all that is given

The pelt for warmth

The bones for protection and the meat for the night’s sustenance

I would walk with wolves and fish with bears and be calmed by the river

Rushing by with the beauty of clear crystal blue roaring off rocks and down cliffs

That bounces the clouds reflection back to him

In the night

The moon and the stars guide me and cool me

Soothe me to bed with the creatures of forest that dwell under me

Alas, I am not residing in the brush

But in a prison that lets me return to my home when I have done my time for the day

Finish line

It is bright out there in tomorrow and most beautiful and alluring for adventures

I am on the precipice of departure

But yet there is this one thing

That eludes me and requires one last

Pursuit of mine

A challenge for which failure is my average grade

No triumphs yet and I wonder

It my bones need reshaping or my muscles aren’t quite right or if my spine goes straight up and down?

Or is it the object of my chase that needs a transformation of body and soul?

I wonder this with such a record in failure

I wonder and wonder and wonder

If this chase is…

Too long?

Too far myself to make it to an end?

The things I say everyday

I yearn for the things we will find when it is time

The love I hold in my bed at night

The lives I may have had created in such time

An accomplished something or other in my field

Fully realized and mostly happy with the life I have lived

I shall write poetry of my wife and read it to her in our bed

She is crying and tears run down her cheek and I kiss her and make love to her

Until the morning comes

My child in our bed waking us to the sun coming in our window

On this, the most beautiful of days

I yearn for this day

It haunts me

It soothes me

For one day it won’t be just words on the page but just the thing I say everyday and every night

Hurry,Hurry

It is almost nap time and the children will be put to their cribs and one of which in my room

So I must hurry

I have had this thought bearing

Down my neck

I can barely hold my head upright

I was thinking of love

It Is clearly the most wonderful thing to ponder on

Whether it be an abstract concept of love that can melt the icy hearts of the hardest men

It can literally change one’s life

Or it could even be the tangible touching kind of love

Like that of which I often reminisce on

I just wonder if that part of me has died or if I am even capable of doing so again?