nicklinde.com

Tomorrow, tomorrow,
the sun will come out tomorrow.
After all, it’s only a day away.

But what happens to dreams
when you don’t wake up tomorrow?
Ambitions orphaned like poor little Annie.

You’ll finally tell her you love her, tomorrow.
You’ll finally use the fine china, tomorrow.
The diet starts
Tomorrow.

Where does that leave us?
Fat, secretive, bottled up with emotions.
We’re unhappy today.
Nobody wants today.
Everybody wants tomorrow.

There are people walking among us that
believe that their life is going to magically start
somebody in the future.
That this is all a test run, this doesn’t matter, today
is just practice.

The real world starts tomorrow.
Those are the ones who are in bed while
we toast ourselves to one-too-many.
Those are the ones who leave the game
in the sixth inning to beat traffic.
Those are the ones who tip too little
to somebody working far too hard.
Those are the ones that will wake up tomorrow
and see that tomorrow was just like today.

So I raise my glass to those of us who spend
too much time being ourselves to question our motives.
The ones that can’t be bothered with yesterday.
The ones that won’t be around for tomorrow.
We’ve only got here and now.
Tomorrow starts today.

Our shadows held hands
Stretched like giants against the earth.
The moment was thick, our motions muted—
Absorbed in a wintery silence.

A year ago you told me
“I’m a million contradictions”
And I loved it. So much nuance—
A foreign film I mysteriously
Landed the lead role in.

Without a script, I became as surprised
As the audience at the sudden plot changes.
The reels like photobooks of
Everything I am.
Everything you are.
The credits rolled and we realized
There were thousands
Of people to set the scenes, to play
The extras, to feed us lines
Even though we didn’t know
What language we were speaking.
They watched the sounds roll off
Your lips. I was hypnotized.

You were as bad as it can get
And as good as it can be.

Innocent bystanders were pulled into
Our wake, cast as the most
Unsuspecting accomplices, they made you
Seem more natural, made me
Seem a little more sane.

And then black.
Darkness.
Silence.

Nobody really knew what to make of it.
It was beautiful, sure.
But was that it?
Is that all?
What more could have happened?

The admission seemed steep for a journey
With such an shallow ending.
But I’d buy everything you have,
Even if it cost everything I’ve got.

Light me up, make me feel alive
add the spirit to these skin and bones,
put the dance in another aimless pop song,
make today more than just another Tuesday.

These soldiers of joy, these perfect smiles
from unknown faces, they come from places
that aren’t so far from where we stand—
from where we’re born, in this moment.

Shine like only you know how.
Raise your hands to the heavens
whether you’re on a mountain or not
and breathe in this mystery and exhale the answers.

These days are not built for endurance.
These days are made for speed.
The second you think you’re too late
you’re already there.

We may be lost, but we’re way ahead of schedule.

“And I’m confused,” I said. “So completely and utterly confused.”
It sucked, everybody. It fucking sucked.

If I have a question about who the 12th President was
I can look it up: Zachary Taylor.

If I need to know how many pints are in a quart
I can search that as well: two.

But you and your world are subjects I’ve studied
for years. Every word, every move, every kiss
is just two heartbeats too fast for Google to unlock.

And I wait.

And from morning to night and the blinks in my eyes,
the deep sighing breaths that I take when I hit a dead end,
and every moment that I know you’re out there, somewhere.
The thought of you not thinking about me makes me wish
I tried harder, tried less, tried at all.

And what I do—I wait.

Every second, every minute, every moment
that tide takes me out and when it brings me back
I’m not sure if I’m closer to the shore or if I’m that much
further from leaving everything I wanted to be
when I grew up.
As a child I rode my bike up and down the street.
I sped past parked cars and ramped over the neighbor’s
driveway and when I fell, time stopped. A broken shell
of fearlessness. I went from smiling and scab-free to
the world’s most helpless child in no time at all.
Because when you’re hurt, it doesn’t matter if you’re early
or late. Hurt doesn’t fit into your schedule—hurt calls you
breathless at three in the morning and tells you that you need
to go the hospital, right now.

But careful bike riders don’t win races.
And when you get older time doesn’t stop when you’re hurt.
It keeps going.
When you pull yourself together from the hardest goodbye
you’ve ever known you’re late for greatness.

And the same blood that pours from those wounds is pumped
through the same heart that loves her smile, that same heart
that has been broken.

