Eyes

Everyday I see her. She smiles and says "hello" while casually averting her eyes downward, avoiding any real sense of contact. I love her.
I don't love her in the sense that I would marry her or that I want to be with her. In fact, conversely, I love her for not caring about me. I would easily do anything to just kiss her once and yet, at the same time, that would kill my love for her. It is not about having something or someone that you can't have and "be careful what you wish for." It's about expectations. It's about tragically being in love with someone who will never know it.
There is the chance of course that she feels the same way for me. Someday, maybe we'll get together. But it will end, as most things do.
When I do make eye contact with her, or anyone for that matter, I can only see how our relationship will end. Whether it be a stranger, a friend, a lover, or a family member, I can only see the reasons why I should not get close to them. I care for these people so much that it tears me apart to see how our knowledge of each other will end. I steer away from being close and lose my love. I gain hope. Hope that someone can break that barrier. Hope that someone will force their way into my life to make me care and make me love.

 I hope that when I see her eyes, I see our lives ending together... I hope one day she looks at me.

Smile

Why is it that I constantly feel like a let down; as if everyone in my life was expecting something from me that I can't give them? I find it strange to feel this way because my entire life I have worked so hard to be unselfish and fulfill others' needs before my own. I have always been the one to make fun of myself for a laugh and let others do the same to me without taking any of the ridicule to heart. I always recognize when people are having an off day and I try and make them feel better. At work I bottle up my emotion because I know that it is not a customer's fault that I'm having a bad day and I don't like to take out my anger on employees.I'd rather spread happiness over annoyance. I gave so much of myself in my relationships with others to the point where I feel that maybe I don't have much more to give.
Is that the case? Have I simply shared so much of myself and tried so hard to be exactly what someone needs that I just have nothing left to give? Maybe I have become selfish of my time and my feelings. I just wish I could shake that feeling that nothing I could do would ever be good enough. I wish I could stop letting everyone down and just give them what they need. I just don't think I know what they need. I don't think I know what I need.

I just want to see a smile every now and then.

Shared

Everyone in this room will die. Not right now. Probably not tomorrow. Probably, tomorrow, everyone will be back in this room. But all of us will die.
That's probably the only thing we have in common. Or maybe not. Maybe we all love pizza, or something stranger. We have all seen the same episode of Three's Company. We have all loved someone or something. We have all cried. We were babies once.
But I share nothing with these people, or rather, they share nothing with me.
Except that they are in this room.
And we are alive.

Pavement

I scuff my sneakers as I pass them
stumbling past like a sputtering car
I listen as they sputter words
words of repitition, decrepit and crumbling
crumbling like the sound on a broken record
a broken promise, a trust misplaced
misplaced keys to a deserted house
a deserted friendship
I have no friends, I have the night instead
the night which is filled with character and emptiness
I am a character witness to the murder of one
the one who sits on pavement in the night waiting.

Cigarette

She flicks her pen as if ashing a cigarette and leans back in her chair. Her hands grip at the armrests like she is preparing for impact and her mouth hangs open in a yawn. I'd like to turn off the volume right now and imagine that she is screaming. She's in an airplane, confined in a cheap plastic seat, three to five seconds from death; skyrocketing, plummeting toward earth. Her high-pitched screams are drowned out by the others around her, begging for some higher power to save their lives as the engines fail one by one. Eyes bulge and water; fingernails dig. The oxygen mask bursts out from above her straight black hair and dangles before her, occasionally smacking her in the face. I'd like to imagine that the last thing she thinks about, right before she hears crunching and shrieking of metal and is engulfed in a jet-fueled fire, is every single time she flicked her pen like she was ashing a cigarette.

