Solitude

The worst part of writing fiction is the fear of wasting your life behind a keyboard.  The idea that, dying, you’ll realize you only ever lived on paper.  Your adventures were make-believe, and while the world fought and kissed, you sat in some dark room, masturbating and making money.

                                               - Chuck Palahniuk

Here I go again
staring at a blank screen
looking for the next words
to fill the white space.
Honestly,
it’s not what I want to be
doing tonight, but
I don’t have any other plans.
This blank page is my date
and we’ll converse about
anything my mind can conjure.

But solitude is not the way
to live one’s life.
It keeps creeping around
everywhere I go and I’m
finding myself standing in
a space all to myself,
unable to connect with humanity
and just walking around
like I was orbiting personal space
as a distant moon
up in the sky and far away
from the planets below.

So I dream up my own scenarios
and I put them down on paper
or type them up on my computer,
creating my own little universe
where I don't feel so alone.
So what do you do
when you feel that empty feeling
of solitude and your words
don't keep you warm at night?

Capon

Capon
definition - a rooster castrated so to improve its flesh for food

Dad shared with me
a story about my great grandmother
and how she raised capons,
getting money for them every Christmas.
She raised them in the yard,
aggressive birds turned docile
by altering their nature.
They grew and grew
and my dad told me
you could always tell when
the capons were coming by,
the sound of those birds
bounding across the yard,
growing heavy with time,
full of flesh that someone else
would eventually savor.
When they were ready,
my great grandmother
called the market to have crates
dropped off at the house.
She would load the birds up,
and they would be picked
and taken away.
A few days later,
she would get a check
for those capons,
just in time for Christmas