Resiliency is in the wait.
For every answer I don’t know and every question I’ll ever ask
there is one truth:
There’s nothing you can do when you’re the next in line.
You’ve got to go, Domino.

There’s somebody that I’d like you to meet.
Somebody that I knew a long time ago but was killed
By a murder inside of a clock.
His name is Nick and he’s eleven years old, so sit right
Down and let me tell you about this boy. Let me tell you
About what three in the morning smells like in a small
Iowa town. Let me tell you how many sunflower seeds
You can eat in a summer, how many times you can play
A song over and over and over before it stops being
A soundtrack and starts affecting your breathing, your walk,
Your style.

I want to tell you about what kinds of dreams you can have
At two in the afternoon. What summer is like when you’re
Not worried about sweating through your clothes, when you’re
Not worried about what time lunch is, when you’re not worried
About your bills and your legacy.
When you’re not worried.

Before the tick-tick-tock of the second hand sped past the minute
Hand and zoomed past that hour hand like a space ship
On a one way trip to forever, there was a boy that was a pro wrestler,
A late night talk show host, a baseball player, a scholar and a shyster
Who got into a little too much trouble just to see if he could get out.
And he always did.

You might not have heard about his death in the papers, he wasn’t
Lost on some milk carton circulating the suburbs, he just disappeared
Like the late nights and the ice cream man.
One day—just gone.

His spirit survives to this day. He hides in between the hashes
On the clock. That split second before you hold the hand of a girl
You love, the minute you take that step away from home, and in
Blanket warm Wednesday’s in June when you hear lawnmowers
Humming over the sound of an afternoon baseball game.
Enough of these moments and he’ll live through us forever.

I write these words for you.
I write these words for you and every single person
you’ve ever been. That you’ll ever be.
I write these words for you.

There are a million things I’ve seen,
a million breaths I’ve breathed and I might
not have seen them all like I see them on this
cold day, but I know they’re there. In my chest,
near my heart, I feel them pumping in and out of my soul.

I write these words for you.
I write these words for the kids that I don’t have
yet. The kids I might never have—the kids that you
and I once were. The kids you may have.
I write these words for you.

I am a child full of wonder. Older than I
once was, but still full of all these fingerpaints
and lincoln logs. The dreams that won me Stanley cups and
the ones that broke me into sweats, that made my mother
rush into my room and put my head on her shoulder
and do the things that all mothers do until our hearts
are full of so much love and emotion they turn us
six years old. I write these words for you.

I once flipped through a yearbook from a school
I never went to, from a year that pre-dates my existance.
I saw smiling faces staring back at me like a hundred new
friends. These people I have never met, will never meet,
will never sit down and have a drink with. These people
with hearts full of love and hearts full of pain. These
people who have kids who dream of being princesses and who
on Christmas day light up like fireworks on the fourth of July,
beaming that same smile as their mothers and fathers who
I see on the page. I write these words for you.

And my Father who is a long lost friend. The man who lifted
me up as a child and made me so weightless and free that I
thought I was Superman. I am Superman. You are Superman.
There is nothing on this planet that can ever stop us from
flying. It is not his hands that made me fly, but his heart
his smile, my smile, the smile that we share, the smile of
those strangers in that book. The book that my Father’s
smile is forever captured, but never captive.
I write these words for you.

I’m going to show up at the party. I’m going to be
another smile in another photo. I’m going to hear that song
from my childhood—yeah, the one that I should be embarrassed
to know all the words to. And I’m going to dance.
I’m going to dance with anybody that has a smile that
reminds me of the strangers from that school, that looks
like I did when my Father held me high above his head and
we will fly together. We will transport into a time where we
are both smiling faces. She will smile and I will smile
and we will be free as flying children. My children,
your children, our children, our parents children.
I write these words for you.

Who’s that girl living my life?
A unique fashion, a posed stride
Through the crowd. Eyes shielded
Behind dark lenses move side to side.

Short, sharp breaths, under layers
Of diamonds. She can’t be the one
Who has stolen my world. A thief
Who has taken a one-way ticket,
Wrapping it tightly around her finger.

Who’s that girl, where’s she from?
A phoenix birthed from secrets.
A film negative of the reflection
In the mirror that shows such poise.

