Month: May 2022

what is the color

of todays melancholy
in these pools of tears
its echoing reflections
in muddled puddles

time quickly passes

underneath the starry skies

the needles below

blankets as its companion 

the soul of the pine forest

cautionary tale
reckless to fall for the lie

marred by dust and dreams

is it my omen or a curse

to follow me yet again

birds announcing spring

filling the air with color

filling silences

with its cleansing symphony

blinding me so beautifully

held me lock and key
sadly rocking back and forth
unable to breathe
unbearable gravity
inevitable hostage

if joy can hold me 

just a little while longer

I’ll use my last wish

to stand still at the ocean

and say ‘love you’ one more time

if I was an ant

sleep on a dandelion

bathe in a rain drop

sipping the sweet nectar elixir

and help pollinate my world

will it be the same

when you someday call my name

and believe in me

if I could steal tomorrow

would you hide away with me

I would still choose you
their disregard of our hearts

sounds of their madness   

I will still be standing here

and they will see how we loved

I sometimes wish I can control certain memories in a mind vault so I can only access them when I want to instead of re-living them at inopportune times when a different sensory gets involved.  There’s a certain smell that comes to mind and its undeniable in its origin and its lasting effects.

My father decided to take his family from city life in Cleveland to a more rural area in Ohio (completely against my mom’s wishes) and gave us 5 acres with horses, goats, rabbits and a menagerie of ducks and geese on a never ending dirt road.  It was at most times any child’s perfect dream. My father (who I may say was the smartest man I had ever known -2 Masters, a Lt. Col. in the US Army and and also all around Jedi Master of Duct Tape), was quite adept to learning how to deal with this way of life quickly but of course putting his own touches in most areas.  There was one fail, which leads me to the 1976 Ford Pinto.  Now if you remember anything about the 70’s and Ford Pinto’s, the news of that time was that they had a reputation for catching on fire.  Except ours didn’t, it was my father who caught on fire.  

In this rural area you didn’t have garbage pick up, you had to burn or bury your garbage and this house came with a fire pit of sorts about a 1000 ft. from the house which is where we burned what we couldn’t.  We actually did compost back then because we had all had gardens so it was more the glass, cans, etc.  Again, I’ll reiterate, this brilliant man thought to speed up the process, he would pour gasoline on the fire – for what purpose at the time he didn’t say.  My brother and I were watching Saturday morning cartoons when we heard a boom.   I went to look out the back window and saw my father running towards the house and as he ran closer, he yelled at me to turn the shower on cold water.  I did and ran back to the door and held it open as he ran passed me.  I can’t describe the smell of burning flesh but it is forever ingrained since that awful moment.  He calmly asked me to get my brother into clothes and to start the car.  We all got into the car and he drove himself to the hospital that was 30 minutes away.  He told us to crack the back windows slightly (later on finding out the the breeze hurt him even more but the smell of his skin was so jarring that he didn’t want to scare us more) and I tried my best to keep our crying to a muted level.  We held his belt loops and took him into the ER where he ended up having second and third degree burns on his entire upper body and literally looked like a mummy when he was done being bandaged up.

I remember trying to air out the Ford Pinto when we got it back home so, so many times.  I wanted to get rid of the smell that scarred that day for us all.  I scrubbed the interior down with different products hoping that something would work.  My parents would tell me that they couldn’t smell anything and it was okay, that I could stop.  But I couldn’t – I kept smelling the combination of my father from that day, along with a burning tar asphalt like smell that every time there is road repairs, brings me right back to that day in that Ford Pinto.  Still, to this day, 45* years later.

That car brought my dad to the hospital where he survived that day.  That car will never be that negative connotation that its associated with in its history.  Even though the don’t make Pintos anymore, I have (subconsciously I think) continued to drive Ford’s throughout my life – no matter what, that Ford Pinto was a chariot of sorts, safely transporting a burning man to the ER.  It will always be that hero in that horrible memory.