what the stump teaches

I've had moments where I've felt far away. While reading fable haven was one of them. I think it was when I was reading about a giant. The top of wheeler peak is another place. And the top of timp. Or when I'm in a hotel in a Chicago suburb, or in a sketchy Hispanic Southern California neighborhood. Or when I'm so zoned in on a calculus problem. Or when I'm studying and the spirit is teaching. Or when I'm almost crying to "stubborn love" when I'm driving her back for the last time. Or when I was dehydrated at the top of grove creek canyon. Or when I stared down the bear claw slopes. 

Even though you were 15 feet away, with that sunset, it felt closer. And both our heads were flipped upside down to see it differently. And I wonder what it feels like to see things from other people's perspectives. But I need to make sure my heart is seated, waiting for the final exam. Pencil in hand. Because the words I'll write down will leap off the page into my mouth. And I won't be able to do anything but spew them to you. Just like smoke they'll wisp into the sky and join the sun, the moon, and the stars in their own quest to give me the light. The moon will hold those words, and advertise them to me as it finds me in a car after I just lost another tic-tac-toe game on foggy car window. Or when it found them on their first. The wheels on that car spun too fast, the asphalt groaned, and next week grinned ear to ear. 

The house I'm building is made out of the solid memories made. The wood grew from a forest. This forest was explored by a man with an eye for the unknown. The unknown is what lies ahead of every Iceland road shadowed by Iceland mountains under an Iceland sky. Every Iceland goat came from a mama goat that came from a long heritage of proud mama goats, back to the beginning. It was there for every moment that mattered. And when you think about everyone's moments that mattered it's a walk by the pond with bread in hand to feed the ducks. It's every beveled dresser edge. It's everyone's grandparents old rocker. It's every funeral that had a good ending. And it's every time the sun is out just enough to draw your spirit from its burrow into something greater than itself. 

Just like when Jonah found himself back in Ninnevah. Just like when Jonah found himself back in Ninnevah. What that must have felt like. A call from the past. A cry to the future. A change for the better. I imagine Jonah felt like every anonymous valentine. Because every anonymous valentine has yet to find most of us. It's a high dive, a broken porcelain bathtub, and a mighty stump that is now a stepping stool to what life used to be. 

So let's sit there for a while, and watch the telephone wires shoot back and forth messages that need to be said right now, and let's wait. Let's sit there for a while, and watch the clouds change their shapes and speak to each other like whales in the ocean speak, like crackling fires speak, and let's wait. So let's sit there for a while, and think about every basement bookcase that dutifully holds the words of prophets, poets, and pages of professors that will go unreviewed until the will splits the inheritance between mourners, and let's wait. So let's sit there for a while, and think about how the berry bushes feel about having soccer balls blast through their branches. They must worry about the golden gems they hold out to us so dearly, and that's all they live for, so let's think about them, and let's wait. So let's sit there for a while, and pray for the sweet old lady in whose backyard we sit, she never found love but sure knows how to dish it out in the form of Easter egg hunt memories and Halloween visits, both of which never went without enough pictures to fill a photo album, and let's wait. Let's wait for the future to take its time to come because we are realizing that even though the stump may be hard he comfortably shows us what he sees, just like grandpa.

 I'm learning to see life more like grandpa. 

A Soundtrack To My Life

Click the event to listen to it.

My First Time Skiing

9th Grade Conditioning Practices

Becoming Best Buddies with (insert names here)

The Last Day Of 9th Grade

'14-'15 New Years Eve

My First Job

Moving In 6th Grade

Making A Hard Choice Last Summer

My First Date

Orem Owl Baseball Games

Harrison Koford

My Childhood

Junior Year

My Dad
Finishing Drivers Ed

#StolenBricks

"I'm sorry that  I already know I cannot marry you. I'm sorry that I love you." -Auburn Crane
"We carry weights on our ankles" -Katelyn
"God has spoken to my heart one too many times for me to question my humanity." -Nemo Green
"I have a stomach that eats more butterfly's than it can handle at times." -Roosevelt Lee
"I still remember the sound of your voice that night." -KDR
"Go out and love, Go out and be powerful." -A.S. Ketchum
"He walked me home when crickets sang... But love was a pair of iceberg eyes." -Sonny Jean
"I love when people begin a sentence and abandon it when they realize they don't know what they want to say." -Beatrice McCandless
"We are young but love isn't." -Sierra Leone
"Love sees what it wants to..." -Elouise Hughes
"The moon is a cheese grater." -Definitely not Amy
"Tell me the story about how the sun loved the moon so much he died every night to let her breathe." -Here comes the sun
"Always be ready for adventure." -Allison
"Eyes flickered with the flames...they built a campfire but their eyes were holding bonfires" -Lombard Street
"She's got copper eyes like the sunrise" -Brain

If you're not on this it's because I haven't read enough yet. My bad.

Grand Theft Poetry

I think it was three days ago
I first became aware-
This box contains documents of no value.
Only when the last tree
Has been cut down
And the last river
Has dried to a trickle
Will man finally realize
That we cannot eat money
And reciting old proverbs
Makes you sound like a twat.
I hope you understand
Love is profoundly tender.
Let the flames inside you
Lick your lips.
And the irony does not escape me.

