A random sampling...

I had to write a lot today for my creative writing final. Here is some of it.


York Beach
(for Patrick and Megan)

It was cold.
We dove in head-first
Like our feet
Couldn’t feel it.

The weight of the cool
Pressed into my skull
Like a brain-freeze (but
I can’t stick my thumb
To the roof of my
Mouth to stop it).

The warm air was good
Against my thawing head.
We mocked the waves
And dared them
To come closer.

They crashed into us
And we crashed right back.
They raced and roared
And we ran and shouted back.

We were ten and
Knew nothing of real waves,
Of real cold—the kind
That sticks to your heart.

We played outside
Pretending to save
Each other’s lives
(Before we knew that
We could really die).

It’s still cold.
I stuck a foot in
To test my tolerance
And felt unbearably old.


Obituary

I died the other day.

Not one of those poetic deaths
Where the narrator clearly wishes
For some sentiment to be achieved
While he remains very much alive,
Basking in the brilliance of his metaphor.

No, this was not that kind of “died”.

Instead, it was the ugly one—
The people screaming, clutched chest,
“Call an ambulance!”, waiting room,
“I have some bad news,” cue the tears type—
The one that makes a lot less sense.

What happened next I can’t quite say.

Not to say I don’t quite know,
But rather that it doesn’t quite work to tell.
However, I will offer up what little sense I can
(And forgive me if it’s a bit obvious,
But I promise that it’s worth the thought):

When I died, I did not end.
I began.


The End of Something

and what’s left:
just a cryptic hint
of what was;

what became of it all:
just a case-in-point
of what it all could have become—

like a sunburn
or the little drops falling
from low trees after the rain.


A Realization

It has come to my attention
that I think about failing
far more than I
consider changing.

(A statement which now resounds
with some profoundly
strong strain of
sad irony)