portrait

streetwise 

on the cobblestone lay a man barely resembling a man

dressed in little more than heavy dark brown rags

(but who knows their original hue).

cloaked in a layer of dirt

the accumulation of days 

and days of nothing, of lack of shower change or shave

no opportunity or no reason or both,

he snores loudly, his mouth a gaping hole

expanding and contracting as if not he

but the grizzly beast of a beard upon his face breathes in

and emits a dull guttural noise.

three empty bottles of wine stand in front of his body

as if to create a distasteful portrait of Bacchus 

and the stale permeable scent of body odor and misfortune

wafts into the mid afternoon air.

why? how? don't you try?

later on he's asked to leave as he's made patrons uncomfortable 

less likely to enjoy their entrée,

so he stands up unsteady and teetering. 

like a small child bewildered and looking for his mother 

he stumbles off, and i'm no longer disgusted,

not glad to see the scene tidied up,

my heart aches, i'm sad and guilty.

where? what? how'd you get here?

envy? hope? do you wish?

once just a baby a boy a young man

when?

i'll never know, never come to understand, so much, so many.

If I'm on a train to the real world, will someone wake me up at my stop?

On April 7, Gregorian calendar year 2010, I sat on the steps of the Piazzale Michelangelo overlooking Florence, Italy, the Duomo and Campanile sticking out above the city line (in my humble opinion, it resembles a duck; don't take this offensively, it looks like a regal duck, and, I like ducks).  The gorgeous landscape encompasses the history and life of Firenze and I find it hard to fathom a life of my own that is anything other than this.

I spent an afternoon with some friends, eating cheese, foccacia, sun dried tomatoes and olives, popping open cheap bottles of delicious italian wines and taking in the sun rays; come on now, that's the life.  My friend made the comment that her parents sent her an email reminding her that this "fairytale life ends sometime."  I mean I think about it all the time, what's to come after playtime's through, but honestly - what the hell?  There have been so many "where in the world am I, and how did I get here," moments since I've been abroad that any monotony back home could put me in shock.  I feel like I'll need some sort of decompression chamber to safely enter the "real world" without imploding.  Real world, this world, real world, this world...why the distinction?  What is this mythical realm of the real world I keep being warned of, keep planning for?  

Admittedly, it isn't this life, exactly...weeks spent doing spurts of work but mostly just traveling, goofing off, trying to live up to that "live life to it's fullest" requirement, which is in itself kind of silly after all, isn't it?  To think you know?  There won't be a bell that goes off, no special measurement to know - oh, shit, this is it - you just feel happy, feel content, and that has to be enough.  So then, sitting there in Italy isn't my full time job, I'm lucky and out of the ordinary, but I'm still real.  That moment is still real, living...breathing...feeling...what's more real life than that?  Shouldn't being in the real world mean being connected to what you're doing?  Being in it?  Not just cruising along on autopilot, dozing off?  John Lennon sang, "life is what happens while you're busy making other plans."  I wonder how he defined the real world.

I'm real.  I'm alive.  Sure, I went on a Tuscan wine tour, learned about Chianti wines at two vineyards (swirling the glass around, a few steps above drinking yellow tail pinot grigio from the bottle in the back of a baltimore cab), saw a Caravaggio exhibit in Rome, drank wine with my friends by the Trevi fountain, sauntered through ancient ruins, sat on a beach and swam in the Adriatic sea, and then fell asleep on a 22 hour bus ride through three countries.  So alright, call this a dream if you'd like, I'm okay with that.  But even if I'm dreaming, I'm lucid enough to appreciate it.  I'm awake in this dream, and so for right now, just this second, this is my real world.