Reality (Bleeding Ink)

They say you’ve got the future in a bowl…

A wicked glass

The potion is thick

The hangover will never last

They put you down

I Still don’t know

What am I-We?

Waiting for…(looking for)

A body

A heart like our own

Sky full of diamonds

Are we fading?

As we go through this life

How did you measure up,

To yourself?

My child,

Your days fly by

A thousand at a time

But these are your days (change in the pocket of time)

And you can change

We can change our minds

Throw it all in the waste basket

Throw it to the sky

You can be the rebel you wanted to be

You’re in the land of the living

Wake up
you can make it (if you can take it)

You can go it on your own

We all get the same hand of cards

We only get a life

How did you play it?

Advertisements

Shattered Glass

.

And all of the kings horses and all of the kings men

Couldn’t put this heart on the mend

All of the music played

And all of the women danced

Around this room

Around this room

And this heart

Only see’s you

It remembers you

In that dress

In that moment

How do we let go ?

Of all of the things

Caught in the back of our throat ?

A father dies

You see your life before your eyes

The rain falls down

With the leaves

We all end up on the streets

Come winter

These days

This room is common

It’s windows open

Cold …

She never comes around

And all of my blues came from the north

They walk this house like shadows

Her lips were fire

Her eyes were wine

Let me go

Let me go

Let me go.

Rooms

The strangeness of letting go,

We always say it’s difficult

It seems the older I get

The less arranged it is

People are ripped from us in the night

We don’t get to say good bye

We don’t get to make sure they are ok…

The strangeness of letting go

we fight so hard every day just to stay …

While nothing in this room is permanent …

The moon Queen

They say, she left her heart open, in the rain…

Every Tuesday

She would pick her flowers

And write her songs

No one knows much about her

What she really thought

How she felt about things

They only remember her sadness and her tragedy

I like to think

I know what she felt,

Some nights

At 3am

I can hear her playing the piano

Its music fills the halls upstairs

Some nights

When the moon is full

And melancholy

You can see her window open

Her wide, deep, dark eyes

And her blue dress

Sometimes it’s white

But she’s only there for a minute

And then she’s gone

You might see her at the top of the stairs

Or entering someone’s room

Trying to find something she’s left behind

I’ve seen some of her paintings

Some of her sketches

And heard her songs

I think I know what it must have felt like

To be filled so full

And not know

How to express it

To feel so alone

Like an outsider

Maybe she’s still trying to work it out….

They say

You feel the fear

And the terror

If you see her face though

The pain of dying

The air turns cold

I don’t believe it

I think you see the emptiness inside of yourself

No one knows what really happened to her

Her letters

Still show up under my door

That’s when I find her paintings

Inside empty rooms

Sometimes they’re in the park

I’ve seen her walking

When the moon is full

And the fog is down,

I don’t know why she talks to me

Maybe it’s because we are both alone

Filled with things to say

And unsure of how to say them

Maybe it never goes away

Maybe it doesn’t ever let go,

Maybe we just keep on trying

Even after we’re gone….

I don’t know her name

I only call her the moon queen….

Cooking and marriage

I don’t know if I should be disappointed or not in what I’m about to say,

But here goes one for the family …

if I knew I was going to die tomorrow ,

I don’t know that anything would change that drastically in my schedule…

That’s the big rewrite for us writers isn’t?

The white whale

How would we write about dying?

Maybe it’s because I used to spend so much time writing about it when I was younger

Maybe it was the depression

Maybe it was my youth

Or maybe it’s the fact that I have Crohn’s disease

And I’ve been hospitalized several times because of it…

But I like to think that now

I’m living in such a way

At such a place

That every day

I’m just happy to be here

I just want to throw a dinner party that Nora Ephron would be proud of…

I always return to her essays and books every other year.

I’m not for it, but I think it’s pretty safe to put people on pedestals once they’re dead.

She’s easily one of my very favorite people on earth and I never even met her.

I like coffee

I love my wife and my dogs

I like cooking

I like butter,

You can never have too much butter

Or olive oil

I like coffee in the morning

Hardwood floors

Cooking, did I already say that? Well, cooking is like really great sex.

I’ll cook for you before and after.

Reading a really great book

Broadway

Everyone should see broadway

It changes you

Or it should

Art is so important

It’s important that we do not sound like everyone else

That we don’t fall into an echo

I like a really great drink.

An old fashioned,

A brown derby

A Manhattan

I like Sunday’s

Sleeping in…

I know you’re not supposed to rely on movies for expectations of love

But I think I like this bar I go to, it helps me write,

But it’s also, because there’s this table that I sat at…

It was the first “date” if you will,

Me and my wife went on…

I always think about seeing her walk in

And I knew I wanted to watch her enter rooms for the rest of my life…

I know I can be hard edged

Sarcastic and a little bit cruel

But she’s like dark energy

She’s seductive without even trying

And she is sexy as hell in heels

she’s also every Sunday morning

Every breakfast in bed

The perfect hot coffee

And a walk in the park

She’s the Italian restaurant on the corner

She’s midnight in the rain

She’s sitting there beside me

When they have to put a tube down my throat

Because of a flare up

She’s there on the front

Smiling

When I get published

She’s got all the love

I can ever hold in these hands

I’ve seen people come and go

And she wants me

And I want her

Year after year

I know what I like

I know what I want

And I

Like her

I love her

I want her.