Pursed lips protect her words under
Store bought ideals. Prudent strides
From past to present. An unnecessary
Chapter in a story with no beginning,
A story with no end.

Grey scale backgrounds and afternoon
drizzles. Dreary Thursdays and sun soaked
Saturdays. You lead. You follow. You travel.
Rain, tears, spit, and spill. Absorbing
wear and tear with the rest of us. You persist.
Cracking and crumbling, busy and completely
alone. A true friend—you’re there for the journey.
The impossibly solemn summer nights, prayer
filled winter mornings. The arrival. The departure.

Touching our sole being, the root of our mission.
The beat of a thousand worrisome strangers,
escaping nowhere at one thousand rhythms
per second. Crowded chorus coming constantly.
Silence. Hollow breaths. Possibilities.
Change is constant. Stubborn the same. The only
difference is not the how or the who. It is not
the why or the when. It is simply you.
You are explored.

It goes beyond masked maple scent,
auburn sun streaks and shadows.
Lifetimes before posed smiles, fabricated
bright eyes and painted presence.

It’s one heartbeat, one moment
in a timeline of natural motion. Locked
gears in time, without breath, without hope.
Sterile and lifeless.

As the snow freezes on tounges
in mid-air. Thick sweaters warming
bodies frozen in space, in time. Magic
finds breath in the margin, in the memory.

Faces buried in a single second, younger
then than now, older then than never.
It remains a single second in a lifetime
of moments never captured.

One solitary blink, where all others roam freely.

Some secrets need to be kept
As buried treasures in a sea of guilt.
Message in a bottle not thrown to sea—
Buried, miles underneath the earth.
Decomposing.

Each thought like a time capsule,
To be sent to no one, to be opened never.
For each word spoken, a thousand thoughts
Forgotten, a million feelings aborted.
That’s dangerous to know.

There’s no safety in a kiss like this.
Faces pushing together before departure.
Those eyes, never so close, never
So bright. Going to imaginary places.
Unpredictable.

Kiss me.
Take that moment, recycle it. Reuse
What you can when the moment is right.
When the moment is wrong, do it still.
That’s dangerous to know.

My world is slowly caving in.
I knew it would.
Colorblind yet responsive.
Sure of yourself.
Red to orange, to yellow, to pink.
Incredible discovery.
No shadow of reason.

I’m hanging on instead of letting go.
Why quit now?
Defend yourself to the very end.
When you’re stuck.
Knee deep, no hope, no point.
Outrageous claims.
Never a doubt.

I’ve been hiding out for miles.
Underneath that smile?
Telling me they’re tears of joy?
Suit yourself.
Take this hand like hope.
Predictable chorus.
Never echoed.

You can do a lot in a lifetime
if you don’t burn out too fast.
Surfing slowly along the timeline,
hurdle waves until your last.

Straight lines of time and distance
from the past through years ahead.
Before the age of resistance
until the oceans have turned red.

We float along on a tiny place
in time known as the moment.
Moving every second in space until our minds start to own it.

A single star in the dome above
flashes brightly then it’s spent it.
We turn our gaze and it burns out
but only for a second.

One in a hundred or a million
in a spark or in a flash.
Look forward to the moment
and leave the last billion in the past.

We each pay a fabulous price for our visions of paradise.
Running feverishly from shore to water, each stride
getting more strained as the levels rise above our waists.
No sooner has the water reached our mouths we surrender.

Keep going.

We each sell our wildest dreams for small desires.
Hoping that the holes in our hearts can be filled in the
meantime with empty promises and hopes of tomorrow.
Wandering within ourselves until we concede we are lost.

Keep going.

We each buy ourselves prizes from those willing to sell.
Trading all of our progress for an opportunity to prove
to complete strangers our value, our market resale value.
Constantly filling voids, covering wounds, masking fates.

A jar upon a shelf of such beauty and magnificence
need not be filled with expensive jewels.
Its uniqueness serves its own purpose. Not empty or
unfulfilled. It simply is beauty, the way beauty was intended.

Torrent winds shred inked plans,
Reduce our maps to tears and pieces.
North torn and buried under Eastern
Latitudes and imperfect directions.

You can get back on.
You can get back home.

Morning begins on the back beat,
In an unfamiliar time signature. Rushing
Through the chorus, you miss the break—
Speed through your solo, your shining moment.

You can get back on.
You can get back home.

