There's this guy...

I'm walking across the expanse of lawn between two tall buildings and from a distance, I see this guy leaning on the railing that puts a barrier between him and the air beneath him. As I walk closer, it looks like he is doing some serious contemplation. He's got this furrow between his eye brows and he's just looking at the ground. I start to wonder if it registers to him what it looks like he's about to do. One vault over the railing and he could be smashed. I want to tell this guy, "Hey, it won't work when you're so close to the ground. You'd just break your leg." Then it occurs to me...I didn't think about telling him not to jump- more like I was saying,"Hey don't try cause instead of loosing your life, like you meant to, you'll just break your leg." Funny, the closer I got, the more I noticed he was on the phone, leaning and looking. Not contemplating the space.

Loosing sleep together. Walking out to his car, he smiled at me and we would be loosing sleep together. How romantic.

Mad cow disease
drips off of the last brain you slerped
down your esophagus
and I missed my chance to tell you
not to eat cow brains
because of the mad cow disease.

Michigan

In the movie "Easter Parade", there is a song Judy Garland sings about wishing she could go back to Michigan and be on the farm again. Although a huge part of this is romanticized (I don't know anyone who would be happy being woken up at 4 a.m.), there is an element of truth in her song. I never thought I would say this, but I have a nostalgia for the different farms I have lived on- and more specifically, the soil that made them places for growing and cultivating.
My Grandpa's was dirty with dry, loose dust floating above my sneakers as I walked. And with every step, the dirt would linger on my ankles just a little longer than the step before. I hesitated to inhale too quickly for fear the whole top layer of dirt would get clogged in my lungs, and when I sneezed it out, I would cause the dust bowl to erupt all over the wide West. I At the end of the day who ever had been walking with me and I would sit on the lawn in back of the farm house and trail our fingers along the skin closest to the gap between where our pants ended and our socks began. The deeper the furrow our fingers made in the dust, the harder we had played.
The second farm had a sticky layer of clay that suffocated the rich soil under the plant life. After it rained, the clay was glorious. It was as if with every layer coated upon our bare feet was a bath of natures finest brownie mix fresh from Mother Earth's great bakery. Great chunks of the clay would sometimes ooze out of the barrier which prevented the weeds in mom's flower beds from overflowing onto our lawn. This pieces of earth were pies in the making- another gift mother earth gave us in exchange for a few tears or smiles.

My Mentor's Vest

To avoid being accusing and insulting on the part of someone who is my respected elder, I will simply refer to this person as my "Mentor".
My mentor wears the most atrociously offensive colors and fabrics in the manner they were least intended to be worn. For example:
Today, he wore a velvet vest of bright purple, complete with a pouch for the pocket watch and pinstripes running throughout. Accompanying this was a tie of the most blinding blue. It practically shouted out, "Take that Elton John!" What kills me is that under the facade of color, he is wearing blue jeans with a fat leather belt. There is a simple explanation behind all this: I am fairly certain his girlfriend left Utah for more amiable weather. It's crass of me to say, I know, but I truly believe that after years of submitting their wardrobe to the women in their lives, men have come to depend on them for their basic dressing needs.

Tiny Water Droplets

Tiny water droplets cling to the tips of the pine trees like children clinging to their mother. I can smell undertones of their aroma mixed in with wet dirt, and it makes me homesick for the mountains. A memory hurls into my forethought- brought on by the homesickness, I remember mother crying in the spring time. While most people were jubalent when the first crocus poked it's head through the soil, mother wept. I asked her why one fateful season and she said, "Spring is awful. Everything that died last winter has to come back and start it's life all over again. Would you want to do that year after year? I'd rather die and be done with it."

The HAIKU
I blink against sun.
We jump through the sand like crabs
fleeing for our lives.

Narcolepsy for the Agoraphobic Writer

Do you ever wonder if you are turning agoraphobic and narcoleptic at the same time? Sometimes I wonder if my writing is becoming more that way. Like lately, I have considered sending out some of my most prized work into the world of small publishers- such as those found on my small university campus, but I am seized by this sudden fear that it might be read. That's the point of publishing right? To have your work out there for the world to read. Maybe it is the fear that someone I know will read my work. They might associate me with my writing and by so doing, insult my writing because of the person who write the piece. Automatically, as the author, I wish I could kill the concept of the author so that whoever read what I wrote would disconnect me from it in all forms.
There is a secret fear possessed by many an author who has been rejected or judged for the things they create on a personal level. Where once I was OK to have my writing read in class, I now squeeze into a corner and Coward at the thought of having my story read silently, let alone read out loud with an audience. A co-writer friend of mine expressed she harbored this same contagious fear.
Wouldn't it be convenient if we could hand a person we loved a book and ask them to read it. After the fact, I might ask for their opinion, and after the opinion was revealed, peel off my skin and say, "Hey, I wrote this jim dandy of a book. Take it as it is."

Bits of tracing paper.

Sometimes I can feel you stretching through paper,
seeking out my face
and maybe my inside s .
Time again.

Extending my finger tips
and my senses-
nothing. Except the watery salt licking my skin
as oceans of reality break me.
You aren't under the milky way tonight.

Leaving the wood in the pencil, you absorbed it's life giving lead.
Taking the paint from the brush, you've given me a real piece
to chew on.
Choking on what you didn't give,
I wonder about the lin"k"s between
places
and people.

End of the Book.

Years had passed, and we both had grown older than our skins. I cleared my throat in a gesture of genuine awkwardness. He looked the opposite direction, pretending he hadn't heard anything but the continual blast of the train whistle. The hand in mine felt like a dead fish, but I didn't care. I could write a philosophical book on whether it is better to have dead fish or no fish at all, knowing that in the end I would prefer the rotting fish to an empty hand.
"So, I guess I'll see you around," he said. I coughed on my tears, looking up at the sky. It was splintered with bits of gray amongst the pale pink of the sunrise. Funny how the smallest things remind you of life, and even in the best possible scenario, the bad guy will end up dying. I guess people don't usually think about the bad guys when they come to the end of a movie.
"I wish-..." I cracked on the words that wouldn't spill.
His fish hand came to life, gripping my weak chin in it so I had to look at him.
"Maybe we can get together when this has blown over." With his smile and my pain, I could almost see the silver tint to his lie.