Check on the 1st Friday of each month for Gabriel’s newest poetic work in progress!

June 2025

You ever get a sense

Where you feel everyone you know

Have ever known

You know that they are here before you

But in the sight of your eyes

It’s just a deserted bench and the ground

This bench I remember

It is the same bench

It’s always been this bench

It has been here since the beginning

Since it was in its light body

Before the darkness crept

This bench has shed its skin so many times

The old dents

Left behind by ciphering stones empty bottle drums

Are nowhere to be seen

The rest of its body has been worn down

Flush with this remnant of before

But it is the same bench

With the same wood table 

The same rickety loose screws

Holding the whole thing together

I came into a new sense of life 

Atop that altar frame

The combustion of expression 

How humans can communicate 

When there is rhythm and sacrament 

Each one teach one to preach one

When we’d bomb out to the beach just to speak to it, all together

When there was struggle that lived seemlessly with sanctified salvation, let all that sings roll over like a storm cloud to allow the mirrored starlight to shine through 

When poems were all that mattered, because all the poems tasted like bread

When this town was trying to transform into something other than this place it’s becoming 

Yet still, it’s the same bench

Bleaching in the sun

No sign of the graffitied table cloth of dirty paint and ink, covering nearly ever surface 

No lines from poems or names affirmed

No abstract drawings or lettered styles

Now there’s nothing but a bench, with years of stories lost to rain and wind, sitting in the sun, evaporating this very moment

Just as soon as it sings

We all used to sing

Spit or speak

Slam objects against each other

Slam ourselves against the bench

Holding trees as it they are their own instrument 

Falling into compost heaps 

And finding friends in the rot

Broken down and congealed 

Not into a growing thing

But into something that lets things grow

This bench used to be a growing thing

It used be a part of something alive

Now, it only comes alive when we say it does

Wood is alright rite

You put your ear to the surface of it

Listen and see

You’ll hear the tree above it

Softly swaying

Being a home for winged things 

Just like this loose screwed rickety bench

And us, arms outstretched upon it

There is no bench

There has only ever been a tree

With everyone we’ve ever loved 

Composing a symphony of leaves

Out of an silent moment of rest

And rest 

Is our most precious memory