Anniversary Poem for Renee

"Half-Life"

What's the half-life on regret?
Or is it immortal?
Certain metals become rusted
when they receive too much
oxygen and water, meaning
that what we require for life
also erodes something else
Have we considered this science?
I require the oxygen to breath
and that fills me with life but
what is being eroded?
I dared to breath so I could
share words while you laughed
While we laughed
Remember?
Then you were gone and I needed
to breath in more and more oxygen
as I felt like I was losing the ability
to live, with storms in my eyes
the extra O2 rusted away what
was left for me to love you
But I do regret
It's the only metal left

Complicated and Carbonated: A Story of Addiction

The hardest thing I do every day is wake up and not drink soda. I can’t imagine anything more difficult. Every morning my tongue desires the tingle of carbonation as it seductively rises in the glass like a fleet of hot air balloons waiting to take me to a new and grand destination. 

But I must resist the urge. Every single day.

I must.

For the sugar content is too high and the breakouts are unbearable on my skin. It’s too hard to date when your face looks like pizza toppings. Even when the scintillating flavors entice my palate with notes of cherry, vanilla, or regular flavor, I must keep away. Sometimes I even feel crushed by the weight as I cry out for a doctor with my eyes becoming a mountain of dew.

I realize why people have Coke.

To be refreshed. To feel alive. To make you feel like your life doesn’t have to be one big diet. You can experience the full flavor, be your own sprite, magical and wondrous rolling through a Sierra mist as the fizz becomes an eruption, shaken before it stirs you.

However, when those thoughts hit me, I have to call a “code red” so I can keep my mind in check. It’s so easy to ruin my life with high fructose goodness and yet so hard to stop. So tasty. So refreshing. I think of soda with every movie I see. Every game attended. The desire will never escape me. My addiction is never ending.

Even not having soda effects my everyday life. I’m more cranky now with no caffeine for pep. Seeing clear is harder now, my work fraught with missteps. I try to repair relationships I gave up, girlfriends who couldn’t handle my all night binges. Cans painted across the floor, Cheetos on my chest and Pepsi dripping from the lips. Most of my family disowned me as I'd show up to reunions bursting with energy. I'd run around the park shelters and once my antics caused me to knock over a grill and burn my uncle's foot with hot coals. He had to wear flip-flops for weeks because of the second degree burns.

I hope they understand now that soda is just a dark part of me. An evil spread by corporations that I fell into due to creative commercials and attractive women holding aluminum.

It’s not my fault.

It’s just that soda is so accessible and cheap and makes me feel like staring at a sunset with friends and girls in bikinis. I’m an innocent victim in the game of capitalism.

At least I’m not like my cousin.

He’s an heroin addict.

And an asshole.

A Note To Washington Brewers

Dear Washington Brewers,

I support your right to love hops. I support you making local IPAs that people love to drink. I support all you brewers who are trying to make a craft beer to rival mass-produced horse piss. I support these things.

I do not support your incessant need to put a high number of hops in seemingly every beer you produce. I had an amber lager the other day that had 20 IBUs in it. Really? It’s an amber lager. Since when did that require so many hops? (Yes, I know that’s technically on the light scale but it’s at the max of that scale so don’t get saucy about it)

I also had an "Immersion Ale" with 27 IBUs. I guess the "Immersion" into my American ale was a shot of bitter and sour grossness that leaves a worse taste in your mouth than a Republican debate on female contraceptives.

I’m quite tired of being excited to try a new local beer only to find it filled with way too many hops. If I want a beer with hops, I’ll order an IPA. I know people love hops around here and that’s OK, but just because I love Sci-Fi shows doesn’t mean I want to watch an episode of Silicon Valley with an alien invasion and space battles in it. It wouldn’t fit the show’s premise and hops don’t fit the premise of every beer type.

There is such a thing as too much of a good thing (though I don’t really like hoppy beers so I’m getting too much of something that makes me want to gag). The Greeks weren’t just saying that “too much of anything is a bad thing.” They had reason for it and I would like you to heed their words. Hops have their place in beer, but not in every beer you produce.

