Ok With Being Ok

spoken with her in my arms...

Ok With Being Ok

 

 I am

A pen flipping, eraser slicing, shoe scuffing, quick glancing,

Nervous looking cool customer,

And I sometimes catch myself wondering why I like traveling

When it’s grey out,

More than I like it grey at the starting and end points,

As if I could say anything in passing to a cloud.

I am Jackson, and I have trouble being “ok.”

 

Help me see;

Grey cloud conversation my ups and downs into one flat road,

And maybe the rain could hiss hot against the even asphalt,

Whispering to me, slowly, just how to be only fine…

 

Help me to understand the church bells,

In all their comings and goings, who can wring

Out loudly their “Hello. Hello forever,” while,

Dripping, still exact in their tolls:

Hard-eyed “Goodbye,

Goodbye and I’ll love you,

Love you forever…”

The bells all the while in their towers singing

To me: “You’re ok, don’t worry, you’ll be ok.”

 

But that only makes things harder, so

Help me understand how people can

Wear dark sunglasses, minding their own

Feet, and get better, be alright with ok

When, as a boy I crushed little inflatable pool toys

In the shape of tiny animals and dropped them

Over the deep end where I couldn’t follow,

Sinking while I couldn’t help

But float.

 

And so help me to understand why I want more,

Why I can feel pity,

When I see a crumpled hollow shopping bag blow wistful

 Across a blank slate parking lot,

Trying all the while to wrap up its own emptiness

 With a self-given, no-armed hug.

And, please, explain why when things matter all together too much,

When my atlas shoulders have creased corners and

No map can point me up,

I want nothing more than to only be alright…

 

 So, show me how to cross my own heartgrain sidewalk

Patterned, of course, after my own upside down mirror,

Tilted and full of cracks, cracked,

Broken and full of cracks to break your mother’s back,

All just as I fell full swing, lively,

Into that new death dance, tip-tapping away,

Swaying with frost in the corners of my eyes

And with fractures soles

Down those roads I hated wanting to go down,

But always, always never had trouble doing so.

 

But this isn’t failure for fun,

And now the whole world is snowed into one

Piece white, self-undone with one hand and no looking,

“8, 7, 6, and no looking now; 5, 4, 321 here I come…”

Don’t worry: with your help,

I’ll catch all our colors.

 

Hold me upside down and drag me roughly

Out of that crater where I solemnly

Soft spoke, saying “maybe.”

And in your arms I could someday warm my blizzard-breath,

The wind chipping white-washed words out of me and

Swirling them around where I want to go, but won’t

Because sometimes I am just too much afraid of melting.

 

See, I will always be looking up

Through the sun blinding reflection off the bottom

Of your pool where, in long black lines you wrote

“It’s ok to smile when you float.”

And I will always want to be buried in your snowdrift

Frown, then, drowning in your gold flecked onyx eyes:

Strike them together and shock me,

Rock me standing and into shape.

Remake me out of defibrillation and hopes

That are not near as false as we would like to think.

 

No.

And especially when things look like they’ll even out,

I cold-feet yank my own finger-twitch ripcord

Before we could ever learn

Just how to save themselves.

And when you looked down, falling almost as fast

As I needed to, you still saw me bent back

And hunched over double

Under my good times and drowning in your pool

Toys, smiling out of the corner of my frost eyes,

And you said “See? Now you’re ok.

See, now you’re fine.”

Reviews

[Charles]

Second poem of yours I've seen and the second I've found stunning. Really great poem - makes me want to float in your pool of poetry, perhaps to float by sometime and witness the conversations you say led to this and the other writing. I'll be back again and again - just to check and see that you're still OK. :-)

[cest la vie]

Oh JKBP, love this..
I felt like I was sitting in the shadows witnessing this event unfold.
You have a superb way of writing and it is alays a pleasure to read.
Another outstanding piece!!

[D.L. Simmons]

this is beautiful...i love the descriptions, the rhythm...very intriguing write :)

[Cool Handless Luke]

Gotta love the ebb and flow of this one - right up my alley. Brilliant use of metaphor as well. Is it ok to just be ok? Never thought about it that way - nice work.

[Jackson Krauss Blind Pa..]

A very important conversation I had, with a very important girl, late one night.