Thinking Out Loud

I’m getting my teeth cleaned when an Ed Sheeran song plays over the sound system.

Suddenly, I’m no longer in the dentist’s sterile office but now in the front row of an Ed Sheeran concert, getting dental work.

I barely hear Sheeran sing “Thinking Out Loud“ as the dentist’s Cavitron scrapes between my teeth with a sonic whine that winces my face into a grimaced mess.

There’s this hipster dude next to my dentist’s chair. Between sips of PBR, he looks at me and mutters, “Dentophobe.”

He’s right. I’m an absolute wreck at the dentist. I’m taken by anxiety like a tightrope walker at an ingrown toenail summer camp.

As Sheeran sings, “We found love right where we are,“ I realize that’s not me at the moment.

But at least when I finish my appointment, I’ll manage a clean smile.

The Rush and Raw Wonder

Time doesn’t fit quite like it used to, getting short in the sleeves and tight around the neck.

Add to that, reality’s cataleptic slot machines spitting out slug-nickel dreams while epiphanies suffering from allergies have lost their voice.

Here is the memory that holds a lost friend’s ashes, the guitar that sings a city’s dying streets, the incense that burns away time with the sweetest scent.

Think of all the joys and sorrows that have fountained through us:

the rush and raw wonder of hope’s acceleration in the blood.

While we may wonder where love goes when it leaves, we know what it feels like when it arrives.

The Sky Will Be You, And You Will Be Sky

Just a little while ago, the sky dropped some LSD on a dare from Timothy Leary‘s ghost.

Things should get interesting soon.

Boundaries will blur. The sky will be you and you will be sky.

Dogs’ howls will be blue. Kids will ride fluffy cloud bikes.

The sky will feel the color of your car starting, it will smell the sound of your deepest emotions.

Its immense alpha rhythms will be reduced to rhythms of sidewalk songs people will hum while strolling through their day.

If any bad trips occur, angel medics will be on standby, ready to offer the sky soothing prayers and songs.

Perhaps the sky’s altered state will provide some psychotherapeutic treatment for these United States—

each of us dressed in sunbeams, riding thunderbolt electric buses, and safely exploring the terrain of our off-the-rails space.

What I’ve learned from the ghost at the door

Logic cards me at the door of my brain, wondering if I have the right ID to enter my own thoughts.

Either that, or I keep getting parking tickets when remaining stuck on one idea for too long.

Sometimes my longitude and latitude get tangled in a meandering blues with no direction home.

At least I know enough to never allow a ghostwriter to pen my life story.

News of the World

Today, the world got a hernia from lifting all its weight.

World thought it was used to all the heaviness but then thought twice.

So much war, political corruption, water contamination, and deep fake reality.

The world doesn’t worry about which sock goes on which foot or whether the chicken or the egg came first.

It just considers matters like climate change, poverty, human rights violations, and so much willful ignorance.

The world wonders if there’ll ever be a day when peace learns how to read. 

Some have wings made of money

Others have black cats and broken mirrors in their blood.

Some have manholes for mouths.

Others speak in syllables of spark and serenity.

Some have nests of brightly burning light bulbs behind their eyes.

Others are strangers in the countries of their own skin.

But all of us share in this joy, this struggle, this sorrow, this life. 

Bullet Season

When mass shootings are coming at us quicker than another blue Monday.

When America’s immigrant soul has been hijacked by racist nativists’ bigoted intentions.

When we’ve become desensitized, hate bureaucratized.

When our peace signs are mistaken for Tech 9s.

When weapons are more readily available than clean drinking water.

When all this gun violence can’t be wished or prayed away—

that’s when we’re living in the season of the bullet where no flesh is safe.

So many memory bones ago

there was cricket symphony teenage night swim summerbliss, when life was young and we were younger.

Back when the moon would fingerpaint borrowed and beautiful light across the night sky.

When emotions were a rush of IV love drip, and not yet a teardrop in the eye of later years.

So many songbirds have hymned and whistle-bopped bombs of hypnotic melodies since those days.

I wish I could take one of those rarer, more magical melodies and offer it to you now—

here is to whatever troubles you, whatever wounds your spirit in a thousand different ways.

May this birdsong remind you that all that is feathered can help you rise above the grief.

It may take a while, but you will get there. 

Maneater

What I first believe is someone in serious distress is actually a tussle-haired twenty-something rollerblading down the street, wailing Hall & Oates, “Maneater.”

Life can be odd like that:

what I first believe to be gunfire is an angry party clown stuffing balloon animals into a garbage can.

What I think is the first light of the apocalypse is just a beach bonfire.

Sometimes, I’ve been known to create similes in stretch pants that expand too far beyond their intended borders.

Other times, I misplace the letter ’s’ and exit instead of exist.

Many life lessons I’m still learning.

Like how a complex sentence can repent and whittle itself down into a simple, Hello.

7 a.m. smilies

It’s like a pocketful of keyholes with a place to call home;

like a tree that pulls up its roots and goes for a walk;

like wild horses galloping through our mouths and the words come easy;

like luck falling all around us;

like a thousand-fold joy;

like being strapped to an IV of Let It Be;

like making peace with the ghosts of good intentions;

like a soothing breath dance moving us from one moment to the next;

like a beautiful dream drawn on the walls of a sleeping mind…