Ghost

The plastic halls glow with glossy sheen

And I reach to touch my locker safe

But my hand slips right through

It’s not even my locker.

The grey hazy figures

Rush back and forth in these reflecting halls

When I realize for the first time

That I don’t exist.

Wait no, I do, I remember

While someone catches my eye

I reach my hand up to wave hi

I don’t know them.

I realize her hollow gaze stares over my shoulder

I observe but never participate

People walk through me, and I through them

In the murky fog of these halls.

Eustace

Eustace walked into school head down, hood up, eyes half open. A hint of red circled his eyes. No time to go to his locker, must go straight to gym class. He walked into the gymnasium and threw his tattered backpack under the bleachers. He fell like a sack into a chair against the wall right when the bell rang.

Eustace was in a well-earned half-asleep stupor. This was his third night of only getting six hours of sleep. He didn’t have time to make coffee this morning. He only had a bowl of cereal and a cigarette on the way to school. He could feel the beginnings of a headache at his temples.

“If you’re not participating in gym see me, everyone else, go change,” said the gym teacher.

That teacher looked so healthy and full of energy. It was heard in his voice. It sounds like he got a full nine hours of sleep last night and went for a run this morning. He probably had a caring wife that made him eggs benedict for breakfast. He didn’t really drink coffee though. He preferred to live his life drug-free. He sneaked a cup here-and-there and on Saturdays. All of his kids had A’s in elementary school. He had an above ground pool in his back yard. They had families over for dinner on Fridays. They would play board games and drink wine until two bottles were empty. Right after the guests left were the nights he got lucky with the wife. That’s how surprises like little Anna came along.

“Eustace. Eustace!”

His eyes cracked to see the gym teacher standing over him.

“Are you participating today?” the gym teacher asked.

“Naw,” Replied Eustace.

“Then go sit over on the bleachers.”

Eustace groaned internally while getting up. He could see the kids filtering out of the locker room. He closed his eyes and rubbed his face with his hands. The gymnasium turned blurry. His nose started to run and he wiped it with his sleeve. He thought of all the classes he had to sit through today and it brought a headache on full-force.

Eustace squinted. Through his eyes he could see a pretty girl talking in her circle of friends. The blur was still in his eyes from when he rubbed his face, and he found himself unable to stop yawning. When he closed his eyes he could see her clearer. In fact, she was right in front of him. He studied every contour of her face. Every perfection. Every imperfection. He liked the imperfections more, because he was the one that knew them. They are what made her his. Eustace smiled, then she smirked and looked down. Eustace touched her hand ever so softly, and she looked up. He bent down, and softly kissed the tip of her nose. They embraced. He could feel her body press up against his. Her head fit right under Eustace’s chin. He breathed in deep the smell of her hair.

The bell woke him up. 

Monologue: The Grievances of a Grownup

(Sound of baby crying. A teen dad enters, holding a bottle and a bib slung over his shoulder. Crying stops and he slumps down in a chair with a sigh of relief.)

Time didn’t used to exist. Existence itself, when I was little, seemed full grown. Grass was greener, the sky brighter, sleep sweeter, because everything was new. Brand new. The gray curtain of everything being old news is thrown over everyday life with each new experience. I can literally remember my first fishing pole. That purple rod with Looney Toon’s Taz character depicted on the side; an impulse buy by my dad at Walmart.  Growing up is like a burden placed on your back. Not because of responsibility but because of knowledge. Like when you realize for the first time that evil is not so far away. When you grow up you pretend to be drunk to look funny, but then your cousin gets into a drunk driving accident and dies at age nineteen. When your dad tells you that his wallet was stolen out of his car; not in the city where he works, but right in your garage. Life slowly gets scarier and certain habits are adopted to cope with fear, or at least make it less intense. But today I want to sit in my mother’s lap again. I want to volunteer at the local library with her, before I had to go away to kindergarten. To wrestle with my dad after suspensefully awaiting his arrival home from work. Now I’m older, and I need to be someone else’s security, while maybe I still need some myself.

(Baby starts crying again. Dad gets up and walks off stage.)

I Wish I Knew The World Was Grey

I wish I knew the world was grey
The night a turning lantern held by a string
A whisper the ocean
The cry of a moonlit night
The damp streets pounded into the earth,
Suffocating its worn out lungs
The wolf cry of a vagabond
The tear, a pompous shade of black
The capitalists around me laugh
As I fall down on my back
The streets are crawling, crawling
Forever towards me
And I can't escape their neon glow
And they carry, carry me far away
To places I never wished to know

From Rags

Do these clothes, or rags
Make you think
I am enlightened
Or clued into a deeper part of life?

If anything, I want you to know
That I can rip them off,
And still be the same person

If anything, I want you to know
I'm just as lost as you are

I just want you to know
You can run, jump, live please
And learn

But it's not the hat, it's how you wear it
It's not your burden, it's how you bear it.

Untitled

I want to devote my time to education
Rather than school
I want to jump and fall
To see what I can learn
To devote my time to honesty
The truth of life
To see the best minds of my generation
Even if they are destroyed by madness
They are after the same things I am
They are mostly soul
Detached from the their sacred heartbeat
The idea of the soul
Is the cancer of the body
For one destroys themselves to find it
For death to yourself
Is the ultimate enlightenment
Which is finally, truth.

Chemicals

I’m in a coffee shop. It was a particularly good day to be in a coffee shop because it was a snow day. Good coffee, good food, and a good book. High school is a good place to be in life sometimes because there still are snow days. You don’t have to go to work on those days yet because you don’t need money.

I was deep into the book I was reading when I heard a voice. It was an energetic kind of voice that seemed to demand one’s attention. I looked up. I found myself immediately attracted to the girl who belonged to the voice. I had that feeling when a little flutter begins in your heart and an unsettling in your stomach begins.

Don’t get me wrong; it was not “love at first sight” as some call it. I don’t believe in any initial feeling being called love. Love is more of a long term, self-sacrificing thing. I think people that believe in love at first sight over-indulge in their sentimental nature.

As this girl ordered her drink and sat down, I could not help but steal the occasional glance. She was, in fact, beautiful. She was short with dark hair. She looked almost Italian.

 What was strange is that there was nothing in particular to attract me to her. She was pretty. But, I see a number of pretty girls on any particular day. Maybe if she came in on a different day, or in a different way, I would not have noticed her. I wonder, sometimes, if people’s chemicals can just match at the glance of an eye. It really makes no other sense. I don’t know her, she doesn’t know me. But when I look at her, something leaps that demands my attention, and demands my action. Maybe the same thing happens when she looks at me. That can happens sometimes. Sometimes the chemicals are one sided, but sometimes they aren’t. That’s magic, if you ask me.

The girl got up and walked out the door with her friends. Maybe one day I will see her again under different circumstances. A circumstance where I can easily talk to her or find out about her. Maybe I will never see her again. For some reason, I think I will.