Tag Archives: Edward Austin Robertson

Humility in Doses

22 Apr

The collective air had been sucked out the town

with the madness now over.

Their team had lost

but their guys were were getting their recognition

 

A  pleasant weekend of chasing pickup ball

all over town and now we were in the park

enjoying the waning daylight

 

It was good to see her again–

to finally know there were no grudges held on either side

No doubt I could’ve handled things

with more delicacy and tact.

She was just doing what young women do at that age

 

We talked for about an hour;

neither of us really saying anything.

Avoiding any past details that led

to touching each other’s faces

early into the night;

caught somewhere between

convenience and necessity,

lust and tenderness,

tepid and cavalier,

wrecking the perception of friendship

 

I know what I should’ve done

even while I hurriedly packed

running from feeling broken and disappointed.

 

She looked in good spirits

and that felt good.

But the biggest difference was that I was finally happy.

 

I hadn’t failed myself after all

And as it turned out I’d left

at exactly the right time–

again and again (soon to be) again

 

I felt the sudden sense of satisfaction

towards my lovers (all of them).

Happy for all of them

and happy about all of them.

Knowing that they were all the right ones

And knowing that none of them were the right ones.

 

The chimes from the city clocks went off.

The wind stiffened.

There was about an hour of daylight left.

She and I hugged it out in the middle of the park

before I got in my vehicle and left town.

 

~Edward Austin Robertson

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Forty

25 Jan

My first weekend post birthday was nearly over

by the time I realized my new age.

Los Angeles? More like Lost Angeles

Sitting in the McDonald’s drive thru

trying to figure out the best way to get to the airport.

 

By my calculations, I was nearly 60 in white people years.

Cuantos tienes anos meeester?

Old enough to know better.

 

Every day just got sweeter

knowing we are never guaranteed  to

see another set of birthday candles to extinguish.

 

The existing barbarism  woven deep

within our society’s fabric

has been lying low and dormant,

a fact that we forgot about not because it was hiding,

but rather because we refused to acknowledge it

until it became too obvious to ignore–

Kinda like when someone’s urethra stops itching

only to give way to a  burning sensation.

 

Time to flip the script (again).

The board has changed

and what I’ve suspected and feared for 17 years 

is finally coming to fruition.

I’ve been right all along but didn’t want to believe it.

 

Shifting from apathy to anger, from disbelief to resignation

it was hard to muster up enough grief to feel sad for us.

We were getting what we deserved.

But there was no reason to ever be afraid again

because the worst case scenario was indeed happening.

 

 

Even those fortunate enough to survive the next 4 years

would be leaving something behind that they may never get back.

 

 

The drive thru cashier handed me my coffee

and pointed me in the direction of the airport.

 

I pulled out of the parking lot and took a right on La Brea Avenue

and drove back towards the direction I came from.

 

I wasn’t sure where I was going to end up

or how I was going to get there,

but I had a pretty good idea of where I should start.

 

 

~Edward Austin Robertson

 

 

 

 

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1995

3 Jan

Some of the best days of my youth

were spent lounging at my buddy Ricky’s house

after school; watching videos on Rap City,

reading Boondocks strip and the Unsigned Hype column from the Source Magazine and

eating tortillas and homemade salsa.

Talking Wu-Tang Clan, girls, Cypress Hill, baseball and girls.

Things were never easier than being alive back then.

 

~Edward Austin Robertson

 

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Company

4 Jun

So easy to love

the sound of your adorable laugh.

You placated my silly, frustrated rants;

railing about our classmates’ hacky stories

over post workshop drinks at

the bar across the street from campus.

 

We’d amicably disagree over we liked most,

which classmates we found irritating,

whose comments were the most annoying,

and which classmate would make a fun date.

 

For being old friends,

we barely knew each other,

but now was our chance

to share our mutual disasters;

both being newly single.

 

It didn’t bother me that half the time

you asked me to hang out was to push away

any lonely feelings you were having.

 

I liked the company.

Being with you was easy

and it was fun. And for the most part

it was innocent.

 

I loved you differently

than the rest of the girls I spent my

time chasing–the ones you’d listen to me

bitch about while you rubbed my scalp.

 

I just wanted you to be happy.

Most guys back then were terrible for you

(Including myself).

