The Casual Vacants

Poems written for one or several, many or few.

[thecasualvacant]

We spend more time forgetting than we do remembering. Skimming over faces, pictures, colors, all fleetingly held. Think of years and it's of a handful of moments. I wonder if we ever get it back. There's a lot I want to see again.

[thecasualvacant]

Peace is foreign to poor men

But the rich are punished in pieces

Partners are punching bags for emotions

And nothing makes sense

To have the capacity to create

But never heal

It's only appropriate that life always fails

Such a shame to be made in moments of loud instead all our quiet and down

So many nights more than any have known

When you were just alone

It's whats there that should be meaning

Because only your bedsheets know you

They feel your heavy moments and crashing heart

Cascades of human emotions

I wonder how far you are from that person

Maybe they would say

I'll never ask.

[thecasualvacant]

I saw you through shards of porcelain

Each a shimmering fractal of memories both past and potential

Glimpses of moments hidden from my own sanity

Everything that was wrong with where we were standing

And who we are holding

You still shift my gravity

An impossible urge to close space

To find silence in your scent

To breathe the bed we lay

To break from assigned reality

We settle for good if perfect exists and our souls never bounce back

I hope you still take care of the pieces of me you carry

I feel yours in the early mornings

I hear them in music and lose myself in moments that singularly exist

I see them in silly places

I've not been truly myself since

It's hard to lose the person you were only yourself with

That person only lives in these silent moments

I love you more than anyone still

I hope thats alright.

[thecasualvacant]

I thought that as the days passed I would feel less tired.

The edges would sharpen.

The sun would be brighter and warmer.

The weight would be hardly noticeable.

I feel hollow.

My body is a magnet and eternal rest is a metal fridge.

[thecasualvacant]

A screeching halt.

I have widdled the soap bar that is my feelings- away.

For a time I may have convinced myself that this too was a phase..

But I just find myself wandering lonely rooms

It's not the fall or the speed that kills you they say

It's the sudden stopping

I think I've thrown the carcass of my passions off one too many buildings

See, skin that once was firm with hunger for the future now slips through open hands

Bones forged by fire and failure now quietly crack

There is dust where dreams once covered like sand

No fall ever lasts forever

Sometimes it just comes to a stop.

[thecasualvacant]

How do you raise a generation born into smoking buildings and crumbling travesties?

How do you expect them not to ask questions? To ask why? To ask how? To wonder when we turned down the wrong path.

How do you grow angry at a generation that was wrought with hard words and broken families?

A generation that learned the world was fucking brutal before puberty ever graced our faces.

Do you expect a generation that survived terrorism, natural disasters, economic fallout and a never ending war on its own people before they ever survived college to be passive? To be complicit?

No.

We knew taut air before being taught to share.

We know shattered day dreams and trampled daisies.

We know red and blues flashing and racial bashing.

We know everything left behind and a planets ashes.

And now it's time for us to raise.

Raise from silence and be brave.

Declare objectively that we aren't all equal, or the same.

Each is unique. And none are to blame.

Together we need to stand and remove all those in power who play games.

Our lives are not pawns.

We are not to be tame.

[thecasualvacant]

Time is it's own beast. It has a way of slipping through your fingers and tying your shoes together when you aren't looking The first time I met her I finally had time in my grasp though I locked it in it's cage just as I met her gaze and the world has never been so patient and perfect. They always say you know when your soul mate has been revealed by the way your heart works Mine was a bongo with a lost toddler playing. I couldn't damn well catch a single beat. The following minutes, hours, days, months, and now years, have all but kissed my cheek and left though. I caught it's tail for a moment when her face became a thousand fireworks in a shop full of absolutely, and totally flammable plants. And then again the first time her eyes bloomed in a moonlit room with the words "I love you" gently cascading off her lips.  I saw a glimpse of it near my knees when our bodies joined together in nothing but a symphony of what should be And I know I felt it tickle my neck when nights together became days laughed and 12:30pm breakfasts devoured.  It sat on the couch with us as we watched Christmas movies fill the room and hot chocolate fill our lungs.  It was as enamored with you as I was the first time snow kissed your hair.  As the white carefully embraced your hair like a frost crown meant to be and your nose lit with a thousand shades of red all perfect.  It was with you on your sled as you got all of about six-feet before coming to a complete stop and tipping over.  I held it while you drove fast, framed by an endless ocean and 70 miles per hour of absolute crazy.  I haven't seen it much since. Today though. Today it pinched my cheek. It pinched my cheek because once again, even though only for the space of a lighter to click- We were together. We were fire. We were light. We were space.  And together, We were time.