There are two main issues I have with this current trend. One, it’s misleading for someone who wants to order something like a lager or an ale and won’t be expecting to have hops shot in their mouth. Imagine if you were surprised to bite into a piece of ravioli and a bunch of seamen came out of it. That’s basically what you’re doing to people (This might be a slight exaggeration).

Second, it makes it seem like you don’t know how to brew beer. I understand that there are many different hops and (for some people) fun variations of flavors within those hops. But I also know that they’re great for hiding faults in your beer because of their strong taste. When you put a bunch of hops into a beer that shouldn’t have that many, I’m assuming it’s because you didn’t know how to actually brew that type of beer and you needed the hops to disguise what was wrong with it.

Obviously, hoppy beers are very popular around here and that’s totally fine. I can put up with going to the grocery store and having fewer selections of beers that I enjoy but it’s very irritating to then have those selections also filled with an ingredient that I can’t stand. So please, embrace the fact that other types of beers have their worth as well and plenty of different flavors and complexities and keep your damn hops out of them.

Thank you for your cooperation.



Sincerely,

Jordan Miles

A Loss of Insperation

I think that maybe we blame Obama because we’re mad at ourselves. And we should be. We were inspired when he started out and then that inspiration faded. We blame him. But inspiration is just the start of the relationship. When a writer gets inspired, do you think she can write a whole book just off the inspiration? That there aren’t grueling nights and moments where she isn’t sure where her book is going? Do you think she doesn’t work? Relationships start out with passion but when the passion isn’t overwhelming anymore and returns to normal level, people either discover the best parts of the relationship or they bail because they’re “not feeling it anymore.” Passion should always exist in the relationship but it’ll never stay at that new and exciting level because eventually it isn’t new and exciting anymore. Eventually it’s something better or we let it fall by the wayside.

That’s what we’ve done to this presidency. We were inspired. Impassioned. We were ready to take on everything we knew was wrong with our country but as soon as work was required, we bailed. We said that we weren’t inspired anymore and Obama should inspire us. He’s had to claw through so much just to get a semblance of what he wanted passed, passed. Things that we said we wanted. We said we wanted Universal Health Care and then when it became complicated and harder to understand, when Republicans or others fought it because it might hurt corporations or the insurance companies because somehow they have more rights than people, we bailed and the law was changed and faces more gutting now. We said, “Well Obama, you said you were going to do this so you better do it or we’ll be mad at you.” We said this as if the President controls everything in government. As if we aren’t the ones with the opportunity to control congress.

When Obama called for a change, it wasn’t just for congress or for government, it was for us. Everyone. It was about changing up the entire system. Changing to a system that treats people like people and doesn’t value one person over another. It was about saying “Yes, we do need corporations to stimulate an economy and provide a workforce but not at the expense of people. Corporations don’t get to make all of the money and then decide that the workforce that actually creates the product gets so little of the profit. Yes, the CEO is an important role and should require a decent salary but if you don’t have the assembly line worker, you don’t have a product to sell in the first place.” It was about us using our power to make sure that the people we elected, actually treat their electorate like people. 

Aren’t we tired? We all seem so tired. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Socialists and everyone else with a brain is tired. So why aren’t we doing anything about it? All of us? We’re so tired of it and yet we keep letting the same people who’ve been governing for decades, govern. Then, we elected a new guy to be the head of it and dropped the support once he got a little dirty. Government is dirty. Life is dirty. Anything worth doing is dirty. It’s how we know we’ve done something worth doing, when we compare the grime on the face and the mud on the knees. It’s not that I think Obama doesn’t have some blame or that he hasn’t screwed up in places but that putting it all on one person isn’t fair.

