Jeffrey

Jeffrey

            Jeffrey had always loved to sing. When he had been born the doctors looked at the shriveled little baby, his crooked eyebrow’s giving him a permanent grimace. They spoke softly under their breath. “Poor thing…” they murmured, handing the baby from nurse to nurse, moving it quickly through hospital towards the nursery. They put him in the back of the room, tucking his little blue blanket directly under his chin to hide his grotesque face. He sat close to the nurses’ station where the older women would sit and knit, singing old gospels that would lull him into peaceful sleeps. They always said he was the most well behaved newborn.
            Years down the road he begged his parents to enroll him in the children’s choir, little hands clasped together. They loved the grimace he brought to them every day, caterpillar type eyebrows furrowing together in concentration. So when he asked, they gave in and enrolled him at their local church children’s choir. For the next six years he sang his little heart out although the music came out in high pitched squeals. The choir director would sit him in one of the fold out chairs beside the piano, hoping that the clang of the ivory’s to wire would drown out the nasal voice.
            High school was hard. Rejection was everywhere. He was always an extra in the school play or assigned props, stage crew. The only picture he ever found of himself in the yearbook was his yearbook photo, his crooked smile and glaring eyes scowling across the page. And when he tried out for chorus, his raspy voice drilling holes into the instructors ear drums, he was denied a spot. Girls? Don’t even ask him about girls. They walked past him, eyes seeing through him. He was invisible in high school. Just the ugly face in the crowd, wooly worm eyebrows permanently scrunched together in contortion. Sometimes he cried at home alone when his parents were working late. He grabbed the whiskey sometime drinking just enough to forget. To say he had a drinking problem in high school was an understatement.
            He was an understatement, but today, fifty five years after his birth he finally discovered karaoke. Jeffrey was going to sing. His family tried to convince him not to. “Don’t embarrass yourself Jeffrey. You’ll only get hurt.” He ignored them. Each wobbly step of nervousness up to the stage convinced him of certain failure but each time his feet held firm he gained momentum towards an uncertain but much awaited future. His song choice was not something that a grown man would not/should not normally choose but he felt right singing it. And when the music started Jeffrey smiled, opened his mouth, and belted out the lyrics to ‘Before He Cheats’ loud as he could, proving to the world that he was more than just never ending frown.
             Jeffrey lived his dream.

Bubble

Bubble

birth
freedom
                                                                life…

                         life….



                                                                                                   life……



                                                life….



                life…
death
repeat

61 Miles

61 Miles

It was when I first realized
that it was over.
The road stretched out directly in front
of me. My pulse quickening as I read
the mile marker.
61 miles, it said.
To what? I replied.

To disappointment.
The most extreme feeling of anxiety
and sadness follows.
Cast down and out of the life
I yearned for so effortlessly
and lost much to soon.
Death of a bond
made clear by too much love,
by my hand of betrayel.

To resentment.
Not for him. Never for him.
But for myself, I'll make an exception.
The one time in life
when despite all the encouragement received
self loathing cannot disappear.
Knowing only of one assumption.
It's your fault.
Take it because you deserve it.

To depression.
Hot tears of sorrow trickle
in slow rivulets down my cheeks
hollowed from desperation.
Blinding as an attempt to drive goes immoral.
Don't cry, mother says, just persist.
Towards a looming mountain
of disgust.
Make him miss you, mother says,
but only if you want him too.

61 miles to go.
Dont cry, mother says.
It's hard to reflect and drive
when all there is
is thoughts of decay.

This Is What I Am Now


Death. Decay. Destroy. Mutilation. Relief. Recover. Shame. Hope. No. Not hope. There was too much pain for hope, too much agony for hope to be left. These words are embedded in what used be my left breast. A part of me is gone. It was taken when the doctor first told me I had breast cancer. “You have breast cancer,” he said, staring vacantly at my face. He wants you to say something my mind told me. But all I could think about was how hard my heart was beating against my cancerous breast. My witty reply, “Yeah?” He then went into the spiel of medication, chemo, ‘We’re gonna beat this’ blah, blah, blah. Bullshit. How many times in a day has he said this? How many times has he sat with a woman just like me and said ‘You have breast cancer’? Do they care? Do doctors really care? Do they feel the pain of waking up every day to a broken, scarred body?

