Happy birthday,
by the way.
I just thought I’d write to you,
since I never really did

It’s been two years now
two complete rotations around the sun
since you died.
I probably think about you every week-
believe it or not,
you changed my whole outlook on life
But I’m sorry to say it didn’t happen until you left.
I think about you every time I leave the house in the morning
I think about how sudden it was
and how that happens every day to all kinds of people
even you.

I think about you every time I say goodbye to anyone
especially if the person I’m saluting is getting into a car
and when I say goodbye
I say it as heartfully as I can
and I hope that maybe they’ll realize that I’m saying
“I love you”
and “please, for the love of god, drive safely.

please.”

all in one word.
Because if I said it openly like that they’d all think I was totally mental.
I’m not mental.
I’m just a lover and a fighter
who lost something he didn’t even think he had the option of losing.

I think about you when I hug
anyone.
because you never know.
  and hugs are not ever worth half-assing.
                       ever.

  So maybe I lied.
and maybe I actually think about you multiple times a day every day of my life.
   not consciously i guess.
      but I can tell you for certain
that your absence is felt
          in one way or another
                      every
                             ­      day
                             of my life.

I wish I could have learned these lessons without losing you.
                        but you went all the same
                                         and here we all are.

             anyways happy birthday.
                          
                             Miss you.

I can't come back.
Sorry, pastor, I can't come back.
Sorry mom and dad.

I can't come back.

I have seen crippled men beg for pennies outside the mile-high walls that guard the glittering, gem-encrusted Vatican.
But I haven't seen Christ.
I have seen good men's funerals picketed by angry mobs all swearing to be the hands of God.
But I've never met the rest of Him.
We've seen holocausts, crusades and conquests **** millions in his name.
But I have never heard His voice.
And I think those men holding those guns missed the point as far as his commandments go.

But that's not why I can't come back.

I ducked out from under the umbrella of religion and I felt the rain
And every day since I've been learning to take the wet with the dry rather than seeking shelter in what's comfortable.
And what's more, I've gotten a clearer view of the sky than ever before
And without that umbrella
I have seen something.
Or the outermost edge of something-
Something unimaginably large
Something not only too big for words, but too big to see all at once.
Something bigger than me and you and god and everything.
And I can't unsee that.
I've surrendered to the fact that not I, my children, or their children will be able to fully comprehend the vastness of everything,
But I am willing to die incomplete before it.

So sorry mom and dad.
Sorry god.
I found my own truth.

and that’s why I can’t come back.

We are balanced
Precariously
Over the vastness of the unknown.
Every day when we get ourselves up
We have a choice
To continue to walk the tightrope above the abyss
Or to let ourselves
Fall.
This can be both good and bad
Or one or the other
But the important thing is to remember
That the life of the tightrope walker
The fence sitter
The cliff hanger
Is one that is doomed
To regret.
We must cast ourselves in
If we seek to
See what life is and life is always
Unknown.

The sun is resplendent and warming.
on this bench in front of these shops in a town we’ve never been to.
Italy’s a lot nicer if you’re in a small town.

I’m watching her peel an orange
slowly,
meticulously
she’s removing the skin from the meat.

She reminds me of a boxer wrapping his hands
before a big fight.

The last moment of meditative solitude
before the **** hits the fan.

She’s finishing with the peel now, setting the pieces on the bench next to us
as she splits it in half, an aerosol of juice sprays from the orange
she hands me one half
and begins to eat the other herself.

I peel the segments apart, eating them slowly
and spitting the seeds into the gutter.
she’s smiling,
the juice running down her chin,
and neither of us are speaking.

Later I’m smelling the citrus on her fingers
as she runs them through my hair;
it’s barely long enough to run fingers through,
and I’m thankful for that.

I’m thankful for that orange.
I’m glad I saw that small town,
the one without tourist attractions or snakeoil peddlers
I’m glad my scalp ever knew her citrus fingers.


it came,

I saw,

it went.

Interchangeability.
affixed to loss, affixed to
     loss of limb, or
             worse.
                                              She has the
                                              wildest hair.
                                      So wild it almost makes
                                            her look tame,
                                                   by
                                comparison. and she talks
                                            of magic,
                     no,
                         she talks magic.
                                      she speaks in smoke rings
                                             and with the light of god nestled
                                                            in her bounteous hair
                   those smoke rings float up to form
       halos
                    cresting her brow

                                           shining inner light out.
                                              she is lost.
or I am lost.
       either or, but not both.
we are interchangeably lost
                        and it is not that we are less lost together,
  simply that we are together,
              and that means
                     no matter
              how
                                                      ­    l
                                                           ­                                                              o
                              s
                               ­                                                     t
       ­  we become,
    we are found.

