AJ Lewis Poetry, Poems: February 2008

my pregnant wife and my son were waiting in the
car
as I hurried into the gas station to buy some cheap
wine.
lately I have been thinking about integrity
and what makes a hero out of a man
and what I'd do if I got an opportunity to help
someone.

well, as I was waiting in line to pay,
I saw a man in his sixties
wearing a winter coat and thumbing through a book of scribbles.

as the cashier was ringing me up
he said in his thick middle-eastern accent, "hey, this guy needs directions,
can you help him?"
I shrugged
and then listened to the lost fellow attempt to tell me
where he wanted to go.

it was obvious that something was wrong with his mind
as he had seemed to forget where his home was
and he kept thumbing through his book of scribbles.

people came in and paid and left.

time could have brought in new moons
and shift changes.

yet, as I stood there listening to him, I remembered my wife and my son
waiting for me in the parking lot. I needed to go.
then my wife called me on my cell phone; to be polite I didn't answer.

but I wasn’t solving anything with my questions and his
answers,
so I said "good luck to you," and exited to the parking lot.

my wife was leaning out the car window and said,
"what took you so long?"

"oh, there's a guy in there,
I guess he's lost,
and I think there’s something wrong with him. I should go back in there
and help him. what do you think?"

she shook her head. I got in the car and we drove home.

my wife needed help getting her and my son up the stairs to our apartment.

I guess that guy might still be driving around
looking for his home,
but I'll never know if I could have genuinely helped him.

I guess I'll have to leave the hero business up to the
heroes
tonight.
and I'll have to convince myself
as I drink this cheap wine
that tonight it's o.k.
not to care.

View Poem (posted 5:42 AM) Leave Comment (0 comments)

Starting Again (from "A Slip Of The Tongue")

summer is over
and a cool breeze moves in through the patio door;
the palm leaves outside sway and come alive
against the quiet moon of
this evening.
something is happening here in me -
a memory is surfacing -
and I hear wind chimes
and I remember the Autumn that I spent with her,
of course now long over,
but I have not thought of her for years.

and something happened
and we lost those quiet moments staying up at night
talking and
walking in the night air.
and it saddens me
that she reminds me
of why I keep myself away from people now - that all of my life
people
have seemed to keep me at a distance:
never really being the friend, always intrigued by me to use me
and then to move on.
ah, but she seemed different and special then
and she ignited a passion in me.

but now this memory has progressed forward
and I recall the last real conversation that we had together
when she told me what she thought of me
and she left me there on the cement steps
to wonder why I am
who I am
and why she could no longer accept me.

several years later I was telling a friend about her
and he suggested that I go knock on her door to say hello.
we were out driving, and against my better judgment,
we showed up at her house.

the lights were off and the house looked cold
like a familiar ghost.

no one was home.

when I got back into my car
I looked in my rear view mirror as we drove away
and I watched her dark house slowly disappear into the night.

and I see now,
that was exactly how I left it
the first time.

View Poem (posted 5:45 AM) Leave Comment (0 comments)

A Letter To Raphael (from "A Slip Of The Tongue")

I never claimed to be a poet,
a romantic,
a healer
or a visionary.
I am a man,
beaten senseless by life,
drunk in my anger
and tired.

there are things in me that I can't explain:
like these nightly dreams of events
of the past and the future,
to be spoken to others
and then to be told that I am crazy.
yet despite the remorse, sometimes I can capture my spirituality for a moment,
to experience the ethereal
and the astral,
and feel this energy pulse through me
like it has some purpose.

there are demons that have suffocated my soul -
to be seen somewhere between
waking and sleeping -
to torment and violate -
to break me apart -
to dismiss my handed down Christian beliefs.

and to watch the God I was taught to believe in
turn his back on me
while I am consumed with these evil consorts:
dangerous
hateful
cruel
and self-destructive.

