Writings
All past poems and short stories.
By Gavin Neubauer:
Gentle Night
Written
Fighting long and hard to take another hour with your open eyes,
The birds begin to serenade you.
As you're sitting there,
Your back pressed against the cushions below and a sigh that releases your day,
You may feel the wears creeping in.
Uneventful hours flow in and pass without a resonance in the straits of time.
You may begin to feel your eyes close without an effort to pry them to the lights ahead,
As that beautiful night compels you to rest.
Learn Me Something
Writee
Start the story of life as an allegory
Where you are driven by an invisible mechanism
Called time,
It will count your hours, it will date your days,
It will be the fare for your motion,
Pay up to avoid commotion, claim your fate.
Don't slow up now,
What will is never still.
While you're watching the clock with sweaty palms,
Nobody's running it.
I look for solutions, so they call me there with open arms,
Promising hope that they surrender to come thundering,
I watch many moons go by hearing many 'soon's exchanged to ease the disbelief,
They smeared across my head the empty alms.
Cold on my skin,
Let all the truths in.
But not the ones told,
But the ones that are older.
All that in the ocean is that from generations ago,
And that's the real influence, where the ancestors go.
They all lived like us in an odd world,
And we'll meet at the same place not up above or down below,
But strangely close to where we are now.
They are the dirt and the reaching arms that the trees grow.
All your life, all your love, all your strife, even your drive,
It all runs like running water,
In this world,
It has to move to matter.
What's the matter?
Don't look at me like how scared doves fly away when the bells ring.
We're all small fish in a pond beyond our imagination,
But we can imagine and that makes worth more than any denomination.
The spirit of humanity is what we have that is universal among any nation.
There are a thousand corners unseen and a mile of wire to unfold,
But while we slowly unraveled I wanted unveiled something beyond fact or answer,
I told them, "I want to know what's real."
I could stare at the stars a thousand miles away,
But what presses me is rent and a bag of bills to pay.
I don't mean what's far is out of mind,
But if I do not stay focused they will
Tear these young hands of mine.
I will speak from my heart,
I told him, I told them, I told her,
We better get wise,
Because the only thing we are guarantied,
Along with that sunrise,
Is that we only ever getting older.
Point to Nothing
I took a minute to find the right words to say,
I had nothing to construct,
No grand idea or plan,
So the words did not come.
I spent a minute wondering how the great poets created,
Would I ever say an idea that lives past its conception?
It was words that moved us,
Outlived their ink with a call to direction.
One day it'll be one thousand years
Since the greatest speech was ever written.
When I see a street named after a man like Hughes or Frost,
I think that soon the space between these words will widen,
There will be a valley of old dreams,
The dried specters will dance in our absence.
What is a person without a dream?
The philosophers cry while the realists spew careful lies,
What are we to believe?
I see the path of endless stress,
To earn,
To eat,
To raise,
To feed.
Am I a moving mechanism,
When there is no time to slow and breathe like the living should?
The Hills where things end.
Written 2022
It gets so quiet.
Quiet now stave away
The greatest pains of the day.
I want a great respite,
Despite my need to feel.
Lord, there is none.
I speak a thousand words,
I see the world of birds
Fly in a swarm that makes a hand,
Taking mine,
They all fall like sand.
Eyes burn red under the sun's blinding choke,
I see the ground, the trees, the dead dirt
And dry leaves,
Go up in putrid smoke.
Oh the atrophy!
I see the path to hope,
It lay close there to catastrophe.
To the philosophers of the ancient ones,
Save the sages and tried marble poses.
We sweat now for wages and dying roses.
I eat the seeds of old sunflowers,
I spit them out into the ground and grout.
My feet go red, swell, I have my doubts.
I cannot stand for long, I sway,
The earth comes close to my face racing,
I feel the embrace, empowered.
Leave me to the ground to stay,
It was with the bare dirt
I was happier this way.
To The Heart
Written 2022
The orchestra starts,
You walk the street.
One year between,
Ten thousand miles apart.
But soon you hear it,
The collision begins,
And there you meet.
Ten years spent far,
But did not move so.
In the wrong apartment,
I learned to dance the halls,
To laugh and fall like snow.
That was the moment I had thought,
"The noise has struck deep into my heart."
You’re staring at me with wet eyes.
Written 2022
"When did you get so cold with me,
Looking deep at me without a word to speak,
Like your mouth had frothed from the Pierian Spring,
And you had learned too much,
I had given all I had to bring.
My cards were yours to see,
I saw you look up quick and it stings,
I heard you change the subject and stung,
I had given you my life and all it brung.
My legs had ached standing there,
When your car abused the asphalt and ran,
Ran from my crossed arms strung across my larger faults.
Look at me once more, wherever you are.
I know my memory bears down like sores
For it is not easy leave be what you swore,
Yet there you are swerving and jeering,
I stand here sweeping the mess peeving,
Wishing for an explanation.
