A Guided Stroll

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You watch and determine day from night

You linger past the moonlight’s afterglow, well into the promenade looming behind a crested pounce of wave

Evenings are but intermediaries to you

And your centurion’s cage is, at most times, evenly divided into quadrangular partitions of sky

You watch A hour half past six or a

Five months from now—wherein, affixed the

Light stays as strikingly as ever remembered

Or if noncommittal, than your alternations harp accordingly—

To where a number of factors alit the present face, to which, of course, your eye catches each fractured toil and fragmented stint,

You are born

You are beneath

You are besides

And you’ve always been between

Yet it is here where you allow your form to follow form and not in that “some other time of year,” where flesh glistens by moonlight, dances it’s hypnotic tides across the serenity of it’s mystic shores

It isn’t always always fair, just, deserved, proper, adequate, moral, ethical or right. Yet you evaluate all things as if they are all cut from identical tapestries

It may not even be considered plausible to the well-magnified test of eye. You not only understand this, but appreciate it as well.    

You always seem to deliver us the current’s time of day

You notice and then proceed to oversee the fourteen lights and you remember that twelve of these originate a lake; one from a river and the other is a long and winding stream.  

You hear a swift sound.  It scurries quickly across the rocks

You hear the rasping quicken but do not inquire upon its source. 

You are not curious, for you are fully aware. 

You know it is but a sound.  You know rats abound this place, as they nest their families near the grates of drains.  You fear them not and understand them completely.

You declare that they’ve been unjustly defined. Your posture alleviates apprehension.  Your loving tone quells the fears that may have otherwise stirred within.  You indicate that while they are truly a rambunctious lot, it is only that they are consumed by restlessness and are but solely happy to be, invigorated by a life that does not ignite until only after darkness has fully blanketed the light of day.

You bend over slightly.

As you do, your robe sways softly in the salty air.

You reach down and return aligned.

You are smiling as you hold the smallest of them.

It fits within the palm of your hand.  It is malnourished.  You provide it the sustenance it needs.

You take hold of me.  Your grip is firm and strong.  It is comforting to hold.  You lead us down the break-wall, taking us to its very point. You see my reluctance and whisper to my soul, “follow me and you will not fall, for I love you as I love each and all.” 

You disappear, yet I still feel your hand in mine. As the surf tickles heel to toe, you’ve filled me with all I’ll ever need to know.

Later today, stop on over to D’Verse where the exploration into point of view continues with this week’s Meeting The Bar.

A Thanksgiving Tale

This is a short story that I originally posted earlier tonight on my Tumblr feed. It's kind of odd how this began.  That feed is basically a place I write jokes, many of them pretty bad.  Well, I wanted to write a Thanksgiving Joke, so I thought the Turkey in Bowling could be used when paired against the Holiday.  But this piece took over.  

Hope you all enjoy.  Have a Happy Thanksgiving

Michelle was a single mom. She was barely keeping things together as it was.  She did have a coupon for a free 20 lb bird, a sack of potatoes, an apple pie and some assorted vegetables.  Her local grocery store had the same promotion they run every year, where you cash in your shopping points for various prizes.  The Thanksgiving meal is one of the big ones, and she saved up for it as she did every year.  

On her way to the store, a few hours before it closed for the weekend, only three days before the holiday.  She saw these vets, wounded and malnourished standing outside an alms booth.  She didn’t have any money to give them, but she slowed down as they were talking.  It wasn’t just their stories that they were telling; instead they were universal, of people just like them, but moreover, just like anyone, anyone at all.  

Michelle started crying, knowing that this could easily have been her. She couldn’t help thinking that no matter how bad she thinks she has it, there are those worse, much worse off out there, how this clichéd saying is not a cliché at all.

She bowed her head as they offered her God’s blessing.  She redeemed her rewards and went out the opposite door.  She kept her head down, making sure to evade these men.   Eventually she made it over to her car, but the uncomfortable feeling would not dissipate let alone disappear.

On her way home, she couldn’t get these men out of her head.  All those stories, all those people in their stories remained.  

The next day she waited for her babysitter to stop over as she does every Monday.  It was her outlet night, where her and the girls would meet for a night of bowling.  She was reminding her sitter the emergency contact numbers, the sitter nodded without really listening, as they’re the same every time.   But this time, Michelle had a thought, one she could not shrug off.

She was driving down the street to the alley and pulled into the parking lot where her girls were already waiting for her.  She got out, hugged her friends and asked if someone could help her out.

Each girl took a container; Michelle had the largest of the bunch.  They crossed the street and entered a shelter.  She thought there had to be some reason that those men had told their stories the day before.  That she couldn’t get them out of her mind and how it couldn’t be a mere coincidence that their shelter was across from the lanes she bowls every week.

There she met up with someone working hard.  None of the ladies could believe how many people were on cots in the one section.  But when they passed through into the main area, their jaws hit the floor.  It seemed like hundreds of people were either sitting down with a small portion of bread and soup or in line for that precious meal.

She told the man how the story she heard the day before affected her, and presented him all the food she had and while not enough, perhaps it could help some out.  

The man was ecstatic by her generosity but assured her they barely have enough hands to go around here.  That there was no way they could afford to send any out looking for alms.  He asked, “are you sure they said they were from here,” to which Michelle nodded and uncontrollably she welled up pretty quickly, almost simultaneously with the man thanking god and looking to the ceiling as he did so.  

