WIND

Whisping winds beat the sky

To numb the toes of passersby

Then goes to steal the hat on your head

And spins around and trips you instead

It screams sharply in your ear

And shrivels out your deepest fear

It nips every inch of bare skin

You play with it, it will always win

The wind will follow if you try to run

And makes you beg to feel the sun

The wind has escaped its binding shackles

It has lost control, you can tell by its cackle

The snicker of one with uncontrollable power

Impossible to contain inside any tower

It sculpts the earth it bends the air

It melts the trees without a care.

 2013

Nothing

   Why is there something instead of nothing? Well, If there wasn't anything, everything would be nothing. But then again nothing itself is something. So what is nothing? Most may describe it as a black sort of emptyness. Space. But even with that description nothing would simply mean that nothing is space, which is something. What would nothing look like? Wouldn't it look like the space between the image you see right now, or maybe if you were to look in a perfect mirror so that nothing would be reflected back. Even this is something. The fact that I can compare my definition of nothing with something you can imagine means that my definition of nothing is wrong. Something. That's why there is something. Because my hands are on this keyboard, because I can't even conjure up an image of nothing, nothing can't happen, at least not to a concievable level of humans. With nothing there wouldn't even be humans. No one to  even ponder this impossible question. So back to my original wondering;Why is there something instead of nothing? I guess the simple answer is that there can't be nothing, therefore there has to be something. 

Hefty-bagger Basketball

Since the gym class uniforms are already awful, I thought I would rather sit behind a desk with a cheese grater to my forehead, than put on the horrific, sweaty pinny used by millions of other students that our teacher insisted that we wear. To make things worse, I kinda sorta maybe may have spaced out when the gym teacher released us to battle for a decent-colored pinny, so when my team got there, all that was left was a black and white striped Hefty bag with holes just big enough to fit your hands through without it having the effect of a tourniquette. Then basketball (the selected game of the week) began. And I kinda sorta maybe may have spaced out again when picking opponents and ended up with the total "I'm gonna eat you" athlete crazy people. Ok, so we've established I'm a spacey person.... in gym.

So the game begins, and of course I'm the one to start with the ball. Now, I have never actually played a whole game of basketball, so I knew this would be an experience. As I tried to pass to the only partially open person left on the Hefty bag team, a person flew out of nowhere and used his chest as a blockade. To my luck, he had an unusually bouncy chest, and the ball returned to my posession.

And then it hit me. There was a perfectly good basket sitting right behind me. And since I had miraculously absorbed the rule about no center line push or pull or middle line thingy.... (basically they couldn't cross the middle line until I did) I knew it allowed me to take all the time I needed. I took the shot and the ball went in with a swoosh.

Maybe basketball was my calling.

It didn't make any sense to me that that actually worked, but I turned around expecting my fellow Hefty baggers to start thunderously applauding my clever decision. But no, instead the other team was cheering. Maybe they liked me! Maybe I just made a really good shot! But why wasn't my team cheering?

I finally was told that I shot at the wrong basket. And that's when the person with the bouncy chest bragged about how he got the point, and for the rest of the game he acted as if he was competing against an even remotely good team. I had pointed out several times that he didn't have to try as hard as he was now because his biggest threat was the Hefty bagger that spent more time looking at her nails than the court and screamed and ran away when the ball came within 6 feet of her.

By the end of the class I had aquired the nicknames "rebel," "moron," "backwards basket," and some other uncreative, slightly funny names. So I speak to the future Hefty baggers of the world when I say this- When something seems like an easy shot, it's NOT!

Pause

People never stop and look
To see what they have passed.
Nor do they look ahead;
They leave questions unasked.
To most a rose is decoration,
Not to be handled, felt, or sniffed,
And very rarely do people pause
to go and take a whiff.
Most people do not realize
that the future is the past ahead,
that they can move the rocks of life
and not trip on them instead.
You may choose to dawdle in the past
or focus on the future.
But the present is the best time
that many leave unnurtured.