The one about New Years and redos

I meant to work out this year. It was on my very secret list of things to do.

But then, I took a nap without setting an alarm and I woke up, and it was almost March.

Let’s face it, I’ve got to start working on my winter body, if the year is going by this fast,

The flu is going around, that’s the real reason I’m not going to the gym. I’m a complete germ freak. I basically disinfect the entire gym when I go.

Do you realize just how difficult it is to get cold medicine these days?

Back in the day, you had a cough or back ache,you could send your five year old neighbor to the doctor, who was also the local postman, and grocer. To get a bottle of absinthe and some opium. Because you had to keep chopping lumber.

Now?

I’ve got to go down there in person and show my ID and sign my name and give them my birth certificate and mortgage papers just to get some crap medicine that won’t even work.

What happens when we die? Do I have to verify my identity then too? Show you my ID? Make sure I am the person spoken of. That you are expecting for this reserved hole in the ground.

Don’t worry, if we can’t verify, we’ve got an unmarked road between two county roads, just behind the Sunday school, where we will just dump your body. What could go wrong.

I really do believe we are getting stronger as we grow up though.

Not really.

Let’s face it. We’ve all shattered those expectations. If it was a glass ceiling? We couldn’t even clean it, let alone crack it.

We’ve taken so many antibiotics, we can’t even get over a hangover and a bad date. Let alone a real virus.

Used to we had people like Doc Holliday, they’d show up to work coughing blood and they’d still out work you. Now, if there’s even a chance of mild discomfort, I’m going to need to take off for about six months leave. Turns out I can’t handle constipation like I used to. The doctor agrees as well.

We are just not built the same. I don’t know what happened, but it’s there.

And I’m trapped between these two age groups. Maybe it’s because I have been working since I was 6 years old. It’s all I know how to do. Maybe I didn’t have the same childhood as other people but at least I’ve worked to get where I am, and I’ve never asked anyone for help or a handout,you know?

I just find it funny how, When everything was unregulated, unsupervised, we still had more pride and work ethic.

Now, we have better supervision, regulation, and honestly probably for the better. But we’re like a bunch of degenerates. We want a miracle pill. You know, like a re-do button.

You remember when you were little and you could just yell redo!

And get a second chance?

That’s what we’re after.

Something to cancel out the years of bad decisions and choices that have stacked up against us.

But what do I know? I’m not a doctor or anything, I just know how to laugh at myself. Now pass me another Beer.

The one about Shelter Pets

I’m typing this and Garf is sitting between my legs, demanding that I scratch his back. Simon is sitting beside me, supporting my writing endeavor.

Shelter pets are the greatest fans, you will never have a better fan than a shelter pet.

In their eyes you can do no wrong, They’re the best version of Fox News fans, or Nixon, I mean Trump supporters, this ship may be going down, but we still love our guy, he’s the best guy. At my best health, I’m the best guy, but even at my worst , beer gut or crohn’s flare, I’m still the best guy. if I want to work out or go for runs, they’re all about that. if I want to do Sunday naps, they’re excited about that too.

I can do a mean Michael Jackson, Billie Jean impersonation, Some marriages hold sex and finances over heads to get things done, I hold this.

I was practicing, you know, in doors, away from people, so I could later feel just how old I am, and attempt to remain cool and aloof to my wife, extra snuggle points.

But like Homeschoolers, our two welfare, stay at home, shelter dogs…

Simon and Garfunkel, they just sat there watching the whole thing, like they had never seen me before….

I am now, the coolest person in not just my dogs circle of friends, but their lives. I don’t even really care what my wife thinks anymore, I just want to be the kind of cool that my dogs think I am…

You may be disappointed to find – but I was originally AGAINST introducing dogs into this paradise Love Boat. I was afraid that, like children, it would just alter everything about our lives.

Turns out, I wasn’t wrong.

But then I started walking Simon, and he in his eight week old self, was doing crazy things like getting his face stuck in Arby’s sandwich sleeves.

And then I started writing about him- you know, just to write something, because I had writers block, but as it turns out, walking Simon every day, helped my depression and anxiety, and having your own personal fan helps your self esteem. And I do mean personal fan, like, if you went to the bathroom, he would be right there, staring at you and then get excited when you were done. You don’t mean to, but you get excited too, like yeah, that is amazing, modern plumbing, I don’t have to go outside in the grass and hide from traffic and people I work with, like you, suddenly this Monday isn’t so bad.

And writing 248 + short stories about a dog and his life. Is world building and still art. And Coincidentally, writing. Which destroys writers block.

You may not be creating or succeeding in the ways you set out to, but you are still progressing and moving forward.

Now, these two dogs are still silly and awkward, Simon is super excited and will ask a ton of questions like “have you seen sticks before? You probably have, the other day I dug the biggest hole, it was great.” But he is mellowing out as he gets older.

Garfunkel is already old, but he loves to get attention, and he is strange in his own kind of street smart way, you may over hear him convincing Simon that the earth is only as big as our small town and that if Simon goes any further he will just fall – OFF like a video game character walking out of screen.

Or smaller less complicated things, like grass isn’t colored, but if it were it’s definitely colored by crayons, over night, by trolls, and that’s where you get dew, from the sweat of their work.

And he should know, because he’s practically SEEN it.

And Simon not knowing any better, will believe him, until he asks me about it. And well, that all depends on what mood I’m in.