 

When you moved,

you were alone again.

We emailed and talked

(Back when I liked using telephones).

 

I came around when I could.

 

The distance and abstinence

created some funny feelings.

I blame it on the turn of the seasons.

 

When we were drunk and in the hot tub,

I (unsuccessfully) fought the urge to kiss you

because it felt so predictable.

You turned away

and I was worried that the rest of the night would be awkward.

But we held hands in the car,

at the stop lights,

while I drove you home.

“Two hands on the wheel.”

You said,

“The 10 and the 2.”

 

There was no pressure.

I had my own plans after school

and you were living yours.

It was always laughs

until it got serious–

until it got awkward.

Our comically bad attempts at romance

only seem funny now.

 

I’m not sure how many nights of watching

Home Movies in your bed happened, before I started

wondering about what else was out there–

beyond our lunches and dinners–

you begging me to engage you in some entertaining

conversation.

 

And maybe I was unstable.

But stability wasn’t in staying.

The stability was in leaving

because you wouldn’t give me a reason to stay.

 

We both knew the outcome.

I knew the score, and 

I wasn’t going to stay around

for someone whose defenses 

mirrored the ’85 Chicago Bears.

 

As much as I liked the heavy petting,

you can’t win a super bowl settling for field goals.

I saw myself as more of a full time starter

than a stop gap backup QB.

 

I knew that you loved me

but you no longer needed me

and I no longer needed you.

I only needed somewhere I could settle

once settling was no longer an option with you.

 

 

~Edward Austin Robertson

 

 

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When You Were a Bike Ride Away (For Audrye)

4 Jun

I denied you.

Wrote you off.

Jerked you around.

Fibbed to you.

Took you for granted.

Took advantage of your generosity.

Abused your kindness.

Used your body.

And yet. And Yet.

Our friendship endured.

 

My restlessness,

and curiosity

turned what once was a hike across the cemetery–or a ten minute bike ride,

into a 400 dollar flight

full of questions and complications.

 

I miss the convenience.

The late night walks alone

wondering how you felt, how I felt,

on my way home after

the old movies that I couldn’t just watch with anyone,

the music that I just couldn’t share with anybody,

the dark jokes that only you would roll your eyes at.

I loved that I was absurd, impractical, and ridiculous.

And I think you secretly found it exciting and unpredictable.

 

Your practicality that once repelled me,

only makes you seem more of an attraction.

I once wondered if you wanted enough out of life

but maybe I was too complicated–

shirking anything in life that resembled simplicity.

Maybe it felt too natural.

So easy that it scared me.

 

Had I bought in then,

what would it have guaranteed?

Would you (or I) even believe me if I said

I’m all in now?

So many changes that are

the result of so many failed experiments;

necessary experiences that

only strengthened my resolve

for things I know now to be real.

Your love was not enough then,

and my lust ebbed and flowed with the wind.

 

Fast forward to today.

Where I finally have the space to appreciate

how much we shared.

The real part.

The part that makes me wonder

what it would be like

if you were still only a bike ride away.

 

~Edward Austin Robertson

 

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Concentric Circles (For Travis L.)

4 Jun

I instinctively reached out to turn the dial when Glenn Frey started singing.

Brought back memories, that eased my hands back onto the steering wheel,

thoughts of driving through backwoods; similar to the roads back home.

 

Maybe music was just as much about memory as it was taste.

I hated the Eagles.

But I had to admit they were always on the radio

during those times in my life

when we were forced to make interesting things happen

(not always for the best).

 

Sometimes the best parts of the week were spent

carpooling to community college,

crumpling herb on the outsides of CD cases,

rolling doobies on the insides of CD booklets.

Idling through the car wash machine

dropping acid and

plotting the next 2-3 years of our lives.

 

Our social circles expand,

then tighten,

then constrict some more.

 

Phone calls become emails, become texts on birthday,

and special occasions–

which become likes to status updates on Facebook.

And that is life.

It is perfectly normal to still love those who aren’t around

in your everyday.

A thought that willed me to turn the station to something more palatable.

 

~Edward Austin Robertson

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No Disrespect

25 Jan

But this corny ass, dweeb ass nigga????

This is who she staked her claim on?

And maybe I was suppose to not give up so easily–hang in there a little longer, but goddamn.

