by Justin Wetch
Clear the scoreboard, don’t keep count
Of the ways people have wronged you
Clear their debts, reset their account.
Few good things have ever come freely
Clearing the scoreboard, while a task not easy
Leads to a path of peaceful coexistence
If you learn to forgive often and completely.
FROSTBITE
There is one feeling
That all human kind
Cannot bear to feel.
That is the feeling
Of being alone.
Perhaps it developed
To keep ancient cavemen
From wandering too far
From the safety of numbers;
Or perhaps it arose
From the memories of stardust
Separated by parsecs
Which forms our earthly shells.
In any case, the feeling beckons
When sleepy eyes jolt open
And for just a moment you feel
Like the last person on earth.
The universe— a cavern
Too big to return an echo—
The stars stare back
In that deep,
Soul-shattering blackness
And from the depths of existence
Comes a cruel, icy wind
Raising the hairs
On the back of your neck
And suddenly it feels
Like you’re walking a tightrope
Over that endless abyss
On one sad, fraying, thin
Violin string.
It mocks everything
You could hold dear—
Money, fame, love
It wilts like a rose
Thrown suddenly
Into outer space.
To understand this
Of human nature
Is to understand
Every human action;
Every performance
Every deed
Every poetic love
Is this, and only this:
We can’t bear
The emotional frostbite
Of being alone.
DIETARY CONSIDERATIONS
You are what you eat
Too much and you become obese
Need energy? Caffeine release
Eat right to avoid disease.
So what do you feed your spirit?
Do you exercise your mind?
Do you push creativity to the limits
Make time for self reflection, look inside?
Are you balanced and healthy?
Do you manage your diet correctly?
Is your spirit fat and sweaty?
Is your mind sick and deathly?
Watch what you eat
Meditation is like good coffee
Dietary considerations are incomplete
If you’re only concerned for your body.
MONUMENTS OF INK
Photographs have an odd way of lying.
Or perhaps they merely present
The past truths we would rather forget—
Laying them to rest at the grave of memories
Once cherished in the times they lived.
These colorful polaroids
Are like magical portals
Leading to places, emotions, and people
Who had slipped into the midst of the forgotten,
Into the odd ether of willful omittance.
They scream greetings from their frozen afterlife
Imposing their awkward smiles,
Their connections between wayward souls
Which have long since snapped
And shattered like cursed mirrors.
This piece of inked paper stands a colossus
A monument to a string of moments once dear;
The only surviving testament to a time
When these background bridges remained unburned,
Before they became so much unswept rubble.
In vain I try to jump into the photo
To create again a time so simple
That a piece of paper might encapsulate it
From the erosive winds and waves of time
Which bring even the greatest of loves to a grave of dust.
MONUMENTS OF PIXELS & LIGHT
I never thought
That someone I once saw
So vividly, before my very eyes
Would one day disappear
Into a mediocre monument
Of pixels and squares of light;
A poor representation of reality.
This blurry selfie
Is all that connects me
To these past memories;
It is the only evidence
That the light of our sun
Once fell on both
Our cloudless faces
One summer day.
The only remnants
Of our myriad conversations
Are occasional updates
Like highway markers
On the road of life;
Or videos
Shared with a laughing emoji
Like the ones
We used to laugh at
Together.
It is like seeing an apparition
In the desert;
It looks so real
But is a trick of the light,
For I am certain
That this prison of pixels and dots
Could not contain
The person I once knew
Even though for now
It appears to.
NEWTON’S THIRD LAW OF EMOTION
I am convinced that the laws of nature
Which govern the universe
Govern human beings equally so.
What comes up must go down;
For every action there is
An equal and opposite one.
These universal truths
Are imbedded within ourselves
And imbue our psychology.
There is no comedic genius
Who did not grow up with pain
There is no great artist
Who did not grow up with the same.
One must fear to lose the present moment
To capture it beautifully in photography
One must fear life to be flavorless
To be a chef who cooks flawlessly.
As artists, we create the beauty
We are too afraid to live out
And search, but always fall just shy
Of finding what life is about.
LIFE IS PROFOUNDLY SAD
Life is profoundly sad.
