all my past
      imposes on my breath today

i enter a grand mosaic public building
        and on goes my medical face mask
i join the back of the queue with my documents in one hand
            and my numbered butcher ticket
                          in the other
i admire the mosaics
               a jarring tide of art against the bureaucratic purpose
                     of these rooms
gauzed in with own product exhaust
       all my past  is attending    
exhumed
  patted  into my breath
    baiting remembrance with unsubtle notes
for example :
   integrated spittings of 'drum' tobacco (i quit a decade ago)
horning catches of cologne every boy used as a teen
seasonal scents  unweaned from deep in my system
(some reigned in from the different countries
                                                    i lived in or visited)
then i am frisked back to infancy   with breast milk and rusks
it's all there    a basking flippancy
all there in musk about my face
  one fragrance after another

it's an honest relief
     to host an alternative to my 'old man' breath
           but odd and concerning
something of the brain ?

Sneaking silently,

as part of a secret plan --


and it will end well.

At fifteen, the reaper came, silent in the night,
Stealing me from youth's warm, calming delight.
****** into a world where heartbreak resides,
Where innocence withers and hope slowly dies.

No more laughter, just echoes of pain,
Sorrow's lament, a relentless refrain.
Gone are the dreams that once danced in our sight,
Replaced by storm clouds, obscuring the light.

Now, I linger by your grave,
With flowers wilted, their colors all grey.
I mourn the loss of innocence, the childhood's decay,
In the quiet, I kneel, with so much left to say.

Grief marks the end of youth, a bitter pill to swallow,
and builds a home for loneliness to wallow.

Dare I say,
Take me back to sweeter days.
No worries
To fight,
Nor sorrows
To woe.
Just waiting
For sun
And the fall of snow.
These little joys
Replenished my soul.
And now,
I yearn,
For thoughts of old.

The grand parade is

over, and never over:


unforgettable.

I wish my existence could be as poetic as my subconscious,
As graceful,
Elegantly dancing through life,
Like metaphors on a page,
Rain filling puddles,
Mud filling cracks,
Swaying arms of willow trees.
I think that I used to be that way,
I appear to be in the hazy happiness of my memories,
But I don’t trust my mind.
I look back on a life lived in pastels,
Baby blue skies,
Blush pink cheeks,
Sage green eyes,
Lilac dreams.
It’s all daisy chains and braids,
A freckled face,
Ferns and worms,
Rolling clouds and running streams.
I wonder now if those memories are just dreams,
Did they ever really happen?
Was I ever really happy?
Or was it all just manufactured to protect me,
A safety blanket,
A quilt handcrafted by my mother?
I wonder now if my life is just an amalgamation of stolen moments,
Memories stitched together by glorified nostalgia,
Fabricated by a veil so thin,
Made entirely of imagination,
A fictitious eulogy written by me as a child to remember the life I wish I had,
A life I’ve never lived,
A tortured poet trapped in a painfully privileged portrait.
Who can I trust if not myself to remember my own life?
I grew up cold,
Stuck in the rain with a broken umbrella,
With stormy eyes and a stormy mind,
Deep greens and blues,
Scarring scrapes from the sharpest scraps of misery.
I was born in the image of hatred,
Generational distaste that I inherited,
The quietest violence,
Gentle wrath buried beneath the softest reflection.
Tell me I’m beautiful,
Oh, how sweet,
Tiny and weak.
Admire all the lies I’ve told myself to stay alive,
Hiding my agony in metaphors,
Tucking it neatly between stanzas,
A great illusion,
Fallacious lines describing a person I'll never be.