No excuse has any meaning anymore.
So we stand in different cities now.
Oh how we would've laughed under that cafe umbrella,
Next to the five dollar fortune teller,
Bon Appetit.
We met at five,
Your caller ID appeared.
It was the first time I had been stood up.
But the first time anyone was sorry dearly,
You promised me to make it up.
So when I wiped off those tears in my satin suit,
I heard your voice start to crackle too like dying coals.
You told me how sorry you were and I said it's fine knowing
Just how loud my mind was roaring and you said,
"If today you can bear my going,
I promise I will not leave you again alone."
Again alone.
And here we are where I atone
For your sudden going.
I had our names engraved in stone,
The stone you wore was one I owned.
But here we are without a care,
How wrong I was,
How right it felt,
To have been there."
It was once you said,
"We are each other's world, intertwined"
It was six months ago my world was not yours,
It took me six more to accept that yours wasn't mine.
The End of a Cycle
Written 2022
Main Street.
The Great Divider.
Maybe some would call it:
The particle collider.
Some nights it's occupied by night riders,
But there's a power that towers over.
It could could change all.
Edward is a college student coming home from the bar,
It's about a twenty minute drive,
About 5 miles far from the campus night,
But yet still he wishes it less far.
One of his friends is tugging at his leg,
Slumped over, can barely say anything.
He says some words that anyone could doubt,
But the annoyed driver is just grateful he finally spit them out,
"Hit the gas, just go real fast.
We gotta get some quick,
In forty minutes we got class."
So he follows as he was told,
He winces and puts his foot hard down.
Trey turned fifteen yesterday.
He is rushing home on a bike,
Plowing through lawns,
Trying to get home by dawn in any way.
He almost hit a pedestrian so now he's on the paved street,
Sweat dripping down his chin, straining his legs away.
So he rushes down the lanes to narrowly avoid defeat,
While he feels all types of sores at the soles of his feet.
As he winds down he forgets to turn on his light,
There is nothing but sheer will to guide him down Main Street.
"Hit the gas."
And now he's on a winding road
Where a speed bump kicks up his night-retiring load,
So he takes a quick turn to be on the straight path
Recently paved and beaten down to let four wheels
Thread lightly on its ground.
As he leans into the windshield so he can better see
The wind rushing by with ample anxiety,
He takes a right turn to end up on Main Street.
Both boys think, "Only 5 minutes left."
Ed is running more and more on the line,
But he is too focused on the clock to find
That his wheels are past the solid white line.
Trey is rushing down hills looking down at his shoes,
He tries to keep his soreness from leaving his wheels still.
If he looks up he would see,
A pair of headlights
Ungratefully greeting him.
They saw the crash that day was heard around the whole town,
The University investigated along with the police,
Robinson High School took four days to grieve.
What was left behind was a boy in his early teens
Ended short by a young man about twenty.
While the story left everyone one in town shook up and scared,
The young man never looked over at the body,
He kept his head down,
He did not dare.
American Empty
Written 2022
A white living room
Furnished with common wood,
A boy sits and dreams.
He does the work he should,
Wishing for what he shouldn't.
Nights run out on a sin,
Running from wall to wall,
Not much older than him.
Out the window,
If he really looks and means it,
He can almost see what the dreams.
Maybe across an ocean,
There's a perfect replica of that image.
While the whether is sometimes warm,
In the winter when it is freezing,
He looks outside from time to time.
He looks out from the same window,
Facing the same side of life.
Give it a reason.
He spends $20 in the center of the town,
The same places he's been about twenty
More times now.
His friends call his name but couldn't say
A thing of what he thinks.
When his mother drives he's a kid.
When his friends are out he drinks.
He would take any direction,
He'd heed any dare.
But give him a reason,
Because a person like that
Doesn't really care.
And you'd think he doesn't feel a great deal,
But give him a few minutes when it's quiet,
And I could bet you he thinks a great riot.
He can't picture the past.
The city he's in hasn't a building that lasts.
And instead of a picturesque beach
Straddling a great wide sea,
Instead of a legacy,
The attention's always put on the condition
Of city streets.
And some nights he'll go around and have his fun,
But when that clock tower falls,
He'll have nothing to show for what he's done.
At Last
Written 2022
The hand, it feels,
In its palm reveals,
The alms of fair steel.
The sand, it sifts,
Through wrinkled finger tips;
Hope lingers to hold it still.
Washington
Written 2022
Do you know what I see,
The air I breathe in a daily routine?
There may be a fair street above,
But I do live in the caves below.
Always rushing with an engine huffing
Black smoke while the piston shoves.
A woman could cry with a baby in hand,
But a mind would not pay attention to them.
I see that there's a need to free the soul
To the point where community was gone long ago.
Do you need a path or a step in a direction?
