WRITING PROMPT: I Wish I Had (blank) Yesterday!
I don’t know what I wish I had yesterday Sometimes I just wish I had yesterday back Or last year, or my 30’s, or my entire broken childhood And sometimes I don’t want any of that back at all. I’d rather look forward, stand tall And not waste my energy on trying to recall But avoiding the past can cause our passion engine to sieze unto our life is stalled The past is part of who we are, and it’s never truly that far away, So even though it’s yesterday It colors today, in every way, What we say How or even if we play If we see things vibrant, or rosy, or dank, dark and grey If we forgive or try to make others pay If we mediate or if we pray I wish I had clarity yesterday I wish I had courage yesterday I wish I had pizza yesterday, I wait I did that. I wish I had trusted myself And taken my dreams and passions back off the shelf They say if wishes and buts were clusters of nuts we’d all have a bowl of granola Which just goes to show ya That wishing and resisting Is like fishing and insisting on certain outcomes And when they don’t happen we shake our fists at the sky screaming “how come?” But who is supposed to answer that for us? Is that God listening, or the sunshine, or the universe, or source energy or aliens, angels, or space monkeys In the absence of a response from above we become junkies Looking for the next dogma or ideology to become flunkies Because belonging to a group gives us the illusion of certainty Or sureness, or rightness, or safety I’m not saying there is no God. I’m asking how we get to know God. Do we need to be on our knees, or read tea leaves, or aim to please? Or can we go within, to our deep core, our inner knowing at our center, And find, unexpectedly that’s where we can enter Into the mystery of life, a divine relationship with our own broken selves is where healing cascades from and where it returns to. So yeah, I wish I had understood all that yesterday. But the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, they say, and the second best time is now. So I wish I had a sapling and soil yesterday, so today I could plant my tree.
Creating An Ideal Future
The idea of an ideal future appeals to me greatly. Ideal in the sense that is the best one possible. Who doesn’t want the best thing possible. Its probable to say perhaps everyone wants the best of all possibilities But what happens when possibilities seems to be drowned out by inevidibilities Like government control Or heart disease Or a heavy far too humid breeze Or a mandated hiring freeze Is disaster inevitable or is the way to circumvent it possible, but ineffable? Ideal futures are ideally the new present moments. In creating a future a paradox emerges because the only time we have available to create this future with is the present. The now moment. But the now moment, at first glance, seems anything but ideal. I deal with back pain You deal with mourning and loss The globe deals with war and weather and our intractable failure to finally come together 100 years ago we had a new deal Now they want to give us a green new deal So I don’t know what we do from here, I don’t know how to deal, how to feel, how to break the seal on my fear and Start creating that ideal future that I say I hold so dear How do we ideally open to new ideas when there is Such weight to our human disaster And suffering always comes after And seems to be coming faster and faster Our problems won’t be solved with a back room deal or getting an unconstitutional act repealed Its going to have something more to do with figuring out how to get healed, and then when you are strong picking up your shield So you can walk, protected onto the battle field And with nerves steeled and the truth revealed You show others how to put down their weapons How to break free from their deceptions And then, taking a deep breath, you we invite ourselves to a banquet, a feast, a new kind of grand reception. I’d rather have a party than a war. Ideally, that could be our future, because that would be a really good deal.
If My Worst Fears Came True It Would Mean…?
