Category Archives: This work copyright 2014 Thomas Kreek

Themes and variations on “if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?”

January 28, 2015 Thomas Leave a comment

In four acts

Atto Primo

When a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?
if there’s no ear to take it in, and not a soul around.
Is there any ruckus when the tallest branches hit.
Frankly, dear, I have to say, I just don’t give a shit.

Instead there is another way my wondering mind is leaning.
What I really want to know is does it have a meaning?
I’m sure it does to some poor owl whose home the tree destroys
But to someone half a mile away, it’s simply background noise.

Now, Trees are not my main concern, as much as I love birds,
But here’s what keeps me up, some nights: my desperate, needy words.
my thoughts disgorged on every page, and I don’t have much choice.
It seems from deep inside of me they want to have a voice.

And since this voice is my wracked soul, they cry out to be heard.
And seek a willing audience to love them word for word.
Sometimes the way they nag me, till I’m sleepless, is a curse.
They want to tell their story in some tortured metered verse.

And every bit of simile or metaphor or rhyme
Demand to have that fret upon the stage in their own time.
Some day, they will stop asking to assure them they are good.
And then, they’ll be content to fall in silence in the wood

Atto Secondo

If a tree falls in the woods, and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Yes. Duh.

Atto Terzo

If a tree falls in the woods, and we are not really hearing it, does it make a sound?
It sounds like the tear, falling from my cheek, that you didn’t see.
It sounds like the cat purring in that extra 2 inches between us in the bed, that we don’t discuss.
It is the sound of that repeated slam of the door, that we refuse to acknowledge.
It is that sigh of “here we go again.”

It makes the sound of that constant debate between us as we use our theories and grand abstractions to pretend we are addressing the fundamental sound of this splinter between us, but ultimately, we are only arguing the semantics of what it means to listen.

Atto Quarto

If a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound?
The towering oak once proud and tall, with auburn mantle crowned.
And in its budding prime, it broadly spread its springtime pollen,
How sad it feels to see the way the mighty tree has fallen.

But does this toppling really make a sound upon this stage?
It does, he says, as he zips up, “it happens to guys your age.”

Fini

Respiratory Therapy

January 25, 2015 Thomas Leave a comment

I dreamed I was breathing, but awoke, suddenly, to realize that I was not. My breath was caught on last night’s good bye kiss, which I suddenly realized meant more than just “see you later.” It made my air clench in my throat, and I was getting faint.

I was able to cough it clear, as far as my lips, where i could taste your 11 dollar a case beer, and that half cigarette, you swore you’d quit. I finally spit it out and was clear for a moment.

I was finally able to inhale deeply and feel the cold air of my bedroom move into my chest, and show me how it will feel without you. I could smell the soap that you bought at the street fair, this summer, and haven’t used in months, I breathed deeply and it became warmer, inside, like you had returned.

This breath is practiced. it is habitual and happens without my realization. It comes from so deep inside, that it is part of me, but it is not mine. Someday, I will breathe normally, again. You will not be the oxygen, and will not gasp in your absence. I will not exhale my desire, and be confounded by the inability to inhale your response.

Some day, this breath will be my own.

Essence

January 24, 2015 Thomas Leave a comment

I miss your charm, your effervescence,
Your easy smile’s luminescence
I love that our love’s coalescence,
Is such a blessing at its essence.
But even your bright incandescence
leaves just a fading phosphorescence

So, in my anxious convalescence,
From a bout of adolescence,
I feared my thoughtless acquiescence
Had caused our union’s obsolescence.

But now that Im back in your presence,
I cheer the worry’s evanescence.
I feel your caring heart’s incessence.
It sings of your love’s omnipresence.

Sword and Dove

January 17, 2015 Thomas Leave a comment

what he said when he broke up with me during sex because I was too tender.

I want to fuck and not make love.
Give me your sword and not the dove.
I need to be objectified,
And leave romantic strings untied.

