Guitar Cases and Dirty Clothes

I started writing some poems. Here is one called On Purpose.

When my eyes could barely see
And my mouth could barely speak
I would stand in the sand and watch my tiny toes sink
Into that dark, gray, sinkhole, sometimes up to the ankle
Knowing that the role I play at this very moment
Is no blank in the universe, no missing plank in the bridge,
But a role that takes stage after stage after stage after stage
And goes on like a rage after an alcoholic’s final straw.

A moment so innocent, filled with wonderment, a moment purified
From genocide, pesticide, and things like Sesame Street,
Baby food, and running to your mother are
Glorified, magnified, and solidified, by the fact that I am on a beach
With the sand in my toes, something like four years old
Playing a role,
Given a second chance
To happen upon circumstance that would make me the way I am.

Snatched from a cancer that begins with an L
Ends in eukemia, and pushed on towards academia
To fulfill and spill into the minds of others
Not to mention the hearts
That like jars are filled with moments like mine,
Ready to burst forth like a bomb whose time is up. 

Melodies and lines that rise and sink like my toes deep,
Into hearts that beat with pressures, stresses, tests, and quests,
I create because I am made to do just that, tap, slap, and trap.
The colloquial and the formal just so I can ease this troubled
Cranial gray matter that sometimes can be unexplainable yet so concrete to me.

Reasons can be unattainable at best, but I rest
Knowing I know whose I am, and who’s behind the wheel,
Or who’s under that sand
Pulling it slowly
Downward
With my feet in tow.

So when I say that my toes are slowly sinking
My ankles soon to be deep in salty liquid

I am no accident. No predicament. I am

On purpose.