An Overdue Reunion

It’s one of those strange nights.

Nights where you can’t remember when today started, yesterday began, and tomorrow ends.

Early morning stumble to the train, 

the sky grey as the deepest Nantucket fog;

departure after the sun has crept back beneath the view. Luminous dusk lingering overhead.

You walk back into the new true that you call your life;

those now familiar quizzical steps that lead into safety.

You inherently dodge a bo staff flying past your head as your gypsy tribe calls you

“welcome and come home!”

The surreal bliss of sliding down into your childhood chair as laughter and banter and genuine love permeates presently throughout the premises….

I stare into the orbs. It’s a paralytic, this metaphysical prison capturing at a moment’s notice.

The ethanol dances calypso circles around my cerebellum;

the witch doctor’s haze creeps across my gaze.

“Hello old friend.”

I watch as my own reflection speaks to me. He grins and squints and cocks his head the same way I do, but yet we do not look alike.

“ It’s so nice to see you again.”

He looks so different. His face tired, his hair grey, his features softened; and yet, his eyes speak of miles.

“You look so surprised, like you never expected this?”

I try to muster words, to round up the stampede of thoughts cascading through my brainpan.

“What happened, jackass? Your words turn to piss?”

Of fucking course: my introspective self started delving into limerick. What an asshole.

“Yeah, sucks… doesn’t it?” He says this with the inflection of a question when it’s clearly a statement. “Realizing you’re not what you thought you’d be? Tough shit: what are you going to do about it?”

I can only stare back…shamed at my own reflection. I feel as if I have failed myself.

And then I see another reflection. And another. And another. 

A galactic arm of reflections.

I see myself as a young malcontent, expecting nothing but the worst of the world;

I see myself as a child, laughing with my dog Jazzmine as waves splashed against the shore;

I see myself eating dinner in a five-star restaurant in New Orleans with my best friend…simply because she had plans fall through and needed an adventure;

I see what I envisioned;

I see what I could be, for better or worse;

I see who I am, right now.

I rinse my hands and wash my face three times;

buddham saranam gocchami

dharmam saranam gocchami

sangham saranam gocchami.

I keep my eyes closed as I feel the last remnants of water trickle off my face; they catch on my chin with my mask gone.

“It’s alright,” he whispers. I open my eyes once more and look back at me.

“There’s still time. To find your purpose again.”

I take a slow breath through my nose. 

“What,” I say, “no more rhymes?” I grin.

“Asshole.”

“Thanks for the reunion.”

Lost in the Now; Lost Together

xWhen did my words become so difficult to find?

     It's hard to dust off the cobwebs, especially when you've made a subconscious effort to repress them. Wait, no: repress isn't the right word. 

           Bury.

           I have buried my words.

     What was once my greatest escape and means of understanding the world around me have become a liability. They are the warm droplets of blood escaping from a wound that I've tried to bind and hide and pretend doesn't exist anymore. They're scars only I can see that remind me of who I was, who I thought I was going to be, and what I became. But more than that, they're the opening in the armor that prevents me from blocking out the New Orleans style marching band of cacophony and discord that perpetually resonates in my head. 

     The good,

            the bad,

                 the beautiful and tragically ugly and utterly 

                                   inexplicable.

And yet as I keep these impulses at the tips of my fingers in chains, locked away in the dark... I can feel my grip on my own identity sliding away. How do you go so long with a singular purpose only to cast it aside like a soiled towel when you need it more than ever to find that balancing point on the see-saw called life?

     The answer is fuck you. You can't.

***

 It's been such a long time since I've sat down at this rickety little desk to put thoughts to page that my fingers feel arthritic, my mind feels atrophied. This was like breathing for so long and now I feel like I don't know how to take a breath.

    The only way to remember gravity is to just lean out against the cliff and

                           let...

       

                                    ....go.

How fickle this game of 'Twister' is.

     Change comes like the sea and yet things never really change under these quiet skies.

I lay in this room, 

           a place still unknown and yet I'm surrounded by pictures and faces and paintings that remind me of a place I knew as safe and mine. 

     I find myself in terra infirma, terra incognito.

                This tabula rasa carries a lot of chalk lines from the previous lives I've lived:

                        scratch marks of nails dragged in pain still linger just under the surface.

How do you lose track of people you're constantly around?

       A fever dream, a beautiful collaboration of a seven part symphony.

               Beautifully broken bodhisattvas brought together out of bond and purpose and collective bliss:

            a tribe of fallen stars, fitting together so perfectly as broken shards of glass to form something

                       beautiful.

...

...

...

...

      And somehow that mosaic seems so distant now.

               Where is that collective that was once stronger than steel?

    How is it that we're always together yet...

                            ...it feels like another life since we were together?

It's a strange sensation...

      ...being estranged in your camp.

***

Recompense isn't easily found for me.

     But once again I'm taught a truth from life:

                  

                    Words to page.

Solace isn't found. 

     It's accepted.