Broken

I apologize for not writing here. I really do. My mind has been thoroughly distracted. My teacher told us never to make excuses for ourselves, but I feel the need to and since this is mine, I shall.

A good, very good, friend of mine went missing last weekend. And I spent the entire week worrying myself to exhaustion. Then this weekend, they found is his body in the lake they supposed him to have drowned in. I miss him terribly. He was such an excellent friend and a good, good man.

I've heard it said, that when one goes through something like this, writing is therapeutic. I believe that, but only to an certain extent. When something sad happens to me, I do want to write until I can't anymore. Express myself until I feel like I adequately got my feelings across, no matter how abstract they truly are. But there's only so torn up I can be before it becomes impossible for me to write. And this week... I've been too torn up.

Think of it as having a leg injury. When you strain your leg muscle, it hurts a lot. It's tight and painful and very distracting. But you're supposed to stretch your leg and exercise the leg and the muscle so get it to heal faster. But if you break your leg, they stick it in a plaster case, to forbid you from moving it, and tell you not to walk on it.

Usually, I have a mildly strained heart. But this week and today, I have a broken heart.

Baseball

Like a baseball game with no umpire
A one man team against
An endless number of opponents
Infinitely stronger and faster than they are
They throw fast balls
Curve balls
Curving fast balls which
will not be caught by the catcher
Nor will they make contact with the bat
Instead
They will smash into the batters face in
A sparkling display of bloody fireworks
The blood will ooze and pour from
The nose and the eyes will swell shut
And with eyes no longer able to see more
and more of this
Vicious pitches will grace the face of the one-man team
continuously
The stitched bombs pound into the flesh until
The batter collapses onto the plate
Wondering why no one ever called
the pitcher on their strategy and why
They never got the Walk they deserved
they will lay there
Wondering
Their eyes swollen shut and their face
covered in blood so
Thickly
They will hardly be able to breathe if at all and
Maybe
If they aren't careful
They will suffocate on their own misery
and end the game there
Instead of in the dugout

Daddy

I remember childhood,
How we shared things of good.
Cheeto puffs you hid away,
I prefer puff ones to this day.
And strawberries we would grow and eat,
Those strawberries were always quite a treat.
You always strumming your guitar,
Or driving me in your handsome car.
I also remember awful days,
We wish had been spent in better ways.
Through the ceiling on your birthday (dang),
When I hit a parked car with a bang.
I thought that you’d be mad with a fury,
But you helped me, fraught with worry.
For awesome things you always do,
For all the times that you came through,
I’m saying, “Daddy, I love you.”

Chairs

His heart beat, a line,
It bounces and beeps.
His breathing, forced,
A tube does the work.
I sit like a chair
In a chair, looking at
Him, in a chair.
Glazed eyes, curled fingers.
He is motionless.
Glazed eyes, open fingers,
I am shaking.

Smoked Ham

It was too hot to be real. Everything seemed to be melting. Waves of heat distorted even the hand in front of my face. It was just too hot.

Everyone was swimming. Or eating ice cream. Or hiding indoors. Not a soul was seen without some means of staying cool. It would have been suicide otherwise. My sister could be found in her room, asleep on her bed, stripped to her underwear. A fan attached to the wall above her blew cooler air down. For me, a soda and my own fan sufficed. I cowered in front of the TV, shirking the windows and keeping all the lights off. The news blared, but I only half listened, my eyes glazed over and my face shining.

"Traffic on 85 north is bumper to bumper due to a grass fire, which has blocked off almost half a mile of freeway..."

I was so glad to not be driving.

"The Giants game was postponed when half the Bay Area team and almost three-quarters of the Arizona Diamond Backs all suffered from heat stroke..."

Even the people from the desert can't take it? Sheesh.

"Farmers and scientists are baffled by the sudden, and almost complete decimation of domestic pigs. Earlier this afternoon, farmers across all of the west coast discovered entire herds of pigs dead in their pens. Only the herds kept outside were wiped out, and scientists say the cause of death... was from being burned alive."

Come again?

"Scientists believe all of the pigs kept outside of shaded areas were actually cooked by the extreme temperatures, and the direct uninterrupted exposure to the sunlight."

Oh my...

"So keep your pets and children indoors and cool, folks. And have some ham for dinner."

To Train a thief

My room mate wanted to become a cat burglar. That's kind of crazy, isn't it? I thought so too. She wanted to be one, so she "trained" herself. She had a house key, like all of us did, but she never used it. She always climbed through a window or somehow got the hinge off the door and inside. Once she got a screwdriver (I do not know from whence it came) and she unscrewed the wall attachment for a chain lock. Another time, she removed the screen from the smallest window in our bathroom and climbed in. I wonder if she still does.