Frozen

I wish that there was a better way to capture time then to merely scribble words on a page, because there are moments of time in which I feel so overwhelmed by emotion that it becomes indescribable in any language. It makes me remember the natural flaw in all of us: feeling. That feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize you have made a crucial mistake, or the shiver in your spine when you learn that someone you love has died. The agony of having your heart broken because she doesn't look at you like she looks at him. Knowing that your childhood is a long forgotten dream.
But it is the fleeting feeling of joy that keeps us going. Being congratulated or rewarded for working hard. Being told by someone that they care for you and love you. The butterflies in your stomach when you're nervous because she held your hand. Knowing that your childhood was a dream rather than a nightmare you can't wake up from.
It isn't the moments of time I want to capture. It's the feeling. At these moments of joy I don't want to stay at that place in time, I want to stay in that feeling. I want my hands to tremble and my heart to beat fast. I want my throat to close and my eyes to wince. I want to stay frozen in feeling.

Boil

The smooth surface of the water bares my reflection.
We are equals. Transparent. Solid. I can respect that.
From the center of the water there is a stir.
Nothing substantial, it doesn't mean a thing to me.
I continue to stare at myself; maybe I adjust my hair in the reflection.
The water is warm. I wonder if this is what the Bahamas is like, or Barbados.
"We'll save up honey," I say as I continue to stare.
Her eyes show that same transparency.
My pointer finger digs under my collar and my ring and thumb loosen my tie.
Why am I shaking? What the hell is wrong with me?
"It's hot in here," she says. I never look at her when she speaks.
"Maybe I should shave?" I say to no one in particular. As expected there is no reply.
Days could pass, time could suspend itself on the vapors that hang over water.
A reminder of the end because time must always end.
"I'm tired," I say as my eyelids sag to form cracked slits.
Open.
Foam spills down and sizzles. Bubbles form and disappear, the lifespan of milleseconds.
Alarms sound from the other room.
"We should talk," she mutters under the sirens in the distance.
Great.
"Yeah."

Girl

I dread the moment when you see a girl from across a room or bar and just for an instant, a fleeting second, you see the girl that you've been in love with for years. You get that rush of excitement and anxiousness because you haven't seen her in a long time and maybe she's been thinking about you too. Then you blink.
And just as fast as you rushed into feeling amazing, you fall backwards. Crushed. It wasn't her.

The night is ruined. I am not depressed, I am just mistaken.

livingroom

his knuckles clicked and cracked
cracking cracking
a dull echo bouncing off walls
walls made of white
cracking and clicking
clicks that bounce off white walls
searching the air for information
white teeth peer through cracked lips
white teeth smile at white walls
walls built
erected
around a metal frame
wet eyes see white walls
through glass and frames
eyelids cracked open
parting to see
a room made of parts

pieces of something alive.

Search

                    Calf's liver and bacon!
The first female
Inter-religious attacks
Evil empire
Significant history,
               some of which was later to be lost.
The Cold War
In various European countries...
German socialists
The Battle of the Alamo
We are the world
     a failed assassination attempt.

Manifesto

            Stop reading this! Why are you reading the words on this paper when you could be doing so much more? Please stop. I'll give you a few moments to put this down and walk away............Why do I still feel fingers gripping this page? Oh, ok, I get it. You want some ideas on how to get started. Exploration, it's hard to do. Well what a pity, it was a bad decision to come looking for them here. But fine, since you're here, let's have a chat shall we? If you're one of those people who goes around writing stories that literally are about themselves and the people they know then you have nothing to worry about. Quite obviously you are the next Henry David Thoreau (if you cannot feel the sarcasm of these words robbing your innocence at knifepoint, then that's fine, go write your "Walden"). The problem with writing about yourself is that you'll never get the story right. Did you heroically save twelve babies from a burning orphanage or did you pull your niece Katie away from a sparking toaster? The other problem? You're not that interesting. Don't take that the wrong way, neither am I (except I did save those babies and they all have parents now who love and cherish them). Well, now that we have gotten that out of the way, let me tell you what you should be writing. Now I shouldn't even need to say this, but hell I'm going to say it anyway: You're material should be interesting. A no-brainer. I mean hey, you knew that, I mean this paper isn't even for you is it? Just holding it for a friend right? (Sure and that's what you told you're parents about the Playboys too). So, make it interesting? Think about the things that you read. They're interesting right? You wouldn't want to read a fifty page expense report for a rubber factory would you? Well maybe you would, I don't know what turns you on. So let's say you're driving around your neighborhood and everything is the same as it was yesterday except for a machine as big as a building, with a giant metal buzz saw attached, has taken the place of the local park. Maybe a brief image of that machine being used to torture people pops into your mind. DON'T SUPPRESS IT! FIGHT BACK! Not only should you write that down, but explore it! Push it! What's it for? When the people are tortured are they naked? Who's being tortured and why? Does it kill them? Who operates it? Where do they store the blood? Do they harvest the organs? These are interesting questions to ask about the "City That Never Sleeps" (See I even gave you the title). This is an awful example, like absolutely pitiful, but you get my drift. Find something interesting and poke it with a metal rod or something of stick-like nature. Just for the love of all things holy don't you dare force wisdom on me! Don't you dare "Day After Tomorrow" me and tell me the world is going to turn into "The Year Without Santa Clause" unless I plant a fern. I don't need that. You're no Nathaniel Hawthorne warning me about the dangers of science. Just write naturally, write the first idea that floats between your ears and then change it later if you must. Don't change it at all. Do whatever you want. Alright. You got that? Burn after reading.