We had a deal, since this began.
You knew the way this river ran.
You can’t divert its course alone,
You’re just a leaf and not a stone

I know I said “I love you,” first,
But you’re your best when I’m my worst.
So get your heart out of this game,
Cause I’ve already done the same.

My heart has crossed the Rubicon.
It’s born to roam, and now it’s gone.
We’re staying at the river, here,
And going at it, spear to spear.

Unsheathe your steel and I’ll draw mine
We’ll lunge and parry, six and nine.
Give me your sword and not the dove,
Cause fuckers fuck and suckers love.

Traces

January 15, 2015 Thomas Leave a comment

My finger traced your apology in the dusty residue of your absence. Motes and fragments of your habits cling to the apartment and the furniture. A scuff from your impossibly narrow dress boots on the kitchen tile. The dried chalk of your mail-order, not tested on animals toothpaste clings to the bathroom faucet. A drink ring on the coffee table, from your family recipe Manhattan, where the vermouth bottle sits just adjacent to the Canadian blended for 60 seconds, not more, with 2 cubes, gently cracked. The ring is just dried condensation on the finish, not even a stain. Easy to wipe up. All temporary, like you.

We became a certainty, an inevitability, as fast as we chose the restaurant for our first date. Chinese or Italian? My place or yours? Marriage or sinful cohabitation? I cleared that drawer for your underwear. Shall we kiss? I had lunch with your mom. Shall we dance? Whose cologne is that? In our bed? Where were you last night? Your drawer is empty. Chinese or Italian? Delivery for one.

I know you are sorry how it all happened. How you didn’t mean to get distracted. How he was only there to spice things up. How maybe we moved too fast, in the first place. I know all of this. And I know that when I clean the house, tomorrow, you’ll be gone, completely, without a trace. But tonight, at least, my coffee table wears your ring, right next to my crab Rangoon and my extra duck sauce, and my Manhattan.

Princess T

January 12, 2015 Thomas Leave a comment

T-time passed and then the crash
Her only lovers paid her cash
She wore a tattered wedding gown,
The dust of snow, her glistening crown.

She chose, this time, to change her life.
To leave the drugs, the johns, the knife.
Better than her pimp could give,
Like royalty, she dreamed to live.

She walked the caverns ‘neath the town,
And wore her best inverted frown.
She begged for change, and got enough
To cross the gate with all her stuff.

She practiced for her grandest dance,
And crossed the platform in a trance.
The carriage raced to meet the bride,
and that is how the princess died.

Scars on the Sky

December 31, 2014 Thomas Leave a comment

There are scars on the sky
There are stories in those scars
Going home, leaving home
Vacation, deployment
There are tears and there is excitement
There is chatter and annoyance,
Loss and beginnings.

A new grandmother, anxiously trying to learn to knit before the child is too old to wear her handiwork.
A woman still shaking from the pat down, because it was just like the game her older brother used to make her play.
A salesman almost completely focused on his PowerPoint, trying to shut out the thoughts that, if he doesn’t make his quarter, she will actually leave.
A college student, heading off to his first study abroad, with eight extra sets of batteries for his camera, and a map from his older brother that shows the best places to get high.
An ex boyfriend, going home from the funeral, where he wasn’t welcome, still wonders if he could have changed it.
An almost child, going to a place he can’t pronounce, to wear sand camo and an assault rifle, to meet new people to fear.
An elderly woman, on her third cocktail, fights back a tear as she remembers her daughter’s parting words.
A young woman excitedly shows her engagement ring to the gentleman next to her, who just received divorce papers.
A bride and groom on a honeymoon paid for by his parents, because he doesn’t want her to realize he’s lost his job, until after the trip.
An AVP who blames the airline for not automatically upgrading him to first class, but fears it’s because his expense account was cut off.
The copilot, who has once again decided this is his last time he will fly with intoxicated.

There are scars on the sky,
Lit by the morning sun,
and in a day, they will have faded
and been replaced a dozen times.
Each one contains a hundred scars.
Those may never fade.

