WCW

I am….

I am….

I am a better man.

Thinking about pennies and nickels

That are not mine and holding back

My hands.  Cash upon the desk and holding back

My hands.  Still I look through the wallet

And realize that these things are true,

That I am a better man

And I am….

I am…

Far worse.

There’s a smile on the younger picture

Of a Brad I do not know, and it’s not me,

Not one second is that picture ever

Going to be me.  It is not the boy who I grew

Up to be, but another Brad that I also know,

And he does not smile like that. 

There are moments, bent and twisted moments

Where you see upon your gnarled aging face

A warmer smile than perhaps you thought you had,

But old ones are gone.  Careless like the way the room is

A mess, with magazines everywhere and the door wide

Open– if someone saw this they’d be ashamed,

Funny, but….I too, I am….

I am….

Stirred inside by the feeling of arranging things

And often wonder what comments ring

Inside others heads about such things as this.

Did others care that mixed nuts and M & Ms

Have now arranged themselves into a single jar

By the hand of some other Brad?

And now I am….

I am….

Waiting and expecting with every sound

For an engine to bring another girl here,

Through the door in the longer vinyl coat,

Or what seems like yellow vinyl,

I can’t touch.  I have that hard time,

Like there is an aura around it that stings

My fingers and I become afraid of all these things,

For I am worse and better and ashamed.

I am….

I am…..

I am thinking mostly that my thoughts are unconnected,

And that poetry is far more selfish in nature

Than many do lead themselves to believe through pretense.

A door shuts.  Maybe her.  And up the stairs in minutes

And I must be done so that we can start.

Flickering images are all that hold people together

And that is odd.  Every day I change.

And what point do these things all have in the end?

Ah, WCW, that man has made my brain a strange rant-filled place

And I don’t expect anyone to understand until

Perhaps my works are put in some book somewhere

With footnotes explaining how I grew crazy

Waiting for some day for a girl to walk through the door.

I don’t touch the nickels or the pennies, not even quarters

Like I used to, hand full in the jar hoping to God

Not that a single older eye would catch me.

I am….

I am…..

Invested in so much of my life

That I begin to notice others don’t invest.

Like renting a movie whenever you feel the need

To watch something you’ve seen before

Because it makes you happy.  Not own–rent.

Where did all the committed smiles go

That broke taboo and face apart and showed

Something youthful and far more exuberant?

A chocolate mint in the mouth to cure the breath

And hope that tonight at 11:11 wishes do come true.

How many stars and things and superstitions

Carry people on and fail only to be invested in again?

Bank and bank and bank and bank.

I am……

I am……

Existential and transcendental and far more natural

In most minds than realists would argue I could be.

And expressionists make this thing that I often do

Into some art.  But it is not art.

It is life.  It is hope.  It is ideals.  It is wishes.

It is investments in the past and in the present

That may yet become something more and someday

May remind us why we broke back to messy rooms

And broken smiles that wear upon the face so that

We don’t smile like old men and women in our ages

But rather like grinning children.

And sometimes I am reminded of a mirror

When I wrestle with the Brad in flickering images.

I do not win nor does he,

Instead we just watch and wrestle in this way and laugh,

We laugh like brothers under the skin and in the blood,

Far more laughter than seventeen years of brother’s laughs.

It is pleasant to think that life gets better

And sad to think that life was worse.

I am far better.

I am far worse.

I am expectant of one more good thing that I need

And then I promise to be good and never worse,

But when does worse begin to fade away?

Knock knock.