Back to the grind
I drive at the crack of dawn
Dragging yesterday's heartbreak
Lifting today's routine
And pushing tomorrow's anxiety

But steam rises from my sandwich
Walking down a pale carpet of Spam
Amid fluffy scrambled eggs and warm bread
She shivers in the car's AC
Her lithe form unfettered from all this worry

On her little stage she arabesques and pirouettes
Bathed in golden sunlight
With diffuse legs and arms
A routine written by thermodynamics
A spectacle only she and I know

This performance will last for the next thirty seconds
Already time is impatiently tapping its foot
But the steam cares not, for this is all she has
And there, waiting for the traffic signal
I am in the moment.

The knight strides forth to battle
In his suit of Maximilian
Sword-edges turn aside and bodkins bend
Powerless to pierce this fortress of steel

The visor veils his visage
His voice muffled within
Admirers acclaim the armor
Valor, virtue, and victory

But only she beholds
the man within the Maximilian
And her arms are his safest stronghold
His sweetest solace

They think Absence is a cruel mistress
A gorgon with brass talons who rends our bonds
And eats our hearts
Dousing flames
and snuffing out all the candles we lit together

But she is a gentle gardener
Sowing seeds of strength with calloused, work-toughened hands
Watering desire with the dew of distance
Counting day after day until the fruit of reunion is
Ripe and sweet and tender.

My vessel was a speck of stardust unchained from its Sun
Telemetry and course uncharted, crew remaining: one
A navigational mishap  made me lose sight of  her light
And flung me through the void into the everlasting night

I tumbled through oblivion away from all known suns
No up or down, no left or right, my navigation gone
All other functions put to death, save one enduring vow
I'd see this journey to the end, as long as breath allows

Strange worlds and aeons greeted me along the aether way
In hyperspace, it's all the same, and time itself's astray
My heart and soul began to starve, so I lay down in cold sleep
And let the stasis take my life; I'd no strength left to weep

But came the shaking and the shock, alarms blared left and right
And suddenly the cockpit filled with all-consuming light
I knew that glow, I knew that warmth, I recognized it all
I knew that spectrum wrought in love, your wavelength's clarion call

I cannot know the laws that God has written in the stars
Save one enduring truth that beats in distant quasar hearts
Your love, it resonates with mine, across the depths of space
Though time dilates and space contracts, our love remains in place

Though light years, gigaparsecs came between us in the void
My sun has captured me again, you've all my fears destroyed
Your gravity's almighty pull has shattered this dark tomb
And floating me on cosmic waves, your orbit brought me home

When you fall into a well
Grit will not save you from gravity
Willpower will not cushion the bottom
Will not strip the algae from the walls
Will not keep you from slipping back down

There at the bottom
The platitudes of the strangers and bystanders
Bounce off the brick
Sounding endless and hollow
Especially when they think
I don't want to get out

I can scrabble my fingers raw
I can scream my throat hoarse
I can think positively until I go mad
But there at the bottom

Grit cannot dispel gravity
Fighting does not create friction
And the bottom is all there is.

Peeling off a scab
Is satisfying.
The ugly ruin above
Gives way to smooth renewal beneath.
I want to peel off the scab that I've become
To see that beneath the dried up husk
There is new life, new growth, new hope.

I want my love to be a warm blanket on a cold day
A gentle candle in the dark
A mug of cocoa with marshmallows floating in it
But instead it was a straitjacket that bound you
A stick of dynamite that blew off our fingers
A draught of poison that numbed our senses

We were gripping the knife's blade, and the tighter I held,
The deeper it cut.

Many times, when the pain of my heart would overflow
Someone would press a gun into my hand
And shove it against my temple.
I struggled with it and wrestled with it,
tearing the cold barrel
Away from my skin.

