Memories are like snowflakes
So fragile
Each unique
So easily destroyed
Especially those of Love

Hate not so much

I have a thousand
Upon a thousand
Snowflakes of you
I have kept them in the darkest
Coldest corner of my heart
Where they have never melted
Never will

I sit in candlelight,
Old, sad ballads
On my turntable,
Thinking of you,
Writing of us,
Playing the pathetic lonely artist
In his garret.

We were watching Disney when
You ran into the night
Never to return.

No longer mine,
I guess you never were.

My glass holds 
A measure of gin
That never measures drowning
The measure of my loss
From your two feet
Out the door.

A first date,
I held open for you
The door of my Chevy.
You held open not only 
The door to your heart
But to your family,
The only I was ever to have.
As one new to love
I loved them,
Sure even now
They loved me too.

Do I need tell
How I loved you?

My daughter walks 
The backstreets of my heart
But will never walk the Earth,
For life denied me children
While you treasure a daughter
With another man.

Like a drowned man 
Drug ashore,
I thought all memories 
Of our life together
Dead.
But like a lifeguard’s hands
Those letters
Brought them back to life
In a mighty gasp,
******* in joy,
Coughing, spewing sorrow.

I cannot hate you.
Tell me
Please 
How to live 
With loving you
Still and Forever,
You I never,
You still 
I may not have.

You are the long, long shadow
Lain across my life,
Lain across my heart
Where memories of you
Lie like old curled parchment
Desiccated of joy
But not of sorrow.

Please
Take my hand,
Step into my light.
I long to see your face,
The count of joys
In lines radiant from your eyes,
The count of sorrows
In lines falling from your lips.
Do I rightly remember
Your eyes the color of
Norway fjords?
Is that shining fall of hair
Now grey entire?
Are grey your days?

Please take my hand,
You were once the joy
Beneath my touch.
You were my light.
May my lips touch yours
With a tenderness I owe you,
So much time has taught me.

Let this not be the end of us
A dust rag taken to
A few old memories.

I did not quest for visions,
Nonetheless Truth found me.

Four mornings strung
I did not wake.
One does not wake
From the haunts of insomnia.

I rose from sleepless sheets.
I watched the sunrise
Sheen on angels,
One hundred perched
With crows in the trees.

I smelt coffee, bacon,
Weary went below
Where an angel at the stove
Pointed with spatula,
Sit, eat she commanded.

I sat with three holy,
Smelling sweetly of
Divine,
Three aglow, glistening
Wrapped in robes of
Light.

I was shown
My Book of Life,
Made to linger over
Acts of Love,
Page upon page
Of times I found
Courage and strength,
Was selfless and giving.

The spatula was pointed once more.
Go, sleep she ordered.

I climbed back in bed,
I tossed, I turned
Until I felt the slightest weight
Down at my feet.

His beauty was a terror
To behold,
Satan.
He spoke in such a soft lilt,

Until you learn
To love yourself,
I will always own you.

You are my moon

Your moods wax and wane
With pages torn from my calendar

Your beauty not constant
Bewitching at your fullest
When you reflect upon me
The light of others
No heart shine of your own

The days vary
Each I long for nights
When your pull
Upon my tide of blood
Raises it up
To wash my mind’s shores
With foaming scour
Majestic power
Leaving my morn strewn with
A drift of storm wrecked feel

But those moods!
When you wrap yourself in cloud
Hide for days
On end, until
I wish to kneel in desert sands
Beneath, before another moon
Constant

I was ever stone
Upon the granite peak
Allah gave me frost
Into the fissures
He dropped seed
Wildflowers grew

Asleep I ever flowed
Allah placed boulders in
My Path
Now my rapids sing of seas
I know my destination
That Ocean of One

My heart was ever desert
Unfit for even camel
Sorrow, pain and suffering
Allah placed before my eyes
I wept and knew compassion
My tears a garden grew
Of kindness and of giving
To others duty too

I thought I knew love
Wife, children, siblings, cats
That song by Leonard Cohen
All a weak brew
Allah took, took, took
Gave me loss until
I turned, I drank of Him
Then He alone I loved
Then He took my love

Lord of every universe
Designer of the jinn
Stars and moons and Light
Space to put them in
Out of nothing He awoke
Sang a song of all Creation

There is only the One
He was I
I am He
All is made of Love

There is only Love

Why do I write?
This you ask me.

These things you should ask:

Why did my father hate,
Spew spiteful slander over dinner,
So often erupt in rage,
Hammer, pound me
With words like nails,
Make me small,
Frightened always.
Ask the size of his belt,
The feel of his fingers
At my throat.

Ask why Mother
So often confided
I shamed her,
Embarrassed her.
Ask why,
When women came
For cards, drink and laughter,
I hid beneath my bed,
Stopped up my ears
Against their cackles
Down the hall.

Why do I write?

Ask why the Sufis found me,
Why in traveled towns
Bookstores bade me enter,
Where the sweet scent of baraka
Would lead to a single perfect text
Upon a shelf.

Ask the purpose of
My existence.
Sufis suggest
We were given Life
Such that through our eyes
The Creator may view
The beauty of all she created.

Then ask why I write.

Ask
What is family?
My entire life
I have searched for such
To call my own.
You, you are family.
Am I not like you,
You like me,
Awake in the Night
Fitting words
Here, there and there,
Fitting pieces of life to a page,
Hoping to fit  beauty
To one another’s hearts.

Now ask why I write.

I write for myself.
I write for you.
I write for God.

I watch,
For I am you
And you are me.

I watch.
I dive, I surface,
I spin the horizon round,
Yet round again. Sky wide
I stretch my arms, my eyes,
My very Heart for you.

I watch.
I know your pain,
The tattered, little scraps
Of memory, the
Longing, oh God
The longing for our long lost
Home.
Did we not polish our hearts
To sacred chalice,
Pray and sing
Each ancient chant?
Now,
Like sounding whales
We stink of sorrow.

I watch.
I know the moments
Fierce yearning gnaws the gut.
Walking sticks you gather,
Wind and water silvered,
Wood turned twin to
Our own bones of stone.

I watch,
Let loose a tear.
You check your pouch of Medicine,
Your hoard of magic words.
There are fallen stars For Beauty and for Light,
Shark teeth and lobster claw
For cutting and for pain.

I watch.
The ceaseless longing
Pulls you from the Sea.
You climb the sands,
Climb from sight,
My wandering pilgrim
Leaving sacred word pagodas
Upon the foreign land.

I watch.
This day do not die into the Night
That passes into Light.
Return to me,
Return to us.
We are all but little waves
Rising and falling in and out of
That great ocean of all,
That ocean of Love,
The One.

Return Adriana.
I am you.
You are me.
I will touch your hair and
Whisper in your ear.

I will sing to you like Orca.