From a writing prompt: If my worst fears came true it would mean I’m 67, alone, dying, impoverished, publicly humiliated, and universally scorned. And it would be pervasive. You’d be risking your reputation just to come visit me. There would be wholly unflattering dick picks of me online that somehow make me look smaller than is humanly possible. That’s my story anyway, and I’m sticking to it. I’d be ridiculed for my fetishes, which would of course all have been made public decades ago, but unlike the changing news cycle these stories stick around like the gum under elementary school desks, still hanging there decades later, covered in spit and barely decaying. Hardened. Stale. Forgotten. But at the same time nobody has forgotten. Someone somewhere has been keeping a meticulous list of my failures and timids, my betrayals and regrets and cataloging them by category. And reminding everyone. So even though I am forgotten, not one single one of my mistakes ever is. They are immortalized, judged as the worst of the worst, until my bubble burst and I had that public meltdown. You know the one where I ran naked on antipsychotic meds through the town square. That’s where the unflattering dick pics came from. I’d have a shred of hope that some experimental cure was going to help me live past the end of my 67th year only to find out my ungrateful adoptive children who don’t even exist yet were playing a prank on me. For fun. Because they are a failure too and I raised monsters. There is no cure. Never was. I have a week to live. Maybe days or hours. The kids don’t know or care. The nurses are mean. The help is unhelpful and cruelest joke of all is that I…I…
Describe the Most Beautiful Smell I’ve Ever Smelled (A Sensory Piece)
Baking bread Or that first waft of sugary cold air when you go into a candy shop. Not the ones in the mall, but the ones in cute downtowns that have nothing but candy, and at least 100 different shades of chocolate. Or rain about to come. Or the neighborhood during the rainstorm. Or the pavement after the rain. The warm, dank, mysterious steam, a fragrance of childhood mixed with danger with a dash of nostalgia to round out the aromatic notes. Or Thanksgiving day just about 30 minutes before dinner is served, when the red wine gravy is being finished and the sides are being warmed up again. Pumpkin spice candles And the pipes of old men remembering stories of when they were young men. Can laughter have a smell? If it does it smells something like burning autumn leaves mixed with sugar and rosemary, yeah, rosemary. That’s what laughter smells like. With a raspberry aftertaste. If smell had an aftertaste the aftertaste of the smell of laughter would definitely be raspberries. Did you follow all of that? Well, try and keep up.Lasagne. Roasting garlic. Basil. Coffee. Ill concede it has a good smell, a great smell. But it tastes gross and anyone who says otherwise has been brain washed. They call it an acquired taste because you had to go through psychological programming of “being an adult” and addicting yourself to caffeine just to finally be like “yeah, coffee good.” If you have to go through mental acrobatics to learn to like something then that something is inherently not good. Or you would not have to be taught how to like it. Or fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. They smell awesome. Poison for the arteries though so there’s that. Wow, smells bring up a lot of conflict for me. Something fishy about that. Something else for my someday shrink to sink his chiseled jaw into I suppose. And yes he would have a chiseled jaw because that’s why I chose him. Anyway focus. Smells. Sweet cologne on freshly showered man skin. Honey suckle. Gasoline A crackling fire The smell of accomplishment, you know the one, a mix of sweaty gym socks and fresh spring air Or the smell of success, air conditioner mixed with expensive furniture polish.
Something I Can’t Live Without Is…?
Something I can’t live without is inspiration. Well, I can, but the living is grayer, heavier, less inspiring. I come alive when I get a visit from the muse Coursing with energy from the newly lit fuse I get excited about the ideas and visions about to take shape Its all I want to talk about until everyone I know wants to escape I forget to keep track of the time, and I forget I have vices. The work is too important to get side tracked by addictions and habits. Who needs unhealthy mid-day snacks when their normal purpose is to distract me, and with inspiration come to visit, the last fucking thing I want is to be distracted. If someone tries to talk to me when I’m inspired this better be important If someone tries to makes plans with me when I’m inspired they better involve bowling, sex or cheese. And even then I’m gonna say “shh, don’t bother me, I’m working.” If someone tries to encourage me when I’m inspired it had better be so well timed that your interruption to say something nice to me didn’t interrupt the flow of my delicate, squirrily, fickle creative inspiration. Because one thing I’ve learned about creativity is that it doesn’t like to be interrupted. It won’t be kept waiting, it will just disappear. And it won’t under any circumstances be told what to do. Inspiration requires surrender. And though foreign to our culture, the idea of letting go, surrendering, that’s for cowards right, the losers in a bloody war surrender. The smaller kid having his arm twisted on the playground surrenders. But Americans, humans, we don’t surrender. We fight. But you can’t fight with inspiration. It is the ruler. It is the king. And it’s just as keen to abdicate it’s throne if you don’t pay it some goddamn respect.
