Part 2 of: I want to perform for ghosts!

I recite a love letter to a woman I was decades too late to meet.

Whose heart broke when he wiped it with his feet.

A sonnet to sons whose father's lost them along the way, 

building bridges for them to a better one day.

I write the words to the lullaby my aunt couldn't sing,

When I walked through rain drops till the pain stopped.

I say to her son "you are so much more than the hole you left when you left 

and I am so much more for that space you kept."

I hum to the strum of an old friend's long past playing, the twangs: 

whether in time or out of tune are heard on, long after you've passed on

When you passed on the chance to roll the dice on another hell of another day;

A hell I can't ever, wish never, will forever endeavour to avoid 

and one I vow to keep closed off from those who find themselves too alone to be alone.

I sing to the little sisters of big brothers,

Whose outrage I empathize most strongly with,

Whom I'd happily aid in tearing down every temple, totem, mosque, mosoleum, museum, cathedral, chapel, church and house of worship 

just to get another bit of rubble, 

just to stand a little taller,

just to get another insignificant inch higher 

Up that insurmountable incline between down here and up there!

All in attempts to stand toe to toe, to eye to eye to eye to every Him, Her, It and That that ever dared to claim to have a hand in fate.

To say "if you ever touch a sister,

You bait a beating from the brother."

That song might not be sweet, but it earns an "amen."

In epilogue, I leave a note for tomorrow's ghost,

You're with me even if I've never met you.

And if we have met and I missed the signs,

Misread you were okay, when you were actually just: fine...

Even though I'm aware it is not always my place to ask,

I hope I added less to your tears and more to your laughs.

Because you were here 

And if I don't understand anything else,

I understand being here.

In this moment that's enough,

Enough to empathize with all of you who've been here too.

And though we didn't and may not meet: I love you.

Each and every intangible, unknowable, time space and and everything inbetweenable you.

Because I can.

Because I do.

I bow neither baiting nor awaiting applause,

I leave the empty un-empty room, I hope, a little more full than when I entered into it.

And I hope I've left some of my own ghosts behind in it.

Ghosts of loved-loving among the lost-un-living.

It's a comfort for me to think of ghosts this way:

I can leave a room, but let a good part of me stay.

Part 1 of: I want to perform for ghosts!

I want to be a tour guide to haunted houses and towns.

I wish to glimpse ghosts, with an army of tourists around.

I'd introduce them to the unseen non-living lurkers
I imagine, over time, the undead and I becoming chummy co-workers:

For some I'd have nicknames,

Like stretch, gopher and hams.

With others: office games

Like "who's holding my hand?!"

All this in attempt to aim to gain
An audience made up of these unseen spectres of gloom.

“But Scott you fool, are you insane?
To enter an empty un-empty room
Of shadows from flickers of remnant remembrances
re-returning at given points of circumstan-instances;

An echo chamber of what's gone and what's come,
On nights Nans and Grans warned us to go every which way from?”

Yes. I'll stand there, in their haunted house home;

I'll take centre stage, eerily un-alone,

And on that makeshift stage (makeshift it must be,
because builders won't build where they're scared you see)

I'll take my mark and state my name,

Post mark, post name I'll stake this claim:

"Let those who aren't here, hear my request

Allow me to flood this falsely empty un-emptiness!

Hear me in my musings, that you might be amused,

Let said musings still your unending moves.

Remnants of what was, when it once was,

While being not now, what once you once were;

Let your eternity come to a pause,

And I'll humbly offer my poetry in, gracious return."

With prologue passed, silence starts ...

Gives way to a whisper and creak.

A shuffle summons a sliver of light.

Then in it I step, and from it I speak:

Today was supposed to be a writing day ...

Today was supposed to be a writing day.

But today was one of those days.

Those days I don't like to talk about.

The in between days,

The bored and un content with the content days,

The un remarkable, yet make a mark anyways days.

A what's YouTube recommend to me today day ... 

(A lot of pro wrestling ...)

Not everyday can be a "eureka" day.

I'm not always breaking down a breakthrough,

If I was, my brain would mimic a mayflies sex life; 

Here today gone tomorrow.

No mind won't unwind under that much unravelling.

Somedays I just take the universe as is and say "I'm standing up and the world's beneath me, because f*#% science motherf*#%er!"

But I'm wary of these take it for granted days.

Those days oft too often end up an everyday day.

And then, when I think on that I overreact and it turns out it turns into a look in the mirror day.

