"Winter" - inspiracyNow.com

The Winter Collection

Table of Contents

Black Winter

A welcome wind breathes cool relief on the blurs of brownish dead leafs left by the heat of this Texas summer. Air thick with weightless sneezes and coughs, the season's changing is reflected only in the increased sales of kleenex and allergy pills. But we raise a glass to the setting sun and find comfort in soft ambient moonlight. Now is the time for music's embrace: the hour of laughter, lushes, and lovers. Night belongs to the young and loud, and the world to thinkers and dreamers. So let's scorch the sun and live in black winter 'cause this night's too great to end. The frozen wastes would suit me fine, the layers of ice matched by my layered clothing. But our Texas sun still rises hot this Fall, leaving me in hopeful suspense of an approaching winter.

Acute Viral Cardiopharyngitis

Coffee coughed phlegm and wadded Kleenex
littered on the carpet below the trashcan rim.
Green with envy, kept in the pocket of your 
favorite pair of faded American Eagle jeans.

Scarves wrapped over your red, running nose,
stuffed up from the same old common cold.
Honey-cough-drop flavored post-nasal drip
slipping down the back of your irritated throat.

Ointment, lip balm, gloves, boots, and hats
coat our shivering discomforts for only so long.
Watering eyes will still sting in the bitter breeze,
chapping your nose, your lips, and even your heart.

Come on; let’s make this Christmas really merry
and divorce our bodies from this damned viral hell.

Nocturn(e) on 83 North

Drifting in 
and out; 
Eyes searching for 
the tracks of cars 
ahead. 
One o’clock in 
the morning; The road slick with ice.
To be so warm in 
a storm like this seems blasphemous, sitting hot in 
the midst of God’s frozen fury.
Stiff fingers tensed around 
the curve of 
the wheel, cautiously speeding within 
the lines 
below;
The only company comprised of 
slumber’s companion, asleep in 
the passenger’s seat 
beneath 
winter coat blankets.

Headlights and pictures 
b
l
u
r
past as we drive.
Your head hangs low like a guitar around my neck,
a deadweight pulling on 
my every thought and action. No longer played in 
the fashion of 
half a year ago, when held in 
the hands of youth’s inspiration.

In this hour of revolution, where do the morals lie?
New aged thinking preaches valid ideals and conduct,
but what of the godly tradition that bred their life?
Our nations will stand divided like the lanes on this road.

Glass ice streets roll beneath the weight of snow tires,
sliding to the right and losing traction: we'll slip into a sleep.
We will hear the echoing voice of fervent agony cry,
"Get up, and pray that you may not enter into temptation."

The Fault

Winter dawns but its days are warm,
A listless mood its passing's formed,
Over which a blanket's been laid,
Allowing God in hearts to fade.
Here rests the fault of humankind.

A golden-orange glow here emits,
Burning low by finger tips,
Confined within a door-shut car,
Searing closed these opened scars.
Here rests the fault of counting time.

Meaning is lost without a map,
And patience is running its final lap,
Redundance wreaks the daily stride,
As behind this glass the problems hide,
My words on paper and spirals flood,
The thoughts and meanings are in my blood,
They play out, my life is my word,
Singing a song that can now be heard.

Night’s Figurines

The moon’s weak rays
Draw outlined trees
Against the cloud filled sky

The beams of light
Through trees they fight
Reach out to touch his eyes

Breathed vision cast
By a source so vast
Gives birth to a scene unknown:

A boy’s sad face
Whose only embrace
Is the cold cement below

The constant roar
Is just once more
The falling of the rain

But each drop splashed
Is another dream smashed
Till nothing will remain

Smells of earth
And wet clumped dirt
Are carried on the wind

It’s icy cold
But it gets so old
Being out like this again

Dark silhouettes
Make marionettes 
Of the shadows from above

They move in slow
And set aglow
The faults behind his bluff

These cool affairs
Rid his despair
He’s found uncomfortably calm

Content and at ease
He gets up from his knees
Now, with a new aplomb

Left darkness’s scenes
And night’s figurines
To carry on alone

Changed through and through
With feelings anew
That he could never have known.

Now Boarding Group 3

Perfect, smooth, and tan.
Your legs pointing down to your red painted toenails.
Your eyes are caught in the book on your lap,
Mine to the turquoise skirt wrapped around your hips,
Or is it teal? It’s one of those colors nonetheless.
Glancing past me to the TV news,
High speed chase; the suspect shot and killed.
With desensitized American apathy, you turn back to your book,
And I back to my writing.

Pensive, observing, and retrospective.
You’re shrugged forward, writing your mind and eyes.
Hesitant and purposeful. We’re mirrored in work.
You’re watching the world with the pen in hand,
Atop your passport and sheathed boarding pass.
Hands folded, legs still, head moving always.
Not a thing will pass you and me in this airport.

Soon we’ll all be speeding down the runway,
Lifted away from the earth’s heavy pull,
The weight of our lives still holding us to our chairs.
Lips parted, baseball cap pulled down, leg bouncing,
And a hundred bodies breathing.

The two of you next to each other, but not knowing.
My eyes from your ass to his backpack.
My number called, I pass you both,
And I’ll be damned if we ever meet again.