I could point you a thousand ways,
But never teach you a lesson.
If there was a place that no one else would know,
Why would we brave the solitary rows
Of rowhouses down the fresh fixed plowed black concrete.
If there was a place that no one would know,
Where could we meet?
I hardly see a thing looking up to the spires,
As they look down upon the trees.
When a city's admired it shines, waves more so than sea,
I could see the wane from the bus window seat.
I could see the rinds that grew from cruelty,
Under the careful eye of educated scrutiny.
If I would watch it blind so many would then cheer,
For when the truth is hard some fear it.
The eyes of the told are carefully peering.
What is a city but a batch of bricks towering to the sky,
And how can I determine it's mouth, ear, and eye?
Out by the wharf where the buildings stand stout,
Still seems to dwarf my better judgment and doubt.
Why do I hear a hum when I walk upon the asphalt ground,
And when I listen closely to it's complaints,
I, my own fault, found.
There's a city in every corner of the world,
So a city be.
This one grasps on to history
Like the deep roots of the magnolia tree.
If we called to callboxes a grand last try,
Let them describe the city with rust instead of rhyme.
Hot and Cold
Written 2022
I feel in love under the winter sky,
When it was still gray, with no sign of bloom.
And soon it did come, soon it was May.
I saw new colors that before I had not seen,
I had used to walk with my eyes fixed on my shoes,
Watching the carefully the steps below my knees.
Oh! Did those days come and they never did slow.
I could never acclimate to the paced steps
That the clocks seemed to know.
When I thought life was a series of doors,
It was instead a long hall,
And I had soon enough seen about the mechanism
Of every Summer, Spring, and Fall.
And by the time I again reached the bottom,
I was left waiting for the bus in the cold,
Missing Autumn dearly.
But soon enough I remembered by the time I pushed the door home,
What was behind the lock was the warmth.
It is why it was that winter when I was young,
That winter from which I would never again be alone.
Highway
Written 2022
The radio blasts,
The engine softly hums.
The songs lasts long,
Each moment sticks like the spring,
Each breath lingers and exits; I sing,
We laugh to the sky above.
I see the stars shine down,
And I hear what North says
Without delay, it comes forth:
"You must change
There place is wrong.
You have overstayed
Your real welcome."
The driver turns dismayed
And behind thick shades
And over an old song he says,
"There is where you belong."
Pyrrhic Victory
Written 2022
The man who wears gold howls into the air,
It carries across the barren fields,
And impacts upon the swords and shields.
“Toil for a hair's width of ground,
May our lands have no filth found!
Use your hands to my will’s sound!”
And the drums they pound, pound, pound.
The madness runs on the procession,
Until the silence slowly engulfs the scene.
The King screams at the top of his lungs,
But no one can hear his dreams of the day won,
He is the Commander of bones, the master of none
California Dreaming
Written 2022
If you asked what the problem was,
I'd say there is one:
That there is a setting of the California sun.
And if I was to be driving from dusk until dawn,
I would stare into the light until the last ray's gone,
Falling behind the mountain that I cannot reach.
And maybe if that peak rose a thousand feet above,
I could see it touch a cloud that shrouds the poised moon.
If that sight will come, I can only hope soon.
Where did the dreamers disappear?
How will art survive if no one starves to rear it
And is a worth a life if no one ever nears it?
The painter from San Francisco takes a last sip
From a coffee cup he cannot afford
For this week at the very least
He has to pay his rent to an uneasy landlord.
And when the check comes he plays games
With his thumbs and says to himself,
Drowned out by the diner's disco,
Was this the grand life I toiled for?
Ten thousand nights to paint in subtle ways:
Ten thousand nights, I no longer count the days.
What is a night worth from a voice like mine?
I have already given all for a bargain price.
If the world is to consume I wished they had devoured
The subtle eye of mine and the voice it had harbored.
But it is too late now to turn back,
He exits the classic diner without paying the check.
He walks along the road to the bike he has owned
For some ten years now;
It has been beaten haggard by the sun.
The server at his deserted table looks out the window,
"Another one rushes out the door,
Like the wind blows."
But in a resigned sigh both decide it never really mattered.
The Wicker Chair
Written 2022
It burns down so slowly. How magnificent the fire dances. It breathes black air and spits its flame at all those who near it. I watch it singe the edge of the old house and erupt in joy. I have made another piece on this lovely canvas of mine.
At around 4:30, Eran comes home from his basketball practice. The mountain of homework in his backpack could be considered weightlifting. The door creaks open with its old welcoming sound, and his mother recognizes it. She could hear the door open from every corner of the house, not because it’s particularly loud, but in her own tacit ways of loving, she has developed a keen ear for it. Eran gives her a hug as she rushes from the red sofa to greet him, a book lays haphazardly upside down where she had sat. She radiates love that seemed to fill up the room, the invisible ingredient to make the house a home.
