- Credits: Powered by Tumblr.
-
Members:
![[nlinde]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/avatar_613036b0e8f1_30.png "-[Distant Early Warning]+ (nlinde)")
Tomorrow, tomorrow,
the sun will come out tomorrow.
After all, it’s only a day away.
But what happens to dreams
when you don’t wake up tomorrow?
Ambitions orphaned like poor little Annie.
You’ll finally tell her you love her, tomorrow.
You’ll finally use the fine china, tomorrow.
The diet starts
Tomorrow.
Where does that leave us?
Fat, secretive, bottled up with emotions.
We’re unhappy today.
Nobody wants today.
Everybody wants tomorrow.
There are people walking among us that
believe that their life is going to magically start
somebody in the future.
That this is all a test run, this doesn’t matter, today
is just practice.
The real world starts tomorrow.
Those are the ones who are in bed while
we toast ourselves to one-too-many.
Those are the ones who leave the game
in the sixth inning to beat traffic.
Those are the ones who tip too little
to somebody working far too hard.
Those are the ones that will wake up tomorrow
and see that tomorrow was just like today.
So I raise my glass to those of us who spend
too much time being ourselves to question our motives.
The ones that can’t be bothered with yesterday.
The ones that won’t be around for tomorrow.
We’ve only got here and now.
Tomorrow starts today.
Our shadows held hands
Stretched like giants against the earth.
The moment was thick, our motions muted—
Absorbed in a wintery silence.
A year ago you told me
“I’m a million contradictions”
And I loved it. So much nuance—
A foreign film I mysteriously
Landed the lead role in.
Without a script, I became as surprised
As the audience at the sudden plot changes.
The reels like photobooks of
Everything I am.
Everything you are.
The credits rolled and we realized
There were thousands
Of people to set the scenes, to play
The extras, to feed us lines
Even though we didn’t know
What language we were speaking.
They watched the sounds roll off
Your lips. I was hypnotized.
You were as bad as it can get
And as good as it can be.
Innocent bystanders were pulled into
Our wake, cast as the most
Unsuspecting accomplices, they made you
Seem more natural, made me
Seem a little more sane.
And then black.
Darkness.
Silence.
Nobody really knew what to make of it.
It was beautiful, sure.
But was that it?
Is that all?
What more could have happened?
The admission seemed steep for a journey
With such an shallow ending.
But I’d buy everything you have,
Even if it cost everything I’ve got.
Light me up, make me feel alive
add the spirit to these skin and bones,
put the dance in another aimless pop song,
make today more than just another Tuesday.
These soldiers of joy, these perfect smiles
from unknown faces, they come from places
that aren’t so far from where we stand—
from where we’re born, in this moment.
Shine like only you know how.
Raise your hands to the heavens
whether you’re on a mountain or not
and breathe in this mystery and exhale the answers.
These days are not built for endurance.
These days are made for speed.
The second you think you’re too late
you’re already there.
We may be lost, but we’re way ahead of schedule.
“And I’m confused,” I said. “So completely and utterly confused.”
It sucked, everybody. It fucking sucked.
If I have a question about who the 12th President was
I can look it up: Zachary Taylor.
If I need to know how many pints are in a quart
I can search that as well: two.
But you and your world are subjects I’ve studied
for years. Every word, every move, every kiss
is just two heartbeats too fast for Google to unlock.
And I wait.
And from morning to night and the blinks in my eyes,
the deep sighing breaths that I take when I hit a dead end,
and every moment that I know you’re out there, somewhere.
The thought of you not thinking about me makes me wish
I tried harder, tried less, tried at all.
And what I do—I wait.
Every second, every minute, every moment
that tide takes me out and when it brings me back
I’m not sure if I’m closer to the shore or if I’m that much
further from leaving everything I wanted to be
when I grew up.
As a child I rode my bike up and down the street.
I sped past parked cars and ramped over the neighbor’s
driveway and when I fell, time stopped. A broken shell
of fearlessness. I went from smiling and scab-free to
the world’s most helpless child in no time at all.
Because when you’re hurt, it doesn’t matter if you’re early
or late. Hurt doesn’t fit into your schedule—hurt calls you
breathless at three in the morning and tells you that you need
to go the hospital, right now.
But careful bike riders don’t win races.
And when you get older time doesn’t stop when you’re hurt.
It keeps going.
When you pull yourself together from the hardest goodbye
you’ve ever known you’re late for greatness.
And the same blood that pours from those wounds is pumped
through the same heart that loves her smile, that same heart
that has been broken.
Resiliency is in the wait.
For every answer I don’t know and every question I’ll ever ask
there is one truth:
There’s nothing you can do when you’re the next in line.
You’ve got to go, Domino.
I want to talk to strangers.
In a world where I comes before E
Except after C, I think about what is truly
Weird….that in weird the I comes after the E.
Maybe I think about it too much, maybe I spend
Too many nights awake, dissecting reasons
Why I feel so tired in the morning when
I should probably be in slumber.
I love the way your feelings slip.
I love the way you say hello.
I always feel like I’m leaving somewhere.
Never to a destination, I’m always on my way
Back from somewhere. I’m always the last to arrive—
The first to leave. I’ve got to get back to leaving, back to being
Whatever it is that makes me anxious about dreaming.