And today will not be a look in the mirror day.

Look in the mirror days can be healthy in doses,

But one such a day, is not and will not be today.

But if it was, I would probably say:

I freely admit that I am many times flawed, too many times self absorbed and oh so so many many times self conscious,

In addition to being unconscious of the unawareness my unpreparedness in the face of faces looking to me to be what other faces need me to be in order to see in order to say in the right order the words that let them know that everything they do and are and feel is okay; and as long as it's not a look in the mirror day, let me just say if it were; I'd sum it up by saying:

If I have ever promised you aesthetic, cosmetic, athletic, artistic, empathic, scholastic, linguistic or intrinsic infallibility: do not cash that cheque my friend. It will bounce higher than my eyebrow after an innuendo and you know me (if you know me) that that is a mighty high climb.

I never promised perfection to anybody.

I have and will only ever endeavour to aspire to this:

Be better. 

Be better than you; the "who I was on Monday when today is Tuesday" you.

And this is not out of shame: it's respect.

Respect for and upon whom I reflect.

Because the reflection I reflect upon on look in the mirror days, looks back at me too and I owe it to him to not get squeamish over hairlines receding or blemishes impeding on the mask over the many masks I bear in the best and worst of times to come, when who and what I am is determined by what I do. 

And I'm gonna reflect on that too.

And there's no telling what I'll see

When I look back at what I'm looking back at, looking back at me.

That's all for look in the mirror day.

Today is still an I forgot to write day.

Okay? ... Okay.

A poet wrote some poetry, this is what that means to me:

I have been reading.
I have been re reading and in my re re reading.
I have relearned the meaning of one 4 letter word,
I found it in your 7 page world.
But this one word, whether or not it was the author's intent,
Has now and will always be a synonym for you.

Because I've realized, if you or it were whistled while I worked
I'd pay to stay and say fuck the vacation days.

There'd be no need for churches,
Cause we'd need no martyrs to barter for unnecessary salvation
We'd already be saved.
With you and this in our hearts: angels would beg to fall,
They'd claw their way out of heaven's gates just to glimpse the heavens in us all.

You're what dogs say to their owners with each sloppy kiss.
What children can't say when they first meet their Mom's, it's this.
What lives on my lips, as answer to the only question "what's worth the risk?"
What William Shakespeare spent 154 sonnets trying to find the words for;
That was you, because you are this:

...
Guessed yet?
It's big but it's little,
But don't be deceived, it's not short n sweet.
It will bring you to your knees and lift you to your feet.
And it may or may not make the world go round,
But next time I re read what you wrote again,
I'll be reminded to feel the spin.

A letter to Miss Whittaker circa 1981

Dear Miss Whittaker,

You and I haven't met yet.
Before we do, I want you to know something:
For every day you've lived and each day you've yet to see;
No one will love you more than my sister and me.

Her name is Mrs Tuck, and you'll see for yourself that she's a lot like you.
She makes friends easily and takes crap from nobody.
She's an adventurer and an athlete and, like you, yells at the other drivers on the road; even though they'll never hear either of you.

And as for me.
You'll teach me math, because you're better at it than my Dad.
You show me how to do laundry, though admittedly, I still need practice.

You're gonna teach me "I love you" before I know what words are.
It is the most important thing I'll ever learn to say.

And I want to say it to you today and yesterday and on all the days spanning back to before you know me.

Because I learn it first from you Mom.
I learn first to love from you.

Love from,
your six years from now son.

Ps
I'm gonna say "Lo-kee-doh" a lot.
We never really figure out what that means.
So ... Just go with it.

I've been talking to myself again ...

Did I invent a country as a kid?
Did you invent one, too?
What's it like? Where did it go? How do we get there?
Hop on, I'll cover the air fare
Sure the seats are uncomfy,
But Air Serendipity gets you where precisely when you need to be.

I've been talking to myself again ...
I'm re-rehearsing my “what's wrong with the world” words.
I do this in between trips to the unfair.

Do you do that?

Practice what you'll say on that one day-day
When you stand before the powers that would-if-they-could.

They sit staring; as would be powers would,
While you stand speaking; as guest speakers should,
In The chamber of changes made through speech making.

You j'accuse these would be's of dissing interests,
Of serving their selves and selfing concerns.

