Your love comes in
many forms, darling.
May I know how many
you are?

get behind me
i say to myself, too often
like a hero.

Who is God? I asked myself.
“The one you see in fear,”
I answered.
Could I see Him
in moments of happiness?
I inquired again.
“No,
“as light does not appear in light,”
said the voice within me.

Love, if unmet, has many lives
it returns as a limbless reptile,
shrouding your chest, closer,
a chain of loops that hurt,
hissing like a snake,
where blood becomes a nectar
and heat, a desire,
until everything
is reduced to skin.

i don’t make people
accountable for
their wrongs
the complaints hang
like sagging, aged *******,
and old palm fronds,
heavy with dates
ripened
with sweetness,

ready to break
but they mumble,
and they
hold like
my mouth,
which
does not speak bitterness
my aim is to survive life,
not them
i remind myself
give yourself a chance to live,
not give people a chance
to forgive themselves

it is not your responsibility
but God’s.

i stepped back onto the
walking track after
clouds were squeezed
hard, by storms, rain
pattered on prairies
i saw many people
had sunk their feet,
into the mud,
others had been on
the cleaner paths
eventually, the mud thinned,
the footsteps pressed it flat
i saw a passage made,
without intention.
And i thought
life is often eased this way
by rains and factors
by strangers  
softening the ground.
With this, I keep my emotions raw.
With this, I lean toward God.

Our words are monkeys,
swinging from branch to
branch, thrumming
at the barks of mind.

We become clumsy *****,
laying them as eggs,
into the highest tide.

And with oars, we
send them out
to breathe longer,
within the waves.