You won’t see this

Algorithms and scraping.

Data points and AI serving you only the best of isolation that it can provide.

You won’t see this loneliness being screamed into the plethora of pages and apps.

Being reduced to a number, we will never see each other. If I had a use, I’m used up.

You’ll never see the constant call for a connection that goes unheard.

Some call it dead internet theory, but I feel we lost ourselves long ago, only seeing and seeking those that validate what we choose to force the images of ourselves to be.

You’ll never see how tired we are. How exhausting it is to work so hard for not even a passing smile, or only to see a smile someone has aimed at themselves.

Drowning in an infinite sea of voices that refuse to say our name in the present. If at all, they only say our name in past tense. What we were. What they used to love about us. No one reaching for a still warm hand.

Never mind.

You’ll never see this.

Muddy Riverbanks

Leisure spot in the woods, a bear costume, running around trying jerky made from various wild game, cold Caesar’s pizza for breakfast, sleeping in a teepee telling ghost stories.

I remember a lot of details of my childhood friend. I remember either him staying at our house then meeting his parents in a grocery store and asking to stay at his. It seemed like divine simplicity and it was a humorous comfort in a tense school life riddled with anxiety.

I remember the candy glue that he brought to recess and the snow forts we focused on during winters. I remember the Salisbury steaks his family made for dinner and how I wanted another one. The addictive saltiness of it.

I remember the summer air and the dust devil that he spun in as I heard news he was moving and did my best to just imagine it would work out. Having some semblance of faith that the world would not be so cruel as to take my best friend away.

I remember months later the long distance phone calls talking about the Nintendo 64 and how exciting it all was. I remember Arizona being so far away and another world. I remember the news of him moving back

I remember his family moving back and finding a giant puffball mushroom in the wooded area behind his new house, and how it was a short walk through from the library.

I remember listening to pop music on the radio as he slept and him waking up to say he liked the song.

I remember when he had his heart broken from a childish school dance and how the girl was allergic to strawberries. I remember a lot of talks and jokes and growth.

I also remember the end or the beginning of it. I remember how my personality and interests split from his. How it became an uphill battle to connect. I played music but he wanted his own distractions and connected with my brother more.

I remember a hot summer when my cousin, brother and us all went to a muddy river bank to cool off and swim. My cousin taking a long, bumpy path down a corn field, and the water being dark and cool. The mud making you sink in it. I remember my cousin cooking a clam on a makeshift fire and choking it down. I remember my best friend drinking a beer and ignoring me. I remember swimming being a distraction.

That’s when I realized someone I had known and trusted didn’t want my company for me, but merely because it allowed him access to his own distractions. I don’t remember the final phone calls or sleepovers. The joy had been sucked out of it because I knew that fire had smoldered.

I am stronger having seen these things but there is a beauty in understanding transience.

Heat Death

There. Upon the judgement day or the end of all time. Upon the heat death of the universe or the return of Christ, we stand in front of ourselves.

Your religion?

I answer.

No matter.

You still sided with greed and hate.

You used something constructed for some purpose to hate or reduce others.

You focused on skin or intelligence or background.

You focused on things that were like money to a drowning man. And you all drowned.

You found saviors in people more flawed than you, made God into an idea you could consume.

If there is a gate here, why is this allowing you but dismissing a million others that don’t speak your language?

If there is love here, why should you receive it if you hated your fellow people?

You forgot to hate only the sin and hated the people themselves, but they are just like you, finding a way in a dark vastness.

We loved you and you chose hate. And thus that is the way the universe ends, with a mirror that refuses to show itself.

Squint

I’m there.

If you really focus and disconnect.

If you sigh with a gasp.

If the past is visible and wanted,

while being lost and discarded.

I am there.

I am in between the words you can’t quite remember, and the memories you didn’t make.

People, in their endless sunset, discard and hold me at a distance.

But I am there, saying divine revelation in encrypted and deadened mumbling.

A Metallic Ting

Memories are distant and impulsive things. Tom, I remember your basement. I remember spending the night there and working on a fort in the woods. I remember riding bikes and attempting to ride down a plank from the barn, where I fell and my feelings of nervousness were valid.

I remember the musty smell of the basement but also the feeling of slight comfort knowing your family was wealthy by comparison. I know others badmouthed you sometimes but I was fine.

I remember the pool, which I found lavish and completely out of reach for me, and how sliding down the slide was exhilarating, at least until I hit the dry patch and felt the burn of the summer heat.

Memory will eat all of us. We live in that space, with what ifs and possibilities control our minds. There’s a billion of them, full of regret and joy that we with to return to.

