College Love

She came into my life so quickly,
In the beginning, a student strictly,
But I soon began to look at her with
what seemed to be different eyes.
She was of beauty so compelling,
And of intellect so rebelling
That I found our friendship quickly swelling
Before I, myself, did realize
Before it occurred to me that it occurred to be
without any unnecessary tries
The new acquaintance soon slipped to stronger ties.
Reflecting now I stifle a smile,

And though, it seems, that all the while
We never really forced this powerful
and beautiful friendship to take place.
But let it ride it’s natural course
Through ambitious scene, and tale of horse
Radiating pity, love, and occasional remorse
Beyond a script’s own soulful embrace.
Learning, inspiring, and demanding desire
wrapped neatly behind her willful face
Allowing our spirits to soar and heartbeats to race.

Puzzling now, I sometimes ponder
Of our many pure by moonlight saunter
And how she seemed to read so clear even
the most hidden thoughts I held inside
She has a way of elevating
And easily, craftfully too, creating
Emotions, so reverberating
Only her, for this, can I sweetly chide.
But why, I question, can she take my stagnant
passion and williwaw it to a restless tide?
Conceiving this, from her, I know I can never hide.

Into her eyes, I peer slightly closer
To see what few can ever know, sir
What she really is beneath the skin
from which all that passion does exist
To make her dreams, oneday, all too real
To make her talents peak in appeal
To make her life the better deal
Crossing off each legacy on the list.
Experiencing nights, sights and earthly delights
where nothing she enjoys she missed
As if being loved to her was just being kissed.

And that, I guess, is what I truly admire
Her drive, inside, her radiant fire
The fuel that makes her continue to strive
to give and get what she can from life
Now who can disagree that they
Have declined a joy or slept a day
And forgoed a color for an imperfect gray
I confess I have, sadly, in times of rife.
But she, neither slept, declined, nor forgoed
to make herself intimate adventure’s wife
Leaving fear forever, for a walk along a knife.

You see she tends to dullen the point of words
And sends them down in groups, in herds
What once was great, with her is merely a step
above the bottom of a winding stair case
What is strong in life for her is no longer
The moment long must reach on stronger
She devours life with an infinite hunger
And begs for more at this stealthy pace.
She’s the only one I know that can destroy
weariness, and boredom she can surely erase
Pushing the ceiling beneath for a better standing place.

That must be why I require her near
She brings me high, and keeps me here
Allowing me too to feel that addiction for this new
elevated view of everything out there
I see much farther over heads of others
Lead my life by my own druthers
And pray my passion to get above hers
Just to keep it up with her own dare.
She works a banal cloth of day effortlessly into
an immaculate garb of night to share
And manages, before sunrise, the new day’s wear.

Heightening the former goals of mine
Repeaking all my senses with time
She urges the morph that sends me soaring
so proud of myself and what I’ve become
And all I give in retribution
Is my own liquified fire solution
A simple man’s sole contribution
That allows him freely inside to run
Allows him to take her outreached hand
across oceans, mountains, and worlds
In search of that forever-setting sun.

Coffee

In the instant the seeds are sown, life begins to germinate and bustle in the sunlit haze of the coffeehouse. A solemn face of life-stained ivory presides behind a grumbling machine of showering dregs of java and addresses the new day as the walls themselves, yawning and laxed but present to punch in. The breeze is seasoned with a humid summer salt and finds itself proctored through the street by the arched beasts of man, which seem to submit as well to the weathered gears of nature.

She, of the counter, continues to harken her cavalry to whir and bubble in early-morning gossip and an espresso machine salivates to the dronelike hum of the electric lights. I cast a glance to her and notices the spell she weaves has her as entranced as the creatures she conjures. Before me is a notepad, a pen held idly above it, awaiting a new day’s limbic offerings and performing it’s sole purpose of taunting its toter with a leaf unvisited by ink and muse.