But instead the specter turned its scythe
Upon my grandmother
It would not cut her, only struck her blood
That she would bleed under her skin
And she bruised as if beaten

I wept by her bedside and grasped her hands
Soft like paper
And prayed that she might live to see me love and laugh again
And she rose from her sick bed
With her mind ever sharp, and her heart ever soft

Then the specter came for me
On leathery wings
With talons of protein
Injecting its DNA into me
To crown me its agent of pestilence
But I had enough of death and death-threats

I swore that I would live
I swore that I would beat it
I ripped the crown off my head
And beat it into the dust.

Amid the ruins scorched by flame
Masked with recycled breath
I had only myself to blame
For this landscape of death

In a hollow, once called our home
A portrait charred in twain
Beheld amid descending gloam
A face once loved in vain

The void in which my figure stood
Was cinders, soot, and ash
But on the other half I could
Make out her smile's bright flash

I choked, not for the poisoned air
But for a shudd'ring cry
Forever dear, and always fair
She's gone and passed me by

Out fell a note tucked in the frame
Pale moonlight on the black
Up rose within my bile and shame
My heart and hands went slack

She wrote of guilt, remorse, and pain
Of passions pushed too far
Of venom, fog, and clouded brain
Pandora's box ajar

She prayed that I'd forgive someday
The snake-eye dice we cast
The innocence that went astray
The scorching nuclear blast

A tear escaped from my right eye
And jumped to kiss the page
My futile cries across the sky
Could not her guilt assuage

Her blame I've taken, come what may
Forgiven to the last
For me the day, though yesterday
I reckoned aeons passed

For in the end, Megiddo's wrath
The bloodbath and assault
Were all but fruits born of my path
The whole of it my fault

Among the ruins, nothing grows
Beneath this tainted sky
Only the howling wind still blows
And life itself is dry

My judgment is sure well-deserved
As penance for my guilt
But I still pray her joy preserved
Her happiness rebuilt

For though the curses, plagues, and death
Escaped the box's scope
I will declare to my last breath
Pandora's box holds Hope.

All to often
We think we are the heroes of our stories

I thought I was Joseph fleeing Potiphar's wife
But I was actually Judah with Tamar

I thought I was David slaying Goliath
But I was actually David with Bathsheba

I thought I was John or Peter or even Jesus
But I'm actually Judas
Nervously clutching that bag of silver
Before I throw it  the Temple

I raised up a mountain fortress
But its foundation was faulty
It crumbled and great was its ruin

I drank up the ocean
But it was bitter
And it choked me and burst me apart

I flew across the horizon
Away from You
Away from all suns
And I was lost in the void.

Find me
On the barren crag of my own making
Find me
Beyond The walls of fear I built
Find me
At the end of the wastelands of loss
Earth parched and suffocated by the tears of bitterness

May roots of life break through the salt crust
May the dead-gray sky break open
And kiss me with the rain
Of faithfulness and Love
Of truth that never fails
Of the Everlasting Arms
Of the One who Lifts My Head

Ancient of Days, vast beyond knowledge
Whose fingers split the light from darkness
Cleave electrons from their atoms
And knit my flesh and bone and sinew
Whisper Your purpose
Whisper Your love
Find me
Redeem me

I was supposed to write
So many more poems about you
But all I have left
Is the fading scent
You left on my jacket

Backlit by flares and the fires of revolution
Amid the clouds of choking gas
You  wave your flag and raise your fist
And the voice that laughed with me these desolate months
Now screams a battle cry
For the oppressed and the wounded
The maimed and the dead

With the shields and batons between us
The barbed wire woven in congress
The choking teargas spewing out of the archfiend's mouth
And our vow of distance
Our hearts link arms
I raise my voice and with you
Stand at the barricades

Charm is deceptive
And beauty is fleeting
Though you abound in both
Your armor is adamantine
Your sword arm never tires
And your fire
Burns brightest of all

The little blue birds have all flown away
The tapestry of threads of conversation
Dusty and rolled up in a corner
The photos lie scattered on the floor
The algorithms still remember
And still remind me of you
But the longer the red dots remain silent
The faster the algorithms begin to enforce
Your disappearance