he's walking
away from me.
hey, no, stop, i say,
i think i'm in love
with you.
no, no, he says.
waving his hands,
clearing the words
out of the air.
no, no, he says,
its been a long day.
you are probably
just tired.
there are too many sad poets.
everyone's angry, everyone's
drunk, everyone's bitter,
everyone's been wasted away,
everyone's pushing away their
soul, widening the distance between
them and themselves so it is
a deep canyon, a dry riverbed.
i am not a sad poet. i rejoice in the
beautiful life i live! i have been laid
to waste. i have loved and i
have lost. i have been called
worthless. i have been spat upon.
i have laid in someone else's
cigarette ashes, slept on the ground
beside a toilet and called my
life pointless. useless. invaluable.
but i rejoice! i am never useless.
i am never pointless. you who have loved,
love again. you who have been called
worthless, you are worth it all. i can
write a beautiful poem about the
night my fiance cheated on me or i can
write a magnificent poem about how
i have new friends who love me, a God
who cherishes me, and a bed to sleep
in every night. i have slept in a village with
tribal people of Kenya. i have conquered
African mountains and still i have danced under
their great, moonlit sky. who am
i to write a poem about sadness? who is
he to be worthy of what i write?
i, a poet, a woman, a sister, a daughter,
a friend, a lover, a peacemaker, a fighter,
am worthy of the beautiful and that
is what i will write. i have read too many
poems about sadness. i have bore
everyone's broken promises. you are
all deserving of love and i will call you out.
you, sad poets, love. you, broken poets, live.
you write, therefore you are alive. break
out into song. dance, dance, dance on the grave
of your past. feel beautiful. let your hair down.
do not cry about what cannot be undone
but instead live live live. the world does not
need any more sad, drunk poets who hate
themselves and cannot see the beginning of
their lives which, the beginning, it is always
glowing, brimming, spontaneously exploding
with joy at the sight of you possibly recognizing it.
what the world needs, what i need, what
the hopeless need, is a poet who can write
love and hope and joy and peace and
perseverance on a page and bring life.
bring life to me, bring life to my soul. live
beautifully and free. hold everything with
open hands. this is all of my heart for
you, take it please.
it is all yours.
the sound of my heart
is a sassy woman singing
the blues
singing her soul, singing
about the man who left her
and the men she left
singing your worth, singing
because i love you.
i don't even know you,
but i love you. the sound of
my heart is my love
for you sung by a lonely
lovely lady, the sound of her
voice covered with the
salty blue of the
ocean,
sweet blue of my
open sky.
i have no words for how beautiful You are, God.
i dance with You. You laugh with me. You
hold my tears in a glass jar, You banish
my fears to the depths of the ocean. You bring
me from glory to glory, from glory-filled
to glorious. worthy, You are worth it all. You
are faithful, You are true. You are not the lie
i have heard all of my life, but more - the Creator
of the universe, the God who made the sun
stand still, the One who died for me then came
back for me. You came back for all of us.
because i am that prodigal son. i have ran,
i have ran as far as i could. i have tried to find a
god in sex but only found loneliness. i have tried
to find a god in alcohol but only found
bitterness. i have tried to find a god in myself but
i have only found the dust from which i came,
blowing around in the deep empty pit of my heart.
and so i have ran. i searched out other gods and
found none who were valid, who were true,
who sacrificed themselves for their people
in the way You have. i fell on my knees, on my
face, eyes caked with mud, dirt on my lips and
there You were running towards me,
lifting me up out of the remnants of my own ashes -
cigarettes, men, alcohol, sex, loneliness,
anger, independence, dependency, lies -
and holding me in Your arms, emptying Yourself
into me so that i may be filled, so that i may
be loved, so that i may stand here today,
write this right now and tell everyone about
my God, the only God, how beautiful you are,
Jesus, graceful and singing sweet promises
over me. You mystify me. You choose to
live in me - an empty vessel, nothing on my own
but everything with You.
this is when You whisper to me, sweetly,
placing Your hands over the dirt on my eyes
and saying you are blind no more; wiping the
dirt off of my lips and saying you deserve love;
kneeling beside me and saying you are the
temple of God, why do you run? why do you hide?
come here and rest.
everything is in slow motion when you're drunk.
everything is moving at a liquid pace - you are moving
through water and nothing can stop you. you are
dragging your arm through the beautiful sea, you are
floating though the haze of dusty blue,
your cheeks are hot.
you can process nothing but everything.
you know that last night you just told the man
you have loved for seven years to leave and
it feels marvelous.
charles bukowski says that i am marvelous,
he says the gods wait to delight in me.
that is all so true as i lay here,
after wine and wine and wine and
think about how beautiful everything is.
how i'm moving my limbs through the ocean
instead of dragging them through the concrete.
how i'm flowing through the sea instead
of the dry ground of the desert.
words just flow out of here, i am nothing outwards
but the sounds and the movements of my body
as i write each of these beautiful words, letters,
symbols, lines down on paper. i'm nothing but
words.
beautiful beautiful beautiful
i mumble to myself as i lay on my bed that is not really my bed
underneath a down comforter that is not mine.