“How was your day, my peach?”
Eran felt that he was getting a little too old for the produce pet names, but he would never bring it up. While it made him feel small, it made him feel loved.
“Ah it was okay. Me and Jeremy presented for History.”
“How did it go?”
“Jeremy dropped the microphone, so we’re doing our second part on Friday.”
“Oh no, is your teacher mad at you? I don’t want you to get a bad grade. Please apologize, it will help, I promise.”
“I said sorry but butterfingers should probably stop by after school, I’ll tell him to.”
“Good good, I’m so proud of you.”
He was attacked with a flurry of kisses on the forehead and cheek.
“For what? Destroying school property.”
He couldn’t keep in the laughter to his own joke, so it’s release came out in cackles. Cackles are the most contagious kind of laughter, scientifically proven so.
His father would be coming home soon, and on the granite countertop lay two notes for him. The first was a scone bought for him from his wife, For Dad with a goofy smiley face was written next to it. The letter next to it was in an old yellow envelope. It had no name for the sender, so it stayed on the wayside, thinking it was either spam mail or low priority. If only curiosity had set in.
It was two hours until the father would arrive, and his wicker chair in the living room lay empty. The chair that always had a hot coffee steaming next to it, making the chair softer and more homely. No one else ever sat in that chair, it was as if it only welcomed him. The others preferred cushions and Eran sometimes rather lay on the floor. In the last two hours before his arrival, Eran retreated to his bedroom to decompress and listen to soft music. His ears and light dreams filled with the pattering of rain and the smell of fresh snow. His mother had fallen asleep face first into the book she had been reading. It was the story of a dog whisperer, a true one as well. Sadly the chapters began to drag on as it went along, dogs don’t have much to say as it turns out. Mitchell turned the key to his car from downtown, ready to come home and see the muses of his world.
There was one more in this scene. A man who threaded into the stage, into a place he never belonged. He liked to send letters—letters that would never survive into posterity. They always disappeared. His tanks were full, and he crawled under the cramped space under the house placing each one meticulously. He left a small trial of gasoline under each pillar, ensuring that the building would not stand for more than 15 minutes. Out of all of the tragedies he manufactured, he found that no wood beam no matter how thick survived the blast and the blaze longer than 15 minutes. He finished by adding stoppers to the doors, little pieces of metal to make the swing open impossible from the other side. He was the devil in some eyes, the root of all the evil one person could create themselves. As he walked across the street, he carried a long thatch string with him. No one could understand why at a glance, not until he ignited it with a match.
Mitchell Stallward was a good man. In a world where many are jaded and cynical, he had found a maturity that kept his creativity of youth while bearing the responsibility of age. He drove an older model car, all so that his son could drive off to college soon in a car of his own. The office he worked at was a long commute, but he considered every minute of road building into anticipation for his arrival home. There was not a person on the road who sped for more noble reasons. He hadn’t had much happen at work, but he was excited to hear about the days of his wife and son. Old tunes played on the radio, hits from his youth. He sung them loudly, windows rolled up to contain the horrendous and hilarious notes his voice could hit. The road he turned on was the entrance for his part of town, but something was awry.
Flashes of red light filled the sky. A sky, that when carefully examined, was painted with black clouds. He drove slowly into each turn, and as he got closer he worried more for his family. At first he was ready to console the homeowners, then he was ready to perhaps help a neighbor, finally he worried for his own. He was waiting to see his son crying in front of the charred home, hit with the instant grief of a lost love. Thinking of all the belongings he had lost. His wife would be out there too, wrapped in one large foil blanket, like in all of the movies. He had tears in his eyes, streaming down to music that didn’t fit the mood. As he turned the last corner, as many things came true as did not.
It was indeed his home that was ablaze. It’s height had doubled, with a flame tower turning his life into nothing more than a campfire. It was a deep blow, but anything could be recovered from. He had nearly expected it himself, so he had prepared for the worst. Now he was ready to find his wife and son standing on the sidewalk. He was ready to grieve with them, and promptly find a hotel to stay at. Life can happen anywhere that a family is, he earnestly believed. He parked his car in the middle of the road and rushed out. Men in yellow uniforms gathered around the home, spraying the king of fire with small shots of water. He looked around for his family, but they were not on the sidewalk. A primal feeling in his gut sank his chest lower than the ground. It was the catalyst of insanity. The first step off of the edge that God promises no man ever leap from, unless the sanctity and security of life and it’s good he compromised.
There were two figures retrieved from the building. Each one misshapen and mangled by the heartless heat comparable to the Sun. His lovely life and her perfect smooth skin was congealed in many places, and his son had no legs. There was no doubt in his mind this must be a dream. Horrible things are often seen in the mind’s eye of good people. The next few moments slide off the scale of time, becoming something of a dream. Through the crushed door, open uncomfortably agape, he saw his old wicker chair. It burned like perfect firewood, and began to melt and char. Madness filled him, every horrible thought had taken over every safe place in his mind.