Maybe we put so much blame on the President because we can’t bear to put the blame on ourselves. We’re the cheaters in the relationship who blame the victim because they didn’t support us enough. They didn’t give us enough attention and so we had to cheat. We’ve gone in defense mode. It’s no wonder we had such a low voter turnout for the midterms. Things are easier when you’re the underdog because if you lose, everyone was expecting it anyway. But when we were handed a chance to actually get something done, when the passion faded and the real relationship began, we quit. We quit and we threw the blame everywhere else. When did we become such defeatists? 

Of course, you may disagree with him and think that everything he’s tried to do is terrible but you can’t deny that for one election cycle, people cared. So many people got involved, stood up and said “I want to be a part of this.” But it turns out that most just wanted to be part of the victory party. We can put the blame wherever we want but I have no doubt that we had a chance. We had an opportunity. But man, did we blow it. 


*Note: I've not had a chance to run this through some other people's brain first but I decided to put it up anyway and I'll just deal with other people tearing it down. Also, I actually voted for McCain so...

Another Year for Renee

I know it's over a month since the anniversary of your passing but I did write this near the day and just haven't posted it until now.

Just

Just let me live

Please, just let me

Let me just avoid

A permanent lethargy

I want to eat when I’m hungry

Drink my way into a good night

Hear the sound of a woman’s breath

as we lay side by side

Let me find comfort

Let me find joy

Let me be the hero

in a child’s story

Let me live today

and carry it to tomorrow

Let me live because you can’t

Let me forget this sorrow

I’ve seen people torn

Ripped apart by life

Guts splattered on the floor

Mercy holding the knife

I’ve seen depression overtaking

souls that had happiness

I’ve seen the cave go darker

individuality dead to the masses

I’ve seen you on my doorstep

years down your face

crying for me to come back

a ghost accenting my disgrace

Afraid of what you are

and uncertain of what I am

Please, just let me live

because Death, she can’t

A New Poem for a New Year

“Doing As You’re Told”

They told me to be silly

And I let myself go

Would burst with energy

Avoid any lows

They told me to be funny

And so I learned a few jokes

Found humor in bad puns

And wrote fun birthday notes

They told me to be smart

And I achieved the grades

Studied and was astute

Never sacrificing for the pay

They told me to be strong

And I sewed up negativity

I performed a tearless roll

And kept a level of brevity

They told me I needed to feel

And so I released a little

Expressed a few feelings

They said I was too brittle

They told me to be honest

And I gave them the truth

Then they got angry

Said my tongue was too loose

They told me they’d miss me

While I wait for a call

An answer to my message

A sign they knew me at all

They told me to never fear

As I’m terrified by society

I fear the human race

I fear what’s inside me

They told me everything

And I learned to listen

Paid attention to the words

That no longer had a mission

They told me nothing

Since they never acted

They told me nothing

And I never asked for it

Something a Little More Lyrical

Here’s something I wrote while at work yesterday. I’m starting to realize that I seem very negative about our generation but I’m really not. At least, I don’t think we’re any worse than any other generation. But that doesn’t mean we still can’t be better. So, here are a few of my thoughts on the matter.

Our Stride

We hit our stride in immaturity
Void of knowledge, full of purity
We think we know the price of certainty
But we’re in debt to future mistakes

Thinking we’ve seen all the options
We are only making assumptions
But still we have all this gumption
How quickly the fuel runs out

We feel so young, feel so right
But we don’t have any sight
We could stand to be a bit contrite
But then we’d have to think

I’m not sure about our evolution
Finding our prime with no conclusions
We love our games, forget solutions
The world can fix itself

We’re all for love, don’t value loss
We’ll put complications on the cross
Just nail our hands, blame the boss
While we’re bleeding to simplify

We’ll murder the old, frame the young
The word of God on Loki’s tongue
All the songs have been sung
But we still think we’re original

There’s a similarity in our time
Roman ideology, entertainment’s prime
We’ll waste away in consuming grime
And we’ll be sacked just like the Fall

Sure we’re happy, or at least we think
Vacant minds let intelligence shrink
And though our lives may fill with stink
At least we have the virtual

And so we’re done with all this talk
Pretend to accomplish then we balk
Glorify individuals but join the flock
We never judge the guilty