Tag: itch

Life of a Leaf (day 2408)

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I’ve grown accustomed to leaves turning my memories from fresh to curled, a well understood paradox that changes the tide so romantically it hurts like the small spots beside the bulging veins growing inside.

My smile has grown lines, my heart has extended its beats, my hearing has begun to dance with angels upon the dead leaves blowing along the roughly trampled ground – are these our memories we have yet to experience, or have they been forgotten and left to dissolve into earth?

So I crouch down low and embrace the softly blowing wind that helps me to see my passing time I used to think I loved, I used to want to love, so here I’m hurting from spatial infrequencies that cup my involuntary spasms from underneath the table and remind me to forget to itch the pain.

Does this leaf know it crumbles within my palm so slowly softly? Did it reach for me in a pure moment of thought, expecting my return upon amber wings of a sun soaked day like an emotional Prometheus on a personal mission.

Then, like the ashes of memories crumbling in scaled hands of our Phoenix, so too shall sun rise again over the horizon of a small family farm to bring with it a wet spring full of insight and gratitude that runs the width and depth of a heart shaped leaf settling softly upon a well worn path of insight.

Angels Without Matches and a Number For My Name (day 1088)

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So undetermined angels
That hadn’t written down my name
Asked me for a light
Which I hadn’t one to share.
But you know, as they were Angels
It wasn’t smart to tell a lie.
But I had this itching habit
I couldn’t shake though I tried.

The angels looked at me strangely,
My eyes right back at them
With eyebrows quickly twitching
Like two forgotten nuns at prayer.
You could tell they weren’t impressed
By the color of my hair
For I had turned it over
Like my favorite forty five
That had recently been spinning
On my hi-fi stereo.

The one said, “Mister look here
Though we don’t look like much,
From battle we have come,
You can see we have our wings
Floating elegantly behind.”
I said: “yeh sure man, I see them there behind.
But I think that you’re confusin’
That I might be someone else,
For I’ve got some pretty faces
Expecting me to come back home.
I mean you both no harm,
You can understand my duress.
But I’m going to pay the cover
And say all my goodbyes.”

So they looked each other over
To decide just what to do.
I picked up my old envelope
With all I had to ever offer.
They handed me some matches
With a number snuck inside
One that I’ve never called
And I hope never see again.

Harmonizing (day 1027)

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For all that I could remember, for all I could ever remember, for all the times that I dusted off my aching knees to build up my power of love that thrust my gold into the clear blue skies; it was all I was, all I cared to be, all I had dreamed of being, all that was allowed to rest – to be the remnants of some hard played game digging into worn parts of my gloves.

For without these delightful glories (curdling my cream and harmonizing my deep south Presbyterian choir) I was merely a soldier. A hard edged, fine tuned, stainless steel blade of America’s finest earth (plus of course the blood, sweat, and rock hard fists heft my direction). Hardly left a consequence upon my check-marked debriefing.

Here I stood in future’s year, inhaling deep to remember what it felt like laying on the freshly mowed grass in the heat of summer, slow moving cars rolling along manicured gravel. An itch, creeping in and lingering a while as momma’s freshly squeezed – and heavily iced – lemonade tinkled around inside a transparent and sweating summer repair.

But now I wasn’t heading here or there. I wasn’t coming or going. I wasn’t even known amongst the squirrels and bluejays and Chester, the neighbor’s dog, had wilting flowers.

You cannot crush what once lived inside a boy. A man can not fall flat and lie upon his back and let these thoughts turn and turn and turn without the understanding of what has come to pass. Much like Tchaikovsky’s flurrying madness, torrent thoughts arrest my secret moments until the uneven dice with blank looking stares roll the number five five times in a row. To end a second chapter but never ending. Never an end. Never to be ended.

Without knowing then, I was knocking at a door I had left without looking back. A door that still had a mesh pane to keep out the flies. A door that creaked and banged shut no matter how slow it was released. A door that acted as the liaison between country folk and their well meaning manner. A door that punctuated my knocking and brought old – as in aging – footsteps squinted hard to recognize the stranger the stood just on the other side.