Unboxed
As if returning a forgotten memory, like an abandoned child,
Back to the banks of the subconscious which violently pushed it,
Womb-like, away from my fleeting paternal grasp, my eternal awareness,
To live desolate, desperate, neglected, and alone in
What I image to be a plain brown box
In a chilly, musty, secluded basement, my mother,
In an act of shedding the echoing voices of recollection
Which embody the home I grew up in, the one from which she
Is beginning the process of post-retirement departure,
Casually hands me a palm-sized, black and white,
60-minute cassette tape
With the all-too-familiar, hieroglyphic-like penmanship
Of one of my fleeting friends from middle school on it,
A circle of sound that hasn’t met my senses, hands
Since approximately the mid-90’s
Along with a paper printout of my first full-length feature script,
Whispers in the Darkness,
Which I wrote with one of my best friends in middle school.
And as I note the immaculate condition of both items
And my finger traces over words, pages, wheels which once
Spun forwards and backwards in an endless cycle
In the now ancient, near-extinct beast
Us 90’s kids once called “a tape player”,
I can’t help but think of how far I’ve come,
How little I’ve grown in taste,
How quickly friendships vanquish yet stay the same,
And how art,
In all its various forms,
Is a time machine
Which, especially when stumbled upon without preparation,
Can connect you to a mindset, a person,
A younger, less experienced, but far more optimistic version of you,
As if attached with invisible wires which record your thoughts
In a taut, all white cat scan-like tunnel of claustrophobic screeches
And all-too-personal restrictions of movement and breath,
You’re simultaneously happy to have unboxed,
Delighted to have grown into someone else from,
And yet, in the same instance, dearly wish
To avoid.
Third-Person Self-Portrait
A swarm of angry bees, a honeycomb of darkness,
Hovers behind the nerve-laden riverbanks of the swampy eye.
Spastic reverberations, seventeen years of breathless warehouse labor,
Shudders with an exploding anguish, a timebomb between the shoulder blades.
Thus, your back is arched. Thus, your heart is coffin, anvil heavy
From the barrage of emails, responses from publishers about your eagerly submitted writing,
You sigh every time you see because you know the pleasantly worded outcome
Is rejection before your stinger-strewn, hive-like brain fools you with a burst of dopamine into
Clicking on the electronic retort: The orange construction cone placed in horizontal lines
Along the once promising roads of your lifelong passion. And you again sigh, swim in the
Upside down, marshy edges of your gaze as a sensation of drowning, a visage of your
Lifelong regrets, failures, childhood taunts that, like the yellowjacket, still cause a redness,
Swelling, itching beneath the flesh where your true self, naively rejuvenated with a youthful
Vigor to create a still-burning dream of setting the world on fire with your art, rises
Like a pimple that you can never quite get to, pop despite the lifelong scratching, indention
Of fingernails to wounded, infected flesh. And it is because your mind is so laser-like
In its focus on what is currently wrong that you can’t see all you’ve done right.
You miss the happiness trickling down from your hard work onto the smiling faces
Of your children as they grow, learn, pursue their own pleasures and hone their own skills.
You miss the beauty of the fall leaves outside your home which reflect, like a mirror,
Your dedication to providing for your loving family. You miss seeing the progress
Made with your auteurship: The innumerable novels, short stories, plays, songs, scripts, and
Award-winning films that wouldn’t exist if you didn’t have the can-do spirit that hides in the
Closet of your marrow, sits on your shoulder, and whispers positive affirmations in your ear.
You miss the way the sunlight bends around your frame and admirably fills your form
When your back is bent, the tiny creatures are ready to attack, and doubt clouds the eye.
You miss the luminosity spilling from your fingertips, illuminating your every movement:
The quiet, kind-hearted essence of you being distinctly you.
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