I Forget

My hippocampus is shrinking

That much they know for sure

But, I'll never get lung cancer

and I hear it spurs fetal development

even if, I've lost some words

Orion is in the sky again

marking the time when my life split in half

a miserable host to a light

still stands on her shores

caressing places I might have been;

Back in my old school

promoting the arts

and teaching Fred Rogersism

to children in revolutionary fashion.

It's kinda like how

I look in the windows

to see where they put the furniture now

and I linger along the fence

half expecting to see

friends smoking cigarettes,

drinking coffee,

painting alley furniture,

climbing trees,

and kicking up dirt.

I walk past the place

where the plants are blessed

and the wind viciously insists

I pick up these bone thugs tracks

I go to stand in the circle

where, we all have bleached hair

and smoke cigarettes

I think about the time

I looked in the mirror,

happy and eager for rain

to make everything new,

and I cut my hair

just to give proof

and wander barefoot,

unburdened.

cleansing wet amber

beneath a street lamp

I wrote about it

on the front of an antique school desk

while the band played a 40 minute set

riffing on feedback

And on my walk

I tried hard to resist

working just to recreate a moment;

snow falling softly against an old Gothic church

Train whistles blow

and downtown barely glows

over the highway's horizon;

I didn't even let go to sink into the silence

I just pressed upon my mind

to savor each detail

filing them away

to recapture this perfect present

for a moment when I was not

quite so near to

happiness,

gratitude,

stillness.

I try hard sometimes

to keep a moment forever

As if I could stretch it

until it covered all the obligatory

and necessary

and adversity

in between.

Like,
A sky way cascading pinks over the bay.

A firework missed as I close my eyes and we kissed.

Empty nerf magazines left me no reason at all

not to stay pressed against a wall

Sunset dims on fairy mountain

as we sit in the dirt and we trip.

But you know

Mostly I just forget.