If I Started Aging Backwards My New Goals Would Be…
If I started aging backwards my new goals would be hard to pin down. Would I be the subject of a media frenzy because I’m the first real life Benjamin Button? Or is this a world where aging backwards is a thing sometimes, so there’s no media outcry, but just an existential dilemma about my trajectory. If I am aging backwards would I suddenly start to become less skilled with practice?Or would I be more skilled still, but younger. When I got young enough would I start to lose my hand/eye coordination? Would I start to shrink? Would I need to be changed and taken care of again. And possibly have someone crush up my food as my teeth recede. Come to think of it, I’m not sure getting younger before you die is any different than getting older. From age 10 down to zero you need a babysitter again, just like some folks in their last decades of life. I’d get a re-do of my twenties, and be sober more. And I’d most definitely have way way way more sex. Sue me, but it’s true. I’m gay so I can’t accidentally make any humans so I’d stick it in more places. I just would. I’d take being a horny teenager seriously this time, and get laid, like alot. I’d waste no time in the closet. I’d be out and proud all the way until I was back in diapers. I’d second guess a lot less and give second chances a lot more. I want to say I’d enjoy the shit out of those 80’s movies again, but now I think I’m confusing aging backwards with going backward in time. I’d spend more time having fun as my body became more youthful and vibrant …
Glancing At God (The Cat’s Meow)
Based on a writing prompt: “The Cat’s Meow” I look up, a mix of startled and befuddled, like a stunned cat. This cat looks up through glass the way I imagine myself looking up though my limits directly at God, if such a thing is dared. Almost like I looked up to defy but defiance withered under the crushing weight of awe, and dumbfounded, and wondering what I could possibly have ever had to complain about I stare, transfixed, frozen, Gazing at eternity, for an eternity, all in a momentary flash of insight. The energy, the abyss, unexpectedly stares back at me, simultaneously completing and terrifying me. Wholeness is an awesome power I don’t feel ready for. When you combine wholeness and awesome do you really get wholesome? Because I think that doesn’t quite capture it. Perhaps not wholesome, but holy. Or event better still just simply whole. To experience what it means to be whole. Missing nothing Lacking nothing Wanting for nothing To be aware of great force of creation and to be that force, to harness an understanding while wielding the energy of life itself. A couple a hundred years ago you’d be branded a witch and set on fire if you could harmonize with the energy of creation the way we must finally come to embrace in this newest evolution, an evolution of consciousness. Are senses are heightening, like a jungle cat every day, The reflexes of a jaguar where there used to be those of a junkie. Humanity is learning to see in the dark, land on our feet, and live many lives. 9 or so I believe. And when we do life will be better than utopia? What’s better than utopia you ask? Well, I tell you, that’s the Cat’s meow!
What if…Time Were An Illusion?
If time was an illusion it would mean I’m not getting older I’m just getting creakier It would mean there’s no such thing as being on time, which seems even freakier It would mean nobody dies young, and you can never show up late It means nobody peaked too early, and there’s nothing left but fate Because without time there is no occurring, there is just this moment here and now. Happening simultaneously with every other moment, even the ones from before and the ones to come after, but don’t fucking ask me how I don’t know the nature of reality But when I set time aside I think perhaps I start to understand the idea of eternity A timeless unruffled state of being So esoteric, so untapped, it feels like you’re part of a secret fraternity Able to leap boundless, and transcend the trappings of modernity If time was an illusion then you’d never watch the clock Because it’s a meaningless invention, that would no longer be in stock If time was an illusion, well I suppose I’d have to wonder why What’s the purpose, what can it teach me, as the seconds go whizzing by Like a fiery comet on a collision course in space The minutes pick up denser matter and they also pick up their pace This comet is made of months now Then it cascades into decades Eventually a century And I wonder what I learn as I pass moments in this illusory tar of time. What do I get from this illusion, if not simply older and dead?
