Crayons. I love them, because to me they are a reminder of who I am. Confused? Let me clarify. Everyone is born with certain gifts and certain handicaps. I was born with a million emotions. If feelings and emotions were crayons I think most people on the planet would have a nice box of pre-school 8. You know, the nice big fat crayons in all the basic colors, happy sad, angry, love, hate, good and bad. Most people cannot get beyond describing their own feelings beyond these basic concepts, in fact most people don’t really want to talk about feelings at all. As a man I was raised both at home and out in the world to hold a few things dear, mostly what constitutes as manhood. Men don’t cry, men are tough. Leave all the feelings to women. Makes for kind of a messed up life when you have been gifted or cursed with too many emotions, too many feelings. I have spent a lifetime trying to filter it all, to not let too may out and certainly not let too many in. At any given time I have a dozen or so feelings, ask me how I feel and who knows how I might answer. I might say fine, or I might give you some discombobulated answer like ecstatic and a little melancholy. Huh? Say that again. If feelings and emotions are crayons, I am a nice box of 12o.

I have a dozen shades of sadness and a dozen more of joy. Good or bad that’s who I am. It has made me into the person I am, silly, moody, passionate and relentless. Maybe it’s why I choose so often to spend my time alone. I can overwhelm just about anyone. I have long come to the conclusion that its more curse than gift and I will likely spend the rest of my life alone, with one of the many shades of loneliness. Sometimes that’s ok and sometimes I don’t know how I will go another day like I am. It exhausts me sometimes. For every great height there is a tremendous depth.

So I sometimes get a bit contemplative or I write a lot of bad poetry to help process all this stuff inside of me. I might put all this despair and loneliness into a character in a story. For me as I guess most people writing is deeply personal. One day especially I remember sitting in my front driveway on a breezy day. The Texas summer sky was blue and full of clouds, big white fluffy clouds and I started to cry although I was not particularly sad. Yes I am a bit of crier sometimes. It struck me that I was like a cloud pushed along by the breeze, pummeled by bigger clouds, stormier clouds and the patterns of weather that pushed me through the sky. I found myself thinking that I was very much like those clouds and went inside and wrote what is still my favorite poem.

Low Cloud

 While walking outside

A warm and breezy day

My gaze rested upon

A bit of low flying cloud.

I marveled at this wisp

of beautiful fluff

holding steady in the breeze

to the slipstream

or whatever clouds hang onto.

I longed for that kind of strength

The kind to outlast the fury

Of all that God throws at me

And I hang onto myself

Wondering at the spite

Hurled against me so fiercely.

And I hang on, and on

To the slipstream

Or whatever clouds hang onto.

 That poem captures who I am, blown across the sky, pummeled by life and holding onto the slipstream or whatever it is that clouds hand onto.