Like you,
I read "The Giving Tree"
When I was young.
And I drank in that definition of love
With my roots.  
I wanted to be that tree.
I wanted to give that love
To everyone; to someone.  
And you found me
And carved your heart on mine.

I have the scar.

And I felt loved
For a while.
It felt good to give;
It felt good to see your smile,
For a while.  
It felt good to give you shade and shelter,
Stripping and shedding
Everything,
For you.
And it became our life.

So how could I blame you for the way you were treating me
Shearing me
Expecting me
to Give,
to Love,
to Serve—
Even when you no longer recognized me?

The rings on our fingers
Spoke nothing of the truer rings,
The rings recorded in me.  
It took many years to learn,
Many years to chop away at that old definition,
Many years to rip away the rotting bark,
Many years of knowing that
A tree is always there because
A tree’s roots are stuck within the ground.

But I am not a tree.

It’s now the middle of the night
as the stereo softly plays nostalgia,
but I’m the only one
awake.  
You’re dreaming
in that other room,
And our kids take after you.
I sit here boxing up our life,
Staring at the walls, these walls once our life’s witnesses,

Tomorrow will be bare.

And though you tried to force the clocks to slow;
I let time escape and show the way.
Stunned to think
where I’m going.
Forgetting how afraid we were to smile before we
Opened the boxes of yesterday’s promise.

You're wrong you know.
You're not afraid of crossroads,
Not confrontations,
It's not indecision
Or fear of failure,
You have no issue with regret.
You're wrong,
And being wrong is not the problem,
It's not liberty that afflicts you,
Or binds you,
Roots you to this place.
You're wrong,
And though you're tired
That's not the reason,
You have no real desire to give up.
And society, your friends,
Your loved ones are blameless,
It's not the past that puts the pit
Of doubt cemented in your core.
The future is uncertain
But you know that's not
The burden
That incites rebellion
Throughout your body
Leaves you
Fighting with yourself.
You're all wrong,
Because you understand the solution,
You know the puzzle of the present,
the senselessness,
The answer that they give
Has no function
No relevance
No possibility
No relief.
To live life in the present,
To embrace it,
breathe it in,
To ignore the thoughts that cloud
All action,
To make the most of the moment right at hand--
Is Impossible

For the present is a fiction
They are wrong
It can't be measured
There is only past or future
The now does not exist.
Each “moment” that you visit
Is braided
To past and future,
Demands study and reflection
Impacting everyone and everything.
Every “moment” that you speak of is
Not an individual,
Has no uniqueness,
Scarcity and rarity are imposters--
All is all.
Each person past and future,
Every worm and every atom
Every thought and every planet
Singularities
Intertwined with molecular precision,
And every insignificant
Decision
Is momentous
By design.
The reason,
The answer,
The solution for which you're searching,
The misunderstanding
That's been floating beneath the surface
Of your mind,
The resolution to the question the never ending
And unnerving
The unyielding perplexity
That has you yielding to the ebbing flowing tide
Is that you are not an individual,
You are not uniquely different
You are not a figment
Or a stain or an error
You are not a wink of time.

The reason that the crossroads gives you pause,
Doubt,
Fear, anxiety,
The reason that indecision sometimes
Seems to be the guiding force in every moment
Every magnified, sensationalized
Magic nothing in your life--

Is that you are all,

You are everything,

Now, and then, and when,
You are forever,
You are purpose of all itself,
You are every universe
You are an infinite infinity
Divinity resides in everything you do.
And everyone you see, and interact with,
Everyone you love and hate,
Admire,
Everyone you have forgotten
Everyone you'll never know
Every stone and every sinew
Every straw and every beetle
Every drop of blood that flows from heart to heart
Or spills from any soul,
Every all and every anything is affected by your now.


You are not afraid of insignificance, your instinct
Knows
The truth though you ignore it—

The responsibility you fear is
The magnificence of you.

It’s too quiet here despite
the mutterings of the furnace, angry
at me?  At nothing.
There’s the jackhammer on the stale
gray concrete just outside;
I feel it more.
There’s the pounding rushing
feet stampeding all around my knotted immobility racing my
heart my hurt-- still    

it’s silent,

as I stare into the empty

void

devoid
of you.

I’ve never seen the Eiffel Tower, or run with the bulls in Spain.
I’ve never skied upon the Alps, or guided a sleigh across fine snow.
I’ve never had a drink, a laugh, a walk along the Seine.
I’ve never been the starring actor in a Broadway show.
I’ve never seen the pyramids, or the sun eclipsed by moon.
I’ve never journeyed to the Arctic North and saved a baby seal.
I’ve never had a picnic tryst on a sunny field in June.
I’ve never been the stalwart captain steadfast at the wheel.
I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon, or “The River” of Monet.
I’ve never driven coast to coast to discover my ol’ country.
I’ve never ridden the white horse as the knight who saves the day.
I’ve never been the leader of a great municipality.
I've never seen Pisa’s tower, or Hawaii’s volcanic fires.
I’ve never judged the aroma, fragrance, bouquet of a fine wine.
And I’ll never have to fulfill a single one of these desires
If you’ll ever whisper softly that you will, at last, be mine.

It’s too bright here.

Too much blinding
and reminding
of the darkness in my eyes--
You stained our earth.

Now drain the sun,
and wash away the stars.
Rebuild my inner prisons,
Sabotage the chiding moon,
Stoke my longing;
Loathing;
Tear the fabric of the sky.
Speak no more of sunsets,
Divest me of your dreams,
Feed all that’s bitter harmony
with the music of your lies.

Tarnish golden memories;
Posed postcards of the past.
Lock me up
alongside
Emptiness,

Core this body of its soul.

Nurture Hope’s despair--

Dare
to
Disturb my universe no more;

Feast on the charred embers
of my essence like you never would before.

In another space,
I was the air, free and floating,
Boundless, buffeting mountains, caressing downy
feathered geese, kissing the sun.
And you were drawn to me,
Dancing in gossamer mist; the hope
Of dreamers.

Jealous,
I formed around you. Darkening
Our skies.
Rolling my deep baritones
On deafening ears.
Swirling with winds of fear;
The glooming grew.
You
needed the life of detachment--

To fall.



The friction stormed
Within us;
Thundering our doom.
And when you dropped free--



I

dissipated


in the dark.