The door bangs and dispatches an auditory envoy to relate news of a visitor. A shirt presses against a newspaper, both rusted yellow in color, to approach the siren and her perch behind the counter. He forsakes a silent nod and she presents a pen and a undaunted visage. He waits, eyes trained on her chest, which is wrapped precariously loose in a sarong, and twitches a thick of hair that resides beneath his nose. The visitor readjusts his newspaper and I notice the yellowed tinge it has acquired is less prominent where his arm once rested. He tosses his visage towards the window by which I now sit and simultaneously masticates an unknown article to send his mustache bobbing again. The siren slides her labor across the black-tiled counter and sends an audible tick-tick-ticking through the room, beating with the silent clock on the wall. It was twenty-to-eight and the pub’s engine wasn’t warm yet and probably wouldn’t be for another few ticks itself. My pen still hadn’t left its motionless hover to embrace a naked page with drops of soul.

The envoy calls from his post that the chessplayers were here and ready to spend an eternity toiling over a plastic war, they showed respect to their temptress and seated between me and her. The mustard shirt outstretched a payment and graced the black tiles with a clink of quarters and cents, one which carelessly struck the edge of a brass gratuity bowl but had not this morning, nor any morning proceeding, entered by will. The sarong on the other side expected in her remaining time never to see an event like that incur within the morning hours of business, but relentlessly nurtured the tipless payment to lay them in a manger of bills. She, then, ritualistically squeezed blood from her mechanical friends and left her commune behind the tile to donate two glasses to the chessplayers. A trail of diminutive Africa Double A particles lapsed fantastic sweeps of steam to sway from the glasses’ trajectory to pile above their checkered flag on the wooden countertop amidst a few retired soldiers. I could see an exchange of pains between those seated and she, standing. The rusted shirt had begin to gaze intently at a crossword puzzle to my eleven and occasionally dropped a pen to crinkle on the paper below. I looked down, surprised, to see my pen was busy as well, but read not what fruits it delivered. Instead, I tossed a casual glance to see a microbic business crowd enter to remark bagel-and-large-to-go calls to the server, who had resumed her station amidst the caffeinated haze. While each achieved satisfaction, the filed one-by-one to their destination of sticky desks and business memo flystrips. I returned my eye to the screen door, banging, and paused only in brief hesitation on the pen below me, which furiously scribbled it’s own rendition of the day.

“Who are you to judge me?” broke through the threshold and my own Double A meditation. “Who are you to say the what is real to me is not the world in which we live?”

The man entered moments after his voice did and all commotion in the coffee house died. He spoke as he approached and if the screen door did make a sound, I think it was drowned out by this man’s song.

“If I don’t accept the shackle that is a punch card, and shake off the chain of nine-to-five, why must I then be labeled vagrance? I prefer to paddle through life in the canoe I forged of dreams. I prefer to fly amongst the geese with wings of experience, wings of earthly treasure. Refuse to pay with coins of dead plantation-owners. Kindness is my currency.”

He seemed to billow into the room as the tentacle of salted breeze let loose by the door’s upset. As he spoke, he smiled the lunacy that he propelled as freedom and enchantment. The last of the business crowd arched around his path and diverted eyes as the tracked to find their chains. As the last exited the door, a dusty beagle skipped through the door and caught up with his heralding master, leapt quietly to his side.

“Can I get you something, sir?” the siren spoke at last, her first notion to sing for the day.

“You can get me a megaphone that’s powerful enough to reach the stars, or least the penthouse offices. You can grace me with a podium of tears to melt through the barricades my brethren have built. You,” he whirred to Mustard with the crossword, “you, who play with the deeds of man. Allow them to infiltrate your soul with the happenings of an evil race. How many times does the front leaf proclaim jubilence instead of the seven deadly best-sellers? What does your cover speak of now? War? Nuclear armament? Murder and lies? When will you make your own historography of times gone by instead of pumping in theirs?”

Beneath the man, the dog whimpered and the saronged siren took note.

“You,” the eulogy continued with the man now addressing the plastic generals. “When will your games be those to reunite instead of divide, to make amends instead of ends. Why must your passion be ripping those from others? It’s you who trade plastic for metal and decide the fate of worlds.”

The man wiped his brow and looked back to the girl at the counter who had turn her back to retrieve a bowl from the stack. I watched as the man’s gaze never fixated on the girl’s chest or thighs, but locked only on her hands and then her eyes when she turned again. She caught his smile, then worked her way over to the sink to fill the bowl.

