Up early this morning. But then again, why would this day be any different from the next or any other?
I am always up early.
But today was different.
The rain was misty and damp to say the least.
Spring has sprung.
I know.
But yet, somehow, the winter is afraid to lose its grip and embrace the warmth.
I get that.

At the moment, I am no place and yet I am everywhere else but here. Safe to say that I understand what it means to not be present. And I say this to you, knowing both full and well that I am right here. Always.
I am exactly where I am supposed to be. Or at least, so I have been told.
I have been told that no matter where you go or where you run to or hide; there you are.
There is no escape and there is no getting away from the truth and nor can we hide from the outcomes of everyday life.
I know this.
But I have run away ore as an adult than when I was a kid.
I’ve hid more as a grown man than when I was young and playing hide-and-go-seek.

I have also been told that you can see someone every day, and you can interact with them, you can sit and eat with them and break bread, and you can talk to someone all the time and find out that they had something deep inside that you knew nothing about.

I see you now. You are a grown man.
Strong and tall.
I see you now and I wish I was there to see you then.

I wish I was there when you tossed your first pitch or played your first game.
Come to think of it, I wish I was there when you wore that surprised look that a child makes when he does something or pulls off a trick for the very first time.

I have always wondered what it would be like to be strong.
But what does it mean to be strong?
What does it mean to have strength?
Or to be capable?

Is this no different from exposing your weaknesses?
Is it the same as acknowledging them and continuing just the same?
I think about this.

I don’t know how I addressed my first poem.
Then again, I knew who the poem was for.
I always knew who I wrote this too, even thought I never met her.
(meaning you)
And if I met her, I never believed that I could keep her
(meaning you)

I’m not sure if I thought that anything I said would mean anything to anyone; and therefore, I suppose that I just wrote to write to you, or to whomever it is I write to.

The next thing I knew, it was summertime. The warmth began to change the way we spent our time outdoors. The days were longer and the nights were hotter. And I?
I was a young man, lovelessly hopeful and silently admiring those who had someone to go home to.
Spring had gone by so fast, as if yesterday was just here.
The winter was a blur to me, as if autumn had just begun by changing the leaves on the trees in Central Park.
New York City had finally calmed down from its previous hiatus and all the “who’s-who’s” and “what’s-what” and the popular debutantes and socialites race to beaches in their Hampton summer homes or fight their spots on the Fire Island ferries.

I am not so sure how this is or how things happen.
Age stepped in and the days of being “out east” are light years away and more like a story that happened to me in another life.
I am not sure how time flies and blows passed us, like speeding cars on the expressway, unaware and uncaring about the rest of the world because to them, all lanes are the passing lane.
I see time like this too.
Remember when life was free enough not to care who came or went?

I saw you in a dream of mine.
This was real and not long ago.
Yet, this was only a dream so then again, I suppose none of this was real, —unless it was.
Or maybe this is that thing we call memory that bubbles to the surface. Or wait, maybe this goes deeper to a trigger or a receptor in the brain. Maybe something was touched or an end-switch was enabled to recreate a memory in a dream.
Or . . .
Maybe this is what I call my subconscious and so, perhaps something else is overlapping in my life to which, yes. I think I need to pay attention for a while.

Dare I say this and go forward, or if I say anything like this at all, then let me say this with all I have.
Let me be clear and admit to the fear that you will turn away and laugh or reject me.
Or let me say this anyway.
Let me get this off my chest, despite the worry that you will turn away completely and never see me the same again.
And if this were true, then let me preface my entry by saying that I am someone with desires, no different from the fantasies that people rarely speak about.
Yes, I have done things that outrage the spectrum of intimate fantasy.
I have been part of the wild or more erotic things, which in my best assumption, this only makes me human.

I have tried to keep up. I have.
I’ve run and I’ve run and I’ve run to the point where I’ve run into myself at the door.
And what does this do for me?
I have burned the candle at both ends.
I ducked and stayed low to dodge the enemies and I hid.
I have surrendered and retreated.
And to what avail?

I ran as fast as I could and somehow, there are times when my legs are stuck, like they are in my one of my scary dreams.
Understand?

And the world just turns around.
Nothing stops. Not for a second.
Time is always moving, which makes me sound like a broken record because I always talk about the immovable presence of time.

The clock never stops ticking.
Or think if anything, I think about it like this:
A second is always a second and a minute is always a minute.
There will be no change or negotiating this fact.

Time does not stop.
And maybe this is not always a bad thing.

It makes sense to me how someone can lose their mind and yet, you hear things about cruel and unusual punishment and how this is not allowed. Perhaps not, but still, cruel and unusual punishment exists.
Yes it does, and rest assured, cruel and unusual punishment is alive and well.

Time for reflection . . . .
Sitting in a small cage, and secured by concrete walls with a wooden bench, a steel commode, and black-barred door that opened and rolled shut, there was an ungodly smell to the place. The smell was filthy like the sewer; bodies reeking, and the smell of other bathroom functions filled the air with a solid and steady mixture of cleaning solutions that failed to mask or disinfect and solve the odors.

The corridor is eerie, let alone the sound of overhead humming that comes from the fluorescent lighting, which warns that even light is remanufactured and stolen from its freedom.

