West Beyond Kitchen Windows

(Aye, another jolly ol’ bad, bad poem here for ya)

1.
Mountains layered in rows of blue, indigo, and violet
advance and rise between the Pacific Ocean and the Salish Sea
into sunshine as clear as fresh-scrubbed panes of glass.
They uplift the frontier out there,
out west beyond large, old-fashioned kitchen windows.
The day is glorious outside, the Sun shines bright, 
there’s snow up high in the Cascades to our east,
and planets and stars align in night skies bereft of moon.
All my friends are out and about doing fun things,
Playing hard up in the mountains and relaxing down in the city.

I, however, sit at home where maritime clouds of silver and gray
hang heavy inside the bones of my mind,
heavier than when those clouds sprawl across Cascadian skies.
Instead of being outside hiking, paddling, climbing, skiing, or
perusing book stores and funky shops with cups of coffee in hand,
I burrow down into the self-isolation of self-partnership gone awry to write horridly-wrought, quasi-autobiographical prose poems and binge
on Netflix videos in a bottomless hunger to
satiate my addiction to online vicariousness.

Energy spent to hold up and push away the weight of heavy clouds
leaves me exhausted, my excitement obliterated, and my wants and desires to get outside into this spectacular and beautiful day buried
under Pyramids of Forgetfulness.

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Seattle Vignettes: A Prose Poem in Five Parts

  1. Dead Man on the Steps with One and a Half Legs
  2. Bag of Dimes
  3. Tattooed Hands
  4. Donuts, Needles, Jelly, and Blood
  5. P.S. Box of Donuts in the Rain

 *All of these vignettes are interpretations of real events I experienced in Washington State along my way to work from SeaTac to Seattle and back again during the Cascadian Winter of 2017 – 2018. ~ Author’s Forewarning

Dead Man on the Steps with One and a Half Legs
Rain poured in torrents
as dawn broke sunrise into silver and gray.
I hurried down South 176th Street in SeaTac towards the airport to catch my train to work.
Can’t be late again.
Won’t be late again.
I shall arrive early to work
to keep my job alive.
My commute is 3 hours long roundtrip.
Why do good people scatter their trash along the streets?
I passed all kinds of trash, mostly food related, as I approached the SeaTac Visitor Information Center,
also known as Seattle Southside Visitor Center.
A man lay curled upon the lower steps. Continue reading