The laughing from the sidewalk began. The loon still carried the burned thatch string, and he stared at the man with the burned thing in his hand. He laughed at the man sitting on the concrete holding his head, he thought the man looked like a monkey. A circus animal performing an act, moving in strange ways.
Mitchell got to his feet when he heard the laughter, he had wrath in his blood. Red eyes, real eyes of contempt stared at the balding man on the sidewalk. He approached in large strides towards the loon, but the loon did not seem scared. He laughed more wickedly with every step. When Mitchell stood face to face with him, the horrors he had imagined came back to him. This is a dream to his eyes, and this is the devil who brought it upon him. He slammed the loon’s old spotted face into the ground, and when his deriding cackles did not relent, he stomped on the old lungs of his. It did not stop, but eventually the eyes of the loon became empty. Mitchell was soon after tackled by one of the men spraying the fire. They yelled at each other, different calls and expletives. They yelled many things, even the simplest things Mitchell could not hear. This was not his world anymore, but 14 years later, he would die in it.
The Resolution of The Destitute
Written 2022
The violinist at the metro stop plays a cold symphony,
I am a child of God and I deserve sympathy.
How deep mild cases of misfortune can torture a soul,
The only promise given to me was that I’d never grow old.
I haven’t felt the sun in what feels like a thousand years,
I ask for a dollar with a cup that’s often filled with tears.
My clothes lack a collar and now have conceded softness,
Why does the hope that I have, proceed with judgment days?
Why do passerby mope around in more hopeful lives?
I would never look down if given the opportunity to thrive,
And here I sit in shifting ways always in the same place,
And this old wood bench will one day harken a nameplate
Of a man who had never needed this bed I lay.
Will the world ever see me or just walk forward with each step
Carrying contempt for all I’ve put into the air to say.
Each step sounds like thunder to my ears, beating down eardrums,
I am used to the night when the sounds of mice and crumbs
Fill up a concrete home where I am narrowly welcomed.
The story of my life isn’t what’s ever told,
It’s a sum of tragedy and decisions through twist and folds,
And I hardly recall what life was like before.
No one ever has asked me for any more.
I sit here listening to the busy and eclectic,
My life has lost a spark surrounded by a world ever electric.
What power do I have in a world that only appreciates the pretty,
They don’t see the problems I’m privy to,
Of piss stained walls and feeling see through.
I sit in the small nooks of neglect I am allotted in this city,
And I’m faced with the cost while my opportunity tapers,
They leave nothing to the man who sleeps with newspapers.
All the dreams of my youth sedated to cold vapors,
And no money to my name or legacy created.
My story left on the lowest shelf,
Who will pick it up just to know the life I sought tainted?
My own story I can hardly tell myself.
This Little World of Mine
Written 2022
Who dares to tread this path behind the hill, It is mine and it knows what always will be. Where mountains meet in colossal reaches, I see the world wash up on stony beaches. If a home is known for its privacy, No one can know the home better than me. Do you see the cliffs where beaten sand falls? The weight of the hill falls in my hands alone. The great tale of all is told in green tomes, And the sins that punish me with wind and rain Are not my own. When I see the breath of God coming hence, I see that man cannot recompense. Earth beats down on my roof and so I grieve, But no act of God can make me leave. Life in this house is a soft refrain, That keeps the emptiness from taking over again. The story that was once told of empty shores, With no eyes there to see the stories. And when the hills were weathered with rain, No one entered to share the pain. The lighthouse needs a light-bearer, The fear is in every step up the spiral stairs and yet I know what must be done to beget this floral air. I will keep the fire until the end of my time, All in love to this place I’ve found here, Where I will prevent the inhuman crime Of roaring waters and fiery skies and their lifeless dares, From taking whats left of my share, Of this little world of mine.
Wrathful Creator
Written 2021
When I think of God and what he has done,
I think that a creator always has his fun.
Humanity's colors are most vivid blue,
If he were to end it all this would hold true.
When the world ultimately comes to an end,
I fear the man who calls me friend.
By his hand I will see violent awe,
And souls will burn for the breach of warped law.