Casual Vacant #Click

[thecasualvacant]

Is it time?

Time for me to rid my eyes of their crust

Time to peel myself from these sheets of deprecation

To feel the warmth on my skin

To realize that all this time has merely been a hangover dream

A long trip in the wrong direction

Those nights coddling with regretful disdain

The viscosity of loss

Just a long trip in the wrong direction

I'll awake and it'll be different

I'll feel the glow of softness wrapped upon my chest

I'll feel joy spinning across the drapes

Fur will tickle my brimstone and coffee will gaze past bristles

We will be a plot pulled tight

And every love songs quiet delight

The world will be whole and not peacefully pissing

The streets will be city and not clattered cuts

Everything meant to be.

[thecasualvacant]

I was robbed today.

He took nothing physical.

My clothes were left intact.

My wallet was left in place.

My car remained parked where it stood.

He took something of me though.

He snatched my comfort within my own home.

He stole the peace I had made within my skin.

It's a strange feeling to know that every delirious moment could be gone in an instant.

How do you go on living the benign after feeling your own security pulled from beneath?

How do you continue on as if there's nothing wrong with our streets?

I was robbed today.

I'm still figuring out all that was actually taken.

[thecasualvacant]

There are times that we never foresee. Times in which it seems the Devil must be real for surely he is playing his trickery. She first saw him in the emptying breath of a 30 year old; Tubes dancing every which way and beeping noises screaming bloody disarray She saw him in the cold stares as families bid farewell over a wireless connection everything but human How do you provide oxygen to a room that feels as if the very air has taken refuge? He rode home with her every night. He rode her brain with the voices and visions of all those who he stole. He rode with her across bleak and barren roads that once bustled louder than New Years He rode past men and women who lay sheltered quietly in place. It's hard to be an essential worker when every last essential has been drained from you.  It's hard to be essential when you aren't quite sure what essential even means anymore. She is amazing. She is strong. She is powerful. She is loved. She is worried about. She is everything that everyone needs. She is essential.  You are essential.  Thank you to the essentials who even whilst losing their own essentials, time, love, money, sanity, are pushing through to do bigger things, and to do more things. You are the reason the world exists. You are the reason any of us make it through any of this.  And even though the Devil may ride shotgun, there will always be someone in the back with you.  You are never alone.

Casual Vacant #Casually Essential

[thecasualvacant]

Everyone is talking of burning bridges and crumbling sidewalks

There's whispers about dead bodies in trucks and coughing until your lungs give up

Some say we will be trapped forever

Others insist it will all be over soon

All I know is this is nothing new

I've felt this before.

I'm used to seclusion. To isolation from others. To staying more than 6 feet from the nearest breath.

I don't remember the last time I willingly ran to a group of friends

I don't remember the last time I willingly shared what's in my head.

Maybe this is all to level the field.

To show those who ride high at all times what it's like to swim in the filth the lowest feel

Maybe this shows what depression feels like every day.

Another body. Another locked door. Another avoided contact.

This is nothing new to many.

It's only a plague to those who are new.

#Plague

[thecasualvacant]

I Forgot

Time has whittled by unimaginably with each day less impressive than the last

It feels though I am straining against the wind to reach a destination I have yet to clearly see

I’m learning that lost is a strange direction we all inevitably end up walking

Today I heard your voice

It’s been a moment since I thought of the sound, though I think of your existence endlessly. 