My Own Applause Button

I was tired of booking gigs
at vacant, dreary, barn like things
so I made my own applause button

It didn't take me long to tell,
my pitchy rhyming wasn't swell
so I made my own applause button

When I found out my only fan
 was my run down, ear-less minivan
I made my own applause button

2011

Harvey

             The other day, my family and I attended a production put on by the Monomoy Theatre. This play was Harvey, a story about a 6'1 1/2 pooka. What is a pooka you ask? A pooka is a spirit embodying a large animal of some sort. In this case Harvey was a rabbit pooka. Throughout the entire play, the only ones who saw Harvey were his best friend Elwood P. Dowd and some unexpecting cast members who finally saw that Elwood was not crazy. This was hard to believe. Elwood was a grown man that had a giant rabbit as his best friend (who until the end of the production was thought to be imaginary), he spent a majority of his adult life in the bar, and everywhere he went, anyone, even a baby in a stroller recieved his calling card and an introduction to Harvey.
             The hilarious play and the wonderful cast made my cousin and I believe in Harvey so deeply that in the car ride home we had decided that Harvey had come home with us, and we even fastened a seatbelt for the creature. We then escorted  Harvey inside where we took a picture of the three of us and used that as a base for illustrating a portrait of  us and our new friend. We had no idea dinner with a pooka would be so interresting. It turned out Harvey absolutly loves lobster. The butter dripped from the suculent meat nearly every time Harvey attempted to eat it. By the end of the meal, Harvey's entire front had been stained yellow. I showed Harvey the bathroom and gave him some soap . Harvey stepped out of the bathroom with a coat as white as ever.
            We were now ready for the evening family board game. That night the selected game was Clue. Harvey did not quite understand the first time around and ended up showing his cards to everyone. He agreed to take another  shot at the game, now with the understanding that the point of the game is to keep your cards secret. This time Harvey crushed all of us. Not long after that Harvey checked his pocket watch and decided it was time to go home. I managed to ask where he lived, but the only reply I recieved was a tip of the hat and a wink.
            Harvey, if you too are reading this post, do not hesitate to drop by, you do know where I live.

2012

Early Morning Storm

             My head throbs as I lay flat on my back, cringing at the white streaks of light that whip my face. A low rumbling shakes the house and I swear it would lift right out of its foundation and start spinning like in The Wizard of Oz. The house stayed in place but my heart and stomach had been jolted and moved as though they had been forced into a blender and then put back into me as the mushy pulp that the concoction had bended into. Rushing downstairs, I grab a phone. My dad was dropping my brother off at camp, so I was home alone momentarily. The time had not occured to me until my tired hands fidgeted with the phone. It was 8:30A.M.. In the morning! This was hours before I even normally  even think about waking up.
              BOOM! CRASH!! The thunder and lightning were nearly on top of each other. A new noise followed. A ripping sound. A splitting sound. A fiery sound. I rushed to the front yard where a tree not 20ft. away from me had caught a fiery crown. It wasn't long before the flames had reached the front of the plant, scorching it's face and tearing its leaves from its grasp. Who to call? Panic. That word is often misused. Today I felt true panic. I did not flail or cry or scream. I froze. My mind as blanck as an empty wall. My musles  tightened and twitched.  I finally snapped out of it when another gut wrenching boom echoed through the town. The tree teetered. If it fell one way, the house would share the flames, and if it fell any other way, the rest of the forest would.  Although my senses were back, they still lagged a great deal.  My dad's number was already in the phone. I pressed my phone up to my ear and hit dial. My dad's cheerful voice came through the phone
 "What are you doing up so early?" He asked.
"Thunderstorm," I replyed somewhat layed back. " I mean there's a fire in the front yard!" I said, this time a lot more urgent sounding.
"Did you call the fire department?"
I didn't think about this. The fire department, Alex. You know, the people who handle fires! How could I be so STUPID! Without warning I hung up on my dad and called the fire department. Apparently they had had a lot of these sort of calls this morning.
              The firemen arrived and extinguished the flames before it engulfed any thing else. In the end I was left with a crispy tree, a confused father, the true meaning of panic, and a bed waiting for me to climb back into.

2012