Babies laughing

puppies leaping

sun rising

rays shimmering

on waves rolling

breezes blowing

colorful leaves fluttering

rain falling

puddle jumping

cold-day cuddling

hand holding

arm-in-arm walking

silly dancing

dumb joke telling

belly laughing

cooking, baking

meal making

sports watching

card playing

porch sitting

bird watching

garden growing

snowman building

poem writing

story typing

oil painting

music tickling

my ears listening

your fingers strumming

lips smiling

hearts beating

spoon sleeping.

I woke up one day to a world that wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. I looked around and saw that the sun was shining. And for a moment, I couldn’t believe it was actually there. I hadn’t just sat and appreciated the world for a long time, I couldn’t. I had been in a cloud. It is always in the back of my mind, that cloud, reminding me that life is good. It shows me how bad things can get. And every single time I look up from that memory, things are good. Things are better than they used to be. Some days are dark again, but on those days I can still remember the light. I can remember the sun shining. That’s not how it was before. I still can’t remember the good times before the cloud. I know they were there, but it’s like, somehow… they disappeared. I couldn’t remember them anymore. I couldn’t remember being a kid. I thought only of a time where I had been forced into responsibility I didn’t want. I thought only of when I was in pain.

I still can’t see past the cloud, but I am alive today. I live, because I know how bad it can get. And I don’t just live, I live well. I try to make the best of every second because I know not all of them are great. I live when I want to die because I know that someday it will get better. I live when I don’t want to survive because I know it’s worth it. I know it’s worth crying in your bed at night just to feel the tears. I live to know the feeling of pain because the black darkness cannot come back again. I survive so that someday I may thrive. I know what it’s like to die and I don’t want to die for real this time.

I was giving chase of that remote skeleton

Through the graveyards

Of my memory...

The discarded moving carapace

Came in many forms,

And illuminated it's

Surroundings like a spectral force

Until I doubled back to immerse myself

In the remnants of it's heyday,

Flipping over stones in a

Hellbent search

Of shattered self...

Broken mirror shards lay sprawled across

The desert floor, reflecting the

Prehistoric cacti, and the lizards

Crawling to and fro

In their desperate,

Arid haste...

I was giving chase of that remote skeleton

Through the graveyards

Of my memory...

Were you only a mirage that occupied

Tattered shreds of distant thought?...

The desert hosts ghosts of a similar persuasion

While sundials spill their shadows

Across hills, like capsized

Buckets of house paint laid to dry...

Blow me a kiss over Agave and

Spineless Yucca

As you dip and dive outside my grasp...

I breathe my final scent of you

As in a haste you

Disappear over that mound...

The desert glass

Shimmers profoundly,

Dazzling my broken gaze...

I was giving chase of that remote skeleton

Through the graveyards

Of my memory...

A pinwheel stuck within the parched soil

Spins madly during the howling

Night winds of my longing...come...

And pay me visit

If the spirit

Doth incline...

6/18/24

Bunny Villaire

If necessity is the mother of invention then poverty is the abusive alcoholic step-father that forces you to do whatever it takes to avoid a beating. Growing up poor provides me with a constant reminder that if I want to eat, have shelter, electricity, healthcare, and running water then I'd better get up and go to work. Having a family only intensifies this motivation. I don't want my kids to experience the same misery that I lived through when I was their age. The thought of my children being hungry, homeless, and sick is enough to get me out the door everyday.

My wife and I don't have the same point of reference when it comes to what gets us going every day because she grew up in the protective bubble of the middle class. Her parents both worked, owned their own home, and though far from wealthy, my wife and her brother were never made to go without. So, she doesn't understand what makes me go to work when I'm sick, exhausted, or decide to put off taking a vacation until there's a little more money in the bank. I'm glad she doesn't and I'll be fucked everyway to Tuesday before I let her and our kids experience what has motivated me throughout adulthood.

In contrast, I often struggle to understand how my wife can be so confident that things like food, clothes, and medical care will just be there. This certainty makes it easy to forget that for a lot of people the basic necessities of life are almost never a given and having enough is a constant worry. For example, she and my daughter love to go to thrift stores in search of unique or vintage clothes. Now, I have nothing against thrift stores or those who shop in them, but I FUCKING REFUSE to wear anything from a thrift store. My wife doesn't understand why and has even suggested that I'm a bit materialistic and maybe a smidgen elitist. Well, what she doesn't understand is that she chooses to buy clothes at thrift stores. If she or my daughter can't find something in a thrift store they can go to a department store and get what they want. I didn't have that extra option. It was find it at a thrift store, or go without. Besides, thrift stores today are a lot different than when I grew up. The thrift stores of my youth were places where those who lacked and who had no other choice could keep themselves clothed. As a result, the offerings were usually old, thread bare, horribly outdated, and rarely fit my slight, disabled frame. So, it's not a matter of being materialistic or elitist. It's a matter of avoiding memories where my poverty meant that I had to exist in clothes that were old, ill fitting, and provided yet another reason to be picked on by my classmates on the playground. Now, even though my clothes are always purchased new, I don't buy expensive designer duds. So, I may have only clothes that were bought new, but they're modest and practical. It is a compromise that I can live with.

