I don’t keep anything in my pockets. That was the first thing I noticed, gosh, back when I still had to move my car. My chapstick and pens sit on the desk and my car stays put except for weekly street sweeping (though I don’t hear them come by so don’t think I even need… Continue reading a loner in isolation
Author: Dan Metzger
I am attempting to hone my passions and put an end to stifling the creativity that lingers within. I most frequently write about relationships, family, mental health, and the minutia of everyday occurrences which too often go unexamined.
Pillow Talk
You cannot escape truth when talking across a pillow. Delirious comfort leaves no space for fear. If there was a banking system for time, an exchange rate for moments, for getting back what we've lost, I would invest all these empty hours I bleed out introspectively on the page for one morning spent volleying whispered… Continue reading Pillow Talk
Orphan Dryer Sheet
An missing orphan dryer sheet falls from the inside of my pant leg in the produce section by the apples. Solving little mysteries makes me smile.
Road Verse
When the second chance is really the fourth or fifth And you aren’t ashamed, but you won’t admit Lessons are learned as you go, They don't wait at the end of the road. When you’ve lost the faith you thought was heaven-sent Don’t make it all about trying to reinvent The soul you traded in… Continue reading Road Verse
Talking in My REM Sleep
In another life and with another brain I would have made myself pupil and master of language. Instead: I tiptoe on the precipices of residual memories that spill out from suppressed synapses. I desire nothing but the nine-minute intervals between hushing the waking bells I've fooled my mind the night before into believing will penetrate… Continue reading Talking in My REM Sleep
Surviving Suicide: What I’ve Learned After 10 Years
10 years ago, I attempted suicide. On a summer night in 2008, my parents drove me from the house where I was raised to the emergency room in an effort to save the life of their 21-year-old son. My action was built on several years of mental turmoil and anguish, of unchecked thoughts and words… Continue reading Surviving Suicide: What I’ve Learned After 10 Years
Get out of your head.
I used to worry about a great many things, existentially. I am learning to reel it back. You let your mind get such a lead on your heart that it casts a shadow over those who belong in the latter.
Father’s Day, 2018
My father is wise. His wisdom has helped more people than I could ever count. When I was young, I was envious of the so many to whom he lent his ears, of the wisdom he dispensed as if it came naturally. However, when his learning was dispensed to me—it was with frequency as is… Continue reading Father’s Day, 2018
On Hearing Notes Composed in Mourning
I attended a concert of classical music this evening. The final piece, “Ode to Lord Buckley,” composed by David Amram, was written after the death of the titular entertainer. Amram knew him well. What follows is a scant account of the performance’s sublimity, composed by myself. The saxophonist scoops notes penned in memoriam and hurls… Continue reading On Hearing Notes Composed in Mourning
Landlines: One Reason the ’90s Were the Best Decade for Elementary School Romance
Chivalrous courtship, (in the elementary-school-aged-male sense of the word) isn’t dead, but it took a major hit during the latter half of the first decade of this millennium. It started when households began doing away with their home phones and choosing to exclusively use cellular phones. With that one decision, the family itself lost a… Continue reading Landlines: One Reason the ’90s Were the Best Decade for Elementary School Romance
Forgiveness
You’ll reach a point where you cannot blame your mistakes on your parents’. In the early years of your second decade, you’d determined they were the reason you wore a hero’s mask over your villain face and fought for both sides. A double life, your father called it. When you were alone you spat at… Continue reading Forgiveness
Memory Wormhole (An Opening)
The falsities I signify as memories lie in stacked planes, pierced by a needle, threaded taut at the most peculiar points; each day is an involuntary setting off of previously lived remembrances, bounded in touchstones I’ve symbolically mythologized in my psyche. One past moment bounds into another: full submersion in a wormhole of past occurring… Continue reading Memory Wormhole (An Opening)
Gas Money, Honey
Eastern Pennsylvanians love their hoagies. I’d pulled into a gas station after driving six hours north. The place advertised 2 for 1 liters of cola and state minimum cigarette prices. A ‘70s style goose sweeping across a setting sun illuminated above their door. Mosquitoes flocked to its luminance. I parked the car in the rear… Continue reading Gas Money, Honey
Envy
I want your Kevlar skin evolutionarily engineered to banish the blades, the bullets, the bad omens. I want your ‘fuck the world’ attitude the known, flawed self unhindered by inevitable judgement no blood loss no bullshit no brown nose no nothing but grit and gums and safety pins because they owe you, and not the… Continue reading Envy
Planes of You
Most of us do not remember the first time we learned our shapes. Until you budded into my life, I thought that I knew all the circles, squares, and rectangles - the rigidly defined personalities, those with a set number of sides, those who are predictable, parallel, familiar. I look back on the cast of… Continue reading Planes of You
Sophisticating the Rudimentary 