Rain fell right before midnight,
Like the sudden realization that tomorrow was much too close.
The pitter patter of drops meeting the roof top, rolling down, collecting in the gutter, rushing out back to fall to the ground was nature’s pandora of night time playlists. It almost timed out perfectly with the pounding in my chest. But even darkness is not enough to keep the slide show of emotions from repeating.

Sleepyeyes dec 2011

I used to put glow in the dark stars on my ceiling as a child. As if the confines of my room were too much and I needed the illusion of the grand world in the very square ness of my room. I would lie there imagining all that was beyond the constellations I had meticulously picked out.

I ended up laying sprawled out on the carpet of my room tonight. Wishing I had those stars again to put up with careful thought, as if by designed the prudently laid out stars could mimic a plan for my life. A self-declared horoscope on the roof in which I hid out, seeking shelter. This time though I was hoping to bring the world in and not expand out. The diminutive time I have already traveled this world has lead me to a few conclusions that sometimes a set time, minutes to dwell in your own presences of mind was as needed and as necessary as exploring unknown trails.

But then as my eyes wander haphazardly across treasures of previous journeys, my spirit grows restless: from the serious stone statue from Belize to the sketched woman from France looking as perplexed as I feel. This world is just too limitless in all that it has to offer, and I will neither have the ample amounts of time to explore every corner of it or be satisfied in moments to reflect or learn enough from all that I saw. So I will have to contently sit tonight drawing out constellations with stars I no longer have and count from memory the footsteps I have already left behind.

sleepy eyes dec 1st 2011 

I have come to the conclusion that I write to understand this world. I lay thoughts unto paper like a mason might lay brick to connect point A to B. Words create the pathway in which I follow, in hopes of some further depth and understanding of that which had previously lay in heaps before me. The mass and height of the piles vary in which I decided to conquer them; perhaps I should have an elevation limit. 

This brings me to my second point, that the recent “pile” has inevitable turned into a mound, formed into a small knoll, grew into a hill and now I stand at the bottom of a mountain that I have to summit in order to continue my forward momentum in life. 

As I am working though on my approach, packing my ice ax just in case of any needed self arrests; I recognize that this is most liking going to be a mutli-pitch climb. 

On Belay.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends and family, near and far. May your blessings out weigh the negatives and may we always remember to recognize the little, silent and “common” blessings in our life, the ones we so often forget to count. 

sleepyeyes nov. 2011 

I miss the smell of your skin and the way your fingers draw out your name like a tattoo across my skin. Hidden in places few have ever seen; a claim to the hours you made my skin tremble, a memoir of our love. I wonder how many times you have traced it over and over, searing it to the very edge of my soul. Yet so delicate am I inside, you made certain not to scar. Ever so lightly you merely brushed your lips to my being. My darkness learned to understand the coming of dawn as you lay with me. Hope beat between our chests as one and turning your eyes to me, I knew you could see…  You saw “me”. 

sleepy.eyes.oct.2011

She cracked a beer at 30,000, with hands older than her face showed and bent with arthritis.
Fluffy clouds that make me think of cotton balls, speed by at what should be an alarmingly fast rate.
The imprint of peace on my neighbors pale white skin from her bracelet as she finally closes her eyes the last half hour before we land, match her bag.
Wonder what my mother will say about my ear piercing?
Behind me his foot played footsie with the back of my calf. Long legs or just a lucky guy? Perhaps he never knew, fates a capital “b” sometimes.
San francisco rests on his knee on seat F row 18.
She smelled like Philosophy, chuckling to my self I wonder if she likes Socrates.
Go now or hold it till we land. I debate, window seat, both my neighbors eyes have fluttered closed.
I try to add the miles my backpack and I have had together as “all electronic devices” must be turned off.
And like the frantic writer I hope to one day be, I contort my body to find my favorite pen and scribble this all down between lines in the magazine.

Sleepy.eyes.sept.2011

I believe everyone should have something alive in their house. Not necessarily a four legged creature, though those are in my category, but anything that grows, eats, lives and requires light, water and air.
So I bought you a lucky bamboo plant and a phalaenopsis orchid leaving care and instructions careful angled on your table.
I sat and watched for a while the shadow of the orchid travel across your blank white wall already feeling comforted by the company of another living organism. It’s beauty extenuated by the sparseness of the room.
Having squished the mosquito earlier and trying to fit a novel worth of ideas and feelings on to 3 x 5 index cards, I enjoyed the meditative state I found myself to be in staring at the flower.
I continued writing out cards and tossing them haphazardly across the table. Looking up I was tickled by idea of them being self written out tarot cards and I’d just written out my future. Perhaps I should have numbered them as I went…. Might make my next few years easier.

Ps. I miss you.

I have a play list on my ipod labeled “sleep.” Full of classical music that doesn’t have any sudden melodies or crashing of brass instruments to bring me back from the shores of sleep and back into the world in which I breathe in. 

