Heart Candles

Spirit Names

Today was the day that I washed two cars, ran over a red bucket full of soapy water in one of those cars, stepped in dog poop bare foot while trying to get said bucket out from under the car, watched an insane sixties movie based on Jules Verne’s “Master of the World,”  and then recorded “Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs,” which looks amazingly silly. I picked up my cat and found that he had a scab on one of the nipples on his belly and somehow (with the help of my mother) decided to start calling him Cheif Bloody Nipple (that is his spirit name after all). I Got a job interview at Tim Horton’s, and my mother started to call me “her little Tim Hoe.” I nearly knocked the pickle jar off the counter after dinner, watched part of a cowboy movie with my Grandpa who started to call me “Slim” after I told him the movie was smashing (although one of the characters had the name “Stacy” and it was a man. I just don’t think that’s right), bats are now swooping through the air in my backyard, I’m thinking about painting my nails tomorrow, and about reading a sci-fi novel before my next conventional book club meeting at a local coney island.

whispers

 A small group

though a conspicuous one.

Ringed together in the middle of a humid coffee shop

raising their voices to someone most ignore.

They eat their muffins

They drink their coffee

They look away

make a snide remark and

grin

because They haven’t discovered the love

behind quiet eyes.

Love in the simplicity of whispered words.

In the middle of August.

In the middle of a coffee shop with

swirling white clouds dancing on the ceiling.

The sound of squeaky wooden floors

and mindless morning chatter can never mute

The truth of whispers moving,

voices half heard and

half ignored.

The whispers of a small group

bound together

in the middle of a coffee shop

in the middle of their lives

in the middle of the world.

they choose to

stop.