Baby Steps To Adult Growth
*From a writing prompt in my monthly writer’s group. I am in my infancy still when it comes to adult growth. Can an infant even take baby steps, or would those still be way too large for me? Ego growth, denial growth, willful ignorance growth, now those I excel at. In that sense I’ve really grown. But adult growth….as in making good choices and feeling empowered and invigorated…I don’t remember that from the reading. Is adult growth going to be on the test? Because if so, is there some kind of worksheet or something? How do I know when I’m growing adultly? Instead of growing in my confusion, or error or waist line. How can you tell growth from the motion of careening, unknowingly, unceasingly toward certain mental disaster, total annihilation, or unfathomable catastrophe? No, I’m really asking. This is not rhetorical. How can you tell? How can you tell expansion and awakening apart from a psychotic break? I don’t know because it seems the symptoms might be very similar: You lose interest in normal conversation You don’t understand how everyone can’t see the rigged game You overcome some addictions and justify others Your mind no longer constrained by logic, leaps curiously, almost crazily, from shiny object to shinier one. You are eerily calm when culture says its freak out time. And you let go of the need to control others Seeming too permissive So the rigid can become so dismissive And write the supervisor a strongly worded missive Old fears begin to stop haunting And old dreams start to seem less daunting And your achievements need less flaunting So you wander through life more solo A solitary fool looking for a tribe to belong to The only thing separating you from the truly crazy might be a sandwich board and the ability to string thoughts together, well mostly. In a world of insanity being sane is revolutionary, almost crazy making, because you see the backwards, inverted nature of the society we’ve built collectively, and you are the only one with any questions about why it doesn’t seem to work quite right.
Things The Oldest Tree On My Block Has Seen…
The following spoken word piece comes from a writing prompt about what the oldest tree on my street could have witnessed…enjoy. Love, Brian THINGS THE OLDEST TREE ON MY BLOCK HAS SEEN. The oldest tree on my block has seen entire families grow up and die, living generation after generation in the same house. That same ancient tree has also seen family after family move into other houses like a revolving door of bloodlines, like long lines at shopping malls on Black Friday in the 90’s. The old tree has seen the earth get trampled on like shoppers trampling on each other on Black Friday in the early 2000’s. The old tree has also seen us sell off our morality, our dignity, resources and each other in the twenty-teens, like Wall-Mart black Friday junk being sold off on clearance likes some Midas-caressed heirloom. The old tree would close its eyes because it has seen enough It would roll its eyes when I try to explain why humanity deserves another chance It would dry its eyes when I said I cared for earth but it smelled chicken and butter on my breath, things that rightfully belong to its mother, its family. It would rub its eyes with incredulity when I threw myself at its mercy saying I swear we’d change. I’d say… We’d become stewards where we had been wayward We’d become shepherds where we had been slaughtering We’d become better fathers and do better at daughter-ing, and watering our family trees because that’s the only way we can restore a deep respect for earth back into the heart of humanity. By deepening our own roots with life. By branching out By letting go of what leaves, all that leaves And raking myself back into piles of dead old problems that are now just play things for me to jump around in, to burst out of, and make people laugh. To burn and enjoy the smell of The be captured and under the spell of The old tree has protected me during every childhood autumn when it rained down comfort and color and beauty and made me hibernate in the bosom of my family. The tree is that one tree in every neighborhood. You know the one I’m talking about. That tree. When you were a kid it was too big to contain but now that you’re older it’s somehow grown but also smaller than you remember. We’ve all sat under it and been shaded. The brave or dumb among us try to climb it The unlucky fall out and the blessed are caught by the family they nurtured back there in the shade. Am I blessed? Or am I shady? Or is that my shadow convincing me I’m not ready. To be nourished or to ever flourish. Time to learn from the tree the deepest lesson it has to teach me. Time to root deeply, branch out, reach for the sun, open my palms and soak it all in.
