Day 1

I've been thinking a lot about blank pages, lately. I suppose this is to be expected when you staring at them when you should be writing on them. The image of white stone, beautiful in it's purity, ruined by clumsiness catches me by the wrist in a near daily recurrence.
I no longer like this image, so I have decided to change it.

A pond of pure white, whose surface may easily be mistaken for solid marble, but we know better now.
I touch down my pen and instead of making a mark, create a ripple. This ripple ebbs outward, joined by several tender rings, which lessen in size and rate, before inevitably give way to stillness.
The illusion of a solid surface resumes once more, but it's true composition cannot be dis-remembered.
I dip my pen again, this time deeper. Deep enough so that my hand breaks the surface and gives me pause. The sensation is ... unexpected. Were I dependent on touch alone, I would judge this thing to possess the properties of cool air. No displacement of any can be sensed, and yet sight and touch stubbornly combat and contradict one another.
Before I can begin to sort through this debate between senses; I find I've dipped my hand deeper still. It is disappeared now up to my wrist. My eyes have lost all sign of it, but my hand feels as though it has simply entered into air. I've never held a cloud, but I imagine this to be similar ... my wrist follows in the expedition, shortly preceded by my forearm and then the rest, until I am shoulder deep.
"How far do you go." I wonder aloud.
Impulsively I fling my body in. Still clutching the sides I find myself waist deep. I feel the force of buoyancy, but none of its usual accompaniments. No weight nor pressure, no wetness nor displacement, simply the reassuring hand that promises to aid in floating me up should I ask for it.
I sink to my chest and still, there is no promise of a bottom.
"How far do you go?" I re-utter to this thing. 
One could toss a pebble, but then a pebble does not return. People do, if they do... but they must first let go the edge ...
I am up to neck now and I like to think I've made a decision.
As I surrender the last grasp of solid ground, I take a breath. I then give over to decent.
Once more my words are said allowed and it is my voice that carries them ... but something else now asks the question:
"How far do you go?"

Angsty Hyperbole on being shy (I never had myspace or live journal...)

I didn't say “hello,” to you.
You don't know who you are (unless you do).
But to those who know me (and if you know you're you then you likely do)
Know that I know that that was rude.

I don't mean to be rude.

But understand, any avoidance in this instance, was on the insistence of a recently and quickly coronated coronary spoiled little shit, 

One who sits in my chest cavity craving candy and cuddles.
One who, when asked “why?” answers with “because.”
A blood pumping brat with the two word vocabulary lub and dub.
I thought we'd gotten rid of the kid, but no one else would take him, so he stays.

It isn't that I'm given pause by what this monosyllabic matriarch says,
It's not in the how or what of what he says that stops me
It's his silence that shocks me
into
stillness.

Monarchy is dumb,
I'm gonna mince metaphors:

I'm the band and he's the drummer.
He's the drummer who incognito, infiltrated the heirarchy of the whole band,
By intentionally skipping one b-b-b-beat while the song was playing,
Staying the sound from starting and ending or upending the next verse that we rehearsed,
But then that lousy little lub-dub drummer made his maestro cue: One. Two. ONE! ...
...
...?

Is the silence intended or did the band just stop playing?
Ask the drummer: It was you.

If I had stayed- if I had attempted a word as big and as little as a greeting;
A skipped beat would repeat to become another
And another and another, until the whole of the entirety of my self till now, till upto to be, would be broken.
You would have broken me.
Three skipped beats could kill me
And then what would there be left for music for me?

So I weighed that against this:
I don't mean to be rude,
But I don't want to die from being too close to not close enough to you.
Even if the drummer in me, in a moment, was convinced
You're worth the whole band breaking up over.
I couldn't, so I didn't.

So instead, I'm rude.

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.