lazy fog

this isn't spontaneous overflow

or a garden of words

with flowering language

and scintillating syntax.

it's a box of postcards,

old photographs,

faded rays of sunshine

and chalk white smiles--

running through fields

with a bush whose top sways

in the breeze.

i miss

memories i've forgotten,

they leave craters in my

heart, suck water from my

brain, like sticking a

straw in a coconut

to suck the milk from its shell.

i miss misunderstandings through

unshared words, miss the lack of electricity

that illuminates an electric sky--

splattered stars and a nightlight moon--

i miss

fog that sleeps in,

nestled inside the valleys of

one thousand hills.

i've wanted to sleep in, too, lately,

sink deep into silence,

clutch tall grass and refuse

to rise, shut

my eyes tight until sunny rays

light up behind the lids

and tell me that the beat goes on,

the sun will keep rising, even

if people are dying, killing,

standing on streets with machetes,

or living through a nightmare that

refuses to stop.

the drum deafens, that endlessly

beating endlessly moving endlessly

constant sound of progress, turning

pain and passion into rote learned facts

of history.

i don't understand this, this movement, unremembrance,

flow of time.

i immortalize tears,

strain them for their salt, seek them

for their solace, misunderstand them for

meaning as i flip through these snapshots

that show

bright colored cloth

bumpy roads,

fancy looking insects,

unfamiliar to this castle in which i abide.

difference is relative, though.

maybe we're all relatives. so raffiki this is for

you. i'm holding tight to your words as tears fail

to connect these dots and photographs

into a life, a history. your words

stand tall, they shoot for the stars

all the time every time, even after

they miss. lately mine seem to be drowning in

murky puddles, falling flat, lacking hope, but yours

need no conditioning. you speak from

what is it? the bottom of your heart

inhaling before their utterance

and exhaling their veracity. we can't do

everything, but we can do something.

dls