Karaoke on the Rooftop

20170521_100500On the rooftop patio
at the karaoke party
I caught a glimpse
of a woman
who I thought was you

Her hair and her posture
caused me to blink
and bring out my goofy grin
before I realized
it wasn’t you

All night I saw glimpses
of you in other women
one had a sly smile
another had beautiful eyes
and one was a beautifully sensuous

All together they combined
to be half
the woman you are
so I stopped looking
for you in them
and softly sang you a song
as if you were there
not halfway around the world

First Swim of the year 

20170427_180712First Swim of the year is always the most impactful to me. The texture of the concrete under my feet and the smell of the chlorine are expectant preludes to that sensation of jumping into the water. 

I love that first jump when you are enveloped by the water and your hearing picks up all sorts of distorted sounds. I physically stay underwater as long as I can savoring the sensation and enjoying the silence punctuated by my exhale making bubbles. 

I love to float and adjust my position in the water by taking a deep breath in and feeling my body bobbing closer to the surface. The sound of the water lapping on the edge of the pool is somehow reassuring to me. I spent thousands of hours as a kid… swimming in pools. It provided me with a sanctuary from the world… the water cushioning me from the outside world.

However, the best type of swimming is at night… when the lights are flickering due to the water’s movement and the sounds are amplified. During the day, there are more other sounds that we focus on, and our minds are often distracted with whatever we happen to be doing at the moment, so we don’t tend to notice the sounds of the water. But at night… being in the water… is especially delicious.

Listening to a Mixtape in my car

Screenshot_20170425-212322When driving in my car, and I’m having a technical (#!#&$@) with my phone, I will pop in a CD. I have a collection of eclectic stuff… some from my old collection and some from thrift stores… some so bizarre that I swear someone has broken into my car and left them.  

So I started listening to this one disc… was one of those writable discs that has no label on it. I listened to it… and it stayed in the player… longer than the regular rotation… because it had a lot of really nice songs that took me to a sensation of a time-gone-by feeling. There’s one song in particular that made me think about (name). We did have a deep bond and I did love her dearly. Like me, she has her quirks and we didn’t fit together because our quirks were too offsetting to be solved by passion.

One evening I stopped the car… and unexpectedly the CD pops out of the player. I go to wipe it off because it looks a bit dusty and I noticed some very faint green magic marker writing on the disk. It said ‘love mix from (name) hmmm… I just started laughing… and then later threw it out the window.

halfway-round-the-world

Screenshot_20170424-083854you live
halfway-round-the-world
from me
in a distant foreign land
When it’s my day
it’s your night
When you are having lunch
I am deep asleep
My weather is no concern to you
Your food is unpronounceable to me
We talk through typing
voice dictation correcting our ideas
and my phone’s thesaurus is
making me smarter
I have forgotten the color
of your eyes