Reflections #2 - To Those Two Teachers

Thank you.

        You two people have been insanely influential in my life. You have taken me into your home. You have communicated with me, not just talked. You have both inspired me to take a career path that is, to say the least, stressful and noble. I don't see either of you very often anymore, for one reason or another. Usually, I'll make the plan to and be too worn out by the end of the day to see you two, but know every single time I don't drop by that I should have. I think of both of you a lot. You've been kind to me and you've communicated with me and I miss seeing you two everyday. I hope I'll see both of you soon.You both are always in that grey area between family and friend. I hope I can see you again and communicate with you as if I'd only been gone a second to use the restroom, or something along those lines.

-Chris

Poetry 29 - Love and Sleep

A breeze, a breeze, then humid heat.
The fan circulates our sweaty air,
and we dismiss the blanket in bed.
We do this every-so-often;
lay down, cover, uncover, repeat.

The darkness never dims her bright complexion
as she lays, enveloped in her peaceful sleep.

This is a new level of calm,
once unbeknownst to me.

A calm,
where matches and razors and empty stomachs
don’t plague the center of the storm which it is.

A calm,
where she finds involuntary serenity.

A calm,
where I can bear witness to not happiness nor pain,
rather true neutrality in an unbalanced soul.

This calm,
smells like the green on trees after rain,
and looks like the sky, mid-July,
controlled explosions, artificial rainbows and smoke.

Her skin is the feel of polished marble in mansions,
dedicated to the millionaires of tactile art.

I think I hear a faint singing in her chest;
it plays on a kind repeat, what a lovely beat.

Poetry 28 - Frozen Flames

What happens when you freeze a flame?

Is the water melted?
And is the fire gone?
Are there ashes?
Or a puddle?

Will it burn your face if you get too close?
Will it freeze you?
And will you get frostbite?
Like the people in Minnesota,
who go out in the Winter.

What happens when you freeze a flame?
Does it go out?
Or does it take shape?

Poetry 27 - Fish Glass

Shimmering sharp shards of glass swim in my head,
like a chandelier fallen into the ocean,
Katrina met my windows,
and broken transparency does all but pierce me.

Weights ride like I’m their only train –
transportation only to the grave.
Burden, bury me?
Burden, bury me?
Burden, be my shovel,
and pad the dirt.
Smoothen my grave,
even out this dead piece of Earth.

The world made me go swimming,
and I dove in.
I have been diving for years now,
and the pressure is increasing.
Oxygen masks –
exchange and refill,
whatever is needed,
I’ll still burst.
I will implode.

At the end of my life, let them know.
I did not float, I dove.

Poetry 26 - Cute/Corny

I love you more than Americans love football and beer.
I love you more than Canadians love hockey and curling things that aren't their hair.
I love you more than the English fear the dentist.
I love you more than Russians love Russia.
I love you more than Hazel loves Gus' hamartia.
I love you more than Tumblr girls love a good John Green reference.
I love you more than emo kids love penance.
I love you more than Italians love cheese and pasta.
I love you more than hipsters love poetry that doesn't rhyme.
I love you more than the bar in hell.
I love you more than the turtle loves its shell.

Poetry 25 - Morning Mourning

Morning Mourning

The atmosphere within these walls concentrates on my shoulders and back,
pinning them to the padding beneath.
Sunshine paralysis.
Piercing the consolation darkness,
disturbing unconscious effective thought to arise
effective action.

Movement is painful, arbitrary, reasonless,
yet its emphasized, so-called “importance”
terrifies me.

I am sweating like 21^st Century polar ice caps,
so pay no mind.
There is comfort in heavy cotton,
and I’ll weather the heat until I melt,
as long I don’t move from this space.

There is no cosmic mandate
to do anything.
I will lay and procrastinate and starve in this bed,
if I may? –
as long as I do not leave this space.

Scrape
me off this mattress,
I am the roadkill of my mind.
I am the culmination,
of too much and too little.
I am the unbalanced standards
in a southern education system,
a national downfall.

Fall,
into my slumber,
because I can’t spring from every
existential crises which overtake me.
If I don’t burn to death,
these conditions will force me to freeze,
just not in this space.
As long as I do not leave this space.

That intruder – that light,
burning my eyes.
I swear,
it’s like window-shopping
in a crowded smoke shop.
It’s like a knife of brightness,
is stabbing me to breakage,
and stopping finally,
but only so I can witness the damage.
I turn over.
I pull over the covers.
I am unharmed,
as long as I do not leave this space.

Dear God,
take my thoughts, take my brain.
Peel me before I wake,
because I am unsafe here.
I am in an agreement,
to which I never signed.
I am in a world with two options:
I can live or whine,
live or whine.

Peel me before I wake,
for I may not do so.
Peel me before I wake,
for I hold a broken dynamo.
Peel me before I wake,
because for god’s sake,
here is the only place I feel safe,
just as long as I do not leave this space.

Poetry 24 - Purple

Accidentally filling that gap
of that “grey area” between the calm and urgent.
The middle ground of the hyped and deflated,
which gives sense to bystanders uninterested.

Two extremities
producing center point,
like the outstretched arms of a bullseye.
Not too different from an overshadowed flute,
it remains, though only with intentional recognition.

Purple is when you wish to both love and leave,
yet you are chained by its apathetic in action disposition,
so you do neither.

It is feeling a soft cotton pillow
while laying on a sandpaper bed.
It’s like eating expensive, classy food,
with flavorless, diabetic side dishes.

Purple smells like the dumpster behind the Febreze factory.