You express your concern at the poison these hypotheic pathetic pretend powers keep spilling
A spill that keeps filling-in the hole in the heart in the heart of the world!
You then penalize the penny pinching, politico point poachers, the ones who want to score, more than they want to play,
Cause their win-at-all-cost game is maiming your country: both the true-north and the strong and free,
The one you can only now seem to see in dreams
But you can't see it, cause you can't sleep,
Cause sleep can't compete with the screech of
“it's not us it's them” excuses, “I'm sorry I'm not sorry” apologies, and many many insults to a memory of a time and place you can't even remember forgetting.
So you just lie there, fully aware of the sound your body makes when you're breathing.

This is where my speech runs out of air.
It gets reduced to one repeating appeal to the powers that should be to help me, help me, help me.
Because there's a hole in the world,
And despite my eagerness and education,
I somehow missed out on the lesson entitled: all the know how on how to bury a hole.
So I simply say: Help me, help me, help me.

And I realize this is a lot to ask of the imaginary powers of would could and should.

The unfair goes everywhere, and everyone everywhere is rehearsing their own words between visits.
They've a hole in the heart in the heart of their world too
and they're filling it in, in between beats as best they can,
And for now that's about all we can do.

As for this latest draft; we'll shelve it for now
Till the next time the unfair's in town.

And I kid myself, these words won't cure a coronary gap.
Words rarely do, or even our actions at that.
Our intentions in this grander grand band stand will likely never be heard
over the insomnia inducing noises...
But if it could, I wouldn't want it to be with would words or could words.
It's the should words, that should be heard.

So we should choose some should words to change the world.
Because if we could: we would.
And if we should, we will.

I suck at making metaphors

The metaphor for my life, of late,
Is a college grad begrudgingly selling his car.
In this I am the college grad,
The car being sold is the car I'm selling.
I'm selling my car, so it's not a metaphor.
It's something that's happening.
And it sucks. Like this metaphor.

It made more sense to own a car
When childhood was 3 hours away,
On a drive open wide and city-free.
Save for a few spots
Of stop-overs I'd never stop in.
Except in my brain.
Where my mind would encounter
Mind-brain men and brain-mind women.

There they'd offer small town stories and small town snacks,
Which I'd compare to small town fair I'd tried just up the tracks.

These mind-brain men and women would sense something amiss
In my imagined amiss-demeanor,
And asked me where I was going and what I'd seen.

“My Grandma just died.” I'd replied,
Or say, “My family's selling the home.”
Or “A girl I like just asked me out, and I'm leaving the province tomorrow!”

Then the simple folk from my simple mind,
Whom I'd invented on a 3 hour drive over a skip-skip-skipping cd,
would smile, and say nothing.

Then we'd take a time out from weighing worries and woes
To acknowledge just how full of awe it all was.

To acknowledge my one part passive, one part active participation
in such a complex machine of so many-moving.

It's morbid now, to look back then on what didn't actually happen,
And to think how happy I was in light of such tragedy.

And all that while;
while acknowledging my part passive/part active participation
in a complex many-moving-many-parts machine,

I was moving forward to backward.
Backward being forward: back home.

I'd smile and sing over the skips,
I'd laugh off the loss.

In the wake of death-dying and loss-losing
We were choosing to sing.
We laughed and smiled
While, in a little more than a little while:
We'd soon lose sight of this appreciation.
This profound pronunciation.

Appreciation for a life lived, one one finds ones self truly alive in,
Venturing and adventuring in.

Even in the case of those not really living
Especially in their case.
And when we arrive at the end of the drive:
I kill the engine and they die. Like I will, one day.

At the end of a long day, on a long ago rode
To a home, no longer home 3 hours from okay.

On a day long after I sell this little engine that could always get me there;
Wherever there was.
And there might be a metaphor to make about there.
But I suck at making metaphors so I don't care.

The folk-from-my-mind-in-my-car-on-the-road wouldn't care either.
They'd just smile, and say nothing.

I remember tomorrow, like it was yesterday.

I remember tomorrow, like it was yesterday.

Tomorrow, I remember, I will-do go for one of those all to oft put-off walks,
On it I will see-saw so many dogs
many of whom I will-did wish to meet,
with many owners I wish to-did-do not.

Tomorrow, I meet-met with a friend of old,
Re-recalling, tall tales till all tales to tell were told.
I remember that I remember I must go,
And remember I must remember: to meet them again.

Tomorrow, I remember I found-finded the words,
Which found-find the cause
Of all the flaws
Of all the ways that all things are do-done and rue-run
In the live long life I'm lived-live-living.

