Silver Clouds, Streetlights, and Piano Lessons

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 Silver Clouds, Streetlights, and Piano Lessons

 

Thinking:

Centralizing desensitized abstractions,

Finding the center of nebulous…

Claims of self-sense-superiority,

And hurriedly choosing lies out of a bargain bin of returned items

-My heart’s lost and found; my mind’s dollar store-

As to why I didn’t answer your calls, and

Why I don’t come out when you knock…

 

Over foundations and figureheads;

I was busy saving the trees from the breath you huff like

Paint

Behind the Smith’s every afternoon, forgetting that the

Metallic Grey

Has left rhinestones all over your face, so that you

Smile as if you know your dreams are

Clouds:

But that you’re nearly done with the ladder…

 

We knew never to confuse intently thinking

-Love-

With thinking with intention,

We’re much too grown-up for that.

 

Joking, you wished me serious harm,

And so I lived so hard I died.

But I am not death, nor dead.

No, I am too much alive to realize just how dead I tried to be.

Disillusioned,

With death I seek out the darkest sides of light….

Posts, standing under and craning my neck,

Hoping to find the smallest scraps of electric wisdom.

The lights are shutting off, but dawn flooded in hours ago.

 

And you look so beautiful in your water damage, and forget faking

Flood insurance.

I brought fifty feet of rope to help hold me back.

You say it holds me up,

But I found it tied to the bent black handle of a little-red-wagon

Moving van

Unable to lift off, despite the cardboard wings I helped build,

And so I say it holds me out:

Out of my shell,

Helping me hold out through the seasickness and the sand in my apologies.

And even if it holds the sandbag above my head,

I won’t bow out until the sands stop falling.

 

I say your sandals have worn too thin;

You say the same of my heart’s outer walls and my mind’s inner sanctums.

Tree-houses were never meant to hold

 Out,

More than

In.

Up.

 And I know both of us have made mistakes in choosing to regret,

And that sand always gets in between our hands and

The best of our intentions.

 

You caught me swinging an alarm clock on an extension cord

-I was trying to buy us more time-

But I had to get out of line when I heard they were carding…

 

So what does it take to make an

Unrealistically optimistic

Man loose his pessimism?

I have to see the very best side of you before I’ll believe in the worst,

So make me a slideshow of nothing but

Over-exposed secret smiles, and underdeveloped

Inner passions

That are just starting to show.

 

If there’s anything I regret, it’s not forcing my way through the

Crowd;

Looking clear over their heads,

 To see yours.

It’s not stopping at that café to hear you hum.

 

So when I see that bright wood grain that so matches my own heart,

When I see the harshly beautiful contrast between the light and the dark in the wood and keys;

 When I see that

Piano…

Don’t let me regret

Not asking you to play.