Find Your Own Meaning (A Poem)

Find Your Own Meaning

I want to waste my life with you

cause we are too young to die

We are simply too old to pray 

I know for some reason thats true

just don't worry, no need to be shy

I know your heart is turning grey

In the end I can't keep you new

No matter how hard I try and try

I won't be able to keep it at bay

cause i can't waste my life for a few

I love you and feel the need to cry

Im unable to stand without a sway

The world is warped from this view

My head hurts as i try to magnify 

I wish i could hold you and stay

I wish i could waste my life with you

but It seems we are too young to die

we're sadly far too old to try and pray

-

I want to waste my life with you

I know for some reason that true

In the end i can't keep you new

cause i can't waste my life for a few

The world is warped from this view

I wish i could waste my life with you

Cause we are too young to die

Just don't worry, no need to be shy

No matter how hard i try and try

I love you and feel the need to cry

My head hurts as i try to magnify 

But it seems we are too young to die

We are simply to old to pray

I know your heart is turning grey

I won't be able to keep it at bay

Im unable to stand without a sway

I wish i could hold you and stay

We're sadly far too Old to try and pray

Ericapaeus

The bar table is sticky. The juices glistened in the dull light from the flickering TV in the back corner. Sports silently enact itself before glassy eyes and dull thoughts. To the left two older gentlemen play pool, wearing rugged clothing, contrasting their worn, and tired frames; too thin and frail to empress even the weakest of men. The clicking and clacking, thumping and tapping gives the bar an aroma of infinite existence. Time feels worn, like a well used path; the path to the promise land. The carpets have been walked by many dragging feet, with blood stains soaked into the ragged fabric, exuding the pathetic cycle of alcohol, violence, and frustration of lost time and failed endeavours. Above the waitresses head line many famous quotes, most from celebrated alcoholic writers. The men care not that they may share a similar end to those of Ernest Hemmingway and Hunter S. Thompson, without the arrogance or brilliance to leave a bit of themselves behind. To the right the tinted windows show a deserted street. The street light strains to light the darkest of corners, as the rain falls upon an empty street. Once in a while a car will drive by, lighting a back ally, or maybe illuminating a hollow window. 

"Hi." His shy words clash with the scenery. The waitress looks up. She isn't startled, she isn't surprised. She is only awakened. Her eyes lose the faded facade she implements when she wants to be left alone. The man sitting at the bar is looking at her with quiet eyes, eyes that hold the promise of intelligence and sympathy. Anyone who says they don't want pity are liars or derelicts. 

"Hi" she replied. He stood there sovereignly. He had a grey specked soul, and dirty blonde hair that matched the stained and grotesque ceiling, yet it added a beauty that she never noticed before. She smiled, unable to hide the sheepish confusion that played across her lips. 

"Can I help you?" The question evoked a quizzical look from his features. 

"Everyone can help anyone" he replied solemnly. She raised her hand. She dropped it, unable to respond to his statement. She had spoken the same four words in the same order, mechanically, for years. She hadn't realized that she had forgotten what they meant.  Can. I. Help. You. She thought for the first time what each word meant. Can represented an action, or the future of one. I represented herself, the word that helped her explain her own existence to another. Help. Help is what she did everyday. She helped men cope, run, and die. You. Who is you? what is you? This man? 

"I can't" she replied. The man looked at her. He raised his hand, and held within it a coin. He than flipped it. instinctually she closed her eyes, and muttered "heads" as the coin fluttered in the dense air. She heard the sound of metal striking skin and the slapping of a hand against another. She opened her eyes. He stood there, with the coin beneath his fingers and palm. 

"if its head, you can't." she looked down, and saw a head looking back at her. He looked at her. She looked at him. He stood up, and placed the coin on the table, and walked away. She looked down, and placed shaking fingers upon the cold metal laying on the table. She flipped the coin.           

An Imagined Love

On days when I am stifled by the walls of my room, covered in posters of past and current musical heroes (and a massive burger poster stolen on an expedition in mexico) I take the initiative to go for walks in crowded areas. I enjoy malls, cafes, and any other areas filled with people. On a C-train ride to downtown I see a young woman. Before I can continue I must first explain. On my travelling walks I like to look at people, and they become an escape. I see interesting individuals and I imagine them being best friends, intimate lovers, and unparalleled enemies. 

The young woman on the train clearly had lived a difficult life. I don't believe she was much older than I, but she had a worn look of a woman who has been forced to work diligently her entire life. She was being ticketed by a peace officer for not having in her a possession a train ticket to allow her to ride the train legally. As the Officer was writing out her ticket, I saw her hands picking at each other in a cannibalistic manner. Her nails where tearing at the skin of her thumb, which was dry and scaly from some unknown work. 

I pictured myself being in her life many years before this moment. I was shy and in awe of her deeply green eyes and reddish tinged haired, and found her soft hands (for I believe she once possessed them) comforting as they would run through my unkempt and curly hair. We would have our first kiss behind the school gymnasium, which would undoubtedly be ruined by a male friend of mine who would run gleefully from my glaring stare. We would consummate our love during a run away adventure from our parents, drugged with a euphoria that one would imagine an escaped convict would enjoy. 