“You,” the man looked to me. “What is your game?” I looked down to my pad which had turned three leaves and bridged now on a fourth. “Muse,” I spoke. “Why lock yourself in papered remiss instead of sharing it in person? Are you afraid to give that quiet devotion to others and decide your part is taken when it is wrapped in a book? Will that book never be shared?” I looked to the kind man’s herbivorous smile and saw a watery concern in his eyes. All I could do was jog my head from side to side. “Your passions are great. Release that pen and take up the tongue or else your gifts will wither away in their inky decomposition.”

A clinkle behind the man caused him to billow again, but this time in stationary rotation to behind him. The siren crouched on the floor on the opposite side of the counter as her station and stroked the beagle’s ears as it lapped from a bowl of water. She looked up to great his eyes which glassed tears to her.

“Your puppy is thirsty,” she whispered. Then smiled a half-smile. “It can’t live on kind words alone.” “And you, my friend,” the man answered. “You can’t live on sustenance alone.”

The man reached deep in his pocket and pulled out a loose fist to hover before the girl. She put her hand out and he dropped his gift in hers. The dog, which now appeared satiated, licked his chin and nuzzled at the man’s side. “Thank you, friend,” he answered and turned to the door. The five of us watched him drift slowly through the doorway and the beagle romp after. The screen silently fell dormant and stopped without bouncing against the latch. The girl, still crouched, now fixated herself to standing, but continued to stare through the coffeehouse’s exit until the man could no longer be seen. She then turned her attention to her closed hand and peered through her fingers to see what was there. As they spread open, she saw a scrap of retired wrapping paper with half a sketchy Christmas tree on it. I could see her ponderous face turn to a warm smile as she stared at the treasure before her. From over her shoulder, a voice triumphantly said, “check.”

Addlepation of Longing

You were right, Tom,
The days are getting shorter.
And as the snow flakes glaze, I find more and more Interpretations.

Before my six, Tuesday, I saw the campus ablaze with itself and planned to be in it by dismissal. It’s a promise I make to myself to get me through

Even if I consistently miss the flurries of these best years.

Trust. Responsibility. Maturity.

In a letter, I wrote to my dear mother, I begged for a broken curfew. How far have I gone since then? I haven’t seen the bed inMy dorm in weeks, the bed at my home?

Months.

He painted over my vines? Painted a baby blue!

Mom says it’s fine. I can doodle in the basement whenever I want. Dad glares over the NY Times puzzle.

“Eleven letter word for shaken and disoriented?”

He held my hand in prayer and I smelled the cigarette smoke.

Matt and John do-si-do around my head, but the wisdom
Is Ani’s and Sheryl’s:The road winds long and the stampede blows the back of my scalp,
Face planted firmly in the snow. I’m used to it, though,
And it’s much more comforting than watching the campus thrive.

I’m worried the cigarette will burn down before I’ll feel anything. The ice begins to form and the days float past as the flakes in the light.

I.D., keys, and books. It’s time to brave the stampede again.Trying to make a name for myself? I’m trying to find my classes. What? What was that? She says a poem can’t rhyme. He says he’s sure there is no god. Why does it have to be so subjective? Why can’t there be a clear cut answer?

A-d-d

Rebuttal to interpretation seven:Tom, my boy, I don’t welcome the ice because even though I know
The whole thing about absence and the heart, I don’t want the pain of waiting. And if I wait too long,
The stampede will be gone. The fire long since smoldered.

A-d-d-l-e-p

Why can’t the road be straight? Why won’t someone help me join Their dash? Help me pull my face from the snow and burn in the blaze of this snowy night. I look to my hands as the flakes trek past them.They’re his in smell, in scar, in pain. Dammit, I love my father! The baby blue. The crossword puzzles. The smell in church. Propelled my hands to my nose those Sundays, before God, To catch the scent a little longer. One day, the smell will be gone. And that’s another thing: I know there is a god And I’m sure his poems rhyme! And if there was still a curfew,
I’d never see a snowflake!

A-d-d-l-e-p-a-t-i

Screw the road less traveled! I don’t want to journey alone. Mom looks up over the dishes disapprovingly. After a letter, a year, and eight grand, I’m still not mature. But it’s not these classes that make me grow, it’s the dying fire of the campus flight.

The ice will melt, the days will lengthen, but there will always be those best years in between.

A-d-d-l-e-p-a-t-i-o-n

There’s another for the list, Tom.