I am a mess:
to wade through the folly of occult teachings,
searching for answers
and sometimes even searching for questions to ask,
to quench a hunger
that has been burned into my mind.
and this has become my life:
the pitiful stench of one who has bathed in his own vomit of a masquerade.

in my mind I am at war with myself,
a war that is bent on explaining these unexplainable occurrences,
to question who I was
who I am
and who'll I'll become.
and I can attest to these emotions now to relate to you
that your beliefs are held together by a thread
to someday unravel
to let you fall into a mess
of confusion.

that for a time,
your personal religious beliefs could be a farce,
and this tempting darkness could be so soothing
to keep you
and your soul.

I ache for release -
hoping for an easy exit from my tribulation.
oh, God, or gods, spirit guides, or angels,
hear me now
and let me return to you,
to leave my tormented past of demise and foul doings,
of selfish desires
and woe.

I am not asking
to become a Christian
or a Buddhist
or a Muslim
or anything else beyond my scope
of reason.

I am asking for help
to see the light in my darkness
and to save me from this path I am on.

I guess
I am asking for forgiveness
that someday, soon, I can be whole again.

View Poem (posted 7:03 AM) Leave Comment (0 comments)

The Effect Of A Life (from "A Slip Of The Tongue")

sometimes I don't even know where to begin.
I just see a drowning ocean past.

I think that the confusion in my life started
when I realized that I was different
in relation to my peers; I found that not fitting in
hurt me (and to some degree, them), because they would lash out at me
in retaliation.

I have tried to forget the years
and live like a kind of sublime vegetable,
but the cost of this has been my diminishing soul.

of course there have been those who have tried to save me,
but what is there to be saved?
you see, I have always known this way.

as a child I explored the darkness
not knowing what it was.
to me it was new
and exciting.

as the years progressed I was occasionally reminded
through the lessons of people, karma and those of a higher embodiment
that the darkness is an unfulfilling place to reside.

it eventually took me two lives to figure this out on my own.

I guess I had to learn this lesson the hard way.
and now I look back and it seems a dream to me.

yes, the things I have done karma will never forget,
but some nights, when the bottle is low and the moon is bright,
I can forget about her, and about them,
and let myself fall back into that easy darkness,
further and further, further and further,

until maybe
I might accept the significance a single life can have on a person -
how a single moment can create such unhappiness,
and how easy it is for everything to be lost in the effect.

View Poem (posted 3:35 AM) Leave Comment (0 comments)

To Be A Kite (from "A Slip Of The Tongue")

when you put yourself out there
I've found that often it's the emotion that's in you at the moment
that comes back to you.

I have kept in the back of my head
a realization that I made when I was younger
that we really are all just kites in the wind,
controlled by the elements
and sometimes worse: whoever we let yank our string.

there must be somewhere in this chaos
of life
that a person can find true happiness;
that beyond our scope
there really is salvation.

and so
in the pursuit of happiness
I have put myself out there
and I have met such amazing people;
and these people have reminded me
that there is hope
and that dreams are achievable,
and that maybe,
somehow,
there could be a hero in each one of us.

as you read this
you may feel like I am yanking your string.

well I'm not going to lie to you;
I'm only going to tell you that nothing in life comes easy.

as a kite, I have been fighting with myself all of my life,
and in my struggle of being out of control
I have gained a bit of insight:

what you do with your short existence
is what you will get out of it.
and all of these hardships that we cannot control
will happen, and keep happening -
but what is important
is how we meet these struggles,
and to our end, we have the ability to shape who we are
inside.

View Poem (posted 4:27 AM) Leave Comment (0 comments)

This Place (from "A Slip Of The Tongue")

this place
it never changes.
the spiders still hang from the corners of the walls.
the lamp shades still sit covered with dust.
the carpet is stained and filthy.
not much happens here
but my life
and the keys of this
typewriter.

to write is to die in a dark room
under the light of a 60 watt light bulb
as the moths collect against the window
and I watch the flying circle of insects
against the
light and the
night.

maybe they will discover me here someday soon
buried in papers and words
dead from
alcohol or something
worse.

all I can do is
hit these keys
and masturbate between the
moments as I am waiting for some sort of divine
inspiration.

was this what
you expected when
you began reading this
poem?
God and
myself will laugh off this poor moment
at the onset of eternity.
nothing left to do here
but sit and laugh
at how dark this night can really be
when the lights are out
and the words run dry.

yes, there is a sort of warmth in knowing
that you have hit the bottom
and there is no where else to go now
but to your
self-deluded
top.
this place.
this place.
I take another drink
and hit these keys
again.

