Along our journey
Carved in stone
The words read
"The path from here on,
Must be walked alone."
The mournful cry
Tears of betray
Laminating the path
One walks astray
But you and I
Need not have this faith
For even the pilgrims
Lose their way
Although lost and drifting in time
Through the desert's barren beauty
You are my saving rain
And it is true
Our trail may wind
But it shall never part
As you forever remain
The keeper of my heart

whenever she's suspended
affixed
at the apex
of my mind'e eye,
she commands my attention

every breath
of hers
is the wind

tempests of life
unfurling
from her tender lips

'pon which
I run
a steady finger
tracing the grooves
of her supple
flesh
as she whispers
my name

her tongue flickers

tasting
the salt of my skin

fresh from the sea
where we first made love

where I carried her
from shore
to fresh water
to be cleansed
by healing waters
and leave the sea's poison
to the creatures
of the deep
the drunkards
of deepest sin

though time has passed
decades now, since then
I can still feel her
straddling my face
beneath
the running waters
silent
save her breaths
long & satisfied
every exhale
was purposeful

and where she lay
I remember
her legs
poised,
inviting

her expression, yearning

the world had passed away

gone, in the midst
of our rapture
and who
could have stopped us
anyway

I remember
my pride vanished
as hours
in my imagination
became minutes
in reality

I had never known
I could be
so weak

spent

how she took everything
I had to give

how she gave me
everything
I ever wanted

how no woman
has ever
given me one moment
as breathless
as a day spent
in love
from the pool
to the beach
to the shower

how no other woman
could trap me
in one room
for decades
and leave me there, waiting
with
no
regrets...

We fell in love by chance,
We stay in love by choice.

There were black shoes, black shadows
white cuffs, white clouds
black shirt, black boards
white belt, white butterflies

You tell me, your world is black and white,
but,
I ask you,
"Is that all I saw?"
What more, my dear pessimist, you jeer,

So, I say,
Well, of course,
there were blue skies, blue scorpions
white doves, white daffodils
red roses, red blooded hooligans

You tell me, typical American -
so patriotic,
you bleed the colors you fly,
and die draped in your pride,

but I see you
in your myopia,
your dull diatribe of patriotism

I understand you

you are blind to the mind of your soul
you only see
what I tell you
you only see
what you consume
you do not see
what is between
the slats
of your window

when they shut
you do not peek

when they open,
you imagine night has turned to day
when they close
you prepare your bed for the night
despite the noonday sun
you are a prisoner of shallow waters
drowning
while ankle deep
hollering
believing no one hears you
shrieking - how the world has changed!
unaware that the shores move
in ballroom dancer rhythms
sweeping back
and forth
along the bay
because the seas are alive
but you are standing still

not even the earth
beneath your feet
is still,
despite holding your entire reality
safely,
motherly,
in the insurmountable expanse
of its grasp

Yet, should the earth shake
and rock you
should the hurricane blow
and displace you
should the mountains tumble
and smother you
should the sky open its celestial gob
and expel you
should the mother open her subterranean maw,
and swallow you deep
deep
would you, deeply, care
that the possibility of it all
was an open invitation
a sealed letter
that was never
at your behest
to open
and display its contents

I, too,
have bequeathed upon you
a sealed invitation
to the worlds I paint
with these jigsaw vignettes we call words
and all
you had to do
was open the seams

not with a file

a file to cut the purse
the bounty
of the promised speech
no
I ask you
that you but pry open my soul
with curiosity
and peer within the tattered layers of my story
my lives
unlived & overwritten
letter by letter
slip in that noodle protracted by your pineal eye
and taste the essence of the realities
you have failed to purchase
that meander about the words you,
selectively,
chose to ignore
like the milk around alphabet cereal
or the broth around alphabet soup
or the fine-grained blank spaces
the parchment
the canvas of woe
around the words that comprise
a stack of divorce papers
or an exam
or the dread of a long-awaited raise...

