Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Easy Don't It

She drives me crazy...

You make things so difficult for yourself and everyone around you.
The road less traveled was constructed just for you, but you refuse
to walk it when there is a perfectly wild and impassable wood full of
brambles and pitfalls, roots and stones, and all manner of obstinance
just off the black diamond trail. Doors and windows of opportunity
are opened for you, but you would rather let them slam shut
in your face and beat the door with your head just to
know the bass sounds of skull on wood
and how it feels to be dizzy,
just to hear the melodic chaos of glass relenting behind your fists
and tinkling in random shards to the floor below.
You slam your fingers and toes in those same doors and windows
over and over again, never learning from your mistakes and
wearing your bloody bandages and casts and
purple-black bruises with proud defiance.
You stand in silence when you are wrong,
refusing to admit your flaws,
refusing to utter words of solace or apology or acceptance.
You don't answer gentle pleas but demand
I attend to your volatile tantrums.
You close your eyes and turn your nose to my willing assistance
in the most dire situations when I can deliver you,
and cling with a death-grip and
beg for reassurance when none is needed.
You drive me crazy.
You drive me over the edge.
You drive me past my breaking point.
And I let you, because you are beautiful.

© Jeff Wilson, 2009

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Paper Tiger in a Bowl

Inaction is the root of my frustration...

Like some paper-tiger goldfish, stuck in a restaurant water feature too small to support one let alone ten, that breaks the thin skin between unbearable life below and invisible death above, eyeing the vast universe of plate glass and neon with unbridled malice, testing lungs that ache with chained monotony or sweet fleeting freedom, gaping and suffocating and ducking below the surface for one more caged breath, daring the world to notice its defiance and challenging those who look on in piteous curiosity or pleading for the perceived cruelty that can only be conceived by the innocent and ignorant,
so sit I.
Like some paper-tiger goldfish, unable to break the thin skin between unbearable obscurity and invisible promise, unable to make a terrifyingly heroic leap into potential somethingness, trapped in sloth of my own forging, unwilling to taste sweet consuming freedom, and swimming in terminable indecision that blunts the will and drowns the soul,
so sit I.

© Jeff Wilson, 2009