College

Yesterday was my last day of school. That's it. I'm done. Forever.

Well, maybe.
There's a chance for graduate study. Or maybe another program altogether.                                                                                           

For now

               I think I'll just work, write, hope, and live.

p.s. I think dumping four years worth of schoolwork on here should complete my transfer into reality and away from academia. Also, I'm going to grow a mustache.

p.s.s. I will never buy another lemonade flavored Four Loko, ever again.

Sun

It is a beautiful day today, I wish that I was ten so that I could enjoy it. To me the weather has become useless. It is either raining or snowing or it isn't, and that's about it. It is scary to think that if I don't have kids, the weather may never matter to me again.

Skin

                                             the skin flakes off my finger as I pick at it with nails.

               underneath
            is pink   taut       sensitive...
                                                        i wonder what i'd look like if i did this

ALL OVER.


                         how fun it would be to peel off all my skin
                                      i'd spend whole days scratching off the places i missed,
                                                  biting at my arms and hands.

i would save all of my old skin
and make something out of it.
                                                                       everyone will be impressed.

and

disgusted.

Breakfast

I don't eat breakfast. I never seem to find the energy in the morning to actually make myself something. This has been the case for the last five or so years now. Honestly I don't see the reason for breakfast. I don't really see any difference in the way my brain functions or the way my body works. I don't feel healthier. I don't particularly like the food that breakfast has to offer. I guess you could say I hate breakfast.
When I was a kid my Nana and Papa used to watch my brother and I in the morning before we went to school. On the weekends we would go to their house. I could watch my Papa make French Toast for hours. He was so meticulous with every little detail. The temperature had to be just right, there had to be the perfect amount of milk in the egg, and the bread had to soak for at least six seconds on each side before making its way into the frying pan. My brother and I would race to see who could eat the fastest as they came off the pan. This was our treat. My Nana would only eat one (she was tiny). He didn't make this for anyone else. Even as we grew older, and visits became fewer and more far between, there was always french toast.
After my Papa passed away I tried a few weak attempts at recreating his french toast but nothing was ever like the original. Up until last week it had been two years since I had even tried. I went on a vacation with a few friends where waking up late was not only an option, but it was preferred. One night I informed everyone that in the morning I was going to make breakfast. I thought it would be nice to have another crack at it and see if anyone liked my french toast. 
The smell of bacon at nine is what drove most of the house to wake up and come down for breakfast. From there I proceeded with fixing the stove to the right temp, getting my ingredients in order, and keeping my eye on clock. I heard the sizzle of the first slice hitting the pan and my mind drove out all other thought except those of my Nana and Papa. I remembered their house, my Nana's dorky shoes, my Papa's garden. I remembered hot dogs and spaghettios for dinner while we watched "Wheel of Fortune." I remembered Papa falling asleep in his NAVY chair while watching college football. I remembered my mornings with french toast.
My breakfast came out alright and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I didn't have any of it. I don't like breakfast. I only like my Papa's french toast.


...Maybe life is finding the right people to make breakfast for.