Cloud Dweller

rain drops drip on my skin,

seep into my pores and i am one with the clouds

isn’t that where you said you live?

with the dreamers and the believers and the planes

taking people to and from vacations and loved ones,

funerals and births, work and hiatus

lives worth living and well...

rain drops drip on my skin

seep into my pores and moisten the truth,

soften the pages of my notebook

where i teach myself how words can become bandages

just like a song can still heal even as the band ages

and how the same song can change it’s meaning with the tempo

and i am bracing myself for the fast forward button that has been hit

on my life upon the sounding of the alarm this morning.

I am nakedly jumping in

letting the rain drops drip on every inch of my skin

powerless against the waiting line

taking time’s hand in my own,

praying for a pardon

as he turns his check and sends me away

time is killing me, and i’m running out of ways to kill the time

i’m just helplessly waiting, waiting for the news

waiting for the letter, the decision, there is so much to lose.

in those moments before forcing my mind to go blank

i go back to the beginning

like the day it rained so hard i was convinced that all of philly would flood

and my flip flop attacked my toe as if the blood could make the sun return.

you let the soles of you feet touch the dirty concrete

every step of the the twelve block walk to the train station,

just to keep my blistered digit clean.

when we finally took coverage from the storm, you doctored me whole

despite your phobia of feet

and you said you must really like me

and i said that makes me happy.

for the rest of the week, my toe was black

but my cheeks were red from all your flattery,

yes, my toe was ugly but you,

have always been beautiful.

there are some things, that time just cannot change

i am a compilation of words inked on stacked pages

you are the weight, holding them close

stronger than a staple, more permeant than a binding

you keep me complete

and as the rain drops drip on my skin

and seep into my pores, i know it is you, my love

falling closer to me,

because it was you that said you live in the clouds

among the dreamers and the believers

and the more you fall, the more i faith i find in prudence,

the more faith i find in time.

Subway Stop Memories

I’ve been feeling so old lately

and in a sense, I always do

I can feel the wrinkle before it is formed

I can feel the gray whenever I can see it in the sky

and I wear the eleven o’clock news under my eyes

deep as the ocean, the color of bruises

blue and purple like the crook of the arm of the junkie sitting next to me

on the subway car

where wall street and the back street pay the same fair

to share the same air

and on occasion they even touch

rubbing shoulders and causing more friction

making the rich feel dirty

and the dirty feel used

I look down at all their feet

and I try to imagine the broken soled shoe on the man wearing the suit

and wonder if wearing it would give the papers he pushes some sympathy

I have a collection of pictures of strangers feet

the stiletto's, construction boots, high class shoes and nothing but dirty socks

because the subway, is the only small space where the classes are all in one place

and I look out the window into the intestines of the city I hold so dear

graffitied with the gospel of survival in a language I can barely read

but I connivence myself I understand

where the rats are digesting the garbage the we spit out

as i empty my pocket into a worn paper cup of a homeless man

and take out my pen and notebook and write nostalgia

about a place I once called home

where I used to play in the yard

with the broken fence because of that time playing ball,

and where my bike was stolen and returned,

the tree that was always in bloom just in time for my birthday

the couch where I had my awkward first kiss

to a boy who once watched his father, eased into the back of a police car

he loved me because I never poked fun if he cried

our break up was a surprise, even to me

and I was the one who decided it

some things just happen

my mouth said what I wanted before the rest of me realized it

which is why my past relationships are all resting peacefully

why I often times wanted to feel more than I was ever feeling

because my insides were squealing just like the subway car racing down the track

tripping me over the feet of strangers

on my way back from once again saying goodbye to you, lover

just a little too soon

and against better judgement

that’s when it hurts the most

the sky is burning up

in the colors of your love

and maybe that’s just the sunset

but the horizon looks like your eyes just as

I put you on the bus lover,

right after you held me the way I hold my words

tight and close, warming me slowly

learning me all over again,

memorizing our eternity

Convenience Store Romance

I remember the way you looked

outside the bus window when I finally arrived

Yes, I remember the way you shook with excitement

when I stepped onto the sidewalk

after the trip that was longer than it should have been,

I was in my wrinkled business best,

you in a tank top,

during one of your bouncy moods,

making the jaw in my mind drop.

And that first kiss,

I couldn’t resist the way you looked at me

and leaned in just a bit,

next to the hostess cakes and the hoagie assembly line

this first time was just the start of our convenience store romance

You’re Wawa, I’m Seven Eleven

Philly and New York

doomed to be rivals from the start

But the World Series is over

the Yankee’s won, but I swear I try not to poke fun

I could never put down the city that houses our youngest memories

Because I remember that time when I took you out shopping

and you were bored and cranky and well beyond tired

but we stumbled upon that diner and had a spontaneous date

where we shared a strawberry shake

and you smiled

you smiled as if I were the first midnight star you saw as a child

and you wished upon it to find a love that felt safer than a newborn feels

wrapped up in a mothers arms,

a loved that sounded more beautiful than the memory assigned wind chimes that sing in your mind