Repeat: history

He decided to teach her how to skateboard. He wanted to spend time with her, and he liked to skateboard. So she needed to learn. In teaching her, she held onto his shoulders and hands. She clutched at them, actually, terrified to falling. But he always caught her and she was okay.

Interestingly, the last time they had been that close was when they were in a play together, back in high school. She played some girl who sprains her ankle and he played her boyfriend, who carried her off stage. And here they were again, months into summer vacation, close together.

She caught on pretty quickly. After a half hour, she was balancing well and pumping even better. She could steer and turn and stop. He was heartily impressed, he even took pictures. So, a test was in order, he felt.

He took her to a parking structure. Up to the top they went, and then they went all the way down the 5 stories. She was nervous, and jumped off every time she went "too fast". It was kind of ridiculous. Down they went, to the second floor. And as they neared the bottom, she stumbled and made to stop the board. But she caught her foot oddly, and fell, smashing against the concrete.

She howled in pain, stifling it moments later in shame. But he rushed to her side and helped her up. She couldn't stand on her leg and tried hard not to whimper, but the whimpers came all the same. He picked her up, then, and carried her to the elevator to return to the their cars. And as he carried her, her bruised arm around his neck, he realized he was carrying her as he once had for the play. And as he remembered what came next in the play, he looked down at her and kissed her.

Discotech

I haven't seen her for two years. I've been gone for two years and I come back to find... nothing. She's gone. No one knows where, and no one can really remember when she left. I could explode, I'm so angry at everyone. How could they not remember? She's unforgettable! But they seem to have forgotten. Curse them.

My friends-- my "crew" as they call themselves-- wants to go clubbing. I'm not really up for it. I used to before I left, but now I just don't want to. I want to find her. I want to FIND her. Facebook? MySpace? Will she be there? I emailed her. Is it the same one? I don't know! And I don't want to go dancing. But I'm going anyway.

I hate these club scenes tonight. It's too hot. Everyone is too close. The music is too loud. And I don't know anyone. My friends don't even seem the same. I feel like I've changed and they're the same. I feel older than them. Do they even care? Not at all.

She's back. I can feel it in the air. It's changed, shifted. I just know she's here. Where? WHERE? I'm frantic now. I'm pushing sweating, moving bodies away. They glimmer as they part-- a shining sea of flesh. I'm Moses, parting my Red Sea to the promised land. And, just like the bible, as the waters part, I see her.

In her group of friends. The same girls I know. The ones who didn't know where she went. They'll pay later. But there she is. Dancing with her hips. I'm drawn to her as she moves, her arms are perfectly moving to the beat. Her hair is curled and long, glinting in the colored lights. I'm behind her now, following her movements. I know she can sense me, her movements have changed. Slightly forced. She's nervous to know who's there, but not willing to stop dancing. I could laugh, she's so hardcore of a dancer.

But as the song continues to a sharp beat change, she turns suddenly and faces me. And then she stops dancing. I know her though, so I walk back. I hold out my hands, and as the song climaxes into the chorus, she follows my cues. And we dance. Our bodies were always meant to dance together, they always knew how to follow each other. And it's never changed and never will. Close, but not touching, knowing what will happen if we do. We're making it up, but it's fluid motion.

And the bridge comes, slowing and calming down. She slows with it, but I'm still moving too quickly and we collide. And when she jumped back, I grabbed her waist and pulled her to me.

Even after the bridge ended, and the last chorus was echoing, we still stood there giving each other a proper greeting.

Advantage of size

I took my normal route to school, that day, and noticed an unusual number of Semi-Trucks on the road. "Very strange", I thought after twenty minutes, "That there would be so many so close together."

It was true. There were so many, I didn't see any other cars. And they were insanely close together! Tighter and tighter they pulled, until I suddenly worried they'd dash me against the sides each other, so I scurried off the freeway and onto the normal roads. But there, things were no different.

Semi-trucks everywhere! I mean it, they were truly on every stretch of road I came near. They were the only cars there too! I realized I was the only non-semi-truck out here, and I became very nervous all of the sudden. I felt like a small infant trying to walk through a room of blind adults. I knew I'd get painfully messed up if I tried to venture out further. It was horrific to imagine.

Lemmings

Lemmings have a nasty
Nasty
tendency to follow the crowd.
So, could it be said that
in a world of lemmings, they're only
as good as their most famous people?

That,
were the most popular
teenage
lemming in the school to commit
suicide,
murder,
sin
all the students would too?
Teachers?
Families?
A chain reaction I think.

Could it be that
we live in this lemming world?
Sometimes it seems
that everyone follows the crowd.
"Fit in"
they say. I stand on the roof and sing
my favorite song to them.
"Don't do that, it's not acceptable"
they shout.

Well,
I'm not a lemming.