    I
          am:
Lost in liberation
                    in victory
                    in security
                    in madness
                    in
                      her.

For some people,
Reality is too much to bear.
For some people,
The weight of the air in their lungs
Is too heavy to hold
And for some
Just living is
too much.

Call it insanity if you want
Go ahead, cast that stone
if you want

I call it a hyper-awareness.
And maybe a mind with too
logical a view of how
Illogical
It all is and how
Tragically
Ironic life is and how
Impending
Our doom is.

I know a fair few of these.
They are mostly good, kind people
Who have too good an understanding of the words
"Infinite"
And
"Nothing"
And of the point where those two words meet.

So to my friends who want to end it
Because they see too much every day
Who can't breathe because they're
Drowning in rising water-
I hope you live long enough to find
A reason to.
Because I am confident
That like with all things,
If you persist in looking

You will succeed in finding.

I used to make believe
In the stability of unity
And unified individually

Until the knot came undone
And I hung a hairsbreadth
Above oblivion

We built up Rome in a day
And for a while it was great
But I should have known
Easy come, easy go
You're gilded and I was sold
So we glimmered like fool's gold

Just Like fool's gold

I used to make believe
You and I were lost
interchangeably and there
Was a surety in security
But gold's just rust in training
And all time's wasted waiting

But you're not waiting any more

We built up Rome in a day
And for a while it was great
But I should have known,
Easy come, easy go
You were gilded, I was sold
And we glittered like fool's gold
So it's no surprise I find
That I'm better off alone

Should have known from the start
You cried easy and came hard
You were gilded, I was sold
It was nothing but fool's gold

When it's October 12th-
When it's a sunny Sunday afternoon
In the fall
When you're curled up in your comfiest sweater
Next to a purring cat curled up in his
And you sit in front of the bay windows of your home
Watching the clouds and cars and wind roll by
Carrying burning yellow leaves
In the updrafts.

When you want something,
but you don't know what.
Maybe it's a want to want,
misplaced in hopes of filling
the ever-present void in you.
Maybe it's happiness.

Maybe it's as close as you'll ever get.

Either way,
Maybe it's enough.

We seek love because in love we are validated in our perfect flaws and exactitude of malformation and in love we are given reason not to hate ourselves for the things we see are wrong but cannot change even if we spent a millenia in an instant or infinite instants in eternity struggling to shake off the shackles of our humanity which is both our captor and liberator in this,
life,
yes we recognize its importance in allowing us to be but we spend the congregation of moments we are given in that holy being damning it, for it also makes us imperfect and in our imperfections is the capacity to do harm unto the world which we love so much,
and so,
we equate these imperfections with evil and seek to expunge them with all our might of will and all our cleverness of wit and all our screaming and pounding and passion of
soul,
but it is all in vain for these things which we despise so greatly are joined at the sutures with our very being and hence have many good but troubled lambs of the internal apocalypse chosen to end that being for sake of ending that malformation, though they know this is wrong, but it is the only solution in trying to remove the weight of one’s existence and hence the weight of existence from one’s mind and so they sleep easily,
unbreathing,
unknowing,
and having completely cleansed the burden of themselves from this immaculate and gorgeous universe which they love so, but they are also
unloved.

And it is in love that we are validated, both in our perfect flaws and exactitude of malformation,
it is in love that our weight on the world is not lifted, no, but counterbalanced and nullified,
and in that way,
we are set free.

Life.

Life is, at its best and its worst, pure, unadulterated madness. The moments when we laugh and cry or we cry and laugh. The moments when we scream at the top of our lungs. The moments when we smile sadly. The moments when we collapse on the floor because it's all too much.

Love.

Love changes so much. From the first embrace of a warm body, kicking and screaming, to the last. From being loved to loving, yourself, and then loving yourself. And all of them are as different as the colors in the rainbow- gradient shades of warming light. Many things of one kind- or maybe many kinds of one thing.

But here we are. Where else would we be- no, Where else could we be? And here it all is. Just where we left it. Like coming home from vacation to find not a crumb out of place.
We are dynamically static, waves in an ocean, snowflakes in a blizzard, grains of sand in the wind-whipped dunes.

Together we hum a vibrant chord in the key of being, the vibrating thrum of bees busy at work to keep the scaffolding of what is from collapsing.

And here we all are. Here we are and everything is different but nothing has changed.

Where else could we be?