Magic Show

Nickeles, dimes, quarters:
they all are disposable.

Fives, tens, and twentys:
they always disappear.

I'm left behing with an idle mind,
as my savings goals don't come near.

This dollar bill magic show,
leaving change beneath my mirror.

hammer to fall.

When the world keeps spinning, it's hard to get a hold of your own head. In postulative theory, it is an ascertainable assumption that if your head did in fact fall off, it would bound endlessly around the planet, skipping from place to place. A tumbleweed of knowledge taking wing with dust storms from here to the western seas. Maybe it would gather knowledge, taking in the sights and sounds that it wasn't allowed to capture as a tenant of your body. It is feasible to consider that it would not, especially when one considers the brain damage that would be inflicted during any transportation sequence.

People around me are always striving, working against the grain to establish identity and individuality while still attempting to fit in with some larger group. Hopeless romantics rejecting love, claiming it as the ultimate scape goat for any separate longing or feeling. Love is cheap, hatred is cheaper, and grabbing for attention via either is child's play. I've been the guilty party before in this struggle, trying to find one by wielding the other. Fools often say that hate leads to hate and love leads to love. Consider the proposition that the subconscious depths of hatred can provoke the promiscuity of forbidden love, or that a failed attempt to love can lead to the darkest of hatreds. There is no hope for the hopeless romantic, for without hope there is only despair. Being labeled as such simply construes that the individual in question has no matter of sense what so ever.

I wish I could find my sea legs in this grown up world. I feel the constant wobble as I move through the commute and neck tie ravaged waters. Always impressing, never disappointing, building a resume while managing a time schedule, and constructing a future while digging a grave can destroy your sense of balance. The goal of every new thing brought into the world is to one day render something else obsolete. We design and build new houses, cars, and electronics to create a cutting edge, one sharp enough to sever the bonds between our former possessions. New children are born because one day we will need a workforce, and more importantly because we will one day all be obsolete.

I saw an old woman in the market the other day and started to consider her perception of the world. I often speculate as to how to grand I am as a person, and look back on a wealth of experiences for concrete evidence. Staring out from pale eyes that have been lodged in a weathered face for decades, I can not begin to fathom how young and inept I must appear. Thousands of conversations and struggles paced out over a century can not grant relevance in this day and age. Only the impression that the sun has set on her knowledge, only the promise that one day the youngest of us will be replaced can grant peace to the weary traveler. There will be relief in death. There will be rest at the end of the road. The smartest of us all just bide their time and wait for the hammer to fall.

As I try to get my sea legs and keep my head from rolling, there is one truth I cling to as a guiding light. That we are all on our way out, each is best served to soak up the experience that can be gained by rolling your head, wait in line, if you're an old woman avoid markets where young men might speculate about your thoughts, and that those who loaf around and wait for the end may in fact be the smartest of all.

spontaneous combustion.

I often times hope that I am on the verge of spontaneous combustion. Every slight gurgle of the stomach or uncomfortable air pocket rising in the throat makes me cross my fingers and close my eyes.
I whisper under my breath, prayers to whoever may answer them: "please let this be the time."
It would be a fortunate turn of events I suppose. I would just be sitting at my desk, feet reclined on the visitor's chair, reading my paper at any moment of the day. Then, suddenly I would look down at my watch as I brought my right hand up to clutch my chest."I shouldn't have gotten that second burrito," I would think to myself just before I expired.
Suddenly, a red flash in the corner cubicle, and then I would be gone.
People would look for me I suppose, mainly the man on the other side of my retractable wall.
Following the initial explosion, he would reel back on his chair, thudding with each turn of the wheels backward, and then a clicking sound would resonate as he slid off the plastic carpet protector as he would peer curiously around the divider.
He would crane his neck, looking to see and would be greeted by nothing more than a smoldering chair covered in dirt, the plastic melting slightly as red flames would flicker hopelessly around the surface of the chair.
As I imagine it, I would like to think he would just slide forward, getting back to work, not minding what had just occurred on the other side of his stockade. He could possibly open his black book, cross out my information, and make a note to write the obituary before next Monday's paper submission dead-line.
However, I know in this real modern world, there would be a fire extinguisher that would function terribly due to poor maintenance, but in the end it would get the job done well enough to serve it's duty. They would then scoop my ashes, along with some unavoidable debris and prepare to move on.
I would be transported in a small container, possibly Tupperware, all crammed in with the little pits of plastic that had been a victim of my disintegration process.
There would be tears and beers and all manner of other festivities. The flower market would become drastically saturated with business, and retail stores would have trouble keeping any black items on their shelves. Intricate eulogies and obituaries would be written, and then, after a formidable Friends and Relatives Urn-Mantle World Tour, I would be dumped over the third base line at Fenway Park during the following October. This small act of vandalism would be committed by a man in a long green trench coat, and would be preformed as discreetly as possible. I assure you, this is how it would go.
However, there have been very few substantiated cases of spontaneous combustion, so I can only keep dreaming that one day I will become completely engulfed in flames.