Out An Airplane Window

From here, the clouds cast shadows on the veined and spotted Texas earth that outline their definite shape. Not a dragon or puppy dog; just dark paint splatter peppering the dry ground like a fourteen-year-old's embarrassing acne breakout on his first day to high school.

Looking down on top the gold and grey clouds, a sea of irregularity spans out to eternity. It's a blooming garden of wonder; fruits and herbs reaching up to the open space above.

Civilization seems a rash on the once natural skin that made up this land.

Ballad of our Insecurities

Like your nails pulling 
sharply down the skin of my back, 
the focused point of this needle
scratches finely along the 
carved divots of the vinyl 
in your bedroom. 

Its rotating plastic holds
a melody that has accompanied 
your intermittent appearances 
in my life; 
the inconsistent scratches 
on the delicate surface of solid sound. 

Tripping over a speck of dust, 
the crescendoed chorus 
becomes staccato, 
shortly allowing 
seconds of sounds 
to escape the 
pulses of speakers. 

These curt spurts are the glimpses 
I catch of you on your merry-go-round love. 

I sit anxiously on my porcelain steed, 
riding the circle patiently to greet 
your smile when you pull into view. 

Together we round each other on 
an endless collage of flashing lights
and synthesized music. 

Our eyes meet momentarily 
through the herd of galloping horses, 
but in our brief connection, 
a mutual fear is traded 
through the troubled nightmares 
weíve both acknowledged to 
reign over our sleep. 

The painful dreams that 
foresee the downfall of our song. 
The dreams that wake me 
in the night as I blindly 
grope in the dark for my guitar. 

Desperately channeling the 
foreign thoughts into jumbled 
and nervous chords,
countless nights have heard 
the presence of frustrated piano 
and guitar riffs that have been 
discarded on account of simplistic flaws. 

Every note played from my 
unconfident fingers falls 
short of the imagined symphony 
that has installed itself on the 
spiral of the 45 that still spins endlessly 
next to your bed. 

It ís the record that plays your 
teary eyed kisses and my skeptical 
submission to your arms, but we don't 
dare lift the needle from its track. 

So on may the song play, 
and on may this record sing us
the ballad of our insecurities.

Spiraled Collection of Pages

In a silent desperation to depart myself from this room, I revisit this spiraled collection of pages. This cycle of fast vs. slow is seemingly never ending, pointing my eye to an inward source. Patience to the monotonous system that objectively rules my life is growing thin and a rebellion of night-long fixes dawns on a reoccurring time. 

Here I stand: I'm doing twenty-five over the limit and I still feel like a saint, a warning that speed may breach to thirty.

Varsity Status

Sporting this jersey like a medal of honor:
a show of immoral conduct bound in duct tape
around the eyes of those who have heart.

To settle this score I know what you must do
but we both see that together we lack the strength
to drop our stubborn pride and follow through.

Four track mix down to a single acoustic strum.
A ballad stripped of accompaniment and passion,
leaving us alone with the same old melody to hum.

Strings vibrate a sound to the pitch of my life:
a minor progression that mirrors our digression.
If this continues, we're bound to miss the button.

So we're at the same game, but sitting on the bench.
I'm ready to play, just let me keep these training wheels,
I can't just let go as easily as I once believed i could.

If tomorrow's a new day, why does today feel like the end?
Sunrise at 7:15 and sundown at 4:30; I'll never see the light.
Just the florescent shine of a life without you next to me.

Soft Kisses Fall

Cyclops eyes and whispered lines fall fast upon a plagued character-building his role recumbent in a well watched venue: a scene fit for an eighty's film.

Music drifting.
Red light burning.
Casual conversation.

Existence mirrors strands of words to the building blocks of life: C to G and A to T, a story spelled out in our DNA 'till every move and every place becomes written out on a page...(Much like this). The protagonist plays antagonist, a true Shakespearean blunder, under which conciseness comprehends his life is word. In the saga told throughout his head, the chronology is yet unaware of the placing of time: beginning, middle, or end? Darker grows the plot with every ticking second on the clock, and apathy grows steadily within the character's heart.

In writing these words (to which I am enslaved) I realize the strange connection to key-work stories, and now lose sight of sanity.

The character strongly embraces a song from the past and lets out a long with held anxiety as delicate, soft kisses fall on his memories from the day before.

Confessional

Silence is fiction. Even here among ancient wood,
Winds hiss, waters push, squirrels cry, and I breathe.
Supplies strewn on this campground like my Nintendo back home,
Controller cords to ropes for this twenty-four hour solo.
Think. Let the past replay on the tarp ceiling, every day repeated.
I am alone and I am thinking.
I am thinking about life.
I am thinking about my mistakes.
I wish I hadn’t done that…
I wish I hadn’t thunk.
(I wish I hadn’t lived.)

ADDistraction

Disarray reigns ruthless on rumination,
A panoply of progressing perception en route
To-

Another Today

I oft' long to snuff the day's light-
To hasten its ever-dragging close.
Eventide-ease awaits my grace
By the faithful gyre of our globe.
The day's spent in suspense,  yet
My longing, aft dusk's advent, dies not.
For this evening is the comings' eve:
And oh, the possibilities of another today.

Winter