Excerpts from a Cluttered Mind

At a very young age
I learned precisely how
To forget my multiplication tables
Because, frankly, using a calculator
Just seemed more practical
Than studying

Learning from Einstein
I never tried to clutter my mind
With information I could find
Somewhere else

I never learned my telephone number
Or street address
Thank god for the phone book

I don’t know what year
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
But I know I traveled far
To find new lands when I was four

Don’t ask me who invented the pencil
Or to recite the pledge of allegiance
Besides, if you started in the middle
I bet you’d forget too

What I remember
Is the wine that bled
Not from a cut artery
But from the mere fact that
Your heart was so goddamn full
It was bursting just to get out

How the word caretaker
Has more to do with giving than anything else

I remember the warm eyes of parents
While singing Blister in the Sun on karaoke
How the pride for their son singing seemed to pierce through the room
Like a bullet delivering flowers
How their cheers effortlessly trumped
His laughter at singing a song about masturbation in front of his parents

I remember a mother’s love
And a father’s respect

And I remember it the other way around

I remember how sinking in sand on the beach
So easily brings you closer to eye-level with the horizon
How the distance between the earth and sky become zero
If you can only look far enough into the future

I remember the silence
When a loved one forgets your name
And the sound that breaks
When you’ve realized they can’t remember their own

It’s funny how painful it can be
To shovel dirt on a casket
How each grain of dirt and sand
Seems to pound on your chest
Piercing like a million pieces of glass
Or a broken mirror searching for luck
In the reflections of your heart

I know that music is not notes on a page
But the melodies of life
How that crazy old man with a limp seemed to drum
Tsss da daa Tsss da daa with every uneven step
How his songs could’ve revolutionized an industry
If you only stopped to listen to his words

So don’t ask me who last won American Idol
Because the songs of my fiance’s voice are sustaining spinal chords
Letting words reverberate in my chest
Sending vibrations
Chromatically racing
Up through to my brain.

The phrase I love you
Means a whole hell of a lot more
Than the words printed between the pages
I have refused to memorize
But can damn sure look up and get back to you

Memory
Like life
Is too short to clutter with heartless facts
It’s easier to close a mind
Than to open it
But then what’s the point?
You can’t look to the future
Without remembering the past
But remembering the past
Is more than reporting what happened

To remember the past
Is to relive history