I swear that for every sunny day
Without a care in the world
And every breezy afternoon
Where the wind soothes;
The cost must be paid;
And the price is counted
In sleepless nights
Spent looking at the ceiling
Searching in those etched patterns
For some sort of adhesive
To glue together the broken pieces
Of a soul crushed
By the weight of the fact that
Life is profoundly sad.
DISCOVERING MENTAL INJURIES
Have you ever looked at your hands
And found a mysterious cut or bruise?
You don't remember getting it
But the evidence is clearly there.
Maybe you discover it
When using hand sanitizer;
It stings, and hurts sharply,
Stealing space in your consciousness.
I've been wondering lately
If the same thing exists for the mind.
Maybe you're just sitting in your room
Sketching absentmindedly,
Or just sitting there, quietly
Thinking about life's happenings,
And you stumble upon an injury
You didn't know you had.
Somethin
g someone said
That you pretended didn't hurt
Or something you wanted to say
But didn't have the courage to
Anything gnawing at your mind
Creating a cystic scar;
Perhaps the sound of a certain voice
Is what calls it to your attention.
Discovering mental injuries
I begin to wonder cautiously
What if they're infected?
What if this is a slow death?
Maybe awareness is all we have
And true treatment is impossible…
I guess I'll just bring a band aid
And hope these mental injuries heal.
POSTMODERN ANGST
Love is the poetry of the stars
The wind is the breath of the earth
To never become who you are
Or to change at all, which is worse?
To find a love you must some day lose
Or to deny it to never feel loss
Remain half or lose half, we must choose
Is the value of love worth its cost?
We are a handful of dust in God’s image
Before we return again to dusty grave
Life isn’t a war, it’s a scrimmage
A hyphen between two dates.
At any second we could be writing
Our biography’s very last page
And not even realize it, how exciting—
We’re just actors on life's stage.
MIDNIGHT
Midnight is the cruelest of hours, breeding
Dark thoughts out of the blackness, freeing
Despair from the prison of happiness, meeting
Anxiety and fear in a treacherous alley, waiting
To bring a murderous end to hope before morning.
Fate is the cruelest of masters, taking
Life when it pleases or at random, handing
Rigged decks to whom it pleases, cheating
All alike and none the wiser, taking
Everything away from those with nothing.
Hope is a foolish disaster, ending
All realism and rationality, lying
Always promising too much, trying
To blunt the painfulness of life, muting
Dark thoughts and catalysts for weeping.
Sadness is the cruelest of emotions, crying
Deep sobs into the canyons of the mind, singing
Broken songs of torment and death, sending
Echoes at random into the future, requiring
All happiness to be punctuated with mourning.
Time is the cruelest of physicians, healing
All wounds, but always slowly, looping
A surgical needle through the mind’s flesh, experiencing
Torment again over again, repeating
Until anesthetics bring an end to feeling.
GOODBYE
You’re saying something to me
But I can’t pay any attention
My eyes are locked onto our hands, together
Thinking of everything I forgot to mention.
You’re leaving, oh yes I know, you keeps saying so
You say we’ll be reunited, but that’s just not enough
I know this is hard for you too, but you keep saying
To hold onto your memory and never give up.
You say you left some boxes full
Of things I might need while you’re gone
Some pots and pans and a recipe book
And oh, an antique glass chess pawn.
You’ve got to go, the boarding call sounds
But symphonies play sad melodies in my head
I want to take this time to say goodbye
But I can’t, I just can’t, so I’ll just nod instead.
You’re boarded and gone and soon far away
I burst into tears, head in my hands
I know you’ll be happier, sure,
Off to leave some footprints in new sands,
But I never got to say I that I loved you,
Never got to hug you one last time and say goodbye
Never got one last time in the park
To watch the stars fade into sunrise.
You’re gone forever, out of my life
I know your spirit has gone away to fly
I’m so sorry I didn’t have the courage
To say I loved you, to say goodbye.
THE WAVE
Life is the ups and downs of a wave
Sadness, joy, cycles of years and days
With different depths and unpredictable frequency
Everything comes and goes in seasons and sequences
From the moment the lightwave first hits the leaf
To the moment the wind knocks it down from the tree.