Salisbury Steak, Myst, and Loss.

The mind is a beautiful, awful thing. While I recently was watching a play through of a Myst game, I had a realization that was more distinct than most.

Growing up, I had a close friend. Someone I trusted and felt fine with sharing the awkward and equally uncomfortable aspects of growing up. I still carry memories of their house, the forts we made and the names we gave them. One spot, in a piney tree in and adjacent woods, was the leisure spot.

I remember how sad he was when in grade school, a girl didn’t show up to dance with him. I remember a spelling bee when I was in the lead and he alluded to how God had helped me find the answers. I remember a time when (upon eating a candy that was shaped like glue) and we got reported for snorting it (again, which we didn’t do), we had to write an apology message during recess.

I remember the hunger craving the cheap Salisbury steak and how I always wanted another can of Josta soda. I still do. And how going to a convention with his family, I tried bear jerky, alligator jerky, and several others. I remember the cold pizza for breakfast before a day at a theme park where I didn’t want to ride the tall rides.

Playing Myst with him and seeing the early internet. Listening to a recording of George Carlin and finding the offensive language fun and shocking. His family having a hot tub, and his moving away as we talked of Nintendo 64.

I remember these things clearly but I also remember drifting apart. How when going swimming at a riverbank with my cousins, he tried beer, and seemed focused on just having access to such things. Most of all I remember the moment of realization that a friend didn’t want to be with me so much as the things around me. I remember that loss.

It’s a terrible feeling to feel like an extra piece in someone else’s chase for satisfaction, and I stopped calling them. The friendship eventually dissolved over time. I don’t know what happened to them or if we would have stayed close had I followed the same vices and thoughts. But I still remember that distinct pain of not being wanted, and it’s stuck with me, though I’ve grown to understand personal wants and needs

Ripples in the Ocean

They will see the hurricanes.
And they will notice the waves

But we, the few, see the drops on the waters
Among the tideless days.

They will hear of the storms that ravage the coasts.
But those closeby will watch the ripples on once still waters.

They will say the ocean is endless and vast.
We witnessed the splash of water into our boat,
and the warmth of the water as it touched our feet.

This moment is not as the books say nor as the news reports to the masses. This moment, and it’s importance is the fading breeze that briefly cooled my exhausted skin.

Only the few can see the rain in its close, relaxed hydrology. Only a few can see the many ripples that echo outward to the countless shores of the oceans.

Simulacrum

I stand here

myself and another

distantly trying to whisper words into your ear,

trying to dry the tears from my eyes

I try to cement the feeling of loss

into some monument of memory

so that whoever stumbles upon it,

with their idle tasks buzzing in their head,

will know that there was a heart there,

a feeling and a life that shouldn’t be forgotten.

Capgras syndrome replaced us all,

bit by bit and day by day.

A lack of action erasing the actions we took,

and a single action immobilizing us.

We struggle to know,

when we lift a finger to point at the sunrise

or a bird landing in a tree beautifully silent,

that our choices have meaning and weight.

That ache

when the wind stops and the world is muted,

is reason for us knowing the worth of it all.

Where we see the light through branches,

and know the peace

of silently touching someone’s head

to comfort them,

we find our honest reply.

Civil Dawn

For years, decades

they have sat in powerful positions

and at dinner tables never once unset.

They have slowly gone deaf

from the music only they can listen to.

They cannot hear the earth,

nor the hungry people on it,

nor the mother crying from exhaustion,

nor the child without support,

the family without a winter’s heat,

the home without a home.

Even as the crowd lifted them higher

and higher,

they grew to not hear them

or their cries for fairness.

They chose to define fairness in unfair ways,

to separate and choose issues or people

like putting food on a plate.

Their instinct turned to control

and controlling control,

even with it a silver plate

they remained hungry.

But reigns end,

Kings fall.

The exhausted people can pull enough energy

to pull them all down,

to mouth the words asking for equity

or scream the injustices.

oh, country.

Your foreign soil is beautiful but broken,

just as my native land is.

The systems just as broken,

just as full of bias and dismissal.

Just as built by foreigners who love

stronger than the workers beside them,

built up by the women torn down,

grown by the children never raised,

fed by the father who didn’t eat,

backed by the people they turned their backs on.

We, you, I

have built the country,

not out of duty, but blood and sacrifice.

Slow Walk into Spring

I love seeing the small signs of seasonal changes. Perhaps the most refreshing of these is when trees begin to sprout again.

Every season has its own unique feel to it. While not here yet, the smell and feeling of cooler morning air on my skin before a hot summer’s day is the one I find most nostalgic.