haiku

i've been writing many haiku poems recently, and i am going to put some up. i think i'll probably just add others here in the future if i ever want to. and i might take some off later cause this could get pretty long if i let it. the only "rule" these stick to is the 5-7-5 syllable rule. hi japan...


two thousand feet up
a silver splinter sundries
red leaves relocate

serious colors
drown out reality's call
over my window

softness of new skin
plays to unzip those blue jeans
with bodies untouched

creased green wear and tear
coins shiver in a kerr jar
crickets are long gone

atop the staircase
police step between the hate
they dont know i saw

five ball of the east
rising shine over felt sky
pocket in the west

ode to a vacant cushion

with nectar in a can
and a staff in my hand
i rescued a man
from untimely demise

not death from a knife
nor a high maintenance wife
but no more miller highlife
to drink downstairs with the guys

the doc said, "you know,
you've already eaten a hole
in your liver and soul
no more beer would be wise"

so he vowed not drink
he just thought of the link
written in him with ink
between the bottles and lies

with his health on the mend
he had lost all his friends
cause they all got the bends
bubbles of cumbersome size

but when i showed him the path
with my nectar and staff
he just let out a laugh
with pure joy in his eyes

he drank juice with the bees
as the staff eased his knees
and he grabbed all the leaves
as if a shiny gold prize

what he found was the air
he'd never noticed it there
when he was drinking downstairs
with the safe 'n sound guys

so his wife and his children
got off the couch in the den
and walked out bearing grins
then they looked toward the skies

outside it was sunny
and their father was running
and his clothes smelt of honey
they couldnt believe their eyes

they looked at each other
and then at their mother
they all hugged one another
for they had regained their lives

though they were sad, they rescued everyone. they lifted up the sun.

we live in a grand setting. yes, i said grand. it is a good adjective. and we are alive (for at least a while) in this grand place. we dont have to worry about not existing, and we dont have to worry about the sun burning out for quite a while.

...ok, i realize that this beautiful (grand) world is full of dark corners and covered in murky waters, but isnt that what the beauty is here for? yes?

men are dying in a war right now. children are dying of aids right now. some guy is saving money right now so that he can buy a bigger tv and some new blue jeans.

...those waters are murky...

....but there is also a beautiful sunset in Iraq right now. there are best friends playing soccer in africa right now. there is a guy saving money to support his loving wife and kids right now.

what are we worried about? dying? maybe. or maybe we are worried about living. i think we should be worried about the ugly effecting the beauty more than the beauty effects the ugly.

so we have a sunset and a war, which one wins? unfortunately the war seems to be winning. we have aids and we have best friends playing soccer. sadly, aids has the upper hand. and we have blue jeans vs love. i would like to think love is gaining some ground despite the commercials ive seen recently.

this is what im worried about: not fulfilling my obligation to pierce the dark corners and tred the murky waters. i feel it is my (our) duty to turn our heads away from the bloody ground and toward the purple sky. it is our duty to go to africa and play soccer. it is our duty to support a family instead of banana republic.

more, my friends...... more.

what would jesus do anyway?

you're hesitating arent you?
its ok, im really just doing this for myself.
but is that selfish? maybe.

sometimes i think im losing my mind, but then i realize i just left it at home. and on purpose. is that weird? is weird a bad thing? in who's opinion? should i care? why?

ok, seriously though - right now i am not in school. i am working and saving up money in order to take my brother and myself on an all over the country road trip this summer (and its actually gonna happen). and i really want to make a movie of it (which may or may not happen). and during this break from school i find myself wondering more and more if it really is just a break or if it is a strange goodbye. i really dont want to go back to school, and that is mainly because i have no idea what i want to study anymore. i mean, i could finish up with advertising (which i never feel like i actually started). or i could extend this "break" into next year and hesitate/stall/remain static. or i could do something else that may require more of me than school ever has. school only ever got half my ass. sorry school.

there are a lot of things i want in life, and there are a lot of things i want from myself. and im getting tired of the logic of american culture getting in the way. i need money and nice things to be successful, right? and i need to be clean shaven and tucked in to keep a job, right? now i realize that i have written about similar things before, perhaps the exact same thing, but this is an ever-changing thought process that i am going through here, so bear with me.

i dont think its a bad thing to want a nice life. things are cool. comfort. television. food. yea, those can all be fantastic. nothing inherently wrong with them. its just that im pretty much sick of it all, and not in a depressing, hateful sense (ive been through that already), but in a liberating, longing sense. i long for more. God, i know there is more to life than having a job just to create comfort for myself. and thats what i feel like ive been doing for so long, and now that i dont want to strive for comfort anymore, im having a hard time figuring out how to strive for.....more.

i want to see things that most people dont get a chance to. i want to create something that only i could create, and i want others to enjoy/benefit from it. i want to be uncomfortable. i want to give others all the shit that i have and dont need. i want to be able to hear the movement of everything. i dont want to be ignorant. i want to love someone in just the way they want to be loved. i want to be a servant. i want to learn. i want to teach. and i want to be broken enough to always turn to the provider of all and the lover of all.

how can i start doing these things now? i guess i can start by getting up out of my comfortable bed and laying on a mexican blanket under the stars. i think thats what Jesus would have done anyway.

nostalgia usually smells

has anyone ever heard that the sense of smell is very closely connected to memories? well, i have. a certain smell will bring back vivid memories of a time or person that the smell has been connected to in your mind. its usually unexpected, which makes it nicer, i think. but as i write this i realize it is difficult to bring back that same vividness without the smell to induce it. however, i can still remember a few that were brilliant enough to imagine long afterward.

i cant remember where it was, but i smelled chlorine recently and i was flooded with memories of my old house. my brother and i swimming in our pool, and wet hair in the summer sun.

with the grass beginning to grow again, neighborhoods are spotted with fresh cut lawns. this is one of my favorite smells and the memories that it summons are too many to recount. perhaps being sweaty, or sitting in the dried up creekbed.

almost painfully have i smelled the perfume of an old love and recalled memories of her. i am unfortunately attracted to wherever the smell came from. damn you, mass-produced victoria's secret girly fruit smell!

and just today my nostrils captured something i cannot quite categorize. there was a thunderstorm (understatement), a raspberry altoid, sweaty palms, and.....i cant remember. it was a mixture of smells along with the music i was hearing, i guess. i dont really know what it was, but it made me want to relish in some type of temporal lunacy. or maybe it wasnt lunacy, but rather.... love. its hard to tell the two apart these days.

i hope tomorrow i come across a blueberry pancake or a sticky pine tree or perhaps another thunderstorm.