Revolution isn't that complicated

Let's start a revolution of smiles, a movement so unexpected and extraordinarily mundane that it will turn the world on its head.
Let's have a day where we smile at every single person we see, watch them stare back at us in awe because they can't remember the last time they saw a stranger smile.
Let's live a life where we forget the bad things, where no one needs to ask forgiveness because it's given unconsciously.
Let's have a friendship that makes people do a double take because it's real and uncorrupted by hidden agendas.
Let's reach out a thousand hands to a thousand of the needy in unison, so we can lean on the combined strength of all of us to pull them out of need.
Let's make a pact to do things for ourselves, not to prove something to someone else or to try and beat someone else.
Let's exist in a way that reflects our brotherhood of humans.

Dream Within a Dream

A chariot awaited
the girl with curly hair.
She placed her golden self upon the seat.
The world flashed-
color-
gray-
color-
until the third sky broke.

Distant laughter and forgotten happiness
plunged through the sunlight into her
memory.
She remembered,
she remembered!
There was a family,
not perfect, but potentially.
She remembered,
she remembered!
It was her fault they broke.

The break is too complete to heal-


And then I woke up.

I woke up crying and I told you about my nightmare disguised as a wonderland and your sad eyes made me believe you understood because that's what best friends do.

But it was a dream
within a dream,
because I woke up-
for real-
alone.

Carpe Diem [?]

My heart is beating as fast as I'm driving and the air is alive- how, I don't know. I scream and laugh and choke on the freedom but it's gone in a flash of lightening. The rain erased who I was and with my arms figuratively spread wide I embraced what might be.

It might be that I don't stop driving until I'm far enough away to never hear my name again. It might be that I spin off the rainslick road and give my body back to the dirt.

But what is is me, turning onto my dark street and turning the music down so I don't wake the neighbors.

Self-Portrait

I am a hodge-podge of odds and ends, a swirl of phrases from decades past and debris from the hurricane in my head. There is a father-me, a mother-me, and the objective me that philosophically ponders herself and the rest of the world from a cloud that I imagined.

I am a firm believer in the trustworthy until proven untrustworthy school of thought. Some call me naive, others an optimist. I, however, am a realist. My heart is so big it controls my brain and my eyes, unfortunately, are of the sad puppy dog persuasion. I enjoy walking in the heat but hate humidity. I am consistently inconsistent but somehow love routine. I am an oxymoron in the extreme, which might come from there being three people that are all me.

I will never stop believing I can help people in need and I frequently pick up trash, but don't go calling me a saint because more often than not I have something nasty to say or think.

I don't believe in small talk because I'd rather say words that mean something. I hate McDonald's and all it stands for and I am always wishing that I was not a middle-class white American, the ultimate in cliches.

I can read for hours and I sleep when I'm angry. It doesn't take much for me to absolutely love you and my guilty pleasure is boys who barely talk to me. Maybe I get a kick out of futility?

Here I sit, hoping I've painted you a moderately accurate self-portrait.

Feelings that turn galaxies

Staring at beauty with you by my side, you say, "How do you feel?" What a question. I open my mouth, but no sound escapes as my brain is still scrambling to locate my heart and squeeze out an answer. Now ask me that question again in reference to you and I could spin the world around with all the words I would say. Your patient eyes search for mine and it takes everything in me not to press my face into you and breathe. Instead I return my gaze to beauty and say, "Tell me what I should feel." My heart breaks as you sigh, "I can't."

When Life is Blurred

Human nature is an expert romanticizer. Tragedy becomes something to relive, life with you a fond memory. Somehow, the stark lines of reality are so blurred that a shining trombone brings me to a tearful smile. Somehow, I forget what life with you really was. Yelling, not crying, over spilled milk. Family game nights ending with slammed doors and wet pillows. Life with you was walking n already broken eggshells, because try as we might, we were wrong. Father's Day pictures were you in your old suit, frowning- us, showing desperate teeth and tense shoulders.

If I squint, the smiles seem real.

Unfortunately, when the lines are still blurred, cigar smoke and closed eyes have me envisioning a hiking trip where you made an effort. Where map-reading wasn't an ordeal. Meat on the grill brings me back to six years old, coming home from school to a smiling you making us dinner.

I can't run fast enough to unblur the lines and see the bitterness in your eyes.

Extrordinaire

Burning bridges is my specialty. I love you, but that could change in an instant. When playing the puppy dog gets to be too much, one clean incision and you're gone. Call me a relationship removal specialist, chameleon, illusionist extrordinaire. With a snap of my fingers, the hurt in my eyes shifts to a hostile nothing. It's easy to trust because it's even easier to shut out. You'll be on the other side, head spinning with the quickness of seperation, only vaguely aware it's permanent. I, however, am clearing every thought of you from my mind so next time we meet, the hostile nothing in my eyes will be effortless.