Parabola's Peaked

I wish I knew
what I look like to you
But it's hard to tell
where I stand,
because my feet
aren't on the ground
These recent days
I've been floating
steadily skyward,
and I'll tell you,
it's as nice as they say
So don't remind me,
I already know
the parabola's peaked
I see the ground approaching
and there's no use
bracing for this impact
I'll just close my eyes
and when I wake up
it'll be a dream

Upcoming

To contemplate it
won't mean acceptance
Today, tomorrow, never
It doesn't offer comfort
but I find myself there
often in it's embrace
A day, another, closer
The metallic taste
You'd know it from exertion
but that's not why it's here
It's impending, upcoming
and that's enough
to make the body cold

Opportunity

I can't feel bad anymore
It just doesn't follow
Blaming circumstance
for your lack of vision
Opportunity is ubiquitous
It's there for you
as it's there for me
You just can't see it
'cause your eyes are closed

The Baptisms

Initially, it was proposed
to take place in the river
Remember that vividly,
how beautiful it would be
But instead it happened
in a suburban backyard
A round, flimsy plastic pool
The water unnaturally blue
and searing the nostrils
with the scent of chlorine
No glamour to be found there,
so I don't remember my own
Just exiting the water,
precariously by plastic ladder
Dad had to be removed though,
paralyzed by it, and rendered
unconscionable and confused
How violently he shook,
he appeared to be freezing
The towels did not warm him
Holy water dripped from his pores,
diluting with his sweat,
and poured as tiny streams
through the coarse hair of his head
Those eyes were sealed,
trying to escape the images
I don't know how long we waited
beneath his knee, praying
for his safe return to us
Later, he remarked that night
the demons left their dwellings,
fleeing every one of his pores
I couldn't grasp it then
and now I only wonder
if they've returned

The Brook

Outstretched on the boulder
in the dappled sunlight
The water lapping softly
at my worn-smooth boot heel
An ancient brook
whispering earned wisdoms
I saw you in that setting
and it's etched in my skull
So since then I've been
contemplating what might be
An attempt, perhaps,
to justify these sentiments,
but I know they're bound
by delicate ties
You've all the solvents
to disintegrate them
Still, I can't promise
I'll keep quiet here,
even cautious not to catalyze,
because this time I'm certain
it's not a lie

Today

He told me not to fall in love, because I couldn't afford to lose much weight.

Culmination

The night was not cold
They were invulnerable
except to each other
Acknowledged comfort
Traversing the center line
on the moonlit blacktop
Eucalyptus silhouettes
against the blue-specked night
Every step he'd taken
had led to this convergence
He could say at any moment
that this was the culmination
And he remembered the old saying
For things at a common destination
there is a common path
So, smiling, he hoped,
as they walked side by side,
that the inverse
might be true as well

An Old Timer

An old timer, through and through. His shirt was tucked in, with the fancy yokes and pearl buttons, and one front pocket tobacco-filled and bulging so that it would not snap shut. He was wearing faded old blue jeans, and a work-softened leather belt with a sterling buckle - a Zuni piece with coral, turquoise, and two bear claws. The hat was the first thing one might notice. It was well-worn wool, a wide-brimmed black novelty with a sterling band adorned by what he considered the finest turquoise in the county. He also had a Victorian turquoise tie-tack above the center segment of the hat band, something one might not notice, but probably the most important relic he wore.
We talked for a while, mostly because he was the rambling type and I felt I might gain a bit from something he might say. Told me about how his brother was arrested once not too long ago in Calistoga, and beaten to the threshold of death's door by three officers. Billy clubs flailing carelessly, hot from the friction, until the varnish had worn off of them and embedded in the man's clothes and flesh. He sued and won. Also about how when he was eight or nine he'd ride his bicycle from Calistoga to Saint Helena, steal oranges from the Catholic church and fill his spokes with them, riding back and eating the citrus all the way, a trail of peels behind him. Said it was a shame times had changed the way they had; that he'd rather live back the way he used to, even though it didn't make much sense anymore.

Feather-light

After she said it, he thought, to his own amusement, about how they say that the hardest thing in the world to do, is to find somebody who believes in you. Then he was falling, and before long he felt the ground creep back beneath his feet and then he knew he was fallen - still looking up and half-heartedly hoping to be sent back into the freckled sky. He thought the ground would come to him faster than it did, with a hollow thud and a twisting pain curling along his spine, the breath forced from his lungs, but it was feather-light and profoundly soft, as if he were pneumatically depressed. A part in him hoped he would avoid the updraft as it was easier for a feather to lay on the ground for someone to inevitably find and carry off, and that person would be the one to truly cherish it, anyhow.

Bricks

They were out there
beyond recollection or attention
Two bodies cold, one shivering,
under a moonless blanket
of pin-holed blackness
One painstakingly laying bricks
Evidently hesitant, but composed
The other, tireless,
determinedly separating
hardened clay from grit and mortar
Casting the blocks aside
and raising his field of view
at a rate proportional
to the rising pile of rubble

Innate

A luminescent quality
Must have been
something innate,
for he'd never known
acquisitions to be honest
and this was true