Prairie wind

December 30, 2014 Thomas Leave a comment

The wind makes its own decisions. Like any farmer on generations of loess, those decisions are very similar from year-to-year, but always they adapt to the current conditions. Occasionally it loses its temper, and scatters sod and silo, board and batten. Force of nature becomes force majeure. But it soon regains its composure, and goes back to moving soil from farm to farm to shed to house and vibrating in the gutters and corrugated.

The wind makes its own decisions. On those faces that etch the prairie with plow and hoe, the wind carves the same lines that it does in the unprotected earth at the edge of the field. Wind and sun burn indistinguishably except for the pattern they make. Wind, horizontal, sun vertical. Face, head. Draw the tear, dry the tear.

The wind makes its own decisions. It is always coming and leaving at the same time. It has travelled hundreds of miles with no interference, bending the wheat and slashing the corn. It is never static, never staying. Its direction is not predictable, but it can always be felt. It stalls and waits in lee or copse, or behind the house or in the barn, and then it’s cool and its movement feels like a caress, instead of a slap.

The wind makes its own decisions, and I have made mine. Now that wind sings of a place I am from. The sound is only in my ear as a whisper, and the daily grit in my eyes cleared many tears ago. But it calls to me, at night. I can taste the fields behind my home, and hear the weeds rustle over 5 generations of my family’s graves. But it is not the wind that drove me away. The wind and I are friends. It found me and sang me to sleep. It invited me to climb high into the elms to feel its gentleness rock me back and forth. It brought me flowers, and the smell of huge silos of corn and the cotton candy of the county fair.

The wind makes its own decisions, and it has made me its companion, and I left with it. Prevailing from the west, my only choice was to head east, so that some of that grit and fragrance and bluster came from home, though now it mixes with sea and maple and ice and hemlock.

Drunk Texting

December 25, 2014 Thomas Leave a comment

Yeah, I know. I drunk texted you every couple weeks, since that day 6 years ago. The words made no sense to me when I sobered up, but that didn’t last long. I know I pocket dialed you, at least a dozen times, because yours is the only number on my favorites list, and sometimes I look at your picture and I read the address, and think of better days.
Always, you have the grace to ignore them. Always, you have the sense not to reply.

But now the world is drunk texting me, and I don’t understand. Crazy messages that make no sense. A lead rainstorm in her gymnasium. A hidden fortress in a home room coat closet. Counting children from too many to too many more.

Please. This one time. Please respond and tell me that someday, she will grow up to ignore my messages, too. Tell me she will grow up at all.

The End of the Hallway

December 24, 2014 Thomas Leave a comment

It’s amazing how long that hallway is. A long hall papered with bad dreams. It takes a long time to go down it, before I am confronted with that door, waiting at the end. And how frightening to know what is on the other side of that door: is it the light we sought? The darkness, and eternal fire that we’ve been warned of? Or is it another hallway, a long and tedious walk, with those same dreams haunting me?

When I last met that door, I stood in front of it for several days. It’s like it was calling me to experience it. The few times I touched the knob, it was painfully cold. But something inside called anyway, “open it”. But I didn’t.

Certainly, what stopped me was the fear that it was another hallway, that hell doesn’t end here. Because even the darkness seemed to be a good alternative to this dream world.

Other friends have shared that hall. Sometimes, we walked down it, together, so that one of us could pull the other back, away from the door. Late nights sitting beside him, telling him “no.” “Stay.” “It’s okay.” We had a phone tree, we did shifts, we made calls, we held hands. But those were the ones who chose to ask. Those were the ones who were able to ask.

For them, this life seemed something to save, not simply to end. People always discuss whether this is an act of bravery, or of cowardice. But it is neither, because it is an inevitability. It is a force stronger than our own will. And when it is time, the intervention must come from outside, because inside there is only emptiness.

To sleep, perchance to dream. And in that sleep of death, what dreams may end? If those prayers are answered, all of those dreams will end.

Bob and Thomas