what are you trying to tell me?
what do you want me to do?
should i give you what you are asking for?
i know you won't expect it
and it will feel like a slap
up the side of your head
a very unexpected slap
because you don't really believe
that i will do it
it's going to happen
i just don't know when
later you will regret that you pushed me that far
but right now, it is what you want
so someday, someday soon
i will grant your wish
(Simple words on a hot afternoon in May as I grasp for courage to grant a wish)
Desperado, do you know how much you have hurt me? I never asked for anything from you, except your thoughts, your words. I only ever wanted the best for you, for you to find love, and to be happy.
I knew it would not be with me, though I sometimes dreamt it could be. But we walk in different worlds and all we could ever share were words. I felt your heart through your words and I know you felt mine.
But now, you hold back your words and now I know I don't matter to you and probably never did.
Seven years wasted.
It's a bitter pill to swallow.
(Simple words on a Sunday morning as I ponder the silence)
I was looking back at words I had written through the years. It all seems so meaningless now and some of it seems as if it was a lesson in futility. Writing in hopes you would see or hear and understand. But no, it all fell on deaf ears and blind eyes. I was never sure you would see, or hear, but I was always sure you would "feel".
I was wrong.
(Simple words on a cloudy morning, the last day of January 2019)
Last night I had a dream, a very short dream where you were sitting in my livingroom along with several other people discussing something, I can't really recall. But I recall that you were very articulate in your presentation of your opinion. I remember you had a little boy with you and it was getting late. You wanted to stay but needed to get the boy home.
I followed you outside to say goodbye. We stood there for a moment, you looked me in the eye and touched my face gently. I pushed your hand away.
And then you stole my ladder.
Dreams, they can be strange...
(Simple words as I sit here remembering the warmth of your hand on my face)
We had a conversation that one night and I started to tell you I was on to you. I didn't though, because I wanted our talk to be positive and in spite of what I know, and the things you do, I still have a place in my heart for you because I think you are a good person deep down.
But you need to know that I have been on to you for a few years and I know your game because that game is as old as the hills and I am more astute than you have ever given me credit for, and I am also quite intuitive. Besides that you are careless and it is not hard to see your mistakes because you put them out there in plain site for the world to see.
I won't turn my back on you, because in spite of it all, I have been a faithful and consistent friend. I truly do care about you as a person, and we all have our faults. Yours are no greater than anyone else's including mine, so who am I to judge?
When everyone else is gone, I will still be there, caring about you as a person.
And that my friend, is what real love is all about, unconditional.
(Simple words to an unnamed someone as I sit here on a stormy morning smiling because life is good!)
I crave silence, but there is no real silence. The background noise is so loud this morning. Cars driving by, the pump on the fish tank, the cat meowing, the wind blowing and along with it, the windchimes, the refrigerator humming, and on and on...
Those are sounds I normally don't notice, but this morning they seem to be amplified.
It's like the world and it's cacophony of voices all speaking at once, all with something to say, but their words are just noise, meaningless and annoying.
Where can one go to find silence these days?
(Simple words, probably meaningless and annoying to most!)
"I remember, growing up... At night, my dad would sit in the kitchen with all the lights out. And he would wait for me to come in. And he would sit there and drink. And I would stand in the driveway and look in through the screen door and I could see the light from his cigarette. And then I'd rush up on the porch and try to get by him. He would always call me back. And it was like he was always, always angry, always mad. He would be sitting there thinking about everything he was never gonna have, until he would get me thinking like that too. And I'd lay up in my bed at night and be staring at the ceiling. And I'd feel like if something didn't happen, if something didn't happen soon. I felt like I was just gonna, like someday, I was just gonna..." --Prelude to a song by Bruce Springsteen
The first time I saw that video and heard those words, and the emotion that went with them, I felt such a sense of deja vu. Like he was speaking words that could have come from my mouth, telling my story from long ago. I swear it was exactly the same when I was growing up, after my mom died. My dad would do the same thing, sit there at the kitchen table in the dark, smoking and drinking. And I would come home and stand outside watching the glow of that cigarette, hoping he would go to bed before I went in, but sometimes he just sat there so I would go in and hope to get past him, but that rarely happened. And he was always angry, always mad and always hopeless. And I too would lay up in my bed and start to feel the same way, and just like Springsteen I would think, "if something didn't happen, if something didn't happen soon, I was gonna..."
It was a hard time in my life, but I grew up and moved away and life went on for a long time and things happened, good and bad as they do in life.
Years later, when I was grown and I was much closer to my dad, he told me that after mom died, and he was left with a pack of kids to raise alone, that people would always ask him how the kids were doing, how they were getting along since mom was gone. But no one ever asked him how he was doing. He said he wished that just one person would have cared enough to ask him how he himself was doing, but no one ever did.
I understand him now, I understand his anger, his despair, his broken heart.
I wish I had known what he was going through back then. I wish I had understood. But I was a kid, I didn't know. I was in too much pain myself to see the pain of another.
