Memory Archive | A Poem Collection

1.

If you were to explore the library of my mind for a while

You'd likely first hear the sound of ocean tide clashing with smells of fresh cut grass and brewing dark roast coffee.

But I would suggest you lay your head back on the grassy knoll beneath the linden tree where it overlooks the apple orchard and there, close your eyes.

Pollen might disturb your nostrils, and the taste of a grass stem would be bitter on the tongue. 

You'd hear my brother and I argue then, as we often did, about what face was actually in those clouds.

Then from the dust covered library shelves occupying the old cobb webbed corners of my mind I'd withdraw volume one from the archive. 

Volume one: 

It's summer of 2002. Life is roses and rainbows. All is a facade of exquisitely arranged color. 

In my hands I hold a white butterfly displaying to me life's beautiful fragility. 

Black lines trace its wings and I sit there afraid to breathe. 

Gentle hands begin to shake in nervous excitement as I stare transfixed by its beauty.

Walk with me now. Over the miles of paved road we traveled.

Our family van with its rattling exhaust, no more than a fading echo with all the years now forgotten.

Then as we pull up to a double wide mobile home I'll reach into the vault once more and brush the dust off the cover of volume two.

Volume Two: 

It's winter of 2005. Life feels dulled with the seasons changing.

Roses died and rainbows abandoned the skies with the autumn rains.

Frozen ground crunches beneath my boots and ice digs into my knees as I hold my favorite hen in my arms.

Her body is stiff with the extreme cold and I feel my face flush as my vision blurs with violent tears.

The house is almost built now and if I close my eyes I can hear my brother grunt with the impact of my chubby head into his stomach

As I force him off the clay mound so that I can pronounce myself King Of The Mountain.

Now as 2007 gives way to 2008 I think I might pause here before I pull from the vault, volume three.

Its pages are filled with dust and I fear entire sections remain somehow unfinished. 

And yet I think I might look to fill in the blanks.

Just let me find my pen and a clean page

I'll take a seat when the crickets begin to sing quiet songs reminiscent of home.

Then I'll begin to complete what was once forgotten and lost.

2.

It's quiet, I don't wish to unearth this memory of shattered foundations

But here I sit and I hold this oversized book in my hands

The courage to open it, not yet with me.

I shift my hold, allowing my palms to brush its surface

Leather stretched so thin over the hardened cover and binding, it threatens to tear.

Almost like it speaks in a timid voice saying: 

“Be gentle when touching these memories.”

I fill my lungs with air, chest expanding and I pull open the cover of Volume 3.

Volume 3:

It's August of 2008 

And I'm rewatching a video captured on the VHS-C camcorder my family owned.

Summer days filled with capture the flag,

Backyard soccer till the sun sets or shins bleed.

Popsicles in the shade beneath the cedar at the forest edge.

All a rose scented daydream that was never meant to last.

Joy seasoned with a dash of excitement -

mix themselves in a pot surrounded with prestigious violations insinuating moral compromise.

The calm flow of the river turns rapid with the rocks that upset its current.

Now sediment stirred waters;

Catastrophic thoughts lost among the turbulence of stunted understanding

Motionless there upon the threshold of war torn adolescence

An epoch of a child's prayer starved libations at 3:00 a.m.

Summer turned to winter and winter into spring. 

Years passed and…

I often felt like a lost child wandering down whitewashed halls in a place no one would call home.

The roar of wild rebellion with circus music as the crescendo building to violence.

Adults were the captive zoo animals turned savage against those who kept them bound.

And I was only a visitor, observing crimson Jackson Pollock's plastered on the clean surfaces. 

2011 is the year that echoes in my mind.

A gentle haunting by Gospel quartets harmonizing quietly when I cry.

A strange possession that even I don't wish to be exercised. 

I quietly return volume 3 to the archive shelf. 

I think I'll rest here a while. 

Perhaps I'll learn something from the ghosts that still wander near.