I wonder how your day is flowing, how the schedule of a mad-woman is passing, and when you will ever rest.

I wonder if you hold disdain for my distance.

I wonder if you hold greater disdain for my direction.

I’m sorry I disappointed you. 

[thecasualvacant]

It's a New Year, or so they say. It's strange as I feel the same as yesterday. The flowers are no brighter today and frankly the sky is still gray. I wonder if this is the year I will stay. Will I be true to me, to where I lay?  Will I once more run until the sun kisses the bay and my mind has no more angry words to spray? Will I learn that all work and no play, will never pay.  Will I finally learn to pray? I'll do as told and make way for new comings and new days.  Please 2020, let me know when I've overstayed.

Casual Vacant #The Cliche Lingerie 

[thecasualvacant]

All I ever wanted to be was someone special

Someone who could deliver words that marinated for months in others minds

Someone who's presence in a room wrought the air with belonging

Someone who was the source of hushed whispers and large laughs

Someone who could seemingly walk on water itself and spin earth between his fingers

All I ever wanted to be was the someone you made me feel I was.

Casual Vacant #Someone

[thecasualvacant]

At what point do you abandon your dreams?   When do you wake up, trace your glass veins, and realize the ink beneath may never reach the right page.. Let alone pass the right chapter. Is it a fools right to seek the moon during the brightest hours? Should you set fires to the newspaper headlines of your fondest nightmares? Or maybe quietly hem new patterns into the carpet of your bottom barrel psalms.. At what point do you abandon the idea of dreams and start living?

Casual Vacant #I’m Lost

[thecasualvacant]

I write this as another lays their dreams upon my lap like one might a napkin for dinner

It's a love that's real and pure for sure

But alas it also lies a love that's troubled and torn

I am not the man I ever was or am

I know its confusing but

Theres versions of me you will never understand.

Versions of me that only exist under circumstances that we will never share

Circumstances that are forever set and bound by pages written, read and once more written by another

My heart beats at the rhythm different than my footsteps speak

My mind jumps to worlds my mouth will never talk

My hands trace skin feeling the braille of anothers past dances

I've merely been playing charades with my own sanity

Waiting to see who guesses it right first

Me; or all that I'm cracked to be.

Casual Vacant #Tableside Honesty

[thecasualvacant]

It was a bed of black satin, a whirling mesh of cold November sheets yearning to feel warm bodies pressed to them Our warmth lay hidden. Hidden beneath unconscious-limits separated by millimeters of elastic. Limits carefully designed to be shattered as a hand slowly danced up and down your back. Every stroke a little lower, a little truer. Your skin whispered small secrets. How it yearned to be touched, caressed, and loved. How this elastic waistline was only a formality for us.  Music played all the while, a compilation of nonsensical rhythms crafted to transport us to lives that were never ours. Lives that would never be ours.  And whilst the initial root of our horizontal meeting- quickly did these rhythms become a soundtrack to action.  Small touches and lingering fingers beneath hips turned deep caresses and grabs. Soon your body ached for more and with heart in hand on a night of more firsts than there are fingers did you lend your lips Lips that whispered of all that was missed with every cheek-kiss, lips that screamed of all the love that was waiting.  These satin sheets gifted all that was wanted, two warm bodies pulled together and pressed. Tugging, kissing, hugging and pulling all to brains screaming of actions that would never be able to be taken back. Actions that would never want to be taken back. As you lay bare, skin akin to fire from passion, lips dancing with love and hands ever tugging near You laughingly repeated one phrase "Jack, we shouldn't have sex."  It is then that you pulled me and we met closer than we had ever been.  Close as two can be.  Your black satin sheets became ours. Sheets stained with love, lust, and filled with two bodies coddled tight. Sheets that would come to be warmed again and again. Sheets that would preserve the image of you laying softly atop me with your hair spilling across my chest and your soft eyes resting still.  And ultimately... Sheets that would eventually belong to someone else.

Casual Vacant #Sheet