As time went along, our lives would drift as our economic classes clashed with our futures, I, destined for the universe of university, as she, caught in a whirl wind of lower class politics and family responsibility would feel ashamed and unworthy of me, a man from a different world. We would fight, we would cry, we would hold each other, but the end was near, and we would break each others hearts. It would be done below a bridge, when she would make the ultimate sacrifice and tell me that it would not work out. My pleading and my begging when unleashed upon her to no avail would act as knifes into her already tattered heart.

She would leave appearing tall and strong, and I shattered and unkempt, but we would both feel the same inside. I would not understand that she felt as if she was weighting me down, keeping me from a future I was meant to have. She gave me up, not because of spite or lost love, but because she was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and allow my future take precedent to hers, and my ultimate happiness be at the expense of her knowing she let us go forever. The years would dull the ache in my heart, and I would go to university, meet new people, and grow to be a smart, bright, and well educated young man. I would ride the train daily to go to school and one day I would see her, sitting with her frame dejected and withered, broken down by a lifetimes worth of pain, regret, sacrifice and misfortune. I would feel the ache in my heart once again, but I would not move to her, and pretend I do not know her, as she begs for me to say hello, to help her, love her, and hold her as I once did those years ago.  On that train, picking away at her skin, with a peace officer writing her a ticket.  

A Sales Pitch

Hello and welcome! My name is Jerry and today your life will be changed forever.  I shall introduce you to a new and fantastic product which will revolutionize everything around you. Now before I begin I would like to ask you, the kind viewer, a few simple questions. Do you find life a bore? Does life weight you down, does it get in the way of "happiness" and "fulfillment" which are empty words for gigantic promises and untold lies. If you answered yes to one or all of the above questions than I have the answer for you! 

Death!!!! 

Now hear me out. "Life" has been a fad for much to long. It has become a vibrant part of our society and is sold to us from one end of the world to another. Life, not only being an unstoppable fad, is filled with stress and annoyance. It is incredibly expensive, and has consistent payments year in and year out. What a bore!!! But what if I told you that I could sell you death for one simple price, and it ends there! No more laborious payments and oh those taxes!!!! It would all come to an end. 

In our studies, we have not found a single person who has been unhappy with their death experience! Not a single letter has been write by any of our customers complaining about the new experience known as death!!! Now this stands in stark parallel with life! Costumer satisfaction for life has been declining for years. Throw away the path to life and embrace the positives of death! No more stress, no more taxes, no more payments, no more aches and pains, and age means nothing when you are dead!! 

Now Jerry you may ask, what about happiness?! what about fulfilment and all those good things about life?! Well good question! The answer is simple, all those "things" you listed are simply human constructs. They don't actually exist! Now I know you are no fool right? I know you, the loyal customer, can see a great deal when it is presented to you! You may ask yourself, but Jerry, death sounds like such a great deal, there must be a catch!? No Catch!! Death is simple, easy, and cheap, a stark contrast to the expenses of you now pay to remain alive. Thousands of dollars thrown down the drain simply to maintain the same boring and senseless state of existence. But death will only cost you one easy payment of $5,000, and then you can enjoy the blissful neutrality of non-existence! Thats right, only $5,000! 

Call now at the number at the bottom of your screen! and it gets better! When you purchase death you will also get to choose what happens to your worthless corpse! That will be thrown in for free, but only if you call the number at the bottom of your screen within the next 10 minutes! Don't hesitate now!! Get your chance to enjoy death, a one time offer for only $5,000! 

Troubling Journey (A Poem)

Troubling Journey 

Brilliantly on you own 

comprehensibly lost within another day

Cursed by blind fate to lose all that is dear

A military man at sea for over 120 months 

Post-traumatic loss 

Greed turning his peers into pitiful swine 

No choice but to make a great sacrifice and honour

Lost a year being in love with a dangerous remedy

I broke my mothers heart

When I had given my heart and loyalty to country 

I missed her last breath and received her final warning

Beware the touch of a femme fatale in the shadows 

For she shall sing 

A song to seduce men into the dangers of beckoning rocks  

We must sometimes tie ourselves to the mast to remain 

Some must have trust in those while being willfully blind

Then we lost 

caught at sea, the guns blazing as the sun was rising 

I knew we shouldn't have taunted fate with arrogant banter 

Some hunts are never worth taking as I brutishly interpreted 

Morphemically simple

I lost myself into an old love who become my femme fatale 

Seven years unrecoverable on the island that was within 

Inexplicably disoriented with the knowledge I singularly survived

Unpretentiously vague  

Every overseer must revert himself to an apostle in order to lead himself 

I learned to let myself go and to be revived by those that I once loved

It seems you can tell a path a man walks by looking closely at his soles

Dejectedly suited 

Only way to remind her of that olive tree planted in our beating hearts

was to remind her why she adamantly rejected those bustling suitors

That she tore their hearts with the arrows of her youth for a reason 

The Vengeful dreams 

If only those Images could be freed from my over stimulated cranium 

Post Traumatic stress disorder is always in-order when I fall asleep  

Deus Ex machina. why does it only exist in the greek tragedies?

