Postcard Part 2

The people hunched

blotched colors one tries

to force meaningful

but they only blended

until the stench stemmed

from each of us

His car smelled like 1923.

You can feel that

someone was here

but they won't let you

see him

A lens is just a roundness

that chooses who to take

capture

usurp into exhibit

I'm a part of that

The crowds are erupting with tongues of necessity

the licking is sanguine

with slippery speech

I can't translate it anymore

for I may be that delicate

kind of lazy

that yawns upon devastation

but cries at silence

It doesn't even need water.

Nothing I've made has sprung

quite like this before

I think there may be joy

in the soiled scaffolding

of such palpable hope

and these tiny fingers

trace the lines of earth

until they are parallel to the start

angled at end

Postcard Part 1

~This will be the beginning of a 3-part postcard series that were written beneath the copper tree during a bike tour of East Austin art galleries. It was a very magical, sweaty day and I tried to not think when I lifted pen. This seems to almost always create better pieces. Don't take my word for it though, I am a liar.

See what you think.~

Part One:

I'm on a roughened bench

sitting beneath a tree

dilapidated copper and dripping silver leaves

I sincerely believe

this tree sprouted in a dream

and now buds to reassure me

of this

The evening sort of aroused us all

The shade became exotic

part of waking that creaked

in my consciousness I wondered

if you sliced through my bones

what poetry you'd find

Arteries are clogged

stuffed wine-tinted hyperboles

that hold graceful little hands

It smells like a sack of seeds

with the freshness of frothy tide

I wished for more.

I feel the hour relay a beautiful

exhaustion and a timely numb.

As I sit, and write on a post

card that never gets mailed

each year the addresses lose houses

connecting them to me

and I sit beneath a tree

this deathly little tree

Target coffee shop and foggy vistas

It was an early morning. You know, a real-teacher haunting of around 7:30 and you've already been up since 6. It was foggy on the drive, something I am particularly adverse to given my past with pesky trees and T's in the road, but I had to meet one of my student's mothers. And it was well worth the trip, as she teared up with pride at the awards ceromony and proceeded to clutch his chubby little cheeks in her small hands.

I needed coffee.

I purposefully use the verb need, because at this point, it is the elixir that resurrects most of us. We are just ruins, vacant vestiges before we are aroused by the bean.

As I sat at the Target coffee shop, sipping a Cappuccino, I saw a Hispanic man walk by with a Hispanic downs-syndrome boy. Their interactions were minimal, and the age of the boy was one that couldn't be discerned.

They turned the corner, exiting the grandiose automatic glass doors, and the older man suddenly disappeared behind a column. I bit my lip, at first questioning his actions, moving my head vigorously to find the boy. The boy waited and then, with a smile so electric I nearly yelped in my chair, peeked round the corner and found his father.

It was a moment of the purest delight. Perhaps it was a game they played often, even more so did it touch my heart then, because he found that kind of inconsolable joy with every new start.

I watched as the fog hung low, gripping the cars in the parking lot, possessing the morning, but the man just grabbed his sons hand, and they walked, smiling into the mist.

And it was nothing more than a trip to Target, on a Wednesday morning, at 8:23.