family

from a chair, time gets stuck in the breeze

Posted on by andrewsmeyer

a moisture licked breeze kissed by emotion brought the smell of switching situations into the air with cloud rumbles and streaks of light that kept us interested in a changing affair

we sat on creaky back chairs

searching through cob wedded screens

switching focus from distant swirls to shapeless matting

through and within

what was captured in each?

your hand searched through your knotted and unwashed hair, the world knew

i was reluctant to acknowledge

it’s going to rain

passing time for the inevitable

love limply hung above us, waiting to blow away

your sighs matched my lies

neither of us spoke

where would we start?

talking about the weather is what got us here

your chair continues to rock as i hear footsteps follow the howl and slamming door

i sat alone

watching our clothes drench

we’ll leave them out for another day.

from bed, before the sun rises

Posted on by andrewsmeyer

step-by-step

catatonic children donned rhinestone suits for the procession

stamped behind one another

walking in tireless fashion

scorn sewn to their experience-less expressions

riveted and compelled

step-by-step

locked

filing past suits and pinned flowers, stretched faces finding and fulfilling their future

suddenly dead drum beats find their final echo

halting the synchronized steps to stranded conclusions, they turn to the marionettes and bow

moments later

scattering flashes

reflections a blur

costume changes

reassembled

labeled by age no more

it’s their turn to lead refusing to reuse tread upon tired traditions

instead

insisting you acknowledge purple satin sunsets wearing what you came in

splayed haphazard

in the birthing rays of dying days

step-by-step, shuffle, and step, run, now stop, step-by-step

from a couch, pulled from the past relevant for the future, our present

Posted on by andrewsmeyer

**Cleaning up some ideas, i wanted to get this on this site to go back to.

Bonus, enjoy.

Written July 9, 2016:

To the death

Cities dead

Our children learning geography through humans eating humans blaming humans assuming humans racist humans scared humans.

Red

No, we can’t go there, children were shot, Mickey left the castle believe it or not, a new town marred and sandy hook scarred. Eiffel tower? and now the lonestar? St. Paul, New York, wait, let me stop.

It’s everywhere, where I’m not.

Oh, it’s here.

Less bullets more minds.

Why does it take death to realize

It’s racing through you when you first rub thighs

Inhaled between your infant cries

I can only surmise, you’ll act surprised when I say I see it deep set in those eyes.

Blue

The ones who kill others they haven’t met, willing to take a chance on a half baked bet

Fed through the tv set.

Aspersions cast

The stars of this show.

We are taught not to regret.

It’s in the mirror

A faint windex smear, I thought I scrubbed hard enough to make it clear.

The filthy ignorance of generations passed.

God damn Mississippi can we at least get past the spread of color on a gay mans mast or hue of human skin, please, at last!

Green

What were you told when you were young?

Face your fears and they’ll be overcome.

Face them with confidence, poise and grace

Not the end of a gun or scowl on your face.

My team, your team, the team that won.

We lost

A stain on cities, the cost?

Do you see your place in history?

Understand you matter?

Is this even reality?

Orange

Struggle to know that we are killing one another, killing one another, a child has a mother and you are killing my brother. Assumptions, gumption and praised ignorance

Come together!

This doesn’t make sense.

I don’t believe things are this bad, it’s illuminated by this new fad. Pop culture stupidity, video game invincibility.

Yellow

That’s a child, your neighbor, police officer – you can name them.

Black

So what now?

We can keep collecting cities, looking at kitties and all shapes of titties. Or, we can galvanize, open our eyes, stare in surprise about the reality that came from lies.

White

We don’t hate one another.

We’re Afraid.

from a couch, a shorty

Posted on by andrewsmeyer

stranded in a city made for me

the pilot who brought me here was sure i’d have a key to unlock the mystery buried in the sea of starlit sunshine that sunk our treasure it’s glowing beauty is all i remember in passionate riptides it was pulled out further and further and further and i gave up watching and decided to leave

**A draft that didn’t see light, not sure of date:

i wake up half baked and the world gives me time to add and equate the benefit of doubt due to the color of my skin a lapse of reason a few minutes to begin good intention seekers nicely imprisoned for laundering our whites, not the socks in the duffel, yet an equally angry vet wondering where the rules went with an ever changing board designed to adapt to rent its slipping away and the fear and intimidation that still sit silent in alien suburbs where they don’t see torches as necessary defense i’m the lucky one spewed out washing my skin duty delivered and i’m stuck within clambering to the next of kin where do i go? i want to help. i’m not one of “them” the great forgetting wasn’t lost on me i’m decidedly pretending i haven’t added to this. the start? polish and Italian joke books in 2nd grade, mocking street slang, defining identities by the size of their nose all the while being told ‘but you’re not one of those’ i wasn’t overtly taught to be racist, so i supposed, its who we are under the clothes that i wore in an effort to avoid confrontation i didn’t know why you couldn’t eat bacon. i should have asked. but when you’re born with privilege that you don’t even know math equation symmetry is all that’ll show.