Right in Front of me
Written 2021
This is a letter to myself, so I never forget what happened tonight. It was the greatest night of my life, the summation of my love and its consequences. I used to believe that the core of life was pain. I thought that happiness came in small waves while the ocean was full of loneliness and hunger. A hunger for greater circumstances, always just out of reach. Loneliness itself is a hunger, a hunger for friendship or to be loved. For me, I want to love. God, some nights seem to go by slower than by the second and I grind every gear in my head to a halt thinking about it all. I want to be successful like my friends, who now are living their dream. How selfish it is of me to feel so mad, so jealous when I am happy for them. I’m only 19, but on that day, I didn’t see past 20. I sat in the parking lot of the largest department store near my house, and I reached for the glove box. Weeks prior, I had purchased an old handgun from a thrift store, the cheapest one on the rack. I bought one clip of ammunition, I said for self-defense, but the man said most people buy more. Anyways, it was a cold day that damned January day. The month that everything dives deeper and deeper into the dolor of cold days and no respite from them. I see billboards with families of all kinds enjoying each other’s company, keeping the house warm and the dinners served. It had been nearly two days since my last meal, I hadn’t the motivation to cook. I had just overcome my hunger one hour, it seemed to slip away from me. My mind became clear, and that’s when I knew it was time. It felt divine almost, I saw my way out. So I opened the glovebox, picked up the heavy steel contraption, barely keeping it up with one hand. I cocked back the hammer and pressed it under my chin. You don’t know me, so I don’t mind telling you all this. For the first half of my story, you’d be worried about me and if you knew me you’d be mortified. For my next half, you’ll be questioning my sanity, but I assure you that I’ve never been wiser. When I pulled back that trigger, it’s as if the whole universe died with me for a second. I remember a dark space and a pulsating feeling from my chest. It was like what old scriptures talked about, a kind of energy that took the place of my heart. Suddenly I was surrounded by blurry lights, and numb feelings started to connect with my body. I heard faint sounds that turned into voices, and my right hand began to feel the wood of an armrest. It began to hit me like a bullet, my mother’s laugh, my dinner table, my brother’s face. I smelled roasted chicken in the air, that old Brazilian recipe that made my stomach suddenly feel empty whenever the scent hit me. This was my send-off party for college, and my folks had even put together a little table outside for neighbors to leave gifts and well wishes. I walked outside, my sister stood in front of one of those folding plastic tables, the top of it full of nicely wrapped boxes and some I could see plainly. Most had little notes attached to them. I saw a rice cooker, and next to it were some kitchen knives. Mr. Gruher saw me and hollered that “a good set of knives will last ya ‘till you look like me!” chuckling on his way down our steps. My sister turned to me and asked me what was wrong. “Are you nervous, Arthur? Seattle is a long drive, but with your dumb luck you’ll find a way to make it, even if you flip three hundred times on the way there.” She punched me in the arm, and I laughed and laughed under that late-summer sun. That was the car I died in, or at least that’s what I thought at the moment.
It seemed that before I had even the time to blink, I was at a party in some stuffy apartment. The lights around were rainbow strobe, or what I call a migraine factory. A girl walked up to me with a grin on her face, clearly more acclimated to this environment than I was. She was beautiful to the point where I had stood there a while thinking of what to say. She asked me to dance with her to some mid-2000s Pop song, and I took her hand as she dragged me through frantic rows and rows of people. What felt like the next blink after that we were sitting together on some cozy couch, in a much more comfortable apartment. She had her hand on my neck, tugging at it lightly. She was asleep, so I made every effort not to move a muscle. I remember the smell being so peaceful, and the couch I almost melted into. I closed my eyes for a second and saw myself in an office. A man opens the heavy wooden door in front of him. He has something behind his back and the widest smile on his face. He walks up and says my name with increasing excitement, Arthur, Arthur! I ask him if he needs anything, and I carry a smile now too from the warmth of his presence. “Happy 30th! I got you that coffee I saw you staring at that one morning. Remember the one? Aloha! Comes straight from Maui, and I bet it tastes just as happy as anyone there! Now, let me get one cup before I go, isn’t that fair Arthur? Hell, you have one first, am I talking too much?” I open my mouth, but the man in front of me fades away into an older woman standing in front of my desk. “Thank you, Mr. Wentworth, you’re amazing, I can’t thank you enough. Me and Micheal are doing just fine, and he’s getting better from the accident. If you hadn’t helped us I don’t think a single soul would’ve ever believed us…”
I smelled sterile air, and suddenly I was surrounded by white walls. There was a throne in the middle of the room, so stately that it had towers and state-of-the-art machines around it. On it, lay my father, heaving for air. He reached out his right hand, the hand he’d always shake my hand with when I’d come home. I looked into his eyes, as the light behind them, that great mysterious magic of life faded away too. Everything started to fade away frame by frame. I got married, and I saw two little ones grow up into two adults that kind of looked like me. I did almost everything my father did, even shaking my kids’ hands on their way inside. “I’m proud of you.” Dishing out those timeless words to bring joy to the little faces, growing every day. Soon my arms moved slower than they used to, and the woman next to me, that woman I loved, grew older. I had no mirror, but she always anchored me in time. The odyssey accelerated until time cut my face like a fierce sandstorm wind. Soon I too layed in the grand room, surrounded by all the people I had seen, and a dozen more I couldn’t recognize. Their eyes spelled love in beautiful poetry, each with a different narrative. My eyes opened, my arms limber again, a heavy feeling in my hand. I threw the gun to the ground, the safety had been on. I sat for a minute in the freezing car. I tried to recollect all I could but it was slipping from me as if I wasn’t meant to have those memories. No one ever believes my story, but I have a feeling that a stranger will, that’s why I’ve left it here for you. There is time ahead of you, and time brings a future. I didn’t see that before it was in front of my own eyes, but it is true. You’ll see it too, just give it time.