I often put these on late at night when my head spins like a mouse on a wheel. No opera, like Andrea Bocelli, for it is meant to weave you through emotions. I am trying to calm them. On warmer nights I wander to the darkest spot I can find, laying on a soft piece of grass to stare up into the heavens.  I rest my hand in the spot you could be, right next to me, hoping that it might find you. I write my name out with the stars, find constellations of my memories and water the grass with teardrops of too many thoughts. The issue with the music that I have selected is the mere fact that no words, such a neutral melody can rock you into sleep, but also will let you just exist in the moment. So instead of running, I am lead to embrace each one idea, over and over like the piano keys of my songs, until I am neither in pain or pleasure. No emotion besides a dull sense of hope, like a candle burnt too low, battling the slight breeze from the west. My heart so slowed that one might have to watch my chest with such a careful gaze just to know it still beat. In this meditative trance I pray for a shooting star, something to wish upon, to feed my hunger. My desire for something greater than I am since asking for answers has proven pointless time and time again. A comet to burn so when I reminiscence I can recall feeling small. Not small like my feet don’t touch when I sit in the chairs, or by the measurements of my waist, but undersized in the knowledge of our understanding for the point of why we are all here. For then it sets me on fire, burning to keep reaching for more. A passion for what might be possible, a bonfire of promises I merely have to make for myself. Then I feel the inferno of energy and I am whisked away from the shores of peaceful sleep and flying through belief like a child. Designing what I was running to find in my sleep to something here so in the day light hours I would not be able to tell if I slumbered or slept. As my world would be full, my floor plans not drawn out alone. But with you… And you being more than just what I ran off to met in dreamland, but the sun light that also woke me in the morning.

sleepy.eyes.may.2011 

The eloquence of words have left me.

Stripped bare of meaning,

Void of any understanding,

My heart beats inaudibly.

Confused in sinister gloom,

Veiled by my own restless hand,

It beats me black and blue,

From the inside out. 

Neither capsule or dedicated mediation find answers,

And the heavens above seem to be overcast with uncertainty. 

I fall to my knees,

Like the rain to the earth,

Looking for my conduit of hope. 

I become wedged in my fairy-tale allegiance,

Burdened by the throne I lean on,

Shattered with merely the truth. 

Sleepy.eyes.may.2011

Can’t sleep.

Rain pattering on the roof doesn’t help. It’s the sound track of my head, thoughts falling hard on the concrete, plunging it into abstract ideas I cannot gather. I wish you were here, a voice to call me to bed, or your arms to wrap around me holding me together like glue. I wonder if I appear fragile. Some silence is too much. Too many paths to loiter on, too much time to turn back around when we become unsatisfied. Fat drops plummet from the rain gutter like a clock ticking, counting each second I stare at the blinking courser of my screen. The comfort of my bed doesn’t tempt me and I cannot seem to distract or convince myself I need sleep for my day which is getting closer and closer. I almost wish the rain would stop, maybe the silence of a house could then reflect my head and my heart and I could finally close my eyes. But it seems as if it is here to stay. We both seem stubborn in our battle, though I am not sure which one I am fighting. If it weren’t cold I’d go for a walk in it. Give in to and let the water cleanse me. Instead it is just beating on the roof that is supposed to protect me, knocking on the fragileness of the night. I find I am ill equipped for the darkness like the flickering surge right before the power goes out. Dreams will be no relief, I am still searching, constantly, for the flash light of liberation. Perhaps this is why I sit here, neither stirred to rouse or lulled to sleep, none seem peaceful. Stillness does not always bring calm, if anything we’ve become conditioned to board up the windows and brace for the storm. But as a wise man once put, our hiding doesn’t not serve the world. Sometimes I think though we just have to figure out who we are hiding from…more than anything or anyone, I think we hide from ourselves the most. Does the seed of our potential really scare us that much? 

Don’t laugh but I actually closed my eyes chewing on the question thinking maybe I’d hear an answer or be enlightened. Nothing… But I wandered into the picture of a wall, one like my mothers back home, full of favorite quotes, pictures of places we have been and places we will go, faces that inspired and courage that was captured. I thought of you… mentally weaving both things together. And the stars that I can not see tonight twinkled again with hope in my sky. I found harmony again in the not having the answers to questions I tried to ask in the wrong time and serenity in the moment of now. The synonym for the word “now” is “live,” but it is also “survive.” So it’s merely a choice or living or surviving. And as if on cue, my long awaited sign has come. The rain has slowed to a composed melody and my choice of now is this – living… living and loving in the only the best way I know how.

love ~ sleepy.eyes.april.2011

I have a love for pens… I have even hidden them before in my bag or under some unuseful object in my meager attempt to keep them from running off with a wandering hand. 

It’s a relationship I am sure, much like those of an artist with their media of creation, whether paintbrushes or clay. The smoothness of the way the letters roll from my fingers through the pen; the elegance of the straight lines of a sentence; the idle doodling off to the side when I am trying to connect to thoughts in my head, lost in how best to continue, feel like an affair. When I lack the formation of a clear idea I lean into the pen, nibble on the end, trace the edge of it across my skin, like the fingers of a lover. 