beautiful beautiful beautiful
i say to myself and the world as i swim through the sea
while still being dry and clean.
i am lovely and worthy of gold.
i am porcelain dripping in fine silver.
i am not ash anymore, like you wanted me to be,
like you tried to create me to be.
i am a new person - someone stronger than
the ashes of your cigarettes, the remnants of your liquor,
the end of your tears. i am more more more, so much so
that i do not even know who i am until i look through
my own eyes filtered through Yours and i say
beautiful beautiful beautiful
lovely, you are lovely.
you are the loveliest.
you are lovable, so therefore love
others as much as you have loved.
i am excited for my new life -
life without dragging my limbs into the ocean but instead dancing into the sunlight.
i love when my body feels suspended -
in the middle of everything and nothing,
in the middle of heaven and earth. i am
a feather, i am a leaf drifting in the wind,
i am the trace of a lover's finger, i am
the heartbeat of a newborn, the soul
of a jazz singer. lift me and love me.
bring me up to the sky and let me go.
join my heart with my soul and breathe
in the candied smoke of release.
at last, you are one - at last, my love
has come along and he is blinding
like the sun, incomparable like the stars,
stretching as far as the deep blue satin
sheet of the night sky.
you are here, so stay.
you stay, so here.
here is the length of my body, the waves
of my flesh, the secrets locked inside my
ribcage, the smooth glide of my skin.
here. it is a sweet fragrance. it is a
whisper in the morning. it is your name
emerging from the darkness, carried
by the voice of the one you love. it
is a wholeness you've yet to experience,
but here - the whole for you.
take what you will because i am
delighted to give more. here is wonderland -
trace the outline of my beautiful
body, my brilliant mind, my eager heart,
my old soul. take it all.
iloveyouineedyouiwantyouivalueyou
isn't that the most beautiful way
to be human? to love without measure
and without fear. stop and let me
have you in the silence. stop and
let me love you. stop and let me sing
to you. you have always had my attention.
i cry when i think about you.
oh, new york: so sad and so
beautiful. i see your end
and your beginning at the same
time - they are both blinding,
both waiting, both pressing against
the silence and eager to listen
to the sound of the present -
new york: crowds of people,
cellos, rushing sound of fabric,
cries of the lonely, singing
of the once lost, but now found.
sound of embracing, sting of
anger, slurred reality of the drunk,
constant aching for the beauty
of the present.
unstoppable, unshakeable,
immovable pursuit of
happiness and lust and brief
promises of what the future
holds tightly against itself,
selfishly clinging until you
reach up and rip it out
of its hands.
tonight i walk into your heart and it is
dirty - cobwebs draped off of the
edges, dust falling off of the plush
ceiling like old stars - and yet it still
beats to the rhythm of the universe.
i walk into your heart and in it, even
still, i find love dousing the walls
like gasoline and the flames of life
burning higher and higher and higher -
new york, you have consumed me.
but how can you still be here,
why have you run away from me,
for what reason do you still live &
how do you exist when you are the
embodiment of what people are
scared to go after.
new york, i cry when i think about you
but only because when i cradle
all of you in my hands, your beauty
slips and drips through my fingers
like honey, like jewels as fine as grains
of sand, like oils and perfumes and
i am reminded of why i live.
and who says you cannot find
yourself in lines of poetry? do
i have to cut off a limb to be
entertaining to you? do i have to
eat a bowl of maggots to catch
your attention?
you have not seen true beauty
until you have looked at the
unending loop of an o or the
careful bend of a f or deep
slope of a m. you have not felt
love until i write one sentence
and then suddenly you feel what
i feel without experience -
the fast beat of your pulse, the long nights
spent in thick, sweaty sheets pleading
for more, the arguments where you
are ripping your heart out of your
chest, bleeding and screaming here
here here take it and realize i love
you and the times he caught your eye
across the room to share a laugh with you
because he knows the subtle jokes
are your favorite and he knows because
of the nights he has spent with you, laughing
- and that is the power of words,
of what i bend and twist to my will. true
entertainment is in lines of poetry,
in the spaces between them, in the
implanting of emotions and ideas
into someone you may never know.
as i write, i create and now i create
in you a fresh vision for language
that is in the palm of your hands,
begging to be touched,
pleading to influence whole nations
and mend torn hearts and bring
an entire generation to their knees,
then re-define them for the glory
burning bright in their souls, for the
beauty that is constantly
being refined within them - the one
i see, the one you may see in faint
moments where humanity unites
and fights as one, but it is always
there, simmering under the surface
with the intensity of a thousand suns.
this is the power of language. and you
are denying yourself and you will
suffer. enjoy the pleasure of words with me.
create new life with me.
a man, speaking to the woman he loves
sitting across the table, saying:
even if it takes one hundred years
i will reach down your throat and
rip everything beautiful out of you
so you will never question me again
when i tell you how lovely you are
or how gracefully your lips move
when you say my name or how
elegantly your body twists when you dance
naked in the dim light of
the corner of my bedroom
the moon orbits around you
and you have no choice in your
beauty everything in the world
has been created to exist around
you
she stares blankly, lifts one finger
and the waitress comes running. her
lips gracefully spill out two words:
check, please.