"It's"

It's the lost art in a subway tunnel,
beneath a shit-hole apartment dream.
it's the now and then,
or now and later,
and the differences between
the thoughts you had,
when you were young,
and the way they all just ran away,
never staying,
always fleeting,
for western suns and better days.

transistor dial homes.

I feel as though I have gone into hiding. Taking a long summer hibernation from the normally nominal social circles I have a tendency to run in.
The phone rings and vibrates, leaving behind a carnage of tone depressed voice-mails and questioning text messages that need to be sorted at the end of each day.
Maybe I am becoming more of a hermit, burrowing deep inside a shell, putting up privacy fences and hedges, training ferocious beasts to walk the property lines of my social self.
There is no particular reason, there is no judgement being placed, no values assigned to the hundreds of people I have been failing to make contact with. My wires are crossed and I can not seem to find the motivation to upkeep the satellite and communication lines to all the distant lights.
Many people are in my thoughts and considerations daily, forcing a smile from my lips as I venture down the pavement during my work day hustle. I harbor no ill will towards anyone, I have simply grown lackadaisical with my diligence in regards to keeping correspondence.
I feel as though the distant lights are shutting off, slowly tuning out of my ever babbling radio station of a life, finding newer, more up beat transistor dial homes.


I am not the man of interest that I hoped to become,
I am now the quiet observer.
I still mumble in the darkness with eye lids closed,
stumbling through thoughts not turning over.

human communication.

Human communication is completely and utterly based on a shared desire to learn. Without a driven motivation to acquire knowledge from those we interact with, there is no hope for shared vision or eventual understanding.
A simple intrinsic belief that all human beings are motivated by something to get out of bed each morning makes them a valuable source from the on set. We each hone our skills and memory indexes in accordance to what we find fascinating.
The 'buying and selling' of this information is the reason for human interaction. When I enter new social situations I have the mindset of an eager learner, a third-grader hearing about human anatomy or astronomy charts for the first time.
I have a tendency to ask questions, stimulating conversation that will eventually lead to myself acquiring a knowledge base from the others that I meet.
Ignorance and closed mindedness breed one another, for if a constant input of similar information and opinion is ingested, eventually it will lead to what I would like to refer to as 'rotting of the brain.' The racists, the bigots, the zealots: they all have a continually focused thought centered around the simple belief that they are undoubtedly correct when it comes to hanging people from apple trees, muttering under their breath on the subway or beating someone unconscious with any specific religious text. These individuals have not allowed an influx of information to overwhelm their circuits, firing synapses, creating greater self-enlightenment.
An approach centered on learning from each moment that crosses each of our path's can provide any individual with a more positive and optimistic mindset. There are potential pit falls to this plan of attack, and they lie in the file marked 'things you would never possibly imagine that you could be interested in.'
In some cases this file is better left alone, things like methamphetamine, pedophilia, and spousal abuse are topics for far braver and more despicable men. There are other avenues that may seem foreign and of no interest that eventually prove worthy of thought and discussion.
Small town dirt track races, bow hunting, interior painting techniques and Department of Natural Resources fish stocking tactics were things I never planned on devoting any thought or time considering, and they have all proved more than worthy courses of study.
Some days I feel this quest for knowledge is futile as I quietly tidy my pre-dug grave in the late afternoon sunlight, because, alas, we will all one day be returned to the dirt we sprouted in.
Why bother learning from others when one day the knowledge in your mind will burn faster than a Ray Bradbury novel?
Because we all must teach one another, we all must pass on the gifts bestowed. That is communication, the process of learning and teaching, taking and sharing, that if executed correctly could promote peace in the Middle East, provide a smarter way to utilize green energy, and maybe even provide a few smiles between our blurry cup of coffee and the late night television drone.

'mathematical word problem'

i once had a friend named tom,
he would sit on a porch all the day long:

strumming a guitar with his fingers.

i once had a friend named fatty,
he would skate the streets all the day long:

kicking the dirt with his sneakers.

when the sun starts to set,
my mind wanders to suspect:

the wheels are at rest on the lawn.

'someday'

so someday they'll show us!
how far they can throw us!

but won't they then just be below us?

'film projector ethics'

i once knew man
by the name of john bram,
who traveled up north for the season,
he froze in the cold,
and half lost his soul,
and by the spring headed south yelling treason.

there have been lots of men
i have made contact with,
while orbiting the sun on this vessel,
no space suit restrictions
or up nosed partitions,
to show me where i may roam.

i once did cross paths
with a mexican man,
who traveled up north for the season,
the last time i saw him
in a window shade coffin
,he was locked in his head with his reasons.

so i staked myself down
under open blue skies,
just to watch the reeds wave and planes fly,
i noticed they both
throw their own ghosts,
in white jet trail fumes and breezed rye.

i once came across,
a savior for cost,
who traveled up north for the season,
he found steel level heads,
for a hard work day's bliss,
to repair all his broken decisions.

so i rumbled right on,
through the next railway town,
to see if a change of backdrop would do,
it just all played over,
all the living room dramas,
that i had seen elsewhere two years before.

so someday i'll find my end,
if the loop keeps on spinning,
playing the same broken truths in my head.