I’ll Be The Saint
Written 2021
Finally the results of test,
One month left on this Earth maybe less,
Maybe months more, maybe days,
And my legacy changes frantically at this pace.
Old memories quickly remembered or replaced.
If these last moments are seen under scrutiny,
My actions now can dream of all the fruits in me.
To adjust the scene that time will paint,
I will write these last lines nothing but masterful,
I’ll be the saint.
How sober I felt at my diagnosis,
Time slowed down with little left on my list.
Sorries and sorrow, and I will tell you tomorrow all of my mistakes,
I know them all by name and time and place.
To the misters and the misses towards whom I’ve acted vicious,
To the people to whom I challenged vindictively,
Please pick up the call and talk to me.
One last time to be old and talk quaint,
For these last breathes into the phone I’ll speak good and true,
I’ll be the saint.
My children often saw the most interior of my thoughts,
Would they be proud of me for the fear that they got?
Could I ever redeem the domestic missteps and misspeaks,
The loud arguments that filled up the still nights,
Would you forgive me son?
You will outlive me daughter, can you see my love’s fire?
Will you carry it and promise to before I expire?
The youth in your own faces fades away like winds changing,
Where you go next, will you think of me looking down admiring?
Or will you only remember me sick and tired.
I’m sorry to my own I should’ve shown more restraint,
But for this moment by my bed,
I’ll kiss your hand and restate what I said,
I’ll be the saint.
I remember now when times tried us,
When I worked late to provide for us,
Maybe I lived more good than what I’m finding thus.
Love me now and that will be enough.
Stay with me for these last suns dimming,
While in my thoughts I’m constantly dreaming of my life
With more meaning than what what eyes had been seeing
You’ll give it the meaning, you’ll give it the story from here.
An ode to the last voices I’ll be hearing.
So hear me now as my words go faint,
I loved so much,
And when I fly above the ground and mush,
And when I watch you thrive I’ll cheer you on,
I’ll be saint.
To The Walker
Written 2021
Hello sir,
I hope you’re well,
I saw you there,
Walking around
An empty town.
Did you think
You’d be seen
In an empty place,
Quiet and serene.
Let alone by me?
We cannot talk,
And I regret,
That I can never know
Why you walk
That empty set.
I see the steel mill
Rusted alone,
Standing there
In the likeness of your own.
Do you see it still?
Is this just a dream
For my City eyes,
There’s no one left,
Except for you I mean.
How strange this seems to me.
For just a minute,
A moment even,
I saw you pass.
I think of our world,
And our places in it.
Just Like Him
Written 2021
My parent’s hopes and dreams stood on the thin line of life and death. My mother had been in the worst position possible, with the parting of my brother and postpartum depression.
The week before my birth was scarred forever into the consciousness of my parents. I will attempt to set the scene of that eternal day. A tranquil beeping filled the room, the mechanical rhythm of life, while the steel and plastic moved in magic ways to preserve a sunken body.The whirring machines worked to fill derelict lungs, but at 5:34 AM on October 17th, 2002, the room was silent and still for one instant. The instant before the emergency button was pressed as if each tap would bring Michael back to life, and the wailing of my mother and solemn stare of my father burned pain into the essence of my parents’ souls. 3 days later, I was born. In one week, my parents had observed the two most dramatic observations in life, its start and end.
My full name is Aaron Micheal Smith and I turned 17 just four days ago. This year I wanted to do a sci-fi theme for my party—go to a movie and see my friends afterwards. The classic Star Trek was playing in the best retro theater in Inglewood. Something about neon lights and popcorn makes me feel nostalgia, despite the fact that I never lived back when theaters were like that. My parents always told me my brother loved cinema, and dreamt of becoming a screenwriter for movies just like Star Trek. I remember finding my first sci-fi comics under his bed, and vintage baseball cards of all the legends that dominated the game just before my time. His room looked pristinely kept from as early as I can remember. Living in Inglewood, I was more focused on my friends and biking the 12 mile journey to Dodger Stadium on Sundays. While I spent my time getting burned by the loving California sun, my parents seemed to stay in. Their lives made California seem cold. Their minds resided in places where the sun couldn’t warm them, maybe fearful that happiness would make them forget what they had lost.