They walked out and as they did a young child came up to her leg, wrapped her arms around her left one and hugged her, whispering a muffled thank you.

The girls left and went across the street and bowled.

In the third game, the league had a contest every major holiday, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.  Any one to bowl three consecutive strikes in the fourth, fifth and sixth frames, wins a monstrous bird.  

What would happen was amazing.  The girls were not great bowlers, Michelle in particular.  But on that night, not one, not two, not three, but all four of them bowled turkeys that night.

The following evening, Michelle and her kids took the four birds with them and decided to spend the evening at the shelter, eating amongst the needful, but also to assist anyway they could.  And this particular Thanksgiving, her children learned a lesson elsewhere they never could

Heaven's in my Heart (A Devotional)

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A wavering peak of substance

A meriting chasm of hollow will

confronts the siren’s secret trance

that sends the sailor out, upon rocks that kill

Heavens in my heart

and I feel unworthy….yet smile, that you still care

A smothering entanglement

A shackling undulation

enshrouds the every sense

whispering virtuous elations

Heaven’s in my heart

and I feel unworthy…yet smile, that you believe In me

One day, one day you will come

across the sky it is said

you’ll come down, and crush the serpent’s head

and light will shine, shine down from your kingdom

Heavens in my heart

and I feel unworthy….yet smile, that you still care

All will feel, as it never has—we are blessed, we are blessed

each day a lifetime in love’s sweet caress, sweet caress

and then, one will know

the beauty in salvation, to bask forever long in its glow

Heaven’s in my heart

and I feel unworthy…yet smile, that you believe In me

Heavens in my heart

and I feel unworthy….yet smile, that you still care

Heaven’s in my heart

and I feel unworthy…yet smile, that you believe In me

Nightmare's Autopsy (The Will to Overcome)

Unawareness.  Sad, sad scourge,

Where despite the cleavers gleam

Enroll again! On we surge

Upon the cold, cold table we

Will once more lay prone for

His convenient dream

Watch we shall, March we will

From the silos to the unmarked graves

To cut across reaping fields, ever forward on we stave. 

Vivisection does not breed good intention,

Do not believe anything they say, it’s never about

The process, it’s always about the pain

Inflicted, where the loudest are the strong, and the screams expire before the walls wail their weeping songs, while the sick, while the poor, shed not one tear more

Bone to bone. Disassembled on

Slats of marble, practiced upon

For those not cared for

Are but generic and alone

stainless tin, cold, cold steel

each discarded, parts and whole

Sad it is, for these, not a tear is felt

Separated by the lash of an imposter God

Fearing a day without, where future’s freedom’s left in doubt

Leaving but an unheard requiem, a lesson, a sigh, for without the crackling, pain does not yield, ever forward stirs the prod

Reassembled, fractions and sums

As only a self-termed God would dare attempt make whole,

Such reunions of the recent dead

Your image yet fans each flame incited by the memories haunting the dreams of your dearest mourners, where words, spoken in your natural tongue, engrain each minute of slumber, with the writhing procurement loss endows

Every piece within is found without.

All lined up across this wall

Organized precisely yet scattered haphazardly about

And here treads a man, in the shallowest depths of water, pacing in wander, sloshing over each direction ever scoured

Ever mired is the misery concomitant to each shard remembered, never knowing what tortures persist to lurk

Yet, it is he, who we cannot dare guess upon; it is he, who never sickens thinner than frame allows, for repetition’s mysteries here assembled sour not the troubles therein

Jars of me, at rest, alone

In this sealed solution,

flesh plucked clean, off its bone

a floating cage with lockless ends

Forever swimming—

Never truly dead, yet life barely seep these veins,

Floating simply about, within this pool, an aquarium

Where waves are as absent, as those prehistoric beasts science willfully omits from the present-day vernacular

Pickled in formaldehyde; Awash, then dried,

By permutations cloth, preserved forever, yet

Never, in such company, could the soul hope to thrive within

Errors form the function, upon this weavers loom,

Tainted by misfortune, needles sew wryly their quilted interpretations, echoic of our most hollowed depths of doom

Expertise is ignored, when it’s failure that’s exposed,

Leaving only the thrush of pride, forever hidden—shall we try, to find pathos, through wisdom’s ever dwindling light?

Parceled streams create purported visions—albeit in lieu of the self-sustaining sufficiency such stained seams require—

Where thusly soon thereafter, we are quick to notice that the breadcrumbs have all grown stale and indigestible

Here, the body secretes away its last remaining vertebrae, crafted, is a sense of clarity, never known or seen before—proffering each sentiment stored away, with the dank chill preeminently found whilst creeping seditiously amongst those reservations not your own—for it is within these chambers, where the stagnant air of darkness, adroitly replicates mankind’s first regret—

Yet strangely enough, for now, a change is found—an unrequited epiphany appears—here, falling forward—we see through the murky horizons and past the greyest clouds, envisioning that fleck of precognition crucial to surviving this nightmare realm our beings have been unwittingly cast unto—

It was in each these bands of sparks, whose arcs bestowed more than superficiality, but legitimate directions to salvation—here, it was found that one can be lonely, without succumbing to loneliness, where one can be alone, yet sated still—for it was then, when needed the most, that I became aware, aware, fully, completely aware, where the torture that shall surely follow, will be nothing to the comfort I now feel.