On The Train (A Poem)

On The Train 

Part One 

Beneath stained and worn glass we are enticed with the image of success 

Post-secondary dreams on which we lay our deepest hopes 

A nice home, and flowering garden, with children playing 

mild comfort unbroken by life that exists outside of suburbia 

The figure below the opaque glass is smiling and seemingly knowledgable 

Though signs of disability dot the walls of the train station 

bringing into focus the reality of pain and all that life can take 

From one train station we are shown hopes of the future 

In the next we are witnesses to the crumbling infrastructure of the city 

For we all can't live within a mild mannered utopia upon gods graces 

It amazes me what can be found when one watches from a moving train. 

Part Two

2207 is the number of my slow moving train on which I ride 

I can see a middle aged woman running trying to retain slipping youth 

I see youth dressed in old world elegance trying to pretend they are old 

I see two men standing side by side, fated to know the other exists 

Though cursed to never know what the other could have done  

if they had only decided to interact and exchanged a few words   

So many lives crisscrossing yet never interacting directly 

feats of avoidance we rarely consider except in artistic mediums 

This is what I see on this train ride 

Part Three

Greasy hair and a pulled up collar 

fitting, amount the human wreakage known as poverty

a frightful gaze and fades jeans hinting at fear within the home 

while an uneasy cross of the legs portrays raw stoicism

A reflection of the glass of the train enlightens more perception   

a couple on the rocks, turmoil dwelling below the calm exterior

an acne riddled face looking at itself with sadden distaste 

willing to sell her honour for the utterance of the word love 

though one day she will be majestically beautiful though lost 

A glass man sits next to her easy to read, full of cliches 

External confidence hiding internal self hated and pity 

Told by society to love that which is beautiful and important 

though never being told where to look and find that beauty 

So skinny, her greasy hair failing to express her deep hunger 

Red eyes telling a story of which I cannot truly understand 

Part Four

Owl earrings upon a youths glazed commitment   

Engrossed in the technology that exists in her unsure hands 

Such is the quiet freedom we have granted the youth 

Released from the realities of scarcity for a short while 

Ignorant of the chain of events that made it possible 

For the mild message of boredom which encompasses her 

Red coat possibly expressing her innate belief in life 

Yet truthful she shall never know what her opinion is 

among so many yelling voices telling her what to think 

Me (A Poem)

Me

I was born, in ninety one

the year that kurt had won

nevermind kurt cobain

brought the year of pain

interesting parallels of life

Me surrounded by strife

Than at three i moved

What does that prove?

learned to change my name

Reinventing life as a game

I became the boy alejandro 

Had a friend named predro 

thats not true. just pretending

Im sick and always reinventing

Thats okay it could be worse

I could be living a terrible curse

at seven I was back in my land

It seemed boring and bland

it was cold and bold and old

and i decided to sit and fold

stay warm by staying lazy

Slowly becoming crazy

loved my television and chips

Staring at small lives in clips

transfixed by lips and lies

they are deep seeded allies

When i turned ten I delayed

i didnt want my soul to decay

of course at ten i wasn't dead

far from it, I was ready for bed

I was aging faster than rust

my lungs filling with dust

parents smoked and laughed 

my lungs getting cut in half

at 12 i had my first true kiss

oh boy was that true bliss

she had long black hair

 shit was she tall and fair

at 13 i had my first real fuck

and well i sure was in luck

cause I later fell half in love

i could see that she was above

her soul was mine to keep

sadly she had to go sleep

they say it lasts forever

ill see her whenever

at 13 i fell in love once again

i guess it was heavenly ordained

though i dont believe in that

maybe thats cause im a brat

anyways at 14 i ran away

I just knew I had to pay

sadly life wasnt meant for you

as such my depression grew

when i was 15 my life wavered

I was in dire need of a favor

got some friends and stability

what can I say, I was a liability

i become inter-perspective  

not always very reflective 

though i was still a child

haha i felt almost defiled

that doesn't surprised me

I find life is full of hard fees

When i was 16 I meet her

the year was a bit of a blur

I fell in love and so did she

sadly it wasn't with me

I moved on and accepted

I think i finally intercepted

The strength of my existence

i wasn't fighting a resistance

I become more mystical 

some could call me fiscal

at 17 I slowly understood

and kinda ate some food

sadly I didnt become lean

nor did I become mean

I fell in love with Emily

she was so cute, friendly

I leaned on her too much

I used her as a crutch 

I dated her till almost 19

She was my true queen

now I'm in university

Met people like shifty

and have grown a bit

though lets not have a fit

im Olek and am happy

that may sound pretty sappy

thats my life's story for now

and I have survived somehow