An Ode to Nostalgia

As a child, I would lay
Under the willow tree.
Ev'ry warm, summer day,
I felt relaxed, happy
To watch swaying branches
Move in the sweltering,
And aeolian breeze
As if spirit forces
Had just been rust'ling
From heaven's canopies.

The rocking, zephyr wind
Would make the green leaves shake.
My senses, too, would rescind.
Half asleep, half awake
In a daydream of youth
For all its innocence
And childish abandon,
Ignoring forms of truth
To see its resemblance

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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A Melody

A melody echoes through
the walls, reverberating softly,
quietly, absently in the hallway,
seeping up through the paint,
tingeing it with the crackle
of color that once wandered through
the corridors of a half-forgotten
consciousness I thought I remembered.

I hear the record skip a beat, its
metronome tapping against
the insistent plod of scratched vinyl.
The piano arpeggiates to keep
time, to keep its shape, to accompany
the passing seconds. A voice
reminds me that it speaks through
muffled words, disintegrating bliss—
without a future, without a past—
that decomposes in the contour of
a turn of phrase—that wears out in

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Camel

I am like a camel wandering in a harsh and unforgiving desert. The heat manipulates my eyesight. The dunes warp and twirl subtly in front of me. I wonder to myself if whether or not the world has dried up, for I haven't seen water in miles and miles. My tongue lies in my mouth, shriveling like a prune, pitted and lightly bathed in crisped saliva. My spit is thick, coating my gums and teeth as if it were a translucent tar. I am thirsty, walking aimlessly—searching for some sort of lost oasis which may or may not exist. There must be a fresh pool standing alone somewhere; I dream of it in my parched thoughts. My skin burns—golden brown and tanning, cracking similar to the dusty, torrid dirt under my feet. The sun beats down hard on the barren land. I long for softer soil, to feel my toes dig into the porous ground. I wish for an all-encompassing shade to swallow the desiccating heat and the dehydrated swat droplets lining my brow. Where are you my palm tree? Can't you save me from my muscles turning to sand that slips from the sides of my bones? I wander in the harsh and unforgiving desert with only the water I've stored in my body. One day, it will be gone and I may still be looking for you, my lost and beautiful oasis.

poem by Tim Stensloff
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Chalk

I'm a picture made of chalk
Drawn on the sidewalk,
A white powder
Poured on the black tarmac
And gray pavement.
I'm colored flakes of dust
Pressed into the ground,
Scraping against the rocks,
Carving an image into the surface
Of a parking lot,
Or some other vacant and spacious nowhere.
I'm a picture
Sketched by an innocent and naïve child
Who disappears—
Searching for someplace warm—
When the rain clouds cover the sky.
The rain dampens the streets,
Flushing it to a cool river
Flowing on the cemented pathways,
Guiding the flotsam

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Songs of Praise and Worship

As a child, I would stand
With the other children.
We would sing songs of praise
And worship—God's kingdom.
The words pulled at our young,
Temporal, pure spirits—
Innocent spheres of soul
That had yet to mature.

We would bow our small heads,
Close our hands and say prayers.
The preacher would instruct
And show us what to say.
We didn't understand
Biblical passages and
We didn't comprehend
What all God's stories meant,

Or at least I couldn't—
Though I tried and longed to.

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Echopraxia

I can see myself
Clearly in the reflection
Of my mirror,
A fluid glass pane.
I am a ripple,
A skipping stone
Dropped in the depths
Of the parallel world
That seems to exist
On the other side.

I am dripped in the water,
Drying out in the sodium deposits—
Dehydrated and drowning
Simultaneously.
I plunge deeper still,
Unable to adjust
The shifting sands
Spiraling down, around me.
They rub away at

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Post

Somehow,
I found myself lost in a familiar landscape
that suddenly appeared alien and heavenly—
white
in the absence
of however death felt—
and I was hunting for time in hypertext.

Unaware was I
of the scope of my distraction,
following the skimmed passages
of half-fact with half a half-life,
decaying in the brief tapping
of each second's slovenly click.

I was tapered
to the staccato immersion,
collecting the rifled, jutted,
haphazardly dispensed pornography
of Information—

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Notes On A Billboard

The billboards are atwitter,
Shaking in the wind
As if they had Parkinson's—
Colorful pictures placate
Passing drivers, comfortable
In their leather, reclining seats
To God knows where—
Who knows where God is?
He's advertised right there,
Up in the sky
Above a church
With valet parking and high-definition
Televisions side-scrolling Biblical slogans:
What would Jesus do?
Come and find out, we'll tell you
(Because a dead man can't
And you can't tell yourself
The billboards glitter
Like the sea-washed, sand-polished
Treasures that erode over time—

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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When Watching

One thing I've noticed I've come to miss
When watching my LED HD TV
Is that whenever I flip through the channels
On my DVR,
I don't have to become a tourist
Glancing at the sights anymore—
I can only read the dialogue of information
That tells me what I am watching
Or what I could be watching.
I don't have the time to observe
Foreign landscapes
(Partially because
Nobody makes shows
Of that
Anymore)
Or see how other people are different,
I just see text, text, text with no
Context, context, context,
And I feel like I'm missing something.
I don't even watch TV much anymore.

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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Syndicated Emotions

Go ahead:
Laugh laugh laugh.
It's all so funny.
Doesn't it remind you of home?
Doesn't it remind you of that one time?
It was like
Yeah, it was like
A similar something
I don't remember,
But I'm sure mom and pop have done things like that before.
Man, it's amazing how they replicate my life,
But, oh, wow, it's so much more engrossing.
More than likely well-written.

So I just:
Clap clap clap,
Opening a can of applause
For them to fork out onto my proverbial plate
Of the senses.
It's such a good time.

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poem by Tim Stensloff
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