Half of me is gone. My womanhood, part of what made me is gone. It’s just a breast my mother told me. It’s just a breast my friends told me. It’s just a breast my doctors told me. It’s my breast. The ripple of scars splayed across my bosom a warning to any who see, caution I am fragile, I am weak. The brand of cancer forever displayed on my body. Always marked as the survivor; as a woman who “overcame the odds”. I am not that woman. The will to be strong that should course through my veins as the last round of chemo ends is not there. All I can think of is that lone breast. Sometimes I want to scream, “Look at me! Look at what you have done to me.” To who I would tell these words to, I do not know. God? I am not the only woman praying to be healed. What would make me stand out from the others? My doctor? “He’s only doing his job,” they say. “He’s saving your life,” they say. Maybe, just maybe I didn’t want to be saved.

God, just thinking about it makes me sound so damn vain. Looking at myself in the mirror though, the dark brown of the scar as it stretches from my sternum across my rib cage, a sense of uncaring washes over me. Sometimes I run my hand over the breast that isn’t there, feeling out each line that was created, over the points where staples punctured my skin keeping the wound closed and recreate the night of my surgery. I can’t remember the pain as the blade of the knife slid across my skin, the sound as it sliced as silent as falling snow. All I can remember is the glistening utensils, each sterilized, eager instruments ready to maim new flesh. Plastic fumes tinge my nose as anesthesia rushes in and then in an instant: euphoria. Whether it was the drugs they pumped into my body or the storm before the calm, my body did not let me register to myself that my breast was gone. Even when shroud of haze lifted from my eyes, the realization of what I have lost does not set in. Only when the pain registers, which creeps slowly in on the edge of my consciousness, do I realize what has happened.

Death. Disfigurement. Depression. Fatigue. Listless. These are the words to my life now. I live, therefore, I am alive. A human shell of emptiness, misshapen and worn; an awkward shadow of minus one. This is what I am now.

Anchor

Anchor

Muscles straining upward,
their sinewy strings stretch beyond
comparison. They continue.
Moving slowly aloft
towards their unattainable goal, to put two hands
on the top.

The strain reach the moment of extreme tension.
Crackles and pops as the human body
is forced into exertion. Then euphoria.
Higher and higher in a never ending ballet
of energy and rapture.

Hanging only by a multi-colored thread,
over a crevice of upturned face
each glistening with fresh dew.
Vampire Weekend droning in the background.
What terrible music to empower.
Hands keep on pulling upwards
toward that common goal we all have.

Placement of feet is nonchalant,
no many notice their location on this as the objective
is a hare's breath away.
Deep down in the bowels of determination
a satisfied grunt resonates in the cavernous space
and cheers from below announce
Savior.
The pitiful harmony minute
past the glass doors.

Amber Eyes

Amber Eyes


Golden flecks in a wasteland
of change.
Possibly something more
than just a gaze across the world.
Fingers brush as if by accident.
A colorless spark reacts softly against her iridescent skin,
tugging an irrelevant girl out
of the soapbox she calls home.
Open wide, stretch out and smile.
His heartsong reaches her
in that unnatural way a bone breaks.

Barren, desolate, alone;
the ability to lose herself in thoughts
is what this place is created for.
She created it.
Marred it with an undying infatuation
something no one can quite accept.
Poison, the flavor of chocolate,
coats her lustful pallet in a thick ooze
of contempt.

For that is the explanation of it all.
The intention of humans to seek
comfort, control.
When all she wanted was a father.
Opaque eyes, shifting wilding into an indefinite
prospect of him.
Softly at first,
the cascading, crashing, utterly consuming
too deep to even think logically.
Bound by a fluorescent light
perceived to be the sun.

There she stands now,
screaming in a field of self worth.
For what is the worth of a person
if only given by themselves?
Did he give her this
undying need for attention?
Molded, like a fresh piece of clay,
into a woman that is considered
acceptable.

They used to sparkle, those flecks
of gold she loves much.
Across the maze of freckles and rosy cheeks.
There is no other option now
than to settle awkwardly into the nothingness,
a pale sack of withered skin.
Where is she?
She is no longer worthy of more than an it.
It breaths, it walks, it talks
speaks of perfection in a skewed voice
of denial.

The potential to be more
than just a walking corpse of self pity
wallowing in her prize.
Too bad the prize just walked out the front
the screen door crashing in

a resounding
echo in the shade of a meal ticket.

She wishes for something more than this.
She wishes for those amber eyes.

Just preface

This is just a blog of all my works of writing. Poetry, short stories, works of fiction. Anything. Enjoy.