Strange Captain

Dawson adjusted himself, sliding sideways, and picking up his books, allowing the man standing in the aisle beside him to sit down.

 As the bus pulled away from the curb he began to feel the familiar melancholy weight of a thousand days spent in a robot repetition of work, sleep, eat, work, sleep, work, eat, slowly pulling him beneath a wave of depression.

 How had it come to this? Where had his life gone wrong? There had to be a different life, a different way to live somewhere out there. He suddenly realized that his life had somehow gotten completely off course; this wasn’t what he wanted. The endless days floating aimlessly in a sea of doubt and self loathing aboard a boat with a captain he no longer knew or understood. It simply had to stop.

 He decided he would take the elevator to the bridge and introduce himself to the stranger at the wheel; he would let this alien captain know that his services were no longer required. He decided that he would take the wheel, check the compass, and make the necessary course corrections. He saw himself standing on the bridge, the blue water of the future shining like diamonds ahead, the dark water of the past churning beneath him, lost in his wake.

 He smiled as he stepped from the bus, the wash of exhaust fumes filling his lungs, the noise of the city and roar of the diesel engine fortifying his need for change.

Captain, allow me to introduce myself.

When Darkness Comes

 As a new year rushes toward us, we often look back and try to remember the time that seems to have washed beneath us as though we were nothing more than driftwood, pulling away from the shore, only to return again, as the waves of daily life push us toward the sand.
 We think of the people we met, the friends we lost and the family members that fill our memories with love and happiness, the feelings of a life well lived, and the prospects of the life still ahead.
 And we think of the people in our lives that fade into the distance, there one day, and gone the next, leaving us to wonder if we will ever see them again.

When Darkness Comes

 

Light fades from your eyes

Like water from the shore

Pulling away to touch the sand

Of another place

Another time and space

I breathe the air you push away

And listen for the words

You forgot to say

Your voice

Like a falling wing

I have forgotten

The momentary Illusion of life

A moon disappearing into the daylight sky

Left here among the living

We wait for the turn

For there are other worlds to see

Another us to be

Yet somehow among the stars

I feel your living pulse

I feel your reaching hand

And I see through the night

I remember

And I rejoice

For there was a time

I knew you

I feel I know you still

It was not a dream

And when the darkness comes

Two moons are there for me

In the quiet of the night

Your eyes are what I see

 

 

Tony Whitford 11/30/2012

 