adjust our lenses

feel the flow

all are one toe to toe

from bed, the plate is loaded

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the line between love and unkind voices

voices that shake at a moments notice hoping we will go away during their midday walks to the food truck, ungratefully George Jeffrsoning it to the window hoping it’ll shake down a smile

it doesn’t translate

it wasn’t even close

he tries again assuming trips to Mexico count as language emersion experiences ordering tacos with american cheese

assuming

unseen eye rolls

he wraps it up and flip back his tie

you can do it in reverse order

the dramatic tie bit

or, is that later tonight

he gives the eye to a flipped gender he thinks he engendered while discussing the ‘nectar of the gods’ (his words to be sure) he’ll be gurgling with four other bloated fucks who look like him

unscrewing little black caps and discussing states and years

your status is clear and clearly defines the time you think your curfew is while you leave behind that high school sweetheart story you smile through after your first morning coffee to show you have enough sugar to kill the economy of both countries and reconcile erased travel trip nights ‘networking’

the caps piled up

your lease on life and luxury car allows you to make it home without a question from that swerve on your phone

you

you stumble in lingering with that last stop complaining she is acting like a cop while self serving yourself in the mirror through shaken and stirred lenses

she’s crying

you think it’s irrational

go to sleep

and stay there

from bed, wrapped in a towel waiting

Posted on by andrewsmeyer

cancer crushed the cornerstore front where i was soft selling my wares to those who would stop long enough to understand the value of worlds that would emerge from words they heard dripping with hyped to high-heaven hyperbolic terms, a pitch to catch every dime store dip-shit who couldn’t discern between integrity and the incessant need to flatter ourselves in the dark imagining that she would actually come home with us

or him home with me

you home with he

we don’t come home

i wasn’t so disillusioned

understanding fever pitch i walked away before the switch would kill the last necessary need to continue to feed the balancing half of this distraction

it was destruction

disappointed that you kept defending their right to feed at the same trough as the ones who gave you this cloth, stained with the way you trained them to listen when nobody else would come

a disease

innocuously took the heat for you

the lie for him

the life from them

why did you tell me you were born in July

I was at that store

when your mom, on your birthday, left you in the falling snow

from a fold out bed, be careful of pronouns

Posted on by andrewsmeyer

i zipped it shut and walked away

innocence trapped in a bag with my initials on it, an ode to a forgotten time when gifts were working to define how i’d view the world

it sits on the top shelf in my closet now

holding letters to mysterious creatures and old candy bar wrappers

i peak inside from time to time

inspiration for a way home

stuck inside, curiosities roam from peak to valley in midnight walks around a room built for two, or three, maybe four. there are enough doors, pick one you want to exit through

or, we could take them all off in fits of honesty and clear out the pretension that sits with knowing we’re somewhere they can’t be

they’ll always run free

because they get to treat the sounds that clatter from our room as little more than the raising of little ones to do our bidding when the mice shriek down the stairs they’ll be crushed by side-eyed stares and who cares if one of you light the flare it’ll only alert hyper-egos and selfish sun soaked children to look away while their loved ones are feasted on and carried to a place of infinite corners and steam shop loaners wandering into one another wondering if there is a way to grab that bag out of your closet

unzip it

and let the dreams of children fly through fanciful forgotten scenes of innocence

those are my initials though

it’s mine

that’s what they were trying to tell me

close that thing

from bed, she reached for my arm

Posted on by andrewsmeyer

sniffling through thursday i realized i might desecrate the real estate if my markers don’t keep their caps on

i’m impulsive

they’re responsible (the caps)

i kept wondering, who’s afraid of losing everyone if the time is right for me to move on and continue this plastic emotion piling up for future generations left with charlie brown sippy cups and forgotten glass jars that used to hold our consciousness

you said it was a reminder

it was your best gift

that empty jar

you told me to stare at it when you were away

it held us

i can’t remember if i threw it down or accidentally knocked it over it was mid december and the people were practicing how’d they’d greet later sunsets and cancer walking tombs

televangelists came to our door

it’s not jesus they want it’s your little girls mind to refine this garbage pail philosophy that subservience is the key

leather whips hang in the closet waiting to zipper my mouth shut and cross our eyes for something more tame this friday night

from bed, i want to play with this one

Posted on by andrewsmeyer

i forget

how wide do you cast that net?

is something lost in the width

a myth

dilution of relationships

the ones we claim with a first or last name junior status and the patriarch game is comfortable, traditional and somewhat unconditional.

where do we go when we can choose everything?

you want that, right?

the ability to choose

are you scared you’d lose the tethering of strings a single mass of balloons, thirty or forty each, helium filled, carrying up individuals into the night sky taking turns who gets to ride on by

we couldn’t possibly come together

who would be lifting and recognizing from above

the specks we laugh at perspective gained a person to blame for their reign and i couldn’t possibly remember all your names unless it’s mine

drones walking

careful what you wish for

we are all in this together, but not how you want

there is no common goal

save that for falling off a bridge.

hate me

question and cause a disturbance knuckles in my face causes growth and believe it or not that’s for all of us.

benefit a few at a time

over the wall humans are confined and kneeling down for an unwanted god just give me your time and help me plod i can’t soar that’s bullshit and more

look for what’s more

utopian drunk visions blur our ability to realize we’re at sea drinking salt a bit less buoyant i can’t hold three hundred million or six billion hands and hearts. i got fifty, maybe five, you read three hundred but they’re just taking pictures back to their hole

with their five

doing their thing to stop being alive. the answer, it’s drifting. stop thinking we’re all anything. we’re all everything realizing, collecting in groups benefits the whole. which i dug myself one, but these gatherings are not defined by race or religion. those don’t exist either. i mean, you made them up cause you were afraid to gather with the thirty who were around. lost and found. fight fucker, fight and love. you’ll hoover. you’ll meet the same disastrous light. careful now, it’s got only two generic D batteries to last through the night.