cherokeeghostwriter

[cherokeeghostwriter]

mouse or rabbit

I’m as quiet as a mouse. - a mouse that’s really trying to be quiet :/ tippy toeing around on your poems/pages. little cheese flavored mouse prints meandering about.     and yes, I see the traps,      unintentional as they are. pitfalls of ineludible empathy,       hair triggered to capture the unwary peruser. you’ll never take me like that, snared like a fat little rabbit struggling, with my own feelings.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

i'd rather say beautiful things, than say things beautifully.

give me a crooked line that limps toward meaning, faltering -in the attempt.

i don’t need clever, i need sincere.

words that -tremble to unfold.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

after the blink

i always thought i’d know the moment, the exact second when i’d cross some invisible line, and become the version of myself i've been pursuing-

but nothing happened. no trumpet call. no enlightenment. -just me again. still here. still circling. like a bug trapped between panes of glass, only one of them is me, the other, a reflection of who you think i am.

i don’t lie, exactly, i just leave things out. the way some people skip meals when they’re too tired to chew. that’s how i’ve handled the truth. just… left it untouched on the plate.

there was a better me once. he wrote poems in margins, and saved voicemail messages because the sound of a voice meant something. he believed in things, or at least he believed in believing.

i don't know where i left him. somewhere between a goodbye, and an empty room.

and now? now i live in the pause between explanations and silence. the door is open. the lights are off. and if you blink- you won’t hear the sound of me leaving.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

the vase

i never sit down thinking, now’s the time for poetry. no. it’s more like a slow leak- a thought drips out, then another, then a goddamned puddle on the floor.

so i gather it up- the scraps, the cigarette ends, the busted shoelaces of meaning- and start sorting. it’s a mess. it’s always a mess.

i try to make something decent- like arranging roadkill into a parade. or flowers -sure, we’ll call them flowers. but they’re bent, with missing petals, some still stink of last week’s rain. and yet i put them in the vase.

every time i do, there’s always that one that doesn’t belong. a tulip with a knife in its stem. a daisy that screams. a weed that reminds me of you and your unbearable forgiveness.

i try to pull it out but somehow, you like it there. you say it makes the whole thing honest.

and god help me- i believe you. i leave it in. we call it art. we call it love. we leave it to rot on the table.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

So, this went past my house the other day. This is about a mile from me. it tracked north of me and took a bunch of stuff with it. luckily not my house.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

This planter has only had moss in it for years. Came outside the other day, and now there is this. does moss do this?

[cherokeeghostwriter]

soft as regret

somehow, i find myself in belgium, photographing chestnut trees.

not on purpose- not with a plan- but as if drawn, by some quiet gravity, to these narrow streets and onto this vacant square -shaded like a held breath.

i get lost, not dangerously so, just enough to forget what I was looking for -and there they are chestnut trees impossibly still blossoming, with all the time in the world.

i raise my camera, not to remember- but because something in me needs to hold what has already been expressed.

in may, they bloom. -and i bloom.

the shutter clicks soft as regret.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

I made a ring today, first time in a long while. I pulled out the good stuff, and made it for a server friend of mine here in Alabama who is struggling right now. I hope all of you had a great mother's day. Hug yourself for me.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

This.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

adrift

i have a vague impression where my timbre used to breathe a vestige, for an appetite a nuance left, of need i have a thread hung loosely laying lithe along my skin a tentative touch remembrance that aches to live, again

[cherokeeghostwriter]

[cherokeeghostwriter]

I emptied out the bin again. it said "drafts" at the top, and I poked around in what was there- looking for something, the same something I failed to find before.

things last for a much shorter time than you think. it's one of those things that you find out too late, even if someone is kind enough to warn you.

I'll be 62 in a couple of days. there's no slowing that down. I suppose I should be grateful to have lived so long. but it's flown past, have you not been listening?

[cherokeeghostwriter]

Silence end

I would return to you, if skies unfurled the chartless way- but dim are the lines where oceans lie, and night consumes the day.

She waits beyond the water’s bend, where stars and compass fail- where dream-lit shores in silence end, and faith commands the sail.

I’ve walked where hollowed echoes call, through sanctums worn and wide, where saints in stone, lie cold and still, as memory subsides.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

stardust

whittling my desires down. culling unnecessarily. losing fingers in the process, -it's, a process -it's a close cut to the quick, desperation dodging despair.

i'm all that's left. well, me and these unusable puzzle pieces. these snippets, cast as past lives, and perilous seas. my conceit, sprinkled with stardust.

what is it about a blank page, that troubles me so. where do all of these words come from? more importantly, where do they go. a bit or a byte. a feeling converted into a digital signature, as blank as my expression, and half as legible.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

I must go, for the fog is rising

These are my last words, at least, until there are more. -if there are more. all of my words are my last. apparently. after some thought.

I should be prepared. (get prepared) come up with something clever to say on my deathbed, a dying declaration. something profound would be best, but all of the good ones, have already been taken.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

i've been avoiding what's left of my ability to care. thoughts like birds wildly flapping their way to the page, have been reduced to a slight fluttering sensation somewhere around my middle. lately, i feel i should apologize to anyone who stumbles across any of this morose shit. "write what you know" well, this is what i know currently. i've got a garage full of mismatched memorabilia and dusty odds and ends that i can't seem to cut loose of. if someone were to try and figure out who i was using only the contents of my garage, there's no telling what sort of inane profile they might come up with. i console myself with the knowledge that nobody ever really knows anyone else. so it's a push. i have every computer that i've ever owned going all the way back to an Apple Macintosh 128. if you don't know what that is, then you're neither a computer nerd, nor an old jackass like me. i've almost thrown the entire lot away a dozen times, but i could never bring myself to pull that particular trigger. i get attached to things. i'm an overly sentimental person. i hang on to items that most people would have never thought twice about keeping. sometimes at night i think about the fact that, when i'm gone, all of the things i have kept as a reminder of old friends, and lost loves, will transform back into nothing. just an old eccentric guys trash.

-he must have been a hoarder.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

for granted

still waiting to grow up. it could happen any day now. or maybe it never will, would anyone notice?

i'm still a child at sixty two, ignoring all of the blaring signs of age. slowly becoming less able, with the unwelcome need, to catch my breath.

the world has gotten away from me, -all of this casual cruelty. i'm unwillingly placed and categorized, staring back at you, between the years.