Oil Beneath The Sand

He couldn't understand his failures

It was as though ashes were falling from the sky

Intent on burying his pathetic attempt to build

To reach

To move

Nothing would load

Why would a god that called himself a shepherd

Allow so many to wander lost

It was a question that many would toss at the devil

But these kinds of thoughts served no-one

And no-one would ever see his greatest accomplishment of all

But it didn't matter

He closed his eyes again

Allowing himself to feel nothing more than the buzz of the booze

Feeling himself slip into the void

Every night a voice from another world

Would call him from a fitful sleep

A world of smoke and blood

Burning tires and shouting men

Pulling him into a nightmare where a cell phone lit up the sky

With burning steel and ball bearings

A world of sand and the sounds of bullets singing past your head

Supersonic,  stereophonic,  madness

The smell of gasoline and rubber burning

Choking your eyes and throat

The cries of your brothers trapped in a medieval sandcastle

Where life seemed to have stopped in the fifteenth century

Did enough people die to keep the oil pump flowing

How many did it take

Sheets wrapped around his thighs

He kicked out and threw his legs to the floor

He could feel his finger still trying to pull the trigger

Yanking on the steel that wasn’t there

He could feel the barrel burning his hand

Searching  the floor for another clip

Falling from the edge of the bed when the sound of a oil barrel exploding

Pulled him back to the day he signed up

The few

The proud

The defenders of the faith

The defenders of SUV's, Baseball, and Rock and Roll

The defenders of the oil

Those people didn’t give a shit about that

We gave them weapons and they killed us with them

Great plan

Great fucking plan

Oil beneath the sand

Who knew it would lead to this

Shaking in a dark room

The smell of oil smoke in his nose

Morpheus pulling his veins apart

Crawling under the bed

Digging through debris under the Humvee

Lightning cracking through the clouds

Rain tapping on the window like bullets on sheet metal

Oil dripping from the sky

Burning when it hits the ground

He pulled himself up from the floor

And made his bed

Pulling on his boots he thought

Today's going to be different

I'm going to lay off the hooch

Stay off the dirty boogie

His right hand trembled

A synthetic vibration

A sympathetic realization

Who's  gonna be my shepherd

God…are you out there

He wiped the sleep from his eyes

Slapped his thighs

Time to roll

Time to rocket

He pulled his keys off the hook by the door

Grabbed his helmet

And with the smell of oil smoke still burning in his nose

He hit the road

Time waits for no man

Time

Like the oil beneath the sand

AWWhitford

8/12/2012

The Turning Point.  


   LuAnn walked to the kitchen and got another beer, and stood watching the birds on her bird feeder. The suction cups holding the feeder to the window were turning yellow and starting to slip and the red plastic was fading to an unnatural shade of pink. It won't be long before that damn thing falls right off, she thought. The beer was cold and the condensation felt good on her forehead. She rubbed the back of her neck and blew the hair out of her face with a jet of air from the side of her mouth. Another night alone. Another night in Texas with a six pack and a dog. Sounds like a country song. She began to sing, her voice cracking from lack of use.
 I guess I'll stay another year in Texas.
My old man left me but the damn dog stayed behind.
My truck broke down
And I lost my job
And now I'm gonna cry.
She stopped singing and wiped a tear away with and angry wipe of her hand.
  The sun was just starting to peak over the slash pines on the back of the lot where her trailer sat, squat, and old, and faded, the lattice around the bottom broken and falling in the dust. Just the site of it made her depressed. Just me and the birds, she thought. Sometimes I wish I was a bird. Then maybe I could get out of this dump and figure out how to get rid of the junk in my head.
   She drank the beer and lit another cigarette, and she leaned against the counter top, her arms crossed, her expression one of depressed exasperation. How long had it been since she had a man hold her, she thought, or fix breakfast, hell just eat the breakfast I cook, or just talk to me. She drug her toe around in a circle on the dirty linoleum, the dog watching her, his head resting on his paws. This is bullshit, she thought. I'm not gonna just stand here and feel sorry for myself all day. She poured out the beer and sat at the little table and opened up her laptop and placed her fingers on the keys, staring at the ceiling. And the words fell from her fingertips. All of the pain, and loneliness, all of the hate and despair, all of the fear.
   She closed the laptop and wiped her face and walked to the bedroom and pulled the suitcase out from under the bed, and she packed her clothes, not bothering to fold them. She took one more look around the tiny bedroom with its fake wood paneling and crooked pictures hanging on the crooked walls and she called the dog and walked out of the trailer, the storm door banging in the wind behind her.

She stood

And the words fell from her fingertips

Her delicate fingers danced on the keys

With the grace of a bird, they flew

Writing her symphony of expression

Writing the words that were written on the back of her soul

The speech of her heart

The words her mouth could not allow to escape

For fear of their reality

Her tears fell to the keyboard

Her blood mixed with the pain of each letter

Each syllable pulling the id from its hiding place

Pulling the hair of a backwards glance

Pulling the pain of a lost point of chance

Words fell from her eyes

Words fell from the skies

Words fell to their knees

And blessed the day that they met her

Words worshiped at her feet

They became her disciples

And they spread to her thighs

And she shook through the heavens

She burned through the lies

She shook off her self-loathing

And found something new

Something useless

And borrowed

And broken

And blue

And now with the courage

Armed with new found truth

She stood and turned words

Into gold from her proof.

Tony Whitford  9/14/2012 5:44 PM

Things to do

How can we find the time to do the things we want to do (need to do).

Where does one find the space, the money, the freedom, to fulfill their dreams, escape from reality, and run through the fields of nevermore? Well, the reality of this is, I don't know if you can. Sure, if you were independently wealthy you might. But would you really appreciate it? Maybe it's the need to see everything and touch every texture of life that keeps us pushing ahead to a better ... you. Maybe it's the fact that some things, some dreams, can or never will  be, and that keeps us stepping into the future with a sense of hope.

I don't know about you, but I have so many things to do...