It is April, the day after Easter Sunday.
The sky was beautiful as ever this morning but the winds were cool and the winter refuses to leave without leaving a few chills behind.
I noticed the sunrise is taking the stage earlier now.
I love that.
I noticed the return of the red-breasted robins as well, which I am far from opposed to because the robins spark the beginning of springtime, which is fine for me.

I think it was a long time ago.
Yes, it must have been.

I think this was back when the age of innocence was still innocent.
But somehow, I know that purity exists. I know there are good people out there.
I know because I have seen them arrive at times when I was alone or facing the consequences of life-long decisions.
I was that one too.

I know that I was better and smarter.
Perhaps maybe this is why I swore that I was stupid because deep down, I knew better. Of course, I did.
See, no one talks about the results of trauma or the symptoms of depression.
I knew that I was being lazy.
I knew it all too well.

I cannot say that I know what I believe or that I “definitively know” that yes, there is a God or that my God is right and yours is wrong.
I don’t know these things.
I don’t know if your God is stronger or mightier or that somehow, we’ve all been fed a narrative that draws us to believe in something stronger when we feel weakest.

I don’t know if we need to fight about the relevance or the existence of God.
But we do.

I wonder though.
What does it mean to go crazy? And when I say crazy, I don’t mean to go crazy in a bad regard or in the sense that this becomes clinical or sadly dangerous.
Not at all.

When I say crazy, I mean this in the best way possible. I say this because if I want to be one thing, or anything, I want to be the one who knows how to do this.
I want to know how to have fun.
I want to know how to let go and to let it all hang loose.
I want this.

There is no place like home
I agree . . .
Home
I love that world.
I love the feeling of it.
I love the idea that has been famously said, “be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”
And once more, I agree.

I can say that I have lived in different places. I have lived in different apartments and houses.
I lived in different areas, and I have lived in different spots for a decent amount of time.
I lived where I lived, but out of any of them, I would not call too many them home.

Do you know what I miss?
I miss the vibes. I miss the energy.
I miss the late nights and the gas tank, which was my ability to go all night long and somehow, I could still make it to work the next day.

I miss my younger years in the city.
I miss the feeling that came over me when the music turned loud. And I remember this well.
I miss the dance floor, crowded with bodies.
Everything was hot about this, including the bodies that moved and swayed with each other, like, up close and all too personal.

And so, in the case to find myself or to retrace the missing pieces of my life, I had to search through different dreams to see exactly where it was that I lost my place.
“I lost my place.”
Yes. That’s a great way to put it!”

I identify with these words.
And I have identified with these words for a long time.
At the same time, I identify with the ideas of losing my place differently now. Or maybe I relate to them differently each time I lose my place.
And each time I say that hey. “I lost my place,” I realize that this has happened more times and, in more ways than I could possibly count.

What do we know? And by the way, I think this is a fair question to ask.
What do we really know?
Let’s see . . .

What do we know about anyone, aside from what they’ve told us or what we’ve seen or what we’ve been shown?
And even still, even if we see something or even if someone shows us who they really are, do we still know as much as we think we do?
And again, I think it is fair question.
I think this is fair to ask and to assess this thing which we call truth.

And truth is a funny thing because in all fairness to myself and to anyone else—there is only one truth. Any variation of truth becomes opinion, and opinions, of course, are neither truth or false.
They just are . . .

I agree when you tell me the world is a mixed back of tricks.
Of course, it is.
Look around.
Do you see?

There was a man selling tickets to the resurrection on Vesey Street and Church the other day. I told him I had to work that day, but maybe I’ll catch my salvation on the flip side.
Who knows?

I agree there are beautiful things, all around us. Like, say the way sunrise looks when I am driving downtown on the FDR and then heading west on Fulton.
I have reasons for my connection to both the East River and The Hudson, of course.
Both sides of Manhattan have seen me through different periods of my life.

I have always had this thing for sunrise.
Always . . .
I suppose I’ve had this since, —I don’t know, I guess for as long as I can remember.

Maybe this is because sleep and I never seem to connect very well.
Maybe insomnia and I were too close and the ability to sleep was too distant.
But the sunrise and I have always had this “thing” together.
I know it.

The sense of smell has got to be one of the most interesting senses of all. For example, the smell of honeysuckles reminds me of a time when I was in grade school. Or the smell from low tide at the beach reminds me of a fishing trip I took out to a place called Shinnecock canal. I caught my first winter flounder there and this is one of my best memories of all.

You never forget the smells from places. I know this to be true, and while above smells that I mentioned are good, there are smells from places in my memory, which are ungodly to say the least and cruel to say it best.

You’ll never forget the smell –

The strangest part is I am not sure I would recognize him.
That is, if I ever saw him again.

At the same time, we pass each other every day.
We see each other all the time.
All day.

I can’t say that I know what he was thinking, even though I know exactly what he was thinking.
I know exactly who he is because “he” is me and I am “him.”

I was a young man once and playing the dangerous game of cat and mouse and chicken too. My stance was imperfect at best and yet, I tied my best too pull off a look that made me seem bigger than I was.