How much of her horseshit was I supposed to take, and who the hell would respect a guy like that?

How much shit does he have to eat in order to remain “her person?”

Would you call that patience or insanity?

Or is that just a higher booty tax bracket?

 

~Edward Austin Robertson

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Dr. Bobby’s Miracle Hangover Cure

25 Jan

2 puffs of medicinal herbs

1 banana

1 8 oz glass of water

34 fl oz of coconut water

And an aspirin or two wouldn’t hurt either.

 

~Edward Austin Robertson

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Dregs

28 Nov

My apartment smells funny.

It hits me every time I 

open the door to the building.

 

My neighbors are nice enough

though they are either A.A.R.P.

A.A.

or with the Mental Health Association.

 

The apartment manager is a nosey gossip

whose son was stabbed last week

trying to break up a domestic dispute.

 

My newest pastime is wrapping

live roaches into tissue paper

and burning them in my sink.

 

It isn’t the best place I’ll ever live

but at least it’s my own space.

Any noise that I hear I is because I made it.

I’m the only person that I have to clean up after, and

If I bring an ugly girl home, no one has to know about it.

 

I can see the river from my bedroom window

and the sunrise occurs over the park

across the street.

It been ten years since I left college

and I’m not that far away from all those

anxieties and doubts that I felt–

stress dogging me even under the best of circumstances.

 

Although I knew it all would work out,

I would have never guessed in a million years

that I would take the path that I traveled to get there–

here.

 

I doubted myself the whole time

even with the constant reminders that everything was okay.

How could I have known it would look the way it does?

I wasn’t creative enough to know what it would look like,

but I had enough faith to know it could work.

 

This isn’t what I envisioned for myself to be in my late thirties.

But it is also the last time that I’ll ever get to live like a deadbeat

something I’ve turned into an artform–

yet it certainly had an expiration date.

 

It was time to position myself as a breadwinner,

no more promises or projected trajectories.

Just cold hard fact

Ipso Facto

Women my age are no longer wowed by potential

from men my age.

 

Don’t get me wrong.

I’m quite thankful for what I have

the place is almost a step up

from an Eastern Bloc ghetto in the mid- 80’s.

 

There was a time in my life

when I didn’t even need a bed

living like a character out of a

literary (Fante?Carver?Bukowski?) narrative.

 

There was a romantic element in sleeping

soundly in a sleeping bag on the floor.

I was so much younger then,

my joints didn’t scream as loudly from

a bad night’s sleep

 

It is too late to question my subconscious.

I chose to be here

out of desperation, laziness, and being cheap,

out of the need to remind myself

that I’m not quite there yet,

that I have to work just a little bit harder

to wake up to that feeling again

of being where I’m suppose to be.

~Edward Austin Robertson

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Thinking of Paris

25 Nov

It felt good to have my window open

the night sky and the cold rain

gave my apartment  a sense of time and place.

 

Trying to process my thoughts–

everything felt so jumbled together.

Softly wondering what 15 yr old me would think

if he knew that 20 years would barely change anything.

I still preferred watching sports to social interaction

and still jerking off more than what is considered healthy.

 

But 15 yr old me could have never imagined

the irregular path that he would travel 

to get to this point today.

And control, yes–I finally had control.

The biggest tragedy of my teenage years

was a lack of autonomy.

 

Paris couldn’t have been further away

than when I was living in Texas as a kid.

At least now it is a viable thought

less abstract,

but mostly a fantasy,

involving a beautiful woman

and literary groupies inside

cramped coffee shops

and bookstores.

 

But I’d read the headlines.

Saw the footage.

Even cried a little.

Friday the 13th brought in a gloom

that kept hanging.

Everyone so unnerved

because the illusion had finally been shattered.

 

The world has never been safe

for Muslims, for Jews, for Africans, For Arabs.

 

We have to treat each other better.

There is no way around it.

Which means I have to learn to treat others better too.

 

I still have not been to France.

But I will go someday–hopefully

on someone else’s dime.

and when I’m looking into the eyes

of my good company,

we can clink our wine glasses together

and I can tell her about this moment;

staring out of my apartment window on a rainy night,

thinking about the attacks

and how that event affected me.

 

~Edward Austin Robertson

 

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