Things to do

All of the things I want to do sit in a pile before me

The stack has grown so tall

I can no longer reach the top

Without the aid of a ladder

The things at the bottom of the pile

Date back to my childhood

Something that seems so very long ago

These are barely remembered

Or, forgotten

Among them lies, a song

The Grand Canyon, wolves on a rise

Silhouetted by a pale yellow moon

Horses running on a field of grass

A doctor, a poet, scientific discovery

Paintings and instruments leaning in a corner

Furniture to be built

Planes to be flown

Fly line playing out behind Bonefish, slashing clear water

Garden paths of stone

A hooded raptor resting on my arm

Books to read

Stories to write

People to meet

Collections and photographs

Houses to design

Schools and cars

Rebuild an old Harley

I jot the newest of them down

Climb the ladder

And add it to the pile

A few of the newer ones tumble down

I descend, pick one up and read it

A trip to Scotland

I weigh it in my hand. (nice one)

I add it back to the pile

Right where I can see it

And go to work

© 2011 Tony Whitford

The Stranger

I usually like to set up a poem for the readers. It's kind of a way of telling you what I was thinking about, or which direction I thought you should look when listening to, or reading one of the poems on this blog. So, having said that, It may be better if you just read it and take from it whatever you put into it, you know, what place you saw, what sound you heard, what kind of wine you held in your hand.
 I could be wrong but...it may be just a little bit arrogant to think you should point someone in a particular direction...they're the ones who are reading it. Why should they want to see it from someone else's point of view.
So, having said that. I'm just happy that you took the time to read the poems and little short story/stuff you find on here. It really is all about you guys who take the time to read it.
This one is called "The Stranger."

Let me know what you saw...what you heard.

The Stranger

No-one knew what to expect

What the world might expect

From someone like you

When you walked into the room

The air filled in around you

Like you filled a void

The crowd relaxed

As though you

Made the scene complete

As though we were waiting

For someone like you

Our clothes uncomfortable

Our books unread

Our eyes against  one another

Misdirection, no direction, this direction, that

Whether it was your intention

Or just the weight of your presence

You were pulling us across space

And waiting for us to notice

Your light shining at the top of your tower

Warning those that might fly over

That there would be no safe landing

Someone from the crowd introduced you and

The room grew quiet

Murmur, whispered awe

Listening for your words

Watching your face

Of course, your betrayal

Was effortless

Brilliant and succinct

Your hair was perfect

And your eyes were jaded

Your smile tattooed

You were tailored, brushed and cut

A flash of gold on your cuff

A flash of sincerity in your words

And though you looked like us

We knew

That someone like you

Could never be someone like us

We knew what we expected

And we knew where we were from

We listened politely and shook our heads

Our cues taken from the injected humor

And we turned our backs

And we finished our drinks

Small sandwiches on tiny napkins

Watching you work the room  

And we secretly wished

We could be

But never would be

You

The Doorbell Button

The other day I started thinking about what it would be like to go home. Not the one you live in now, but the one you lived in as a kid, when everything seemed to be right, when you knew that all you had to do was walk through the door and everything would be okay. Everything the world could throw at you would be deflected. What if you could walk back into that place, the place that held your heart, your dreams of the future, and your feelings of love and safety?

 I can barely remember the first place I called home. It seems like it was so far away. And now it feels as though when I try to go back to that place in my mind, something wants to keep that memory at a distance, some strange forcefeild of time rises up with its dark curtain and pushes me back. Look, but don't touch. There is no malice, its just a place where I no longer belong. It's someone elses home now. The memory is still there, but growing dim, the distance between us diluting the warm sweet taste of home.


Doorbell Button

Once he realized that no one was home

He stepped down from the porch

And scratched his head

Turning to look about the yard

He thought

How long had it been

Twenty

Twenty-five years

Why did he feel like

Every time he reached out

His hand was slapped back

But every step he took lead here

Always here

But he was never quite home

Wasn’t it Frost that said

Home is the place that when you go there

They have to take you in

Then why did the door stay locked

Why did the lights stay off

Even the little light on the doorbell button

Then he remembered that it didn't work

And it never did

He turned to leave, looking at the ground

Fall leaves

Fall birds

A heavy heart

Nothing but the sound of a plane overhead

Only to find himself knocking on the door

Waiting

Tony Whitford

6/24/2012