Tomorrow, I said-say it to be hear-heard
by a herd of members of the
“Who-we-need-when-we-need-em” s
and they did-do storm the citadel of the “in-the-way-of-change”er's
While I sing-sang the song of all my woes and dangers.

Afterwards a great cake is-be-will-be cut in my name!
I am be-will be knighted without have having to slew-slay the dragon,
And I do-did dub her: serendipity.

She flew-flies me where I need to be and when I need to be:
Which would be ... now.

When-where the calendar becomes a clock
Tick, tick, tocking, stalking and sticking

To the second-minute-moment before home time in final period
To when my eager beavers aim to owe all the hopes held in my hope bank
(kept safely beneath my bed, hidden from hope heisters)
To an anticipated, reinstated, pre-state-state of nostalgia.

This of course means, that I remember tomorrow unlikely precisely as it may have-will have happened...

But who amongst you;

before the grand chrono-chronological here-now-then-when court,
would not be found guilty
of embellishing what you relish?

Relish it now.
Remember it as it may not happen, then hope it does.
Have a sentimentality about the days not yet old.
Tell tall tales of tall tales not yet told.
And remember to remember it tomorrow,
when tomorrow and today:
is today and yesterday.

A highschool student's parents don't want them to pursue acting.

I was led by the words of men long dead
To a path
to you.
It was new to me, and you were too.

I loved you; you rejected me.
I fought you and you beat me.
I acted valiantly and you made me feel ashamed.

On this, I've reflected.
Of this, I've inspected.
From this I've concluded:
Nothing justifies your sudden, certain leaving.

I rolled the dead mens' phrases
On my wet tongue
Till they were wet and it was numb
Till I forgot what I was remembering
And thought their words were my very own.

From this madness I went dumb,
and in dumbness: my body writhed:
I racked it to compacting into insignificance,
Wretched it beyond stretching what it's little limbs could ever reach.
All in attempts to, without words, cry:
"I'm not beautiful! ... Embrace me anyway ..."

I harvested every experience and every relationship;
no thought nor feeling, no matter how innocent,
was not molested and made sacrifice to you.

Now I know how to be naked without disrobing.

Now I fall in love with wisps of smoke, only to weep at their passing.

I've learned to hide my virtues and celebrate in my sins.
And here, beneath all the blood and bile, I've found you again.
Pure, imperfect: you ...

And just as sudden as you're there, you're gone.
So I make chase, unclean and unkempt.
Maybe I'll hold on longer next time ...

My sister is a wizard!

My sister is a Wizard:
She showed me my first magic trick using a handkerchief and a cup with cinnamon toast crunch in it. Her powers vanished when I peaked under the handkerchief to reveal a small sliding mirror. I did this even after she told me not to. A wizard should have known better.

My sister is a Scientist:
She showed me that liquid can go just over the rim when you fill up a cup. She showed me this every day we went to get a drink of Kool-aid, and every time she'd say “It's a science experiment.” I would sulk at this ... When would I get to do science experiements?

My sister is a Warrior:
At the bus stop and on the playground she struck fear and shame in the hearts of my enemies; reminding them all, “If you mess with him, you mess with me! And don't bother sending your older brothers or sisters: they're also scared of me!”

My sister is a Trap Checker:
She went to the same schools as me, but she would go first. All of our teachers were surprised how very different we were. Mostly in the area attendance and good behaviour. I'm not saying I was more well behaved than my sister, but I certainly got caught less than she did.

My sister is 'Hitch' (Before there was the movie Hitch):
She set me up on my first date, with her friend's sister. Unfortunately, I didn't know that it was a date before, during or even after the fact. And I wouldn't for many years later ...

My sister is an Athlete:
We both took part in soccer, volleyball, softball, badminton, golf, martial arts and the occasional videogame.
I am not ashamed to say she destroyed me at all of these ... Don't make fun! She'll wipe the floor with you, too ... but I will beat her at cards ... one day ...!

My sister is a Bride:
I watched her go through her share of frogs before she found her prince. And when they asked me to speak at her wedding, I was speechless ... but I spoke anyway. Everyone cried.

My sister is The Best Sister:

She's my first friend.
She will never truly know how proud of her I am, and that's alright.
I have the rest of our lives to find the right words that will inform her.
Until then:
Happy Birthday
To my Li'l Big Sister.