Good news, “I love you’s”, lies and truths
Are all communicated when the soundwaves move.
Every atom held together by electron waves
The waves of mystery holding together time and space
From the moment a baby opens eyes and takes breath
Till a soul is taken from us by the cruelty of death.
The brain waves of a thought, a dance, a kiss
Emotional heights, plunging into the abyss
The waves of the ocean echoing upon the shore
The waves of blood shed in scores in war
History repeats itself and so do our lives
Future set in stone, none of us survive.
Everything is connected, all part of a whole
Every word from different depths of the same soul
Ups and downs, what goes around comes around
As strands of future and past come unwound
Life is more than just death’s wicked countdown
Life is a wave— so swim, surf, or drown.
A MAN IN THE RAIN
There is an old man walking in the rain
On this empty road as the leaves fall
His skin is wrinkled, his glasses thick;
he carries an umbrella, but doesn’t use it
He hobbles along, using it as a cane
Without a care as to the drizzling shower
of water coming from up above.
He finds an old wooden bench, and sits heavily
Lowering himself gently as it creaks in protest
He exhales laboriously and settles in,
His breath visible in the chilly autumn air
He sets the umbrella down beside him
In her place, where she used to sit.
He holds his head in his hands, and shudders.
Tears run among their relatives, the rain
And streak through every crack in his face
Falling slowly towards his heart
Or, rather, the half of it still remaining
In his chest, the other half not beating back
In time from across that old bench
The way it used to, time ago.
His joints and bones ache from the cold
But he doesn’t even notice, or doesn’t care
Why would he, when he stands, incomplete
His old eyes drowning under waves of despair;
He caresses the empty seat slowly, trying
To recall his most precious of memories;
But her face is taken from him once more.
His Italian accent still shows through a bit
When he mumbles a bit from her favorite song,
But he can’t finish this serenade, he collapses
Into a puddle of sadness beyond language
Crying bitter, bitter tears onto the pavement
He has nothing, nothing left at all
Nothing, nothing left but shattering tears.
A car screeches by, running through a puddle
Sending a wave of muck cascading over him
But it’s no different from the way life has been
To him ever since that one wretched day.
..
He sees the wilted Rose she had once proudly
Watered and been sunshine to, or perhaps he
Only sees his own reflection in a puddle, dying.
There is an old man, walking in the rain
With a story to tell but nothing left to say
He carries an umbrella, only a walking stick
A crutch, to keep him further from the world;
He’s alone, waiting, vacillating indecisively
Between trying to glue himself back together
Or letting go of a heart broken apart.
section four
personal
SECTION IV: PERSONAL
CONTENTS:
Passport
Musings
The Actor
I Wanted To Ask You
Fingerprints
Honesty In Writing
Self-Diagnosis
Graphology
Sadistic Fiction
Wandering Soul
Uncharted
Keeping Creativity
Disabused Notions
Bending The Universe
Eternity
The Weight of the Future
Special People
Cynical
Internal Combustion Engine
The Box
What a cruel irony it is, that we get to choose our thoughts but not our feelings.
PASSPORT
These pages are filled with the places I’ve been
The beliefs I’ve changed and the sins I’ve sinned
The past versions of myself, each leaving their mark
In the ridges of my brain and veins of my heart
Changing musical tastes, changing features of my face
Changing viewpoints, different breezes to chase
Stamped with scars and troubling times
Soiled with dirt and splotches of wine
Hallelujahs, hail Mary’s, hunger and plenty
Days of hurricanes and days of serenity
Tattoos of things I swore would never change
But each falls behind at the turning of the page.
My past self would've hated who I am today
And I still feel that hatred in the parts of him that stayed
I’ve changed so much and yet something's lacking
I still don't how how to accept being happy
I once thought I had every answer, full of hubris
But I never knew anything and now I'm still clueless
.
Each page testifies to truths that are now lies
Stories of sunny days read under cloudy skies
These pages are filled with the places I’ve been
The memories I’ve made and mysteries within.
