Happy Tuesday, you silly bunch o’ waffles.

I wish I was cooler, mostly because I wish I was the type of person that liked coconut water. I really, really do, but every time I try, it always tastes the same: like fart-water. It’s kind of like that scene from Doctor Who [WARNING: If you’re a fan, you’re about to be mad] from that one season where he revives or whatever and is being fed by a little girl.
“What do you like to eat?” she asks.
“Oh, I very much like fish sticks!” he replied (according to my super reliable memory).
-she feeds him fish sticks-
“Oh! Yuck!” he exclaims.
“I thought you said you liked them!”
“I suppose I don’t this time.”

It’s kind of like that: I want to like it, but my tongue, throat, nose, and whole physical being disagree. And it’s the same way with water chestnuts, painting (don’t have the patience for it, even though I wish I did and sometimes even think I do before I’m quickly proven wrong), and finally…poetry.

That last one especially gets me. I’ve written a few poems in my day, but none that are ever stirring or resonating. Poems are supposed to resonate and make you feel and think deeply, right? I’ve read and listened to people read their own poems that stir all kinds of terrific and terrible emotions, but my own never really come close. Now, of course, all that said…

I wrote a poem.

The Red Sun Looms

The sky is blue, but its plumes are gray,
and behind them, the setting red sun looms.

Reporters and Facebook warriors post and relay,
from the comfort of our living rooms,
fire map borders, evacuation orders, and impending doom.
But my map is white. My lights are on. Though, my nerves are frayed.

It’s the taste of survivor’s guilt, watching lives be rebuilt,
the silky sand that slips away.
Within every grain, the whispered promise of a day,
when luck’s run out, and it’s your turn to lose.

FIN

The Take: See?
Insider tip, when I wrote this, I had the butterflies, the trembles, the watery eyes. But reading it back, even now – nothin’. Albeit, it’s an early draft, ever-incomplete in all likelihood, but still, you’d think some of the original shivers would linger.
All of that said, I do seem to only get the inspiration to try my hand at poetry when confronted by really real feel-y feels, and the above is a reflection to having a house full of refugee-friends while on the border of an evacuation zone for a week.

So…there’s that, I suppose.

Anyway, see ya Thursday. Hug a firefighter. Ciao.

PS – Started a job as a carpenter’s apprentice today. So there’s that.