It always cracks me up when my wife says that she has to go to the store because there's nothing in the house for dinner. Well, there's probably not a large variety of the lean meats, bread, fresh vegetables, and cake for desert available that her upbringing promised would always be there. So, upon entering the kitchen I can usually throw something together with what we have on hand. Left over chicken, a few tortillas (an inexpensive California food staple almost always found in our homes) and a bit of cheese becomes quesadillas. Some Spam (when did Spam become expensive?), a bit of onion, some bell pepper, a few eggs, and some left over boiled potatoes becomes a stir fry. Grind up some graham crackers, heat up some canned pie filling, combine and top with whipped cream and you've got desert. Growing up, a trip to the store was problematic because the walk to the store (no car and no money for gas anyway) coupled with the scant food stamps with which to purchase those few extra items needed for dinner meant you made due with what you had. As a result, dinner might be beans, rice, and a canned vegetable, or pancakes with government commodity peanut butter. Contrary to my wife's experience growing up, a trip to the store for porkchops wasn't usually something we could just do.

Now that you're probably good and depressed it is probably pretty clear why I get up every day. I refuse to let the twisted wreckage of my past shadow my family's present. Always going sucks, but going hungry sucks worse.

What keeps me going is God. He is the reason a suicide do or don't succeed. He mapped out your life for you, no surprises. Evil thoughts controls the pain you suffer within, but your final ticket is cashed by God no matter what. There are no promises on how long you will live. There are no promises on how you will leave. You are here to bless someone even if it's only for a second, and your job was done, just know it was meant to be that way. Bad things happen to good people as we see from our eyes. But if you understand that they came here with an expiration date, you would then know that their job was done and now they are living in another world at another time. You should then know that our souls never die, we go on to the next life. So until your job is done you should be the best at being you! Huggers my friend.

There are people who care.

Is the line I often come back to

when I'm struggling to be.

I grew up with buying certain

foods, clothes, and toys

categorized as special occasion things.

Hand-me-downs filled my dresser

Though some I barely wore

Clothes were welcome gifts

And I'd still be happy if they were

I'm in college and still ask

if I can get a choclate bar.

There are people I need to see

And those to stay in touch with

Songs I need to sing

And those I'll put up with

And one day I hope

My mom won't have to break herself

just so there's money to scrape by with.

I have more things to write

And many more to do

As a lonely neurodivergent

There's one thing I come back to:

If I were gone

a number of people

would be impacted

And I could never see

my mother in retirement.

There's people who care

especially those I care about

This is why I don't wanna die

even when existing is something

I could do without.

The title is lyrics from the Queen song Bohemian Rhapsody by Freddie Mercury

A transient figure wanders through the mist

Wading through the torrential downpour,

Directionless, adrift like a renegade ship

Searching for an unknown harbor.

His bare feet indent the wet, blind earth,

Ordaining the world with tracks

No different from the ones that had preceded his,

All to be smoothed out by the rain,

For every step a hearse,

The vestige of what he was forever lost.

He sees nothing through the fog,

No bend or branching path,

But he, like a fallen leaf,

With no choice but to obey the laws of its fall,

Carries on.

He ceased to understand the direction of the path

Or its destination long ago,

Resolved that it's enough to simply exist,

And feel the bare wind blow against his cheek,

He carries on.

He walks in the search of a soul like his own,

The kindle to ignite the dying flame within himself,

And the occasional glimmers of light through the fog and sky

Alight the potential paths in his mind,

The balm soothing present burnings,

Fueling the flickering longing for what could be.

Sadness was silly when I was twenty-three

Masked with a drink whenever it bothered me

When my head hits the pillow, it won’t leave me be

Curious what keeps it alive inside me

A lifetime of firewater banished from my diet

Thoughts I generate are deafening yet quiet

Some may notice and engage with defiance

A mere spark to the blaze of my self reliance

Day-in and night-out is the only time I dream

To escape the nothingness of my homemade esteem

T’was self-induced as I retrace the seam

Dreams are for suckers mister Martin Luther King

Three fort-years plus two, is the level I’m on

No cheat codes, or power-ups except for my Dawn

Thinking aloud that identity is needed

To conquer the beast whom the devil preceded

My mind is a television that goes back to this show

Like  a car wreck, a rubbernecker will never truly know

Wipe the tears, chin up and let no one else know

The weaker use this for their selfish ammo

Without earning the title, everyone seems to  judge

My productivity met with a smug-filled grudge

Know this now, I will never ever budge

From the path I’ve chosen so continue to judge

The smoke has all cleared and the mirror’s been broken

The bullshit discarded from what has been spoken

With steps taken toward Him, I feel more awoken

I now overlook fake-friends who’ve  misspoken

Friendships lost and ties have been frayed

By the judgment and ridicule I sensed every day

Now strangers, not family like back in the day

I pray this new path won’t end in dismay

I’m now wide-awake, crafting my thoughts into text

Forever hoping one day He will grant me His best

Full-speed ahead on my unending quest

I pray that the outcome turns out better than my mess

I know not the purpose of this rather long story

Should be filed away in it’s own category

Forever in search of the true morning glory

But to the naked eye, everything’s hunky dory

Wake up, eat, sleep, repeat.

It was the world I lived in

I made my bed, and thought

I had to lay on it

No exact reason to continue

Still young to know what life is

But if you didn't give up

Why should I?

No motivation

All but words

Except knowing the pain, I will leave

As soon as my body hits the floor

I look out the window

To see new life forming

From the dirt to sky

This is the world I live in

Why shouldn't I try?

Tomorrow's pain is not today's

Today's Blessings are not tomorrow's

If it's worth a try

I will continue living

I wanted to die

But I guess I'll give it a try

If it's not for me, it's for you

And it's not for you but for me