A POEM A DAY

I'm just happy to be here.

Tag: austin

April 30, 2025

19/30: GUARDIAN ANGELS

You see an empty field and run through it
Your steps are sure even if the ground is uneven
The moment you fall is the same moment you rise
like a redwood tree in Muir Woods days before your 1st birthday
We must have walked mile after mile together
under the cool shade and scattered light
Redwoods watched you like guardian angels
Look at you now, son. Hungry for what’s around the corner,
curious and determined to move forward with purpose.
On spring days like this, I used to lay my body down on the soft grass
and release whatever was keeping me from being free
And you are free as a boy before dusk
Watching you be allows me to be
The UT Tower watches over you from the background
like another guardian angel
I feel you tower over your world,
and then you hold my hand until you decide to run again.

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April 27, 2025

17/30: Friendship is a saucer of soy sauce with wasabi gently folded in.

In my mind, I try to make time work for me,
as if my hands push each moment forward,
forging seconds to form long enough to
come together for something simple like dinner,
which will hopefully become a story we tell,
a memory we fold into
our wallets and slip into the pockets of time,
or throw back into the well like a wish for more.
It is Thursday in Austin,
a city of origin stories
Tonight, time was made
and I’m grabbing dinner
with Marshall and Pablo,
my best friends, old friends
still capable of making time
for new memories.
I try nigiri for the first time,
fatty bluefin tuna, king salmon, and yellowtail,
each piece carved clean from the body
They guide me through the menu,
I don’t know what I want, only
where I am and who I’m with
And isn’t this lovely?
Uncertainty is a gift,
The unknown can co-exist with truth
and what I know is true is the unknown still
makes me curious, makes the time
I have in any window compound like interest
when my cup is empty.
We take delight in every bite,
in the low light, blending into the
hum of conversations that surround us.
We disappear like a second order of dumplings,
losing track of time,
using our spoons to pick up the pieces
of each other’s puzzles.
A story as old as time.


 


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April 18, 2025

16/30: A Fortune Cookie Mural in East Austin Reminds Me of Who I Am

This morning, a flat tire.

A nail got me in silence.
I could’ve compromised and collapsed in anger
i could’ve lost control and run off the road,
I could’ve welcomed ruin and speak ill of the day.
But I didn’t. A kindness from the universe.
The eternal optimist writes another verse
into the play.
Last night,
I pass by a wall with a fortune cookie mural

that reads,
You will allow yourself to be yourself again
and maybe it was talking about this moment,

when I had to decide, who I want to be,

or who I will let myself be, or who I want to

let myself be. I will tells me the future is
up the hill, bright as ever, beyond
shadow.

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April 16, 2025

14/30: April in Austin

You can spend all your time making money
You can spend all your love making time

-Take It to the Limit by The Eagles

The blue sky is a promise
I honor with all my might
Bluebonnets bend in the wind
I find myself walking under the Oak Trees, again

Time traveling is easy

Walk through the world

with your best friend
with nowhere to go
and nowhere to be
Rewind and reminisce.
What I carry

carries me forward
What I keep
has kept me
grounded
and searching
and still I return
to the present,
hungry for more time
with love and more love
and more love and
more time.

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April 23, 2014

21/30

21/30

THINGS FALL APART

The last band we saw together was Built to Spill
over at Stubbs, when November was its nastiest
and Winter felt so true. Thirty degrees and dropping,
I pressed my body so hard against yours, I expected
sparks to consume whatever it was we could not control
like the weather
like each other,
and each of our expectations filled with what we
both wanted, which was not each other,
I learned that from the aftermath
and that is the hardest part.
To be a lesson and not even know it
until you have to.

But oh, if I had to do it all over again,
I’d do it just the same. Even if I know
our sparks won’t stay long enough to last
through the winter of each other, I will
still build the a fire for you,
even if I have to burn myself down
to do it.

“We’ve all seen enough, now it’s time to decide
The meekness of love or the power of pride
It doesn’t matter if you’re good or smart
Goddamn it, things fall apart

Let’s go for a walk, yeah, let’s go for a drive
Don’t know how to say thanks for being alive
Let’s go for a lifetime, let’s go for a fling
Don’t know how to say anything”

 

 

 

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April 3, 2014

3/30

The problem is I’m wearing a watch that isn’t mine
and still checking the time like it is and suddenly
everything matters. Every second stutter steps
trying to say, “Hey, you sure about that?”

But tonight I am sure. Tonight
all my uncertainty leaves the waiting room
and gloom is gone for good. Tonight
I am in a ballroom with all my favorite people
I am all chandelier and sure I’ll pass the sugar
Which is me saying, tonight is sweet,
and your hands are careful cantaloupes
Which is me saying you are my favorite fruit.
Yes, you.

It took me twenty-two years to hear
the heart
doesn’t have to be sweet to be eaten. Tonight
I am grateful that teeth touched me without tearing
or taking the bloom with them. Don’t they know
I’m still arriving? That the days begins and never ends?
That when my brown skin blushes gold, I tell
it to stay? And sometimes it does
but sometimes the blood is too familiar
so I make a bushel out of the burning
and wish it didn’t ring like ritual. Wish it didn’t
ripple so sad ship like.

I listen to a song by Manchester Orchestra
The lead singer, Andy Hull
heaves anchors from honey
and calls it song. Sings
The invention of the ship
is the invention of the shipwreck.

So I am both the ship and the wreck
Should I start over? Okay. I’ll start over.
Hi, my name is Zachary. I am not a ship but
the first of me is the last of something
pretty. 
So I am a shipwreck.

Should I start over?

 

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