For Pops

I don't just love girls, I love my old man:

As I sat there pouring over your perspective I couldn't help but love you even more.
I think of you as a tree that grew from a sprout that grew from a sidewalk crack in a scorching Fontana, CA sun.
You've chosen the best part. The amount of support you had in the right direction  was about as strong as an un-splinted broken leg
You didn't have to climb all the mountains you did,

instead you ran them.

The man I love most, became who he was in Brookville, Pennsylvania; through every new kid school yard fight; through every girl he chose not to kiss because that was the right thing to do; through every tender, spirit-filled teaching moment; through every watery eyed grown-men-can-cry moment; through every love filled let me-give-you-a-blessing-because-you're-hurting moment; and by saving your mom countless times over.
I love you because you loved me first. No one knows this, but whenever I am writing about you, I don't write "dad," but "Dad."

Because you deserve it.

Your example has showed me the way. I remember a night when I sat listening to you telling me about something I've already forgotten, but I remember sitting there, looking at you, at the man you are, and living in the moment because I was with my Dad living in something I wouldn't have forever.
I'll be gone in less than two seasons, and I've felt the advice to make more family time far before it was ever given.
We're right, and I'm not mad. Just like I'm grateful for the time that hurt us the most.
When I quit football I first thought of you. I've never wanted to let you down. I've relived every time you've told me "you're a good boy (my name)," too many times to count.
This life I'm building, it's a monument to you.
Because I wanted to prove to you I could work.
Because if I was hard-working, I knew I'd be like you.
And I've arrived.

Now watch me continue to arrive.

I've followed in every footstep in the snow you've left, as clumsy as I may be, but I'm following.
I will always be growing up to be like you.

I love you Dad.

A letter to my future eternal bae

This poem isn't for me, or for you, it's for HER, my future wife:

I'm waiting for the day when I can kneel with somebody, somewhere sacred and say what I've always wanted to.
Things like "I'm glad I waited for you." And say some other things that can't be said.
I'll be able to rest from "the others" and look back like an old person and throw out a bunch of "I remembers."
Then I can look forward to the point where my eyes won't be able to see and my mind still struggles to grasp
and we can let that marinate in both of our minds for as long as it takes us.
I still can't believe I'll be with her forever and she'll believe we're too good to be true.
We'll make banana pancakes and do other things white people in Hawaii sing about.
Then I'll be embarrassed because not every love poem I ever wrote was about you and not every kiss I gave was to you.
 But you'll tell me it's alright and that I worry too much and that we've both hiked that clumsy uphill trail to "here."
And we'll live in the "here" in silence for a bit and then make some eye contact and show smiles to each other that hold so much more meaning than anyone else could ever understand.
I don't know how we'll meet, or if we've met, but I can confidently show you this poem, because this one is for YOU.
And its about time, and I'm 18, and I'm getting a call to 2 years of my life in just over two weeks.
Man, I need to relish in the fact that I can only say that poetic line for about 6 more days.
Know I've been praying for you for many years, and every time it hits me that you are alive on this earth it brings a buoyant smile to the corners of my lips.
I've wondered so much about you, and I can't wait to know you. Or do I know you already?
Either way you'll amaze me still. And I've been praying for us to become prepared for "us" for a long time.
And all I've done and have been doing has been a monument for my Dad, my Mom, you, me, our future, and the future of our little half-me's and half-you's.
Please be patient with me when I become too excited with what I have to say and it doesn't seem to come out right.
I'm working on it.
You'll get my humor and realize how hilarious I really am, and how the small things can be enjoyed so much.
We'll both seethe in jealously over each other's pearly whites.
And I know that line does seem a bit out of place.
I see us slow dancing in the kitchen to our music.
I see us nuzzled up after a hard day of work and an evening to relax with.
Because hard work is happiness and evenings are meant to be enjoyed.
And this poem is to be continued...

Wise Words

"They say all foxes are slightly allergic to linoleum, but it's cool to the paw - try it. They say my tail needs to be dry cleaned twice a month, but now it's fully detachable - see? They say our tree may never grow back, but one day, something will. Yes, these crackles are made of synthetic goose and these giblets come from artificial squab and even these apples look fake - but at least they've got stars on them. I guess my point is, we'll eat tonight, and we'll eat together. And even in this not particularly flattering light, you are without a doubt the five and a half most wonderful wild animals I've ever met in my life. So let's raise our boxes - to our survival."

 -Fantastic Mr. Fox

So keep your head up sporty-spice and pull through, bear-down.

 

My Two "Unknowns"

Just like the boy in the sword and the stone I've been tugging at the unknown for some time.
But I have two of them.


I've hoped to say everything I couldn't,
but my obscurity wears out faster than a pair of work pants.


Excuse my persistence,
but please be flattered by it.

We're have similarities.
We both passed chemistry with an "A"
but failed to admit it to ourselves.


Last year, I needed a punch in the face
and a new pair of corrective lenses
because I couldn't see what I was doing.


Please give me both,
a punch and new lenses,
because my greatest fear is of sliding in that direction again.
And I'll go where I can except when I can't.


I've never really been tempted to smoke cigarettes
because sprinting past asthma was suffocating enough.


I've never really been tempted to drink
because my desire to feel like puking
has been gratified through conditioning workouts.


But November has been marinating in my mind,
and December still makes me shiver,
and November took my breath away,
and December makes me think of that midnight car ride,
and January was uneventful,
but February should kiss one of my two unknowns good-bye.


So here is to the other unknown.
If you've read my poetry you've read me.
So read my everything,
and feel my subliminals pulsing.