Someone ran a red light tonight…Not uncommon, sadly, but if I had not hesitated at the moment my light turned green, I would have been hit. A speeding bullet of metal colliding into my world. 

I call the unknown driver an “asshole” loudly in my car, wishing for a cop or the ability to pull the speeding headlights, fading with distance, over. As if my mind had been hit, I got slammed with the urgent need to reach for you, to know that at this very moment we were both ok. Funny how the moments of “close calls”, fate, or God looking out for you melt away the trivial things of the moment. Its like a spring day warming away all the blues of winter and too many days without sun. So here as I proceeded to make my left turn, I reached for you, searching for anything to comfort. What’d I would have given to have you within reach…to grab your hand and squeeze it with understanding, to get out the car and rush into your arms, just to listen to your heart beating against my ear. To look deep into your eyes as I say, I love you before our lips would meet. This would have completed my day, my “close call”, knowing that you knew that you were the world to me. 

But instead, I lay alone, having the affair with my favorite pen, and writing in hopes you felt me when I needed you the most. Hoping maybe for a brief moment we were together…

sleepy.eyes.feb.2011

I sit here everyday and watch you. I flip through magazine articles, read my horoscope and scan the weather. Sitting here has become habitual, almost like how I ignore the “lucky numbers” given by the alignment of the stars or if it’s suppose to rain or shine. I am merely here because now at 8:33 you will walk by.

I often feel ghostly. The door to the coffee shop creaks if you push it, so I pull it, silently entering. The smell of fresh brewed beans is neither awakening nor stimulating so I stand in the lane of impatient addicts still lost in a foggy haze. I don’t order, just hand my card over; my drink stands ready on the bar. It didn’t take too long for this routine to form, these kids are smart. My Grande extra foam vanilla latte is simple enough though they can’t seem to remember how to spell my name.

Very rarely is my seat taken. It looks out over the quiet side of the street and is 4 feet too far from any power plug though snuggled in the corner. It’s comfort verses power and power wins again.

This is where I met you. Well you know, sorta met you. I noticed your bag first for merely selfish reasons for it seemed practical, worn and exactly what I was looking for. But before there was too much room for examination you turned and were gone. By lucky chance or maybe it was in my horoscope I ignored the day before, I saw you again at the same time a few days later. This is how we began.

You always show up prepared, while I curse the snow or the cold, or leave my umbrella at home. You’ve never walked with anyone, and your seemingly oversized feet seem to shuffle the sidewalk no heavier or lighter on any given day. Your hair is peppered with white signs of age and you favor your right leg. I’ve seen people walk by you as if you weren’t there, you graciously keep step and move over, never taking more than 14 seconds to come in to view and then disappear.

If I were to tell anyone why I showed up here at everyday to watch you for seconds cross in front of my window they would laugh. I will be the first to admit that our relationship is not “standard” and quiet equivocal even to me at times. I know I am lonely and its seems as you are too, and in all the hussle and bussle and “power driven” lives we have become the “ghosts”. Maybe I am hoping that me paying attention to you and taking note, will mean the 14 seconds of me acknowledging your existence, someone maybe will notice mine. Then maybe I will not be just the empty chair and you will not just be the faceless man reflecting off into the street.

sleepy.eyes.2010 

I saw a woman today ride the cart like a five year old down the hill to her car. The black pin stripe suit fit to match her pristine resume, faded into a haze as I watched her hair fall out of place slightly and a grin spread from ear to ear. When she slowed down to an unsatisfactory speed she met her stiletto heel to the pavement and pushed off one last time before arriving at her shiny black SUV. Liberation enveloped her, freedom coursed through her veins and the idea of flying played out before her eyes. I watched as she soon straightened up her suit jacket, pushed the lock of hair back into place and loaded up her car. She looked both ways before placing her hands on 10 and 2 and backed out carefully. I couldn’t help but feel comforted by this small moment for it reminded me, there’s still hope in the world…

                                              We can still break all the rules. 

sleepy.eyes.oct.2010

I write your name scribbled in my notebook like a love struck school girl. But I don’t dot my “i’s” with hearts or draw flowers off to the side while giggling quietly. No each letter writes down more memories tattooed across my skin, burnt into my heart and welled up in tears that form at the corner of my eyes.

sleepy.eye.oct.2010

Tears sting her tired eyes, as she props herself up against a wall, next to the pile of laundry she has yet to do. Words spin around in her like a Ferris wheel. And she stares at the blinking line, on a blank page.  Her heart fumbles like the freshman quarter back of last weeks game and she sighs, wondering. The dishwasher cleanses all her external leftovers, and she settles in to cuddle next to all her questions. Missing all the things that once kept her steady, that wiped away all her tears.

.Sleepy Eyes. September 2010.