Spring

Spring

He took his first breath on a late spring afternoon, somewhere between the rains and the scorching sun surrounded by green stalks of corn reaching toward heaven and tangled raspberry bushes wandering along a rusty chain linked fence.
The air hung thick with humidity from an approaching storm, making each breath damp and heavy like long forgotten photographs thoughtfully placed atop a kitchen table like tarot cards.
One is of a child posing uncomfortably in those 1970s clothes filled with too much orange and plaid.  Another is of two brothers hugging much to the delight of their mother, but to the dismay of their individual fathers. And then, there is that photograph of a smiling little boy with a beer can in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other.
Those memories linger for a moment, but disappear almost unnoticed as small pieces fly out of car windows in the Arizona desert, or are dropped on the floor of a bus station bathroom in Sinaloa on trips across continents.
Some drown in the heaving Pacific after being swept away on the winds of a typhoon. Others are simply pushed to the side by the excitement of youth and the ambitions of adulthood.
As if the transition from sweet bloom of spring to the heavy heat of summer would be eternal.

Sweeper

Sweeper

Daniel wakes at 5:30 in the morning, urinates, and brushes his teeth.
He puts on a ragged t-shirt, a fading pair of jeans, socks, a pair of boots he bought with borrowed money.
His lunch box has what he can afford: a baloney sandwich, an apple, and some water.
Sitting on the train he is invisible or maybe he just blends in so well that he is so ordinary that.
At work he places his lunch in the gangbox and grabs his broom. Throughout the day we sweeps, going from room to room. Floor to floor.
Following directions, all the while focusing on his job, which is to sweep up the dust left behind by the other crews.
The tradesmen. The carpenters. The plumbers. The electricians. They have a future. They are essential, unlike Daniel who is expendable.
A common laborer with a broom sent to and fro to quietly sweep up the mess left behind. To sweep up the dust and dirt like so many lost souls fallen from materials that create impressive buildings where people will impress their friends with views of the bay or mountains.
Where they will watch fireworks from their balconies. Where they will host parties with wine and cheese. Where the rich will vacation in style without the hassle of pieces of wire or slivers of metal framing to stick in the soles of their feet?
 Without fine powdered gypsum to get mixed into their cocaine because it has all been cleaned.
It has all been swept up off the once cluttered floors by the quiet apparition in dust-covered boots, his ashen soul lingering among the whispers.

Time

Time

The arrow of time twist and turns through our lives, weaving a tapestry of days gone by, far off memories, dreams to be realized.

The wonderful entanglements of children's voices bouncing off floors, their hands waving in sibling rivalries, their bodies splashing into the pool of life, offering bystanders the overspray of innocence on a hot afternoon. 

The purr of a cat, her head nuzzled between the sun beaten skin of a weakening neck and a steadfast jaw clenched in dutiful silence while dreams of snatching birds in mid-flight waltz across breaths and heartbeats twitching claws that dig into papery flesh. 

The neglected dog paces back and forth until he loses all hope and refrains from so much as an attempted illusion of freedom away from the sweltering, flee infested patch of dirt that has become his home, his prison, his uneventful desert. 

The dreamer. The artist. The philosopher. All stand with their souls slightly hunched over, leading with a shoulder more in non-committal defense than any clearly defined plan of attack against a world that loses ideas as easily as people in the ebb and flow of desire and survival. 

The needle works its way under the skin and into the bone, down to the spongy marrow soaking up sunrises and mythologies, songs of ancestral feet migrating with the seasons, the forgotten last breath of Lazarus, the transcience of an echo. 

This, we willfully hold in our hearts, but the arrow of time is dismissed as nothing more than the shadow of passing stranger. 

Morning

Morning

Morning comes tip/toeing across oceans

Across forests and golden plains

Deserts and Purple mountains

Across rooftops 

Into apartment complexes

Into tenements

Into trailer parks

In through windows

In between hallways

Between blankets on beds

On the floor

On the cold concrete

Bringing the light of safety

Survival of the night

Hope

Hopefully.