a love that you could always come back home to

and I was that wish manifested in front of you

the flesh and blood version of all you desire and hope for

and all yours,

yes I am all yours my love

for you are the sunshake which I drink from

when I am feeling weak,

the only lover I ever want to seek

Everything I could ever wish in one convenient place

Birthday

I am moving to a new city soon

and I wish I could gather my soon to be friends in a room

and plant the seed of who i was

so they can watch how i’ve bloomed

explain that I might not always be that brilliant flower

but that often i cower and hide in the bower,

and that I am a being of the breeze,

my strength comes from solar power

I want to draw pictures on the wall

so that I can show them all the ways I know I trip and fall,

break out the baby books and movie reels of memories

and let them take a look at every time I had to crawl

I want them to appreciate my past

not see it as an emotional cast, but as something my soul can outlast

for even when my darkest memories cloud cover my summer

I never surrender happiness and fly my flag at half mast

I want to make sure that my friends

know the difference when I say

I’m good

and I’m good.

I want them to now the difference between

the smile on my face and the smile in my eye

so that when it comes to the moment

when I feel I have to cry,

they aren’t the slightest bit surprised

unlike I will be on the day of my twenty first birthday

when they through me a party to celebrate

the last yearly day that can grant me rights

because everyone knows, after twenty one nothing else matters,

and on that night, I will drink from the cup of gratitude

laced with some I’m happy to be alive

even if I am still the only sober one at the bar

because then, it will be legal.

And that night, I’ll take each of my friends aside

and tell them how happy I am with the way they’ve bloomed

because each and everyone is a beautiful flower

and each and every one deserves a loving reminder

that no matter how dark a past, the sun is shinning

and no matter how bloody their knees have been,

everything’s healing

and if the day shall come, that they got knocked off their feet again,

I will be right next to them, kneeling.

Hot Chocolate

I wanna write, not work today

but the deadlines are inching closer

like the breadlines of the all the big cities

overflowing with homeless vets

just begging for a dollar and some respect

like the one I see outside seven eleven

who say oh thank heaven

when he sees me coming with a hot chocolate

as if it will save him from his snow covered coffin

and I go back to my fifteenth floor apartment

with my heat and my mac and my mattress

studying the words of poets and theorists

as if the difference matters

and I wonder if the one sippin’ his hot chocolate in the cold

feels more like a boy or man

I wonder if he remembers what it feels like to be the a son

of a father proud of his solider

or if his choices have just become the boulder

blocking the sun that shines on memories of his past life

did he ever fly a kite as a child?

who’s string was made up with dreams as he cast it to the wind

i wonder where his dreams begin and his reality starts

when did the seams begin to part?

Study break again,

it’s back down the elevator shaft and across the street and down the block

there he is, shivering in his hole filled socks

he see’s me and smiles

and I know just what he wants

I pour us both a cup

then I sit with him and talk

I ask him why he loves hot chocolate so much

and he smiled for a while

says it reminds him of his moms

says it reminds him of being a child

If I Were A Song

If I were a song

my heart would harp on birthing bumping basslines, head bobbing and feet stomping;

my steps would climb to a climactic comfortable crescendo

creating the rising desiring in all of us to give authorization to aberrations

and sanction the exploration of a world without insecurities as we simply glide gracefully or maybe goofy amongst our diligent daily dance partners.

See, if I were a song, my soul would murmur a mellow melody reminiscent of a modest holiday while happiness harmonizes humbly at the horizon

and my words...

oh my words like fireflies would faintly whisper the simple secrets of a fruitful life;

my words like the seeds surrounded by pulp ready to be picked, polished and planted in a poets garden, guarded by galumphing gargoyles while the tulips party

my words would be the smile upon which the verses lay aloft on the licked lips of the lyricist and with them

the chorus would be comprised of my countenance;

the turntabelist leaves scratches on the concrete

as ze tries to capture the autumn of my irises

the joyous djembes jam away, like babies beating beach buckets

amongst the summer sand shades of my skin

the pleasurable polyrythms pumped each word with its own personality like a winter snowflake flittering from the pulp of my lips,

the catchy calming quirky encouraging conversation of the tune, springs forth a showering invitation like my charming fickle freckles.

There would be a guitar riff of regrets,

a piano solo of sacred memories

and no falsettos since my song would settle for no less

then being sung by masses ze nestles with.

It would be a song that everyone could pair with

but there'd be no song to compare it with,

an audio anomaly all of its own.

But you see, i don't have to be a song because my life is a symphony.

It is already made up of music and rhythm,

everyday is a new verse,

every night calls forth the chorus,

every step is a new note

every year marks a new movement

and most of all each person in my life is a different instrument helping build an opus of optimism,

arranging the colors of my aura

without them i would be nothing more than a troubadour wandering the streets alone.

So if it were up to me I would spin the track back to when the earth was flat and dance on vinyl, so we could record our every step as the baseline still beats an undertone of gratitude for those who take the time to learn and perform and build up my symphony.

I thank you for taking the time to create with me.

And with one final great big gasping breath we blow our worries to the wind over the edge of the map

then play it all back

listening as our hearts beat in time with the track:

Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you for your love.

Thank you.