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.

Delusional.
Bipolar.
Schizophrenic.
Unable to provide for the basic necessities of life.
Condemned.

I sat just outside
The decrepit courtroom,
Staring at the middle aged children;
G-d's miracles.

A soft voice startled me from below.
I saw a broken man in front of me kneeling
On the floor.

"I am Methuselah"  he whispered.
"May I wash your feet?"

I think I recognized him.
Two weeks before in the crowded courtroom
He had bared
His soul before everyone,
Yet they would not let him leave.
I remember pieces of my conversation with the bailiff,
"Can you imagine living his permanent nightmare?
Can you imagine
Believing that your parents are dead,
Mourning for so many years?
Then hearing your sister testify
That they are still alive?
And knowing . . . she is lying,
So that they can lock you up again?"


"Excuse me, sir. I saw you from across
The room; there is a holiness about you.
May I wash your feet?"

I looked into his face,
His glassy eyes, his trembling lips.
I don't know why
But at that moment he reminded me of a boy.
I wanted to help him,
To cure him, to raise him up, to help him see.
I wanted to remind him of his name.

"No thank you."  I told him.
"Please sit down."

He gingerly took the seat beside me.
"A fate has befallen me.
I do not know . . . "

He seemed to struggle for command
Of his words,
I wanted to reach out to him, to make him feel necessary.
"Methuselah is a name in the Bible. . ."
But words failed me as well.

What right did I have; who permitted me to trespass
On his life?
If I was helping him, why did I feel so guilty?

"Something holy about you  
Drew me over here.
Who are you?
Can you tell me how to find love?"

We talked together then,
About his family, his marriage, love, and G-d.
He wrote down his address as they came to take him home
Then smiled as if for the first time.
A few minutes later, lost in thought
I looked at the wrinkled
Brown paper he had torn
From his bag and read his name.

It did not say Methuselah.

You are the night, embracing,
Whispering the sounds unheard in light.
You are this night.
And you are the night before,
Before the dreams,
Before the losses and the hopes began to grow.
And you are my night,
The periscope,
Tunneling through
Despair,
Shielding,
Yielding to a day, what day, someday
Not known.
And all answers to the questions
Of each night
All night, questions asked
And spooned out before us in rows,
Stacked in pill bottles
Teetering on the edge
of final night’s
control
are all my own.

Yes, I sit here softly screaming
As I lie,
bolt upright,
dreaming,
Of the sun, at night start rising
On a winter's day in June.

I had entered
while leaving
From a puzzle not deceiving,
That I argued compromising
'til the dawn of afternoon.

Can you grasp the open
meaning
Of the lines I've set here
Streaming,
Can you taste the words I'm writing,
Do you see their silent tune?
No:
I feel you,
softly, screaming
As you sit there,
sprawled
out,
dreaming,
Of the sun one morning
setting
On a winter's night in June.

Rise.

When choice is a lie,
And duty shuts its eyes
To all you've been.

Stand--

Back where you began,
Push hard against the hands
That bind you,
Remind you
Of the failures of your now.

Reach

Within your murky deep,
Reject the secrets that still keep
You
Steal you
Seal you
Hiding in a sleep,
Anesthetized.
Paralyzed.
Compromising all your dreams.

Shout,

Face
Embrace
Chase the doubt
Scream it out,
Confront dusk and dawn and all
Who come to call for your demise.

And rise.

Facing the wall,
On the edge of tears,
Only her shoulders speak.
Her right foot times the tension
Of the moment
In strained silence.

Across the way,
A friend, an adversary
Sits in shamed symmetry.
Her chin takes refuge
In her hand-
A hand that can’t contain the anger, the embarrassment, the fear.
A hand that hides the mouth that spoke too freely,
But now says nothing.

“What's wrong with you?” they say,
“Can't you calm down for just a moment,
Take a deep breath--
Slow down,
Get centered and
Relax.
Stop being so **** negative,
What's the worry,
What's the hurry?
You can't solve every problem,
Let it go--
Hey not so fast.
Maybe, yes just maybe
If you stopped being so **** frightened
Well then maybe for a moment
All those fears would dissipate,
If you just stopped your overthinking
Your hypotheticals,
Possibilities,
If you let life flow all around you
You'd have that peace you say you crave.”

But they are wrong.  

Anxiety isn't nervousness.
Anxiety isn't cowardice.
Anxiety is a call to those
Whose eyes are open to the fight.

It is a certain sensitivity
An alertness;
A war machine never idle
There’s a buzzing below the surface,
There is no calm before this storm.
It is the constant sentinel
Vigilant in clash with
Paralysis,
There is no honor,
No heroism in this struggle
Whose burden countermands reward.

It is not the soldier’s nature to relax.

It is an instinct,
It is concern for you, for me, for others,
It is a special steadfast mutiny
When
Psyche fights the soul.

You say it is a weakness.
You subject me to societal court martial,
Though you cavalierly create conflicts
You say I am afraid.
But those consummate in combat,
Introspective and insightful,
True veterans of life’s battles
Know,
It's fear defines the brave.