Phantom

The sky is blue like your blood and your veins

Would they give me the permission

To reach out to your soul or make claims

I have disregarded my own decisions

And touch your slender fingertips

Whose empty spaces leave me entranced

Which spirit allowed you to be such a mystic?

What deity granted you sentience?

Your midnight haunts and empty footsteps

Of worlds I cannot even begin to fathom

They draw me in, you are the only order left

Among the chaos, you become a phantom.

 

-A.K.-

2015 and the Changing Self

A clear memory from December 31st, 2014, is stealing away from the party and the people to find my childhood friend out in the yard, gazing at a pile of dying embers in the chilly night, smoking a pipe. He offered to let me try it. I said yes. It tasted weird. I think that was the most prominent feature of my 2015: I wanted to try everything, even things I said I wouldn't do before. The desperation to try everything which consumed me was almost crazy in its boldness, threatening all of my usual planning, preparing, and risk-aversion. Life was an adventure!
I thought about listing them, but I don't believe what I actually did was very important. It's the take-aways, the lessons learned from the experience, which legitimize them. That being said, I encourage anyone who hasn't tried something yet to try it, provided it doesn't immediately harm your body. If you think doing car spins in an empty parking lot at midnight is unsafe, then don't do them---but after trying it, I think they're fun.
Last year departed in an unusual way, considering the feverish way I moved about the world during it. Everything came to a peaceful standstill. A warm evening with old friends who grew and changed on their own this year. Yet as we drove home, it seemed like everything I did this year was something I had just done. All of those isolated events coupled up and came barreling toward me together, bringing on a mood of melancholy consideration and, later in the New Year, drunken ramblings. The changes I personally chose to experience are nothing short of ridiculous in some contexts, and I was more than aware of that in the wee hours of January 1st. Logically, the next step is to pull away from change in myself. The very experience I was romanticizing two hours before midnight became something I feared by the next evening. I stood outside looking at the stars last night praying for something which was constant to take away my fear, before I realized quite suddenly that God is my constant. Though each year brings changes in my social relationships, personal goals, and self, none of these are things which I should expect to remain consistent. Instead of flailing about wildly, shutting out that which has changed, I hope I can embrace the person who was the nineteen year old me, and has emerged as the twenty year old me.
We make decisions, mistakes, and have triumphs. None of them can be ignored when a new year arrives. We live with our current selves, not the past or future ones. 2016 is just another year. January 1st is just the date we choose to mark the fluid passage of time in our lives.
I'll change anyway, regardless of anything else. 

-A.K.-

Iain

I would be running wild with my hair tied back
Cotton shorts with little legs sticking out
White like moonlight on water
Dirty feet wading through the silk grasses
Of our front yard, oh youth
You hurt, you haunt, for I have
Misheard the ruling of a judge in
June with no breeze, the defendants scream but
I remain silent, staring at you and I know
Brown orbs like mine carry nothing
You see them, stormy and irrational as
Strawberry milk words pouring
Out of my mouth, childish tie-dye
Crop-top shirt like Dan's of mine,
Incredulous! Questions sent to fireflies who
Answer not, just blinking luminescence,
His kaleidoscope eyes always
Sparkled at me, the game was too enjoyable
Pricking, poking, dancing, you're mean!
I hid from you in my tiny fort
Wrapped myself up in your taunting, and now
Twist strings about your conscience,
Iain is fleeting constellations, broken telescopes,
Glancing at galaxies like a thief,
Cut the knots we made and travel to the place
Where we are running again
Dewy grass in dusky summer, bells
Toll the approach of the engine
A whistle crying deep in the night.

-A.K.-

Flame

I want to say you are the burn-off

The black ash that glows when you smile

Warm and tender, broken

By last year, and the year before
I have lost again

And I get filled up by your fire

Though it be far-off and pointless

Just your burning, ambitious soul,

Though it be simple electricity

Though it just be the kindling

I grow near.