It wasn’t long before I started to live the life of my brother. It all started from my safaris into his room, looking for new toys and CDs when I got bored. Everything always ended up back in the box I took it from, and the boxes were closed with the same orientation of the caps on bins and their contents stacked in the same constructed messiness. When I was 6, I complained to my mother that the fairy who cleaned up the lonely room never put my clothes in the laundry hamper or fixed my bedsheets. She cried and ran into the bathroom, and my father gave me a fiery lecture on how ungrateful I was. He told me that Micheal always did his own chores, and that Micheal never made Mom cry. Back then, I couldn’t have known how important he was to my parents’ lives, I only saw it from my eyes. Micheal was like Jesus to me, I always heard about him, but I could never meet him or talk to him. He was their pride and joy, and now their torment and sorrow, so goes the mortal deal of love.
My parents have given me a new camera and film every Christmas, and in the summers sent me to camps near Hollywood. I’ve met celebrities and directors of all kinds, but I don’t want to be these people. My parents tell others how I will become the next best filmmaker of the future. The other parents always say the same things about me, “Aaron is just like him.” I’ve never told a soul about how I truly feel. After countless essays and presentations about my Summer and my hobbies, it always comes back to film. If not film, then I surely talk about the comics or movies I grew up with, Micheal’s comics and Micheal’s movies. When my friends call me by my middle name I nearly wince, they catch on quickly not to push the issue. I wish someone would. With that same feeling, I don’t know how I could ever tell my friends about this. I have no ambitions for my future, I just want to live freely. My parents are asking me to attend UCLA or Long Beach State. I’m all they have left, but they don’t really need me, they need the feeling I give them. They need to hold on to my life and I wish I had the disposition to stay here, but I do not.
I’ve spent the last few months trying to understand Micheal. I know the most basic stuff about him, with his face that’s just a little thinner than mine. I know of his hair that he kept short, likely the reason my parents make me get it cut every 2 weeks. I know what he liked, and I know what he was like. After all, that was exactly what I grew up with and how I was raised. Some nights my mother holds my head and gazes into my eyes while her own weep, and I can feel that she’s not really seeing me there. What can I do? I want to be happy and I want to be my own person. I want freedom and I want to breathe my own air and think my own thoughts. The mirror doesn’t reflect my image anymore. At 17 now, I survived him, I’ve been around longer than he was. Yet, he got to live his life and now I must continue it. When I told this all to my mother, she sat down with me and pulled out a framed picture she kept under her desk. She pulled out the stand and laid it gently, and there stood Micheal with his JanSport backpack and wireframe glasses. She told me that this was my brother, and I should love him. When I expressed the grievances that his memory had caused me, she sighed and I could see that she had made the connection. She realized that I would never love him the way she did, and she finally saw the resistance I had towards being his living preservation. In her moment of weakness, I asserted all that I had thought. I told her of my anger of being her other son, and how every other family I saw treated their children with more love. In the heat of passion mounting like a crescendo, I said with fire in my voice and a crackle in my throat, “You never loved me, you’re a mother who can’t even take care of the only son you have left.” My mother then sat in silence for a minute, and I couldn’t discern whether she was trying to block out or take in what I had said. Her next words cleared out my questions quickly. With those familiar welling eyes, she told me with the deepest dolor, “you don’t have to love him, you don’t have to, I’m sorry.” Her words were broken in cries, and I could tell that it brought my mother pain to speak at all. She pushed through the final wall of wailing with words full of motherly purpose. “Please, for me, even if only for me, just like him.”
Dementia
Written 2021
Your empty eyes stared blankly at the ceiling,
The secrets of yesterday–your mind was not revealing.
Autumn leaves, do you see them still?
While you fight to think you can’t help but feel.
Old love forgotten as memory fades,
Your reverie was lost and the coffin made.
Will you call me dear when your mind returns,
For it is your true voice again I need to hear,
I yearn.
You lie in bed,
Your mind lies too,
And decay then finds all that once was true.
I see the last of what you will be,
But what is left is not what you were to me.
Time will pass but shall not heal,
Time has taken my love and will.
King Kamehameha
Written 2021
There is a town up the old ashen shrine,
A stronghold of peace so kept from evil.
Let there be peace to blue waves and tide-line.
Lighting cracks windy Pacific bay brine,
Sighting caught water’s angry upheaval.
Threats bare fear to the soft and sweet palm twine.
History would recall the old benign,
The vessel of gall brought hungry weevils.
Let there be peace to blue waves and tide-line.
Fighting engulfs all that was yours and mine,
Leaving nothing for the hand’s retrieval.
Threats bare fear to the soft and sweet palm twine.
Mystery will shroud this, our people’s time,
When naught is left for youth’s soon receival.
Let there be peace to blue waves and tide-line.
Our village gone to the tide of evil,
Children left to learn that our fate’s lethal,
Let there be peace to blue waves and tide-line.
Threats bare fear to the soft and sweet palm twine.
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Gavin Neubauer 