Readjust your coordinates. Set
Your sail to speed around the carnage.
Pay careful attention to the landmarks.
They are the only thing you will ever remember.

Heavy, humid, slow and steady through

Midwestern summers so wet

You could hear yourself dampening

While you watched the sun swim through

The horizon so slowly you’d think it was

Your mission to save it.

You, on the other hand of the meridian

Carefully balanced yourself in that cool breeze.

Seeping, sleeping, low and lazy orbit.

Rocked to sleep by a magnetism.

So tight the current through which smooth

Meditated breaths escape thick lungs.

Our visions both directed west. Creating

An acute angle so tight, so close.

You, standing barefoot on the grass

A light in your system directly above.

I, searching the great expanse above,

Mouth agape, hoping to find your star.

Swishing, sweating, swooshing
Across the masonry of ice. A clouded
dance floor of crowded traffic changing
Lanes at breakneck speeds.

Clicking, clacking, collecting
Scars and stories. Whirling through
Winds and adversity. Flashes of light
And speed. Of love and pain.

Dripping of sweat, blood, and respect
We spend hours hunched over, trying
To look into a mirror without reflection
To see children, playing years ago—
They look a lot like you and me.

For a moment, we become our
Own heroes. Posters hung on our
Bedroom walls coming alive years
After they were thrown away with
Our twin beds, they are reborn.

A splintering sprint. A speeding
Tripod mercilessly floating above
The earth. A burst of youth. Whipping
A black disc with all his might only
To be disregarded like that faded poster
So many years ago.

The sun attempted to pull
The linens from a humid Midwestern
Morning. I stood on the banks of the lake
Prepared to challenge the day.

You lay asleep like the city, unaware
Of my battle. I had left your side in an effort to fight
Time. The firestorm of heat and minutes
Battered my body and my mind.

Unable to resist, I because porous. Condensation
Breached my comfort. Tears escaped like so many
Precious seasons.

You were blissfully at home.

The look of surprise on your face,

When I gave you the green button,

Was not a surprise,

You had a brown coat,

But you accepted it anyway;

The way a mother would

When a child brings home a rock, or grasshopper.

When I explained to you the significance

Of that green button,

You understood me,

Better than I understand myself at times.

My parents, grand parents, and great grandparents

Would have been extremely proud.

That was why, when all came tumbling down,

I didn’t expect to see that green button

Waiting atop the pile of rubbish.

I want to be mad, but don’t know how.

Perhaps it was too soon for the button,

For everything.

Even this warm summer day,

Sun bathing my face,

with the occasional strut of a breeze,

This day on which I am so close to god,

That I can smell the sweetness,

Of Ambrosia on his breath,

Can not keep me from wondering,

What is the true meaning,

Of that green button?

I’ve got scars on my heart and they won’t go away.
I didn’t mind, I didn’t care. I was the light
that fell from the sky. It wasn’t some carnival
or a candlelit meal at some fancy festaurant.
In fact, I’m not sure I remember anything about
that night.

A face so pure, so flawlessly untested, a body
of water without a pulse. It was me who skipped
the stone.

My eyes were closed and there was a brief moment
when I opened them to see if this was a time of
perfection. I caught you doing the same.

I’m looking for someone to take them from me.
I was certainly not up to the task of you. A project
with so much paperwork it would take me years
to sort you out. Yet I accepted the burden, I’d
never open my eyes, until the pond was finally
drained.

I want to talk to strangers.
In a world where I comes before E
Except after C, I think about what is truly
Weird….that in weird the I comes after the E.
Maybe I think about it too much, maybe I spend
Too many nights awake, dissecting reasons
Why I feel so tired in the morning when
I should probably be in slumber.
I love the way your feelings slip.

I love the way you say hello.
I always feel like I’m leaving somewhere.
Never to a destination, I’m always on my way
Back from somewhere. I’m always the last to arrive—
The first to leave. I’ve got to get back to leaving, back to being
Whatever it is that makes me anxious about dreaming.
I find myself walking around looking for people I
Know, only to disguise myself when I see them
And make it seem like time to go.

What I like about you
Is that you’re always early
And you miss me when I don’t arrive.
I’ll never understand why I never see you rest.
You get up before the sun and taunt the moon to sleep.
Portraying a mass of linen—I mask myself—
I am a humid day. Hiding
Within the rain, pretending to be
What you like about me.