I'm happy to know that he healed from that pain, he stopped drinking, he met someone later in his life, someone beautiful who took his pain and despair away, someone who gave him eight years of happiness before he passed away. Someone who was a true companion to him.
And isn't that what we all need? Not just love, not just sex, but someone who would be a real true companion, through the good and the bad. Someone who cares to ask "how are YOU doing?"
I won't find that here in the Twilight Zone, I thought I might, but jokes on me! But that's okay, I think I know where to look now.
(Just some thoughts of mine tonight as I sit here, not in the dark, not smoking and drinking, but wishing for the same thing he wished for).
Love you guys, always will.
(These are not simple words, but I chose to put them here because here is the best page for them, somewhere a bit more private than my other pages.)
A very wise, though a bit eccentric man once told me to always speak simply and plainly. I used to, and then the things of life, and heartbreak caused me to be more cautious, less transparent and to hide behind words only I would understand. And I found other people doing the same thing and so we all drifted away on a sea of metaphors and missed opportunities, till it became too late to change the course we set for ourselves. And it IS too late. So the time has come to stop pretending that something will become of nothing. It just won't. I know that in my heart. I'm still drifting, but these days I drift toward the end of days, my days at any rate. But maybe I can change one thing as I drift along to the edge of eternity. Maybe I can go back and take that man's words to heart. And maybe you should too. Speak simply, speak plainly. Goodnight ~ 12/10/2018 (Words, plain and simple) Thank you Sir Rusty for reminding me of those words.
I don't really remember exactly. I only remember the ship was sinking , so whenever that was, that is when it was.
Somehow, at the time, it seemed as if it would become more than what it became.
But what it was, for most of that time, was comforting, made me smile.
It was what it was, and now it is what it is.
There is no need for the hints and the cryptic messages.
I get it- so stop.
It's funny, there never were expectations , not from me. Maybe that is not true though. Maybe I expected the best for you , as I had put you on a pedestal . Funny that I should do that. I was taught by a wise man many years ago, to never place anyone high above myself. I guess I saw something in you, that you couldn't , or didn't believe existed. Or perhaps it was my own delusion because I wanted to believe you were just what I thought you were.
But over time, I see you are drawn to the unsavory, the raunchy, the contentious, the whiners and the list-ers of complaints.
I am just me, and me was not your style.
12/10/2018
(Simple words, written three years ago, never posted. They came to mind this morning at 5 AM, time to get everything posted one by one)
It occurred to me today as my thoughts turned toward you, that I have only ever seen a part of you, the very small part you chose to share with me in a very small way in this very small place. The real you is locked behind a door that I have no access to and that is partly my own doing because I have never been one to sell my soul to the devil just to be privy to the goings on in another person's life.
I figure it this way, a person will show me what they want me to know whether I join their exclusive club of insiders or not.
Funny thing though, I know more than you think, more than I let on, and what I know is kept to myself, inside my mind where you show up from time to time, or most every single day. It is there I have my deepest conversations with you, in the dark of the night, or in the light of the sun.
And that is how you sometimes know, when I am slipping away, because sometimes in those conversations, I truly think you hear my thoughts.
I know where my heart is, and I know where yours is. I wish I could say I hope your dreams come true, but I am not sure you are dreaming for the right thing. I think your dream, as it stands now, will hurt you in the end.
But there is nothing I can do, but talk to you in those conversations in my mind, and hope somehow it will help you.
(Simple words when I was thinking about a friend who hides behind a locked door)
"To write what matters to us most, we have to be willing to go to dangerous places in ourselves and say dangerous things. It’s far easier to write only around the edges of what matters, avoiding the dark center of our caring where there are unmet, unwanted feelings — rage or grief or forbidden attractions — that are sure to shake up our sense of who we are and reveal the unstable ground we stand on. It takes trememdous courage to tell our deepest truth, first to ourselves, then to the world. No one can do it without deep respect for their own frailty and a fundamental trust in life."
(Not my simple words on a night when I know that something has to change if I am to remain) 10/30/2018
Should I write? And if I do, who would I write for? There is no one left now, and I was never one to write just for myself. A heart is meant to be shared...
There is love inside, but it is all wrapped up like the inside of a golf ball. Have you ever tried to tear one of those babies apart and get to the core?? It's not an easy task. I know. I've tried it. If you even get past that hard outer shell, there are those rubber thread thingies that are wrapped around what is inside and it takes a lot of work to cut through all of that crap, so most people just give up. That's what it feels like, an inner core of love bound so tightly with a hard outer shell and try as I may, I can't break through and allow the love to flow anymore. I can feel it there though. Maybe one day it will explode...
Till then, I remain indifferent.
(Simple words when my mind began to ponder why I am dead)
I think I could have been your best friend, if nothing else. After all, the thread was there that connected us. Even now I know something is troubling you, I feel it in my heart, in my mind.
I have all these words inside, but what good is writing from the heart, when all they are, are words? Words that will never be reality. Writing them down only adds to the hopelessness...
(Simple words on a sunny Sunday morning when you made me cry.)