Imagine,
for a moment
ignoring the obvious
the letters,
the sentences and paragraphs,
the divorce papers
the exam
the pay-bump,
and just look
at the parchment - the fine-grained,
thin sheet of sophistication

touch it
taste it, maybe,

run your hand along it
the surface of it
or the edge of it
***** your finger on the corner
slice your finger on the edge
the paper has a malice that invites
your masochism
curiosity is power
but also
despair
peer deeper

turn your head about
lower it, sideways
all
the
way
down, and
press your ear,
left or right
against the parchment
the paper
the papyrus
the product
hear its screams
the CHURN-CHUG-GGGHGGHHGRRRRR!!!
that chainsaw
like a thousand hatchets
splayed out
dancing on the circumference of
a taught merry-go-round of death
cutting into the mother
the father
the child
the tree
cutting it open
that it may be cut again
again
again
tormented
pulled apart
pulverized
tenderized
pulped
poured
pushed
pressed
preened
­glossed - maybe
matte - possibly
the choice is yours
harvest the living
for the living death of your divorce
your exam
your raise
massacre those families
not just the trees
the bears, the deer, and the little fox, too!

I'm green with envy,
thinking about all that potent pulp
coming your way
the smell of it
place yourself in its abundance
the smell of industry
its factories
academies of excellence
an office
a school
a registrar, magistrate, Corporate HQ,
the Pentagon, the Taj Mahal,
Big Ben,
the daily mail of any place where
the morning paper
is LAW
and
should this be the first time
you heard the screams
just imagine being a tree
coming to pay respects to your family
smell that death
as you creep in
watch
look about you
at the carcasses
strewn about
in neat, pedantic stacks labeled, A4, A3, letter,
fax or snail mail?

My world is plenty black & white
& white & red & blue,
but it's also got screams,
and the stench,
the carcasses of the forest's children
fit for your pleasure
to tear up,
chew up,
gum up with saliva
and shoot through a straw
into the neck of a fellow butcher
and laugh
laugh and snarl and howl and cackle

Laugh
because,
you never dared to kneel down
pay reverence to the
screams
in the parchment
you let the blinds close
you dared not peek through
you let yourself rot there
in the closet
of your mind
in the dark
and when I say, I'm sad,
you say,
"That *****."
You don't ask,
what's around the sadness,
what came before and what could after,
what's in the folds of sadness,
guilt, regret, and loneliness kneaded in

no,
you look at the sadness,
the dull blue,
and you say,
"Yeah,
that's blue alright,"
then you close your coffin
and go to sleep

Cry me a river
of joy,
she said

I knew she meant it,
by the silence
by the memory of her laughter,
how she poked fun
how she rubbed me down with giggles of mirth,
bellies gyrating with angst
and rambunctious
passion

I knew it

It was not the idea
of her
that scared me,
not anymore
would I think of women
that way

What
it was
that scared me
was how I knew we'd say goodbye
and I'd be okay
for once
okay
and happy she said goodbye...

Happy we didn't shovel moats & forge keeps,
establish plans of attack & surrender
belabor, humming & hawing, over broken treaties,
over civilian casualties
the banishment of civil liberties
and the proverbial
dictatorships of,
"I'm not the problem, so, it MUST be you."

Reply with,
"Yes, it is me."
I knew it,
"I'm sorry!"
Jinx!
Not this time.

This time,
she said goodbye.
And so did I. At least, inside.
And she meant it,
and it was honest.
And so was I. A small comfort.
First of many...

Her goodbye was a kiss that could rival
daydreams
of memories that are
more remixed than the splotches of oil
on a painter's palette,
and,
more dibbled and dabbled, than ten playlists of slow jams,
in my arsenal of hopeless stratagems,
bearing the desperate subtext of,
'park your rear end
where I can't begin to ask honestly.'

Because,
honestly,
if this weren't goodbye,
I could only trade this goodbye,
for ten thousand "Hello's"
whose end and beginning are lost to the tides of status quo,
of forget me nots
and anniversaries,
and picture frames
of days where we forgot what 'goodbye' meant,
because we learned to speak the truth...

And isn't it the truth,
that goodbye,
was so much sweeter than,
I can't stand,
how much we fought for a t-shirt
that eponymously said,
"I cried over spilt milk, and all I got was this t-shirt."
because none of us know
the name of the game,
but we know we hate playing it