View Poem (posted 5:09 AM) Leave Comment (0 comments)

He Wanted To Start Over (from "A Slip Of The Tongue")

I went to go see him.
he had just gotten out of prison.
he had served a short term.
he looked tired, so I took him to dinner at a nice Italian
restaurant, and we had several drinks and talked about the
good old days, he told me about his stay in prison and I
caught him up with my life.
he said the food was good, and took some of it home with him.
I even paid for it all because he had just gotten out.

on the ride back to where he was staying
he told me that he wanted to start over, and that he had finally
discovered how wrong he was living his life
and how prison had helped him become a better person.
he told me that he was living with some people that do drugs,
and that it was just temporary until he could find a place
to live.
I told him to wake up, and that he was falling into his old habits
and that if he was going to turn his life around,
he needed to make the acquaintances of people that could help him.
he nodded
as if he was agreeing just to agree.

I took a right at the corner and parked in front of his house.
we went inside and it stank of pot. his buddies were sitting
on the sofa, the TV going and the
night dwindling away.

I left them to their night.

he called me recently and told me
that he had finally found a job as a truck driver hauling crushed rocks.
he was excited that he was going to get his license back
after seven years of not having one.
but he was still living at that same house and hanging out
with the same people.

when I hung up the phone
I knew he would call me again, probably with bad news.
it's always like that with him.
he wanted to start over
but he went back to the same place to do it.

I shook my head.
some people will never get it, no matter how much you do for them,
those people will just keep letting you
down.

View Poem (posted 7:50 AM) Leave Comment (0 comments)

Wanting More (from "A Slip Of The Tongue")

in high school I was very depressed.
I would excuse myself for long bathroom breaks
and go to the top level bridge and
stare at the mountains and the clouds.
I was looking for a release then,
and now,
as I stand at this apartment balcony
looking to the mountains and beyond,
I still
am looking for a release.

there must be more to this life
than just feeling around blindly in the dark.

yet, I stand here now,
wondering and waiting,
as if my entire being is crying out to do something
more than what I have been.
I am hoping for a chance to prove myself
to
myself.

this balcony is like a cage,
and I am a hungry tiger,
holding quiet behind this prison of me,
waiting for the chance to leap out
for the want of more
and more
and more
than this.

View Poem (posted 5:54 AM) Leave Comment (0 comments)

Blank Page (from "A Slip Of The Tongue")

I used to sit under a willow tree
at the foot of a lake
on soft green grass
and wait for some sort of external inspiration
to fill the blank pages of my notebook.
in my mind I was a song writer
waiting for the lyrics to break through.
and usually the lyrics did
and I wrote song after song
just sitting there under that willow tree.

I was hurting then
as I had lost a love and a friend.
and I was without a job or any real
direction.
but I wrote
to release the pain,
to let it come alive through my words
and to come to terms with it.

this was my place
to come and sit and watch the water ripple,
to sit and think and
write.
this was my garden -
my
sanctuary.

and although I have grown apart from that place physically
I still see it in my mind.
and sometimes when I meditate
I go there to the soft green grass,
the lake
and the willow tree.
above me the sun shines yellow as the scattered cumulus clouds
push against the sky.
I breathe in the autumn air
and I release my
tension.

this was the place where I found solace.
this was the place where I used to go to find a moment of
peace.

now it is the place that I go
to center myself
to find strength
to find a better way
under that willow tree
that would sway quietly in the wind,

a place now in my mind
that no one can destroy
or
touch.