old age

~

i don’t even carry my notebook with me anymore. the kids move around me too fast to give me a chance to write down our familial follies. fatherhood is a trip; a nonstop trip to japan and back. last night, after I finally put the baby to sleep, i sank into the red lazy boy with a notebook to see if I could put the pen to it. but after a long day of rearing the youngins, the lazy boy make me out to be a lazy boy. the pen drops in between the cushions with the rest of my forgotten tokens. by the end of the day I feel too sorry for myself to take my thoughts seriously. i let them flutter through my mind and I treat all my emotions as if they are fleeting. it’s the top of summertime and the longest days of the year feel like they’re filled with a few short moments. i no longer got the time to give myself credit. i don’t even carry my notebook with me anymore.

next lifetime

i died this morning and couldn’t wake up. tossing and turning, gasping for life, i opened my eyes and found myself breathless, walking with her on the moon. among the angels. i moved to speak and her fingers rose to my mouth to hush my lips. she drifted closer to me and whispered in my ear a secret chant. she told me to remember the melody, for it was a magic spell to cast down babylon.

Brother Is Said

Brother Is Said. One of the brothas that really put me on. I guess he really is a writer because that’s all I’ve ever seen him do. Write. Pull scrolls out of his satchel and sell them for a few bucks to get a sandwich and go off with that sandwich and write about the sandwich. Take a sandwich, put it into his body and mind and transform it into words.

One time I remember he translated to me the stories and struggles of a cockroach that lived in his apartment. I was like seven years old when he told me. Didn’t know at that point that the words that my mind made were so important. He told me to carry a pad because a cockroach might speak to me one day, or I might hear music when writing down my grocery lists. And so I began to write with him out there on the east side of Columbus – learning how to believe in my truth without citing sources. Learning how to know it was right when it was written.