I find myself walking around looking for people I
Know, only to disguise myself when I see them
And make it seem like time to go.
What I like about you
Is that you’re always early
And you miss me when I don’t arrive.
I’ll never understand why I never see you rest.
You get up before the sun and taunt the moon to sleep.
Portraying a mass of linen—I mask myself—
I am a humid day. Hiding
Within the rain, pretending to be
What you like about me.
Breathing dark, heavy air through a gleam of sunshine—
Sinking into an emotion. A gasp of life in your heart.
How do we know what we’re really after?
We collect our puzzle pieces, and put them together
In the dark. They fit together, but are they truly a fit?
I guess it doesn’t matter if you’ll never see the end.
Why are we keeping a secret?
I want to make you believe, what I say,
I want to make you believe what I say.
It always feels like it is never truly quiet until
You close your eyes. Serenity. The light gentle
Fall of water from a mountain drop sounds
So pillowy, so clean. Seeing the drops smack
Against the jagged earth below is unnerving,
It blocks my mind.
I need some faith now, to trust you somehow.
Run your fingers along the edges of the pieces,
Every groove, every moment, perfectly in place.
I want to make you believe, what I say.
Show me some faith now, the trust is in your
Hands, on the fingers that follow the faith.
You’ll never know if you put the puzzle
Together correctly. What if you never turn
On the light?
I was only eight, maybe seven
The day we were forced to leave.
I remember the dim lit dining room
And the distorted reflection of my
Face in the tin foil around my TV dinner.
There wasn’t much conversation that night.
Mother had a troubled nervousness about her,
Sliding her wedding ring up and down her
Trembling finger.
My sisters and I were ushered into
The TV room shortly after my Father came home.
We sat quietly and responded to the screaming
By turning up the volume.
The sound of Wheel of Fortune unable
To muffle the sounds of a struggle
And the abrupt smack followed by a tumble.
My sisters looked at me, but I didn’t
Return the glare. An hour later my Aunt
Led us out of the house and into
Her sea green pickup.
I remember seeing a spot of blood on
The hallway carpet on my way out.
I wondered if my mother was
Going to use some club soda
to get the stain out.
I’ve heard that death gives advance warning of its arrival.
I guess I find it strange that it always comes as a shock.
Death of people, death of feelings, death of hope.
I guess I should have seen it coming.
Throughout it all I can’t help but find that I don’t check
My hair in the mirror as often. Don’t clean the sheets either.
I can’t remember the last time I made a meal for four—
Or two.
I have, however, found that the morning sun is much more
Bearable than it ever was. The moon, not so bearable.
My mother told me that I could be anything when I was a child.
Forever a dreamer, trapped in the prison of adolescence.
I’d lay down on my bed, in perfect waterslide form. I’d listen
To the low rumbles of a summer thunderstorm over the crackled
Radio signal.
Never once did I close my eyes and dream of being heartbroken.
Not once.
But solace lurks somewhere between these evils. The thought
Of moving on, the notion that this ache will subside.
My prayers rest with Johnny, and Monty, Deanna—to you just names,
And maybe that’s okay. To some, children are objects, jobs—income,
And some believe that Ted Hughes is a murderer.
I do not think these things.
Somewhere between sleep-drunk afternoons and tear
Filled conversations with my mother I began to understand
What Phil Collins is always singing about. Maybe I will begin
To understand why flowers smell so sweet when they’re living,
But look so useless when their dead.
A vase of white roses lay dried up on my kitchen table.
A few petals have found their way to the hard surface to rest.
I’d throw them away, but they are my only memory of you.
I bought them in March, it is now July.
Through the hot, humid days, the only thing I have to remind
Myself of a love so powerful it could change the weather is a few
Crumpled, soulless petals. I could never throw them away.
Her face appeared to be broken
from age old concrete.
A life that spanned generations
reduced to a plastic bag
slowly dripping lunch in
the form of liquid memories,
each splash, each breath,
taking one more sepia image away.
Her lucid glare moved without effort
from the monitored hourglass
to a tilted frame hanging on the wall.
Her eyes met a younger shell of herself,
the stare seemed to dissect a dimension
only known to the half-living.
Each breath excruciating, as a slow
deliberated move in a chess match.
Her ice blue eyes, oddly clashing
with her ghostly skin, close tensely
as she parts her lips and lays
her hands, palm down, onto the pillow top
mattress. Awaking again only
to blow the image of herself one last
kiss before exhaling and watching
the last drop fall from the tube.
The woman dances. Music
pouring out. Silence, then melody.
Not playing because we opened the lid
but because our hearts recalled those precious notes.
Winding harmony from an aged cube.
Whisper of my mother. Whisper
of my past. My daughter’s smile, her white pearls
luminous, the sunshine of the song.
Echoes etched in a timeless moment.
The laughter fills our worlds, the sound
familiar, the sound of my
mother and me. With one
touch, it begins again. We wind the key
around, around. The music
plays, like a bridge between
then and now. Her fourth birthday. The room filled
with love; our futures seem infinite.
we love, we listen. Silence,
